Whispers VI: edited by Stuart David Schiff (1987) containing the following stories:
The Bones Wizard by Alan Ryan: Supernatural musical shenanigans. Extremely subtle to the point of attenuation, with little actual horror.
Leaks by Steve Rasnic Tem: Quintessential Tem: mysterious, disturbing, rooted in the real.
Everything to Live For by Charles L. Grant: Almost a Philip K. Dick science-fiction horror story both in execution and in its treatment of its themes.
Bogy by Al Sarrantonio: Poetic, Bradburyesque piece with the sort of nasty ending that Bradbury specialized in back in the 1940's.
The Fool by David Drake: Lengthy novella echoes the regional dialects and themes of Drake's friend, horror legend Manly Wade Wellman, but with its own peculiar spin on magic and justice. Really a good, convincingly regional piece, and quite different from much of Drake's other output.
Repossession by David Campton: Enjoyable ghost story with a couple of interesting concepts. Would probably work better if it developed the narrator more.
The Years the Music Died by F. Paul Wilson: Bleakly humourous conspiracy tale about Rock-and-Roll.
The Woman in Black by Dennis Etchison: Typically elusive Etchison tale of mysterious horrors in the suburbs turns into an almost surreal freak-out at the end. This is not an ending you will see coming. Disturbing.
My Name Is Dolly by William F. Nolan: Concise, ably narrated in the first-person by a child, straddles psychological and supernatural horror.
Toad, Singular by Juleen Brantingham: Well-written but intensely unpleasant story in what I generally find to be an unrewarding sub-sub-genre of horror: the tale of a sympathetic nebbish who's been brutalized by the normal world...and now gets further brutalized by the supernatural! It all feels awfully sadistic.
Sleeping Booty by Richard Wilson: Droll short-short: black comedy, not horror.
Privacy Rights by J. N. Williamson: Really disturbing bit involving rape and abortion. Verges on the exploitative, and the madness of the main character doesn't seem fully earned by the story.
One for the Horrors by David J. Schow: Great, nostalgic piece about old movies and lonely people. Not horror.
The Black Clay Boy by Lucius Shepard: Super-duper creepy tale of sex, death, magic, and what I'd describe as Hagar Shipley goes to Hell.
Where Did She Wander? by Manly Wade Wellman: The last John the Balladeer story by the then-recently-deceased Wellman. Lovely and somewhat mournful.
In all: highly recommended.
Whispers IV: edited by Stuart David Schiff (1983) containing the following stories:
A Night on the Docks by Freff: One of the oddest vampire stories I can think of, with echoes of the classic tale "Call Him Demon" by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
Into Whose Hands by Karl Edward Wagner: Terrific, moody piece that draws on Wagner's experiences as a psychiatrist working in public mental health facilities. Maybe Wagner's most subtle piece.
Out of Copyright by Ramsey Campbell: Droll bit of supernatural revenge by Campbell, working in a very literary version of his EC Comics revenge mode.
Elle Est Trois, (La Mort) by Tanith Lee: I think this is the prolific, multi-talented Lee's crowning achievement in short works. It's really an essential piece of dark fantasy/horror.
Come to the Party by Frances Garfield: Fun short from the writer also known as Mrs. Manly Wade Wellman.
The Warrior Who Did Not Know Fear by Gerald W. Page: Odd choice, as it's really a piece of a longer work of heroic dark fantasy, a piece without an ending. Still enjoyable.
Fair Trade by William F. Nolan: Another short exercise in the EC vengeance mode, with Nolan doing spot-on dialect for the first-person narrator.
I Never Could Say Goodbye by Charles L. Grant: Mysterious.
The Devil You Say! by Lawrence Treat: More humour than horror.
Diploma Time by Frank Belknap Long: Interesting ghost story from long-time writer Long, with one of his typically jarring moments in which he eschews transitions, though here it's intentional.
