Another Santana Morning by Mike Dolan

Mike Dolan is a writer who is new to me and, I suspect, to many others as well. Another Santana Morning is a reissue of his 1970 collection, Santana Morning. Ten new stories have been added, and the original ones have been re-worked and even re-titled in some cases. Half a dozen appear to have been dropped from the first collection. It is safe to say that if you read and enjoyed the original, then it is worth buying this one, as it is essentially a new collection. Due to hellish circumstances involving Powell Publications, the original publisher, much of the print run was pulped after poor distribution. All this is gone into detail in Dolan’s afterword, which reads like one of Kurt Vonnegut’s Kilgore Trout nightmares.

“The Street of the Storytellers” is an arabesque that tells how a youth with a talent for spinning yarns leaves home, much to the disgust of his father, and heads for the city where he has heard of a street where storytellers are paid to entertain people with their tales. The youth finds, however, that the competition is formidable, and he begins to wonder if he has made a mistake. The autobiographical component in this opener is deliberately obvious, but the story would have had a greater sense of place if it had been sprinkled with a few of Scheherazade’s clichéd turns of phrase.

“Of A Yellow Summer” (reprint) is much stronger and is very reminiscent of Ray Bradbury. Dolan knew Bradbury and obviously learned a great deal from him. This story of an aging everyman is steeped in nostalgia. Howard Bell is an old man who comes across a dwarf selling aerosol cans of “Summertime.” He buys one and is transported back to his youth and the lost love of his life. It’s a lovely Möbius loop of a story that explores fate and regret. Dolan’s prose is solid rather than flashy, but this feels like vintage Bradbury.

“The Hole” (reprint) is more of a Stephen King type of a story. A couple buy a house and find a bottomless pit beneath the floor of the hallway. The husband has a phobia of holes after an experience with a mineshaft when he was a boy. The wife is an unsympathetic character in a couple of different ways. It’s not a story that relies on reader identification.

“Trudy’s Eyes” (reprint) is an ambitious story that deals with twins and identity. A set of twins have grown up in an abusive household, and when they separate, the narrator stays with the mother while his twin sister ends up with the psychotic alcoholic who passes for a father. When the narrator eventually tracks down his sister, he discovers just how close they are, and he also finds that she has a very unusual way of escaping. It’s a disturbing and effective story that is only slightly marred by Dolan’s adolescent description of the female body.

This is something that crops up again in “Strange Lover,” Dolan had to do much writing for the men’s magazines several decades ago to keep the wolf from the door, and this reads like a sample (albeit one with a fantastical component). A beautiful woman is lying, naked, on a bed when she starts to dream of an imaginary perfect lover. As the story goes on, it becomes less clear as to which partner is the imaginary one. As far as erotic writing goes, it is tame enough when compared wish much that is published today. The way that the two characters swap is, however, nicely done.

“The New-Realism Experiment” retains the theme of identity (the collection is ordered with much thoughtfulness). In this case, a man wakes up at a party next to a beautiful woman. He has amnesia but is able to piece together the facts of his life and realises that he is a rich playboy. Then the woman’s husband arrives with a gun, and things start to unravel. The reader, armed with the title, knows that things may not be quite as they appear. The end still packs a punch, all the more powerful for not outstaying its arrival.

“Santana Morning” (reprint) presumably ended up as the title story on the strength of its title. The story itself certainly does not merit it. It’s a sentimental tale of an aging hermit who finds that the wind (the Santa Ana) has brought him the perfect young girlfriend of his dreams. She gradually becomes more real, but unfortunately, he finds that his fear of commitment extends even to her.

“The City” (reprint) is one of several out-and-out science fiction stories in the collection. The premise has dated somewhat, but it’s fun. The overpopulation fear of the sixties has come to pass, and Howard 388 is trapped in a hellish future. He has decided to end it all as he has realised that he has little chance of meeting a woman due to the severe social segregation that has been put in place in order to limit the population explosion. One wonders how there can be such a massive population after all the safeguards and diversions that Dolan describes (the government seems to be actively promoting gay activities and lethal sports), but it doesn’t detract too much from the reader’s pleasure.

“Journey by Heliodrome” (reprint) is another Bradburyesque story. A young man is captivated by a market-dealer with a strange toy-like flying machine, and he misses his train home as a consequence. His only option is to buy the machine, strap it to his back, and chase after the train. He soon catches up with the train but finds that he is enjoying his new method of travel far too much to stop. What happens to the machine when he arrives back with his family becomes another sort of journey, this time one through the decades.

