Monumental Sausage Party

Prime Evil edited by Douglas Winter, containing the following stories (1988):

The Night Flier by Stephen King: One of King's five or six worst short pieces (and it's a long short piece, by the way) seems to have been written solely for the central image. What a terrible, dumb, illogical story otherwise.

Having a Woman at Lunch by Paul Hazel: A weak bit of misogynistic whimsy from someone whom Winter notes has never written a horror short story before. It's like a bad EC Comics horror short, right down to the misogyny, but at least EC could defend itself by noting the time it existed.

The Blood Kiss by Dennis Etchison: Solid bit of Hollywood weird from Etchison, though with nothing particularly scary in sight.

Coming to Grief by Clive Barker: A fairly gentle Barker piece about loss and childhood fears.

Food by Thomas Tessier: Slight but enjoyable gross-out.

The Great God Pan by M. John Harrison: Subtle and elliptical novella about the aftermath of some sort of supernatural event that's never fully explained; the connection to the great Arthur Machen story of the same name seems to me to be so faint as to be perhaps problematic.

Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity by David Morrell: Brilliant horror piece from a writer generally known for his thrillers (and for creating John Rambo). Painting and secrets and the danger of seeing what cannot be unseen.

The Juniper Tree by Peter Straub: Disturbing tale of childhood sexual abuse could use a stronger, or at least more direct, conclusion, but still effective.

Spinning Tales with the Dead by Charles L. Grant: A representative bit of elusive, elliptical dark fantasy from Grant.

Alice's Last Adventure by Thomas Ligotti: Great piece from Ligotti, though in some ways it reminds me more of Ramsey Campbell than Ligotti in terms of subject matter and the treatment thereof.

Next Time You'll Know Me by Ramsey Campbell: A copy-editing mistake screws up some of the humour of the story, though it's still a droll (though non-frightening) bit of business.

The Pool by Whitley Strieber: Blech. Terrible stuff.

By Reason of Darkness by Jack Cady : Viet Nam horror evokes Conrad and Apocalypse Now in equal measure; its effect is weakened by an overly long climax when more development of events 'In Country' would have been far more welcome.

Beginning in the late 1970's, horror fiction seemed to cough up at least one attempt at a genre-defining/re-defining original anthology every decade or so. Notable entries in this accidental enterprise include Ramsey Campbell's excellent New Terrors, Kirby McCauley's Dark Forces, and Al Sarrantonio's 999.

Douglas Winter seems to have been going for the same thing with Prime Evil, though it's a much shorter anthology than any of those mentioned above. And it's also a bit underwhelming. There are good stories included here, the best being David Morrell's terrific novella about painting, madness, and the supernatural. In the end, though, Prime Evil is an interesting, deeply flawed snapshot of some of what horror fiction was up to in the late 1980's. Lightly recommended.

Most Peculiar Mummy

Whispers (1977) edited by Stuart David Schiff, containing the following stories:

"Sticks" by Karl Edward Wagner: One of Wagner's four greatest stories, "Sticks" is a terrific piece of Cthulhu Mythology, with an absolutely riveting first half.

"The Barrow Troll" by David Drake: Typically tough-minded piece of revisionist historical fantasy from Drake.

"The Glove" by Fritz Leiber: Blackly humourous San Francisco-era piece from Leiber, set in a familiar apartment building for Leiber fans.

"The Closer of the Way" by Robert Bloch: Droll bit of meta-fiction from the creator of Psycho.

"Dark Winner" by William F. Nolan: Fascinating bit of Bradbury-tinged horror-nostalgia that would have been right at home on The Twilight Zone.

"Ladies in Waiting" by Hugh B. Cave: Solid haunted-house riff.

"White Moon Rising" by Dennis Etchison: A non-supernatural psychological thriller from Etchison. Stylistically precise, thematically mysterious.

"Graduation" by Richard Christian Matheson: Epistolary creep-out.

"Mirror, Mirror" by Ray Russell: Fun, minor piece.

The House of Cthulhu by Brian Lumley: Lovecraftian sword-and-sorcery.

"Antiquities" by John Crowley: Mummies wreak havoc in England in a most peculiar way.

