City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon: a wicked concoction of urban pastoral and incantatory fantastic, where a grocers’ warehouse might become a palace, and an antique bank is hidden beneath a department store.
Now that nos. 45 and 46 are complete and in the world, a number of elements of this new season, Summer, the third season of the epic, might well be coming into focus. —Head over to Chapbooks, and scroll down to the brand new section where the third season chapbooks will be collected, and you’ll notice that no. 45 is the first installment of vol. 5, the Greene Chapel—and that no. 46 is the first installment of vol. 6, Eleleu Ie.
The aptness of this satire in 2025—in which the law is even presuming to rule on biological “reality”—draws attention to the similarities between the 2020s and the 1920s, which seem much closer to the present now than, say, the 1940s or 1950s. Like our current government, the good burghers of Lud-in-the-Mist can’t counter, or even account for, the ongoing collapse of the dominant symbolic order around their ears because they are unable to recognise on ideological grounds the very forces that are opposing them.
Certainly there is no future for the genre except as a metaphor within some other work. By now the whole complex of ideas has passed so into the general culture that it is conceivable in art only as lyric imagery or as affectionate reminiscence. In fact, the vampire tradition has hardly been used in lyric verse—I can only remember one poem in Fantasy and Science Fiction. I always thought Italian directors would do very well with vampires as cultural symbols for the rotten rich—many of the traditions about the vampire are close to the atmosphere of films like La Notte or La Dolce Vita.
Unlocking the door to the apartment she leans back against him, head against his shoulder, “It’s just,” she says, “a more, calculating knight, would’ve seen the King home. Not a lowly Duchess.”
“His majesty has no need of my help,” murmurs Luys, looking down on her red, red hair.
“You’re saying I do?” says Jo, looking up for a kiss. Arms about each other stumbled steps into the kitchen, kissing, he’s undone a button of her dress, she’s grabbing his hand, turning away from his mouth, “What,” he says, “my lady,” but she shakes her head. Looking down the dark hall, the closed doors. The light under the door to the left. Stepping away from him. “I didn’t leave a light on,” she says.
It’s the bedside lamp, an anglepoise affair pulled out to light the small thick book laid open on Ysabel’s lap. She’s sitting in the corner, pillows piled behind her, knees tenting the blankets, “I’m sorry,” she says, looking up to Jo in the doorway. “But her snoring’s terrible.”
“She came back,” says Jo, her red hair skewed, her hand holding closed her dress.
“She came back,” says Ysabel, and then, sitting up, “oh,” she says, “oh, Luys, he’s, you, Jo, I’m sorry,” setting the book aside as Jo says “No, it’s, just, it’s okay, stay. Stay.”
“No,” says Ysabel, lifting the blankets, “I can stand the noise, let me just–”
“Ysabel,” says Jo. “It’s okay. It’s late, anyway. Just, give me a minute.”
