Best New Horror Volume 3 (1991): 2015 Revised PS Publishing Edition

Best New Horror Volume 3 (1991): 2015 Revised PS Publishing Edition: edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell, containing the following stories:

• True Love  by K. W. Jeter: Really disturbing character study.
• The Same in Any Language  by Ramsey Campbell: A visit to the Greek islands turns out badly for a boy and worse for his annoying father.
• Impermanent Mercies  by Kathe Koja: Totally weird and strangely disturbing.
• Ma Qui  by Alan Brennert: Marvelous piece of posthumous narration set during the Viet Nam War.
• The Miracle Mile  by Robert R. McCammon: Pretty slight entry from a zombie anthology.
• Taking Down the Tree  by Steve Rasnic Tem: A weird, poetic piece from the prolific and valuable Mr. Tem.
• Where Flies Are Born  by Douglas Clegg: OK bit of body-horror.
• Love, Death and the Maiden  by Roger Johnson: Moody horror-quest sort of fizzles out in murkiness.
• Chui Chai  by S. P. Somtow: Another unimpressive piece of horror from someone who was a really impressive science-fiction writer in the 1970's and early 1980's.
• The Snow Sculptures of Xanadu  by Kim Newman: Fun metafictional oddity for Citizen Kane fans.
• Colder Than Hell  by Edward Bryant: Chilly psychological horror story recalls Sinclair Ross' classic "The Painted Door."
• Raymond  by Nancy A. Collins: Collins creates a sad werewolf.
• One Life, in an Hourglass  by Charles L. Grant: Riff on Bradbury's Something Wicked This Way Comes is low-key but mostly satisfying.
• The Braille Encyclopedia  by Grant Morrison: Creepy horror piece suggests that mostly-comic-book-writing Morrison is riffing hard on Clive Barker.
• The Bacchae  by Elizabeth Hand: Brilliant piece of feminist, mythological horror set in a rapidly disintegrating near-future.
• Busted in Buttown  by David J. Schow: Interesting, but it really feels like Schow is riffing on Dennis Etchison here.
• Subway Story  by Russell Flinn: Flinn abandoned writing soon after this was published, which is a shame -- he was like a somewhat more surreal but quite horrifying version of Ramsey Campbell in terms of his subject matter and descriptive focus.
• The Medusa  by Thomas Ligotti: One of Ligotti's relatively early, much-anthologized, weird pieces.
• Power Cut  by Joel Lane: Sharp, satiric horror about homophobia.
• Moving Out  by Nicholas Royle: Excellent, unusual, disturbing ghost story.
• Guignoir  by Norman Partridge: Fun, pulpy piece of American ultraviolence, complete with carnival.
• Blood Sky  by William F. Nolan: Unusual, affecting character study of a serial killer.
• Ready  by David Starkey: Interesting.
• The Slug  by Karl Edward Wagner: Writer's block horror from the late, great writer and anthologist who faced these demons and others at the time of publication.
• The Dark Land  by Michael Marshall Smith: Excellent early bit of horrifying, somewhat surreal journey into... something.
• When They Gave Us Memory  by Dennis Etchison: A typical Etchison oddity, which is to say unusual in subject matter, elusive in meaning, keenly observed in physical detail.
• Taking Care of Michael  by J. L. Comeau: Sort of yuck.
• The Dreams of Dr. Ladybank  by Thomas Tessier: Tessier works some very modern, gender-bending, boundary-pushing changes on the basic set-up for such horror classics as Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Parasite."
• Zits  by Nina Kiriki Hoffman: Bleak, disturbing vignette.

Overall: Many of these stories have become repeatedly republished classics, and others merit rediscovery. There are very, very few misses. Fine editorial work from the team of Jones and Campbell. This new edition updates the biographies for the writers, so there is new material if one already owns the original edition. Highly recommended.

L.A. Meltdown

Dark Seeker by K.W. Jeter (1987): Subtle and gradually building horror novel about the aftermath of a California incident that managed to combine something like the Manson Family with a psychoactive drug that seemed to create a shared consciousness among those who used it.

The charismatic, insane psychiatrist who ran the drug trial -- and created the murderous group -- now languishes in an asylum for the criminally insane. Several of the participants who did not actually murder anyone are free, but they need to take a pharmacopia of drugs several times a day to remain sane: the consciousness drug's effects on the human body are permanent and persistently intrusive.

While the main narrative thread follows recovering cult member Michael Tylers's attempts to remain sane and build a new life with his girlfriend and her son, other plotlines (all of which will eventually dovetail with Tyler's story) show us the journalist who made a ton of money with the True Crime book about the cult and a homeless man named Jimmy who's been enlisted by one of the most dangerous, uncaptured cult members to take care of a mysterious child stolen by that cult member from Michael's ex-wife, who's finally been re-arrested by the police after hiding out in L.A. for several years.

Jeter does a nice job of keeping things at least somewhat ambiguous throughout. Those who take the drug believe that they encounter a being they call the Host, which exhorts them to commit terrible acts. But is it real, and if so, is it supernatural (which is to say, some sort of demon), or is it some sort of psychic projection of the shared consciousness of the drug users? From the outside, though, the verdict of the legal system, and of popular opinion, is that everything about the drug is fake, including the shared-consciousness effect. The cult members went bananas. That is all.

Dark Seeker manages to make even the mercenary, grasping journalist sympathetic, at least towards the end, as he finally gets to experience violent events first-hand. Jeter's characterization of the occasionally unlikeable Tyler, homeless Jimmy, and girlfriend Steff, who's recovering herself from a life of terrible relationship choices and physical abuse, is both strong and subtle. The Host itself is a disturbing presence when it appears (or seems to appear), and Jeter describes the sensory distortions of the drug with hallucinatory elan. And the book ends with a stunner of a final ten pages.

Problems? I'd have liked some more development of what exactly happened with the cult and its charismatic leader -- it almost seems as if some more heavily expository sections were cut so as to keep the page count down. The only other real problem is the title, which really should be something like The Host or The Dark Host. Again, this seems like decision-making at the publishing or editorial level. Recommended.