Illuminations, the debut short story collection from Britain’s pre-eminent comic writer Alan Moore collects work written over the last 40 years, and even when stripped of the visuals of his former day job, Moore is still able to convey tangible universes with his dazzling, at times almost incantational prose, telling us stories of our own time and place whilst doing so.
Illuminations’ opening story A Hypothetical Lizard tells us of two sex workers working to pleasure the peculiar needs of that not-often sexually depicted group, sorcerers. More Severance than Hogwarts, it’s the story of a doomed love between a sex worker who has been bifurcated so as not to be able to speak of or act upon anything she sees and hears and another who is transgender.
The title story is a chronotropic horror in which a middle-aged man seeks to recapture his childhood happiness on a trip down Memory Lane, with nightmarish consequences. Not Even Legend depicts a meeting group for would-be paranormal investigators, one of whom is a time-bending infiltrator.
This is a bewilderingly inventive collection of stories from a true craftsman. Over three decades on from Pop Will Eat Itself telling us so, it’s still fair to say that Alan Moore knows the score.
Illuminations, Alan Moore (Bloomsbury)
Price: £18. Info: here
words PAUL JENKINS