Book Review: 'Blue World' by Robert R. McCammon
'Blue World' (435 pp.) was published by Pocket Books in April, 1990, and features cover art by James Warren. The book is long out of print, and good-condition copies are highly priced. I was able to get a beat-up copy for $8.
Robert R. McCammon (b. 1952) is arguably the most commercially successful of the splatterpunks, with many of his novels, starting with 'Baal' in 1