When people write science fiction stories about people on the moon, they often take the “science” part seriously.
But when Nathan Ballingrud was writing his pulpy lunar gothic novella, Crypt Of The Moon Spider (paperback, Kindle), in which there’s people living on the moon, and they worship a spider that used to live there, he not only didn’t bother being scientifically accurate, he also didn’t write a science fiction story.
To start, what is Crypt Of The Moon Spider about, and when and where is it set?
The novella is set on the moon in 1923. Veronica Brinkley, a woman of modest beginnings who married into some wealth, is being committed by her husband to The Barrowfield Home For The Melancholy, an institution run by Dr. Barrington Cull, because she is suffering from depression. Dr. Cull’s unorthodox methods are abetted by a strange religious sect called the Alabaster Scholars, who serve a long-dead Moon Spider, which may once have dwelled in the deep woods covering much of the moon’s surface.
Where did you get the idea for Crypt Of The Moon Spider?
The phrase “lunar gothic” floated into my head one day. I can’t remember what brought it about. But I fell in love with it immediately, and thought of the classic covers from gothic romance novels of the mid-20th century, depicting women in nightgowns running from dark, imposing houses. The idea to invoke a scene like that on the moon became the seed of the story. I took inspiration from gothic novels, movies, art.
It was also important to me, as it is whenever I write a pulp-inspired story, to maintain psychological realism as much as possible. My cardinal rule is that the characters must always be taken seriously, whatever the outrageous circumstances around them.
As you said, Crypt Of The Moon Spider takes place on the moon, and in 1923. But is that our moon, and the 1923 of a hundred and one years ago, or was the calendar reset or is this a different planet’s moon and it’s been 1923 years since we settled that planet, or…what?
This takes place in our past, and is our moon, in the same way that Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Barsoom is the Mars of our past. So, not really ours, but definitely ours.
And why did you decide to set it there and then as opposed to, say, our moon but in 2123, which would give us time to terraform the moon?
Because then I’m making a concession to a kind of realism that this story isn’t interested in. Once I introduce an explanation for why there is air on the moon, as well as forests and spiders, everything else will want an explanation, too. And I don’t care about the science of it. In fact, the science is not only not the point, it’s antithetical to the point. Gothic fiction is psychological. Pulp fiction is (usually) fantastical. The only logic this story wants or needs is that of the nightmare and the penny dreadful. Any concern for scientific plausibility undercuts the whole enterprise.
You did something similar in your novel The Strange, which was set on Mars in 1931. Is Crypt Of The Moon Spider connected to The Strange? Oh god, is this the beginning of the Ballingrudverse?
The Strange and Crypt Of The Moon Spider are not part of the same world, though they do share that conceit. I guess I’m in a retro space fantasy phase.
I did briefly consider tying the two together, but they just don’t fit together.
In a similar vein, why did you go with a spider as opposed to a lady bug or a grasshopper or some other insect? Or not an insect? Crypt Of The Moon Walrus sounds pretty cool…
Now you tell me! Where were you a year ago?
Probably at home. Reading a book.
Aside from the fact that spiders are scary, the webs of the Moon Spider play a pivotal role not only in this story but the two that will follow.
You’ve said Crypt Of The Moon Spider is Gothic and pulpy, but it sounds like it might have some horror as well. How do you describe it, genre-wise?
This question often stumps me, because as a writer I like to throw in a bit of everything I love. I think the blending of genres has become quite common over the past couple of decades, and I believe we’ll only see more of it. I don’t think of Crypt as science fiction simply because there’s no real science in it. But it does make free use of science fiction tropes. (The same thing could be said about The Strange, incidentally.) I tend to think of what I do as dark fantasy, because that seems to cover all the bases, but I think “pulpy Gothic horror story in a science fiction setting” serves quite well.
Crypt Of The Moon Spider is your second novella after The Visible Filth, though you’ve also written the aforementioned novel, The Strange, and the short story collections North American Lake Monsters and Wounds: Six Stories From The Border Of Hell. Are there any writers, or specific stories, that had a big influence on Spider but not on anything else you’ve written?