"A Weather Report from the Top of the Stairs" by James Sallis and David Lunde: Adaptation of a famous Gahan Wilson cartoon ("And then we'll get him!") with two different endings.

"The Scallion Stone" by Basil A. Smith: A very M.R. Jamesian horror story from a writer who avoided publication until after his death.

"The Inglorious Rise of the Catsmeat Man" by Robin Smyth: Very much an Ambrose Bierce/Roald Dahl-like exercise in gross-out horror-comedy.

"The Pawnshop" by Charles E. Fritch: Entertaining deal-with-the-devil story.

"Le Miroir"by Robert Aickman: An even-more-ambiguous-than-usual story from the eternally ambiguous Aickman.

"The Willow Platform" by Joseph Payne Brennan: Nice bit of regional Maine Lovecraft-tinged cosmic horror in the backwoods.

"The Dakwa" by Manly Wade Wellman: The Southeast backwoods play host to a particularly gruesome Native-American monster.

"Goat" by David Campton: Really solid, evocative piece of particularly British small-town horror.

"The Chimney" by Ramsey Campbell: Award-winning story of childhood horrors that may or may not be real.

The first anthology of stories from Schiff's semi-prozine Whispers really almost bursts with heady goodness. In all: Highly recommended.

100 by 54

100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories: edited by Al Sarrantonio and Martin Greenberg with stories by Washington Irving, Chet Williamson, Steve Rasnic Tem, Donald A. Wollheim, Edgar Allan Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Al Sarrantonio, Henry Slesar, Richard T. Chizmar, Avram Davidson, Gary L. Raisor, E. F. Benson, Saki, Frances Garfield, Mark Twain, Phyllis Eisenstein, William F. Nolan, Ed Gorman, Eric Frank Russell, Melissa Mia Hall, Joe R. Lansdale, Ruth Berman, H. P. Lovecraft, Edward D. Hoch, James E. Gunn, Robert Sheckley, Barry Pain, Fritz Leiber, Richard Laymon, Jerome K. Jerome, Ramsey Campbell, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Norman Partridge, Juleen Brantingham, Barry N. Malzberg, Thomas F. Monteleone, James H. Schmitz, Frank A. Javor, E. G. Swain, Bernard Capes, Nancy Holder, Charles Dickens, William Hope Hodgson, David Drake, Mort Castle, Bill Pronzini, Dennis Etchison, Charles L. Grant, Susan Casper, Rudyard Kipling, Sharon Webb, F. Paul Wilson, Manly Wade Wellman, and Stephen Crane (1993).

Fun, long anthology of horror stories of ten pages or less, arranged alphabetically. The book covers a range of about 150 years, starting with Dickens and Poe and ending up in the early 1990's with Norman Partridge. It's entirely inevitable that I'll find some of the selections odd and some of the omissions odder.

What I do like, though, are the multiple selections from Donald A. Wollheim, known much better now as the founder and name-giver of DAW Books, but also a fine short-story writer. "The Rag-Thing" is a terrific little piece, as is "Babylon: 70 Miles." In a perfect world, I suppose one could ask that every story be written by a different person. And in my perfect world, the parodies would be in their own anthology, as neither a Twain nor a Jerome K. Jerome piece raise any hair at all (nor are meant to, as they parody the form and content of ghost stories).

I've noticed this penchant in a lot of horror anthologists -- there's always a couple of parodies that aren't scary and were never meant to be. But there they are in something labelled 'horror.' I actually don't get it. There are great humourous horror stories of various types, and there are extremely subtle parodies that can still work as a horror story.

However, the overt 'ha-ha' stuff just seems out of place in a horror anthology because it isn't actually horror. Is there some unconscious nervousness about horror's respectability that causes the insertion of the parody into a non-parodic anthology? I don't know. I also dislike not knowing the year a story was published, but I seem to have grown resigned to anthologies generally omitting what I think is a necessary piece of editorial machinery. In any case, recommended.