“Dynamo” (reprint) is another story that features the Santana wind, but this time in a less benevolent mood. A writer bickers with his wife. She is angry about their level of poverty (he is a full-time writer), and he is angry at her interference. As the wind builds up outside, he finds himself getting electric shocks when he touches household objects. This leads to an epiphany. It’s a slight story, but in aiming for an emotional solution rather than going for a shock ending it stands up well.

“Platform in the Sky” is another encounter with an ethereal girl. The narrator finds that something strange has happened to him, but you’ll get no spoilers from me. It shouldn’t be too hard to guess, but the pleasure is from the narrator’s own discovery and acceptance and not from the twist.

“Intruder” (reprint) is a reconstruction of the first story that Dolan wrote (and subsequently lost) when he was fifteen. It’s a weakly plotted time-travel twist story with virtually no characterisation, and it reads like fanzine fiction. Dolan may harbour fond feelings for it, but it’s unlikely to win over many readers.

“Memory” (reprint), on the other hand, is excellent. If the collection was consistently this strong, then Mike Dolan would be hailed as one of the great lost writers of the twentieth century. It’s a fractured, floating narrative that deals with nostalgia, memory, and fear of growing old. Young girls express a desire not to age, and, after a fashion, some of them don’t. One bangs her head in 1910, which opens a cascade of thoughts. Some are about a missing girl who turned up fifty years after she disappeared. All of the mysteries are solved by the end in this poignant and moving story because Dolan doesn’t believe in cheating the reader with unresolved plotlines.

“Morning and the Rain” is a post-nuclear apocalypse story that sits squarely in On The Beach territory. It feels like a cold war nightmare that has been tinkered with to bring it into the twenty-first century, but otherwise, it stands up well despite an excess of sentiment. A CIA agent decides to poison his family before they are exposed to the inevitable suffering, but the arrival of an optimistic aunt with the opposite opinion creates conflict. It’s an exploration of the struggle between hope and despair. Both viewpoints have validity, but Dolan’s own becomes apparent.

“The Segmented Key” betrays an older origin in the turn of phase of one of its characters. “No bombs are going to fall,” says the husband, casually reminding us of a time when bombs were supposed to drop from the sky instead of sitting and waiting for us. A housewife starts to have strange experiences. Is she losing her mind or is she being contacted by an alien civilisation? A promising start leads to a vaguely disappointing story once the truth is revealed. Sometimes one wishes that Dolan would leave a bit of ambiguity for the reader.

“The Lascivious Ghost” is a pact-with-the-devil joke. Arthur Tokay is an unpleasant playboy, but when his looks fade, he becomes abhorrent to the opposite sex. After finding himself rejected by someone whom he regards as the perfect woman, he kills himself, only to find that he becomes a ghost. Up pops a fiend who offers him another crack at the woman. These things never work out well. The story makes a sort of sense by the end, but it is a painful journey over bumpy ground.

“Of Another Yellow Summer” sees the return of the aerosol salesman from “Of A Yellow Summer.” This story’s old customer and his wife live in an “If This Goes On—” dystopia that has dated spectacularly badly. There is a Vietnam-style jungle war going on, the Panthers and the Klan are mixing it up in a segregated South, and the sea level has actually fallen due to the use of fusion power plants. The old couple are due to be compulsorily moved into a retirement home. Does the can of “Summertime” offer some form of escape? Anyone who has read the earlier story will know roughly what to expect.

“Some of My Best Friends Are…” expresses a concern with the civil rights movement, despite the odd mention of I-pods and the like. Orangutans have learned to speak. They are now taking their place in society, despite the misgivings of our bigoted narrator. There is probably more levity on display in this story than in the rest of the collection put together, which is what saves it. The racism/apes metaphor is, of course, familiar from Pierre Boulle and cinema, but it is still a risky one to play. In my opinion, Dolan has managed to pull it off successfully, although I can see others disagreeing.

“The Old Man of San Blas” is the opposite bookend to “The Street of the Storytellers” and is a much stronger story than its companion. An old writer in a Mexican village is a hero to the locals despite the fact that he no longer writes. Again, the autobiographical component is obvious, as is the reader’s knowledge of this collection’s existence. As with many of the other stories, it is the path to the conclusion that provides the interest.

This is probably the most uneven collection that I have read in a long time, and even Chaz Brenchley, in his introduction, feels that he has to offer qualifications. The best of the stories, however, are very fine indeed.

Publisher: Elastic Press (May 2008)
Price: £5.99
Trade Paperback 223 pages
ISBN 978-0-9553181-5-3