Tell Us About the Rats, Grandpa by Stephen Kleinhen: Minor bit of gross-out horror.
What Say the Frogs Now, Jenny? by Hugh B. Cave: Unpleasant insofar as the female victim of sexual harassment is somehow made out to be the antagonist of the piece. I don't think that was Cave's intent, but it's a really ugly, somewhat cliched story.
The Beholder by Richard Christian Matheson: Unusually supernatural story for the master of shocking short-short stories.
Creative Coverage, Inc. by Michael Shea: Bleak comedy about corporate malfeasance. Really, really, really bleak.
The Dancer in the Flames by David Drake: Evocative piece draws on Drake's time in Viet Nam, but uses a somewhat clumsy 'footnote' ending to fully explain what has happened.
The Reflex-Man in Whinnymuir Close by Russell Kirk : Lovely period piece/pastiche by the always elegant Kirk.
In all: recommended.
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.
Whispers II: edited by Stuart David Schiff, containing the following stories:
Undertow by Karl Edward Wagner; Berryhill by R. A. Lafferty; The King's Shadow Has No Limits by Avram Davidson; Conversation Piece by Richard Christian Matheson; The Stormsong Runner by Jack L. Chalker; They Will Not Hush by James Sallis and David Lunde; Lex Talionis by Russell Kirk; Marianne by Joseph Payne Brennan; From the Lower Deep by Hugh B. Cave; The Fourth Musketeer by Charles L. Grant; Ghost of a Chance by Ray Russell; The Elcar Special by Carl Jacobi; The Box by Lee Weinstein; We Have All Been Here Before by Dennis Etchison; Archie and the Scylla of Hades Hole by Ken Wisman; Trill Coster's Burden by Manly Wade Wellman; Conversation Piece by Ward Moore; The Bait by Fritz Leiber; Above the World by Ramsey Campbell; The Red Leer by David Drake; and At the Bottom of the Garden by David Campton.
Stuart David Schiff's Whispers was the biggest little magazine of horror and dark fantasy in the 1970's, so much so that it became the Little Engine That Carried on The Tradition of the Mostly Defunct Weird Tales. Schiff couldn't pay a lot, but with weird fantasy markets in decline, he was able to assemble a Who's Who of then-contemporary greats, with careers sometimes extending back to the 1920's and 1930's.
Whispers II collects fine stories by names familiar and unfamiliar. I've got a real soft spot for David Drake's revisionist werewolf tale "The Red Leer," which also seems to act as a commentary on the sorts of manly men who once frequented the horror stories of Robert E. Howard. There really aren't any weak spots here, though Ken Wisman's "Archie and the Scylla of Hades" is bizarre in both tone (it's like a Jack Vance fantasy story as reimagined by Robert Service) and style (it's a long poem!). When you see these Whispers compilations in used bookstores, you should snap them up. Along with editor Charles L. Grant's hardcover original anthology series Shadows, Whispers represents the height of 1970's and early 1980's dark fantasy and horror. Highly recommended.
Tales of Fear and Fantasy by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, containing the following stories: Manderville; The Day Of The Underdog; The Headless Footman Of Hadleigh; The Cost Of Dying; The Resurrectionist; The Sale of the Century; and The Changeling (Collected 1977): Chetwynd-Hayes was amazingly prolific in the late 1960's and early 1970's. His learning curve was dramatically steep: six years after the release of his first, enjoyable, pulpy collection, this collection shows a writer rounding into top form.
Five of the stories mix horror with black comedy, with the most successful being one of the adventures of "the world's only practicing psychic detective" as he and his lovely, extremely psychic assistant try to solve the mystery of "The Headless Footman of Hadleigh." There are two non-humourous stories here, and they're both hauntingly excellent: "The Resurrectionist", in which a man falls in love with photos of a woman long dead, and "The Changeling", a creepy riff on pop-culture 'horror families' such as The Munsters or The Addams Family. This family, though, not so much fun to belong to. In all, recommended.