It’s my third novella, actually. “The Butcher’s Table,” collected in Wounds, is longer by half than either of the other two. I love the novella; the freedom it offers and the discipline it demands. It’s fast becoming one of my favorite forms to write.
The writers and artists who influenced Crypt are the ones that worked in the gothic or old science fiction modes: Edgar Allan Poe, Mike Mignola, Mary Shelley, Gaston Leroux, Al Feldstein and Bill Gaines, Richard Corben, Wallace Wood, Jack Davis, Margaret Brundage, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Robert Louis Stevenson, Mervyn Peake, C.L. Moore, Henry Kuttner…I could go on all day.
What about non-literary influences; was Crypt Of The Moon Spider influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games? Because the title makes me think it may have been inspired by ’50s sci-fi movies or ’60s Hammer horror films.
Absolutely! I listed some artists above, but I would certainly add the Hammer horror movies, the Universal horror movies, as well as films like The Old Dark House, Reanimator and Bride Of Reanimator, the Poe movies from Roger Corman and Vincent Price. I can’t think of specific card or video games, but I’m sure some have in subtle ways. Influence comes from everywhere, in ways we don’t always recognize.
Crypt Of The Moon Spider is the first book in a trilogy called the Lunar Gothic Trilogy. What was it about this story that made you realize it needed to be told in three parts as opposed to one or, conversely, four or five or 37?
It wanted three parts because there are three principal characters: Veronica Brinkley, Charlie Duchamp, and Dr. Barrington Cull. Each will be the focus of one of the novellas. Once their stories are told, the work is finished.
And do you know yet what the other two books will be called and when they’ll be out?
The current plan calls for the next two to be released in August 2025 and August 2026. The second installment, which focuses on Charlie, is called Cathedral Of The Drowned. The third does not yet have a title.
When people hear that Crypt Of The Moon Spider is the first part of a trilogy, some people will decide to wait until all of the books are out before reading any of them, and some of them will also decide to binge the series when the time comes. But is there any reason why you think people shouldn’t wait to read Spider? Or that they should but then not binge the series? Or that they should wait and binge?
Well, Crypt is written to be a self-contained story. The sequels, which will build on it and which will happen sequentially in time, do not function the way a standard sequel does. Each one takes place after a jump in time, focusing on a different character. None of them end on cliffhangers.
That said, if someone wants to just hold onto them and binge them at once, that’s okay too. Though these are novellas we’re talking about, so they’re pretty short. It’s not like having to re-read The Song Of Ice And Fire series before The Winds Of Winter is released.
I asked earlier if Crypt Of The Moon Spider was influenced by any movies, TV shows, or games. But to flip things around, do you think Crypt Of The Moon Spider — and by extension, the Lunar Gothic Trilogy — could work as a series of movies, a show, or a game?
I would love to see it on screen, though I think the very strangeness of the trilogy makes that unlikely. Each chapter is pretty distinct, so I think they’d work best as individual films or as episodes of a miniseries.
Personally, I think it would be fun to see it in stop-motion animation.
And if someone did want to adapt this series into a movie or miniseries, who would you want them to cast as Veronica, Charlie, Barrington, and the other main characters? Or their voices if it’s animated?
This is a tough question. I never think of characters in those terms, so it’s kind of wide open for me. I hate to say any names for fear of influencing how readers imagine the characters.
I will say, though, that if you imagined a gone-to-seed, less handsome Vinnie Jones [The Gentlemen] as Charlie, you wouldn’t be far off.
So, is there anything else someone might need to know about Crypt Of The Moon Spider?
I would only add that Crypt Of The Moon Spider is, like most of my stories, about loneliness, finding beauty in horror, and finding freedom through the monstrous.
But more than that, and most importantly, it’s meant to be a fun, creepy adventure about mad scientists and giant spiders on the moon.
Finally, if someone enjoys Crypt Of The Moon Spider, what novel or novella that falls into the same or similar genres as Spider would you suggest they check out?
I would guide them toward the work of Patrick McGrath, a criminally under-sung modern practitioner of gothic fiction. All of his work is wonderful, but I’d steer new readers to his novels Spider (which was made into a film by David Cronenberg), Asylum, and Martha Peake. If you have any appetite for the gothic, Patrick McGrath is your man.
