Northern Horror: Canadian Fiction Magazine: edited by Edo van Belkom, containing the following stories: The Transaction by Scott H. Urban; Wavelength by Terence M. Green and Andrew Weiner; The Spruce Tree by David Shtogryn; Heart by Edo van Belkom; Rideau by Kathryn Ptacek; Vermiculture by Nancy Kilpatrick; Writhe, Damn You by Ed Greenwood; Warmth by Scott H. Urban; Advertising Hell by Peter Sellers; Shadow of My Father by Michael Bracken; Sewage Treatment by Stephanie Bedwell-Grime; Skin by Scott Nicholson; The Party Over There by Nancy Baker; Sitters by Del Stone, Jr.; Comes a Cool Rain by Michael Kelly; Above It All by Robert J. Sawyer; and Mrs. Thurston's Instrument of Justice by David Nickle (2000):
Apparently, there always has to be a point at which Canadian literature announces it has 'arrived' in some area -- lyric poetry, comic writing, or in this case, horror fiction. By 'Canadian literature,' I simply mean those people running literary magazines or university literature departments or reviewing books in The Globe and Mail. They're not all the same people, but the canonizing end of the CanLit pool is shallow enough to be remarkably incestuous, even now.
This 13-year-old issue of Canadian Fiction magazine, as editor Edo van Belkom notes in the introduction, told the world that Canadian horror fiction had arrived. Arrived where? I'm not sure. This is an awfully mediocre selection of stories, representing the best work of none of the writers whose names I already know. There are some traditional CanLit tropes at work throughout, including somebody having sex with either an animal or a tree ("The Spruce Tree", which is I guess the Arabesque companion to Marian Engel's Bear), people trying to survive terrible weather ("Warmth"), and people being sexually assaulted by family members (OK, that's not a Canadian trope, but it sometimes feels like one).
The collection also gives us a comic horror story that would be twice as good at half the length ("Advertising Hell", by the improbably named Peter Sellers, is mildly funny until it overstays its welcome by about 2000 words).
We also get an entry I'll leave un-named in one of my two or three least favourite horror sub-genres, one I've dubbed The Damnation of Nobody because the stories always involve dreadful things happening to a person because the person isn't Excellent enough. It's a sub-genre whose patron saint is Harlan Ellison, and it's deeply unpleasant once one pieces together what an unpunishably excellent life would be (generally, that would involve being a writer, the most Excellent type of being on the planet, and not some stupid accountant or teacher or truck-driver, all of whom lead lives not worth living). Don't punish your characters for having ordinary lives, kids. You don't want to be an insufferable prick.
So, anyway, not a very good collection. There are good Canadian horror writers, and have been for quite some time. But this collection doesn't really announce anything. Not recommended.
Death Drives a Semi by Edo van Belkom, containing the following stories: The Rug; But Somebody's Got to Do It; Death Drives a Semi; The Basement; Mother and Child; Mark of the Beast; Scream String; S.P.S.; The Cold; Blood Count; Ice Bridge; No Kids Allowed; The Piano Player Has No Fingers; And Injustice for Some; Roadkill; Lip-O-Suction; Afterlife; Family Ties; Rat Food (with David Nickle); and Baseball Memories (Collected 1998): Prolific Canadian writer Edo van Belkom's first collection of short stories is terrific, a fine assortment of horror stories from the first ten years of his writing career.
Robert Sawyer's introduction strains a bit in its attempt to compare van Belkom to too many disparate writers. The range of stories here, in terms of style and approach, probably most resembles the early stories of Richard Matheson, or Robert Bloch after his initial Lovecraftian pastiche stage, or even New England horror writer Joseph Payne Brennan. Van Belkom is very much plot-oriented, and very much a writer in the plain style favoured by so many genre authors.
Van Belkom has a droll, black sense of humour that suits some of the stories, and his attempts to breathe new life (or unlife) into tired horror tropes such as the Vampire reflect that sense-of-humour, as we encounter vampires in the professional wrestling circuit and in the weight-reduction business. While many of the stories are gruesomely graphic, others are more traditional suspense ("Ice Bridge"), science fiction ("S.P.S."), or plain-style Bradburiana ("The Basement") with a touch of the gentler Twilight Zone episodes.
Some stories would make fine tales in the old E.C. horror comics of the 1950's, centered as they are around ironic supernatural revenge ("The Rug", "Roadkill"). Three of the best stories -- "The Rug," "The Basement," and the award-winning "Rat Food" -- sympathetically portray the plight of the elderly. "Rat Food" is one of those horror stories that may not be horror at all: I guess it depends on one's tolerance for rats crawling all over one's body. In summation, a collection that any serious reader of horror fiction really should pick up. Highly recommended.
The Wyrm by Stephen Laws (1987): Page-turner of a horror novel in which a terrible Something (the eponymous "Wyrm") escapes from centuries of imprisonment to takes it vengeance on the small Northern English bordertown whose residents defeated it in the early 17th century.
While The Wyrm doesn't have the depth or complexity of similar novels of the 1980's that include Stephen King's It and Ramsey Campbell's The Hungry Moon, the novel nonetheless kept me reading quickly through to the end. The characters are sympathetic if a bit flatly drawn at times.
The Wyrm itself is an interesting creation, though as with other such super-monsters (such as Pennywise in It), it talks too much and the novel reveals too many of its thoughts, making it less terrifying than a more silent creature might have been. Still, a worthwhile light read. Recommended.
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.