The Dark Country (1982) by Dennis Etchison

The Dark Country by Dennis Etchison, containing the following stories: "It Only Comes Out at Night", "Sitting in the Corner, Whimpering Quietly", "The Walking Man", "We Have All Been Here Before", "Daughter of the Golden West", "The Pitch", "You Can Go Now", "Today's Special", "The Machine Demands a Sacrifice", "Calling All Monsters", "The Dead Line", "The Late Shift", "The Nighthawk", "It Will Be Here Soon", "Deathtracks", and "The Dark Country." (1972-1982; Collected 1982): 

It took nearly 20 years of being published before Dennis Etchison got his first collection of short stories. It's a dandy, collecting the best of his work from the 1970's and early 1980's.

Etchison's idiosyncratic style and subject matter are in full view here, from the near-future horrors of the "Transplant trilogy" ("The Machine Demands a Sacrifice", "Calling All Monsters", "The Dead Line"), in which the demand for organ donors has ventured into Pythonesque territory, to The Hardy Boys Goe To Hell weirdness of "Daughter of the Golden West."

The award-winning title novella is perhaps the weirdest story here, a subtle horror story about a bad Mexican vacation in which the horrors never completely manifest themselves. It's like a vignette from Apocalypse Now by way of Spring Break. There's also blatant, bloody revenge fantasy suggestive of EC horror comics in "The Pitch" and "Today's Special" and "We Have All Been Here Before."

Two of Etchison's major tropes -- Southern California and "the road" -- appear again and again here, sometimes in concert (the Los Angeles area has a lot of cars and a lot of drivers, after all). Everyone seems to be in transit; everyone is the target of sinister but often undefined horrors that can come from anywhere, anytime. The seemingly ordinary -- late-night convenience-store clerks, highway rest stops, tow trucks, even television laugh tracks -- shimmer with hidden menace, sometimes fatally revealed. Some things come out of the dark; some things hunt in the sun. Highly recommended.

Red Dreams

Red Dreams by Dennis Etchison containing the following stories: "Black Sun", "Drop City", "I Can Hear the Dark", "Keeper of the Light", "Not From Around Here", "On the Pike", "Talking in the Dark", "The Chair", "The Chill", "The Graveyard Blues", "The Smell of Death", "Wet Season", "White Moon Rising." (Collected 1987): Dennis Etchison is pretty much the horror writer's horror writer when it comes to short stories, praised by such genre luminaries as Stephen King and Ramsey Campbell. That he's not more famous is partially a product of his concentration on short stories and partially happenstance and partially the fact that he may be too good and too idiosyncratic to be a mass-market success.

He doesn't write about vampires or werewolves or voracious evil gods from beyond the universe. His style is straightforward without being unornamented, his plot sense as idiosyncratic as everything else about him. It's very difficult to figure out where the average Etchison story will end up. And a mass audience tends to like familiarity and predictability.

What a writer, though, published now for nearly 50 years. This was just his second collection of short stories, released in mass-market paperback during the horror boom of the 1980's. It collects stories from nearly 20 years, all of them fascinating. Etchison sets a lot of his stories in a bleached-out Southern California, but not all. His characters move through a world where explanations are often lacking for what's happening to them. His narrative viewpoint is probably closer to pure noir than any other horror writer I can think of.

This viewpoint makes the subject matter quite startling, as characters who would be at home in a Jim Thompson novel move through worlds that vaguely resemble the worlds of Ray Bradbury or Philip K. Dick. The closing novella here, from 1984, "Not from Around Here", embodies the narrative and stylistic dissonance that makes Etchison unique: it's like a Philip K. Dick near-future story about movie preservation and weird cults as rewritten by James M. Cain. Or something like that. It's all Etchison.

There isn't a weak story here -- even the earliest, "Wet Season", while more traditionally supernatural, doesn't nail itself down with authoritative explanations for what exactly is going on. It actually is neo-Lovecraftian without reading in any way like a traditional Lovecraft homage. And "Talking to the Dark" is a gem about a devoted horror fan who gets to meet his favourite writer. It's horrible and funny, and one wonders reading it whether Etchison has based that writer on anyone from the real world. And why, if so. This is an essential collection for anyone who likes finely crafted, haunting short stories, genre or not. Highly recommended.

I've Come To Talk With You Again

The Year's Best Horror XXII-1993 edited by Karl Edward Wagner (1994) containing "The Ripper's Tune" by Gregory Nicoll; "One Size Eats All" by T.E.D. Klein; "Resurrection" by Adam Meyer; "I Live to Wash Her" by Joey Froehlich; "A Little-Known Side of Elvis" by Dennis Etchison; "Perfect Days" by Chet Williamson; "See How They Run" by Ramsey Campbell (aka "For You to Judge"); "Shots Downed, Officer Fired" by Wayne Allen Sallee; "David" by Sean Doolittle; "Portrait of a Pulp Writer" by F. A. Pollard [as by F. A. McMahan]; "Fish Harbor" by Paul Pinn; "Ridi Bobo" by Robert Devereaux; "Adroitly Wrapped" by Mark McLaughlin; "Thicker Than Water" by Joel Lane; "Memento Mori" by Scott Thomas; "The Blitz Spirit" by Kim Newman; "Companions" by Del Stone, Jr.; "Masquerade" by Lillian Csernica; "Price of the Flames" by Deidra Cox (aka "The Price of the Flames"); "The Bone Garden" by Conrad Williams; "Ice Cream And Tombstones" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; "Salt Snake" by Simon Clark; "Lady's Portrait, Executed In Archaic Colors" by Charles M. Saplak; "Lost Alleys" by Jeffrey Thomas; "Salustrade" by D. F. Lewis; "The Power of One" by Nancy Kilpatrick; "The Lions in the Desert" by David Langford; "Turning Thirty" by Lisa Tuttle; "Bloodletting" by Kim Antieau; "Flying Into Naples" by Nicholas Royle; "Under the Crust" by Terry Lamsley.

This was editor Karl Edward Wagner's last Year's Best horror-short-stories volume for DAW Books before his death at the age of 49 due to complications caused by chronic alcohol abuse. His was a tragic end long foretold, based on most accounts I've read, a slide that went on for more than a decade. Through that slide, he edited more than a dozen volumes of this annual collection (the only such annual collection for horror at the time), and while his writing petered out over that awful span, his editing remained sharp and idiosyncratic right up until the end.

Wagner's editorship tended to focus on short stories rather than novellas and novelettes, which meant that his volumes -- especially the later ones, with much-increased page counts -- sometimes have a ridiculously large table of contents. I think sometimes there must have been one novella out there that year that was better than three of the included short stories, but Wagner's committment to a certain level of volume introduced readers to a lot of writers who might otherwise have remained mostly unknown.

This isn't Wagner's best Year's Best volume. There are a few too many gimmicky punch-line stories for my taste, and a few too many generic stories with generic titles. But there's also excellence here from Dennis Etchison -- maybe the least well-known great horror writer of his generation due to his concentration on the short story.

And there's a concluding double-punch of fine novellas by little-known writers, "Flying into Naples" by Nicholas Royle and "Under the Crust" by Terry Lamsley, that highlights Wagner's career-long strength as a finder and provider of excellence from unexplored corners of the publishing world. When Wagner died, the DAW series was buried with him. Poor Wagner, but what a legacy he left, singing out of darkness. Recommended.

Doomsday Books

The Year's Best Horror Stories: XX-1991 (1992) containing Ma Qui by Alan Brennert; The Same in Any Language by Ramsey Campbell; Call Home by Dennis Etchison; A Scent of Roses by Jeffrey Goddin; Root Cellar by Nancy Kilpatrick; An Eye for an Eye by Michael A. Arnzen; The Picnickers by Brian Lumley; With the Wound Still Wet by Wayne Allen Sallee; My Giddy Aunt by D. F. Lewis; The Lodestone by Sheila Hodgson; Baseball Memories by Edo van Belkom; The Bacchae by Elizabeth Hand; Common Land by Joel Lane; An Invasion of Angels by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; The Sharps and Flats Guarantee by C. S. Fuqua; Medusa's Child by Kim Antieau; Wall of Masks by T. Winter-Damon; Moving Out by Nicholas Royle; Better Ways in a Wet Alley by Barb Hendee; Close to the Earth by Gregory Nicoll; Churches of Desire by Philip Nutman; Carven of Onyx by Ron Weighell.

Horror was in a boom period in 1991, with splatterpunk rising to the fore. Wagner's selections here in the tenth volume he'd edited of DAW's annual Year's Best Horror is solid and occasionally eclectic and broad of range, with M.R. James-influenced 'traditional' ghost stories rubbing shoulders with splatterpunk, existential horror, sexual horror, and surreal, unease-making entries by Nina Kiriki Hoffman and D.F. Lewis. Alan Brennert's story is a fine bit of Viet Nam horror, while Ramsey Campbell's story suggests that some Greek islands should not be visited by tourists. Recommended.


　

The Year's Best Horror: XVII-1988: edited by Karl Edward Wagner (1989) containing Fruiting Bodies by Brian Lumley; Works of Art by Nina Kiriki Hoffman; She's a Young Thing and Cannot Leave Her Mother by Harlan Ellison; The Resurrection Man by Ian Watson; Now and Again in Summer by Charles L. Grant; Call 666 by Dennis Etchison; The Great God Pan by M. John Harrison; What Dreams May Come by Brad Strickland; Regression by R. Chetwynd-Hayes; Souvenirs from a Damnation by Don Webb; Bleeding Between the Lines by Wayne Allen Sallee; Playing the Game by Ramsey Campbell; Lost Bodies by Ian Watson; Ours Now by Nicholas Royle; Prince of Flowers by Elizabeth Hand; The Daily Chernobyl by Robert Frazier; Snowman by Charles L. Grant; Nobody's Perfect by Thomas F. Monteleone; Dead Air by Gregory Nicoll; Recrudescence by Leonard Carpenter

　

1988 was a transitional year for horror in general. Slasher movies were on the wane, while the ultra-violence of splatterpunk was on the wax in written horror. Wagner's selection here is mostly solid, though two pieces by the usually solid Ian Watson are startlingly ineffective as horror. Three novellas -- "Fruiting Bodies", "The Great God Pan", and "Recrudescence" -- are the high points here, along with one of the better NuCthulhu stories I've read in awhile, "Souvenirs from a Damnation", and one of Elizabeth Hand's first published stories, "Prince of Flowers." Dennis Etchison is solid and disturbing as always. Recommended.

Fear in the 1980's

Fears: edited by Charles L. Grant (1983) containing:

Surrogate by Janet Fox; Coasting by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro; Spring-Fingered Jack by Susan Casper; Flash Point by Gardner Dozois; A Cold Day in the Mesozoic by Jack Dann; The Train by William F. Nolan; The Dripping by David Morrell; The Ragman by Leslie Alan Horvitz; Deathtracks by Dennis Etchison; Father Dear by Al Sarrantonio; As Old as Sin by Peter D. Pautz; Fish Night by Joe R. Lansdale; Remembering Melody by George R. R. Martin; The Pond by Pat Cadigan; The Beasts That Perish by Reginald Bretnor; Cassie, Waiting by Julie Stevens; and High Tide by Leanne Frahm.

Dandy anthology comprising both reprints and originals from the heyday of anthologized horror, and the heyday of horror great Charles L. Grant. There's something very Bradburyesque about many of these stories. Early, nastier Bradbury, that is, before the whimsy curdled, back when nostalgia worked alongside horror and the fantastic to conjure up that distinctive Bradbury glow that could suddenly be shot through with terror. Certainly the stories by Joe Lansdale, Jack Dann, Al Sarrantonio, and Pat Cadigan operate within the parameters of that Bradbury without slavishly imitating him stylistically or even thematically.

The anthology also gives us a mournful horror dandy from George R.R. Martin when he was a science fiction and horror writer, and not a best-selling epic fantasist. Reginald Bretnor's entry seems like it would make a dandy pitch for a TV show. Susan Casper gives us a prescient horror story about video games (prescient enough to anticipate a subplot on this season's Dexter, pretty good for 1983); Janet Fox leads with a prescient shocker about surrogate parenting. Dennis Etchison is represented here with one of his 1980's classics, and the anthology ends with a nice, Wyndhamesque bio-disaster piece by Leanne Frahm, an Australian writer I'm unfamiliar with. Recommended.

Edge of Night

Cutting Edge: edited by Dennis Etchison (1986) containing the following stories:

Blue Rose by Peter Straub; The Monster by Joe Haldeman; Lacunae by Karl Edward Wagner; "Pale, Trembling Youth" by W. H. Pugmire and Jessica Amanda Salmonson; Muzak for Torso Murders by Marc Laidlaw; Goodbye, Dark Love by Roberta Lannes; Out There by Charles L. Grant; Little Cruelties by Steve Rasnic Tem; The Man With the Hoe by George Clayton Johnson; They're Coming for You by Les Daniels; Vampire by Richard Christian Matheson; Lapses by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro; The Final Stone by William F. Nolan; Irrelativity by Nicholas Royle; The Hands by Ramsey Campbell; The Bell by Ray Russell; Lost Souls by Clive Barker; Reaper by Robert Bloch; The Transfer by Edward Bryant; and Pain by Whitley Strieber.

Solid original horror anthology from Etchison, a fine and unjustly neglected horror writer in his own right. There's violence, and sexual violence, here, but most of it seems justified by the context of the stories (though "Goodbye, Dark Love" seems a wee bit problematic). The writers basically comprise a who's who list of 1980's horror writers, along with some genre long-timers (Nolan, Johnson, and Bloch). Etchison's revealing introduction grants an insight into his career, and into his thoughts on the state of horror and other genres as of 1986. Recommended.

All the Darkness

DAW Year's Best Horror XIV (1985), edited by Karl Edward Wagner (1986):

Contents:

Introduction: Nurturing Nightmares by Karl Edward Wagner
Penny Daye by Charles L. Grant
Dwindling by David B. Silva
Dead Men's Fingers by Phillip C. Heath
Dead Week by Leonard Carpenter
The Sneering by Ramsey Campbell
Bunny Didn't Tell Us by David J. Schow
Pinewood by Tanith Lee
The Night People by Michael Reaves
Ceremony by William F. Nolan
The Woman in Black by Dennis Etchison
...Beside the Seaside, Beside the Sea... by Simon Clark
Mother's Day by Stephen F. Wilcox
Lava Tears by Vincent McHardy
Rapid Transit by Wayne Allen Sallee
The Weight of Zero by John Alfred Taylor
John's Return to Liverpool by Christopher Burns
In Late December, Before the Storm by Paul M. Sammon
Red Christmas by David Garnett
Too Far Behind Gradina by Steve Sneyd

By 1985, the horror boom that had begun in the late 1960's was starting to ebb, though it would be another ten years before horror fiction started to become really scarce on the bestseller lists. However, a rich list of small and large press horror magazines were still extant, giving editor Wagner a lot to choose from while assembling the newly expanded DAW anthology.

As usual, his selections are excellent and wide-ranging, both in terms of source and in terms of sub-generic classification. Psychological horror dominates in stories that include the university-set "Dead Week", the mournful "Pinewood" and the creepy "The Night People." Short, Hitchcockian shockers are nicely represented by "Red Christmas" and "Mother' Day." The supernatural is mystifying in "John's Return to Liverpool", in which a resurrected John Lennon shows up at the house of the first Beatles fan, and in the lengthy and unnerving "Too Far Behind Gradina," about a British housewife's bizarre vacation in Yugoslavia.

More conventional supernatural horrors await in "The Weight of Zero", a dandy bit of cosmic horror in the tradition (and time-period) of Arthur Machen, the neo-William Hope Hodgson sea-faring terrors of "Dead Men''s Fingers", and William F. Nolan's "Ceremony", about a hitman who takes the wrong bus.

Writers who'd effectively created their own genres by this time, Dennis Etchison and Ramsey Campbell, weigh in with fine entries in which the psychological and the supernatural collide mysteriously and horrifically. Campbell's piece is one of a subset of his fine horror stories in which the problems of getting old are explored in ways that blur the line between the supernatural and the natural, all within that signature Campbellian landscape of off-kilter description and terrible things moving just at the edge of vision. All in all, highly recommended.