Amber's Weird Library

I had a dream that the USA was attacked in several East Coast cities by nuclear bombs. People in towns outside of the cities still went to work like nothing happened. The dream took place in a roadside diner where workers were talking about leaving. They worried about the threat of radiation, but they also didn't want to miss work. Customers fleeing from the cities ran in looking for a place to rest before they continued, most not knowing where they should go. Some were badly burned.  One family that came in was a man and his family. The army was looking for him. He showed us videos of soldiers badly burned walking into the ocean while their skin fell off. The soldiers felt no pain and were smiling and laughing as their bodies fell apart.  The man wanted to take his family far away from the horror. He was planning to take them to El Salvador. I made plans to leave, and the rest of my coworkers supported me. We had one android worker that I asked to come with my family, but he ...

One evening as the sun was setting, I heard a sound I couldn't explain. It sounded like a roar, but it had no source. I didn't hear it with my ears; it stirred my soul. I was confused. Then it was over. I felt settled again. I heard the birds singing in the trees and the wind blowing through the leaves.  I didn't hear it again for a week and forgot about it. Maybe it was some kind anxiety attack. Maybe it was hormones. Then as I was rolling out my garbage can, I heard or felt or became one with that roar.  I looked it up online. Neighbors on message boards asked what it was. So, it was real.  A week later, at the same time, I went outside. Most of my neighbors were also outside. The roar started again. One of our elderly lady neighbors collapsed beside her husband. We rushed to help her. Someone called 911. Her husband said they were trumpets warning about the end of time. A week later, I sat on the porch waiting. I read on a message board that people were meeting near th...

SPOILERS AHEAD      More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon was published in 1953 and won the 1954 International Fantasy Award and a Retro Hugo in 2004. The novel is an important science fiction classic with ideas about the future evolution of humanity through the use of marginalized characters. Theodore Sturgeon asks these questions about human evolution and gives us uncomfortable answers that are less about the future state of humanity, and more about the sad state of humanity now.      It is the story about how a group  of misfits slowly find one another in the Midwest United States in the 1930's through the 1950's. We start by meeting a father abusively isolating his young adult daughters. The daughters aren't allowed to have friends, must dress in 19th century clothes, and can't even get dressed in front of mirrors.  One day one of the daughters while walking in the fenced in gardens behind her home, meets a young man suffering from an intellect...

The birds begin to sing on a beautiful spring morning in the trees below the castle on top of the hill.   The King is in his courtyard, rubbing his belly. His advisor by his side looking proud. The Queen is in her dark chambers covering a hole in the floor with some dusty tiles. Two knights tiptoe through the hallway as the light of dawn slowly pours into the windows.   The rays of the sun illuminate the face of the king's favorite statue from an ancient empire that leans against the wall to the right. The face is forever frozen in agony; a sacrifice made to an unknown god. His body contorted and covered with wounds.  The two knights tiptoe by softly laughing.  They hear a scream from the chamber to the right. They freeze and look into each other's eyes. They look at the statue's face. Then they run away to the end of the hall and down the stairs. They do not ask for help.  A maid runs out of the chamber, screaming down the hallway, tripping on the anc...

 Once I read that The Willows by Algernon Blackwood scared cosmic horror writer, H. P. Lovecraft, I knew I had to try it out.  The story is about two men canoeing on the Danube River, with the goal of canoeing to the Black Sea. They reach an area between present-day Bratislava and Budapest devoid of human civilization and decide to stop to camp on a sand bar while the river swells because of flooding. There, they have a very creepy experience with something not of our world. Is it something supernatural or something that can be explained by science? It is more horrifying if it has a scientific explanation.  I am not sure Blackwood's intentions were with the creatures. I know that he was into the occult and theosophy and believed in other realms. Sometimes the line between our realm and the realm of the beyond is thin and things can seep through. That is why we see ghosts, etc. There could be a mystical explanation for the creatures. However, if they are creatures from ano...

     Millions of years in the future, when the sun is dying, the Earth has become tidally locked and attached to the moon with cob-like webs make by giant spider looking plants. Half of the planet is always in the daytime and half is always night. Most life lives in the perpetual afternoon . Plants dominate, they hunt, they fly, they hop, they graze, they even fight battles with one another. Humans survived but they look little like the humans of today. They are smaller and have green skin. They live in matriarchal tribes hopping through the branches of a giant Banyan tree trying to survive the last years of life on Earth. This is the setting of Hothouse by Brian Aldiss a story that begins as one of survival in the afternoon on Earth but ends up being a deep musing on intelligence and humanity.       Hothouse was originally published as a group of short stories that won the Hugo Award for Short Fiction in 1962 . We follow a tribe of future humans ...