Babbling Into The Void

 Ambiguity is everywhere in Prince of Darkness . The thing that the religious and scientific characters can agree on is that there are places where the common-sense, intuitive rules do not apply, whether that's the level of quantum physics, or within the human heart. While Carpenter does juxtapose the scientific and religious viewpoints, they are not at odds with one another. Victor Wong's physicist and Donald Pleasance's priest are friends, not opponents, trying to work together to puzzle out the mystery. There is debate between the two positions, but, crucially, both recognise that they don't hold all the answers, that there are points where their certainties break down. Instead, they are both attempts to explain the universe from a human perspective - attempts that, it is increasingly clear, fall woefully short. This is cosmic horror, expressed not through the vast, but the minuscule. Just as humanity is humbled when looking outwards, into the boundless universe, so ...

 The two novellas and one short story that make up this collection are simultaneously very different in theme, and yet unified. The eponymous novella tells the story, through emails and IM chat logs, of two women who meet on a LGBT forum and begin an online relationship that - as we are informed from the off, these records apparently being considered as evidence relating to the death of one of the women - careers towards something very dark. The second novella, The Enchantment , follows two people grieving in a world in which the afterlife has apparently been scientifically disproved. The final story is about a man who, worried about impropriety and social norms, is pressured into making increasingly strange bets with a neighbour. So: as LaRocca themself discusses in the afterword, these works deal with themes like the need for human connection, even when it is unhealthy or destructive; the search for meaning in religion and outside it; the ways that social expectations contort our...