A re-readable and re-readable story kicks off Illuminations: feeling like something out of Tanith Lee's brilliantly dark imagination, “Hypothetical Lizard” is the baroque story of a sex slave captive in the most fantastical of bordellos, The House with No Clocks. Witness to a bizarre act of revenge, Moore spins an intriguing cast of mysterious characters around her, adding a thick layer of detail to bring their eerie, shadowy world to life. When one thinks of the visual power of fantasy to conjure otherworldy visions, this story is an excellent realization that rewards on a second (and third) read.
The strange juxtaposition of a corporate environment with the paranormal, “Not Even Legend” tells of a group of modern freak hunters sitting in an office and worrying about the normal things that corpos worry about around water coolers and meeting rooms, but with a purpose wholly distinct from power point presentations and emails. Little do they know what lurks in their midst. “Location, Location, Location” is a funny piss take on Christianity. Set at the end of time, it's up to Jesus to convince the last woman on Earth to continue the species. Satire galore, do not read if you are concerned about sacrilege.
A classic, paranormal story, “Cold Reading” is an evening in the life of a spiritual healer. Called upon to intervene for a man who recently lost his twin brother, things start to get creepy when the man asks for a personal visitation. Along with capturing a mealy, condescending voice, Moore does an excellent job stringing the reader along, making them want to turn the pages to discover the twist. (Wait for it. It's there.) An extremely colorful thought experiment, “The Improbably Complex High-Energy State” describes the early seconds—yes, seconds—of artificial intelligence, and the chaos it gets up to. Moore paralleling humanity's follies, the virtual context would make this a bit of a juvenile larf were it not for the sobering, monkey conclusion. Nostalgia if ever there was, the title story “Illumination” follows a man going through a mid-life crisis as he returns to the places his family went on vacation as a youth. The British beachside having evolved considerably in the intervening years, the man encounters a (metaphorically) alien world, that is, until his will to experience more kicks in.
A novel stuck inside a collection, “What We Can Know About Thunderman” is a brilliant look at superhero comic books, from childhood dreams to childish business, imaginative potential to imaginative decrepitude. Moore applies his magnifying glass to multiple points of view across these spectrums, giving the reader both an inside view and overview to the joy, immaturity, imagination, and emptiness that are superheroes as a form of “literature”. Moore's wit savage, he constantly walks the edge of realism and satire. Seemingly the result of years of refinement, Moore has put his heart into this piss take of superhero comics. If you are an adult and still love Superman, read at your own risk.
One piss take following another, “American Light: An Appreciation” is a work of faux-literary analysis which presents and deconstructs the work of a fictional American beat poet. For readers like myself, readers who have experience in the academia of literature, the story is an amazing tongue-in-cheek deconstruction; Moore does an amazing job juxtaposing the faux-poetry with the voice of the academic doing the analysis. Other readers mileage may vary, but I found huge delight in this one. And rounding out the collection is “And, at the Last, Just to Be Done with Silence”. About a pair of blokes in the 12th century, they have the most intriguing conversation carrying a corpse overland to who knows where. The quality of the story is to be found in the pair's wonderfully colloquial dialogue and the general mystification even they feel performing the absurd. Again, Moore's verbiage carries what would otherwise be a mundane scene.
In the end, the degree of success of Illuminations likely depends on the reader's expectation for visual representation and satire. Moore jadedly deconstructing a number of things, from AI to Christianity, superhero comics to literary analysis, there is a lot of cleverly detailed “anti”, just anti to what larger purpose is unclear, save chaos itself. Accordingly, several of the selections shade more toward vignette than story, including “Location, Location, Location”, “Illuminations”, “The Improbably Complex High-Energy State”, “And, at the Last, Just to Be Done with Silence”, etc. That being said, there are a few stories which pack significant punch. “Hypothetical Lizard” can be re-read multiple times, and What We Can Know about Thunderman is a peerless examination of all aspects of the superhero comic book business in a style William Gibson would love. As with most things by Moore, read at your own preference.
The following are the nine stories collected in Illuminations: Stories:
Hypothetical Lizard
Not Even Legend
Location, Location, Location
Cold Reading
The Improbably Complex High-Energy State
Illuminations
What We Can Know About Thunderman
American Light: An Appreciation
And, at the Last, Just to Be Done with Silence
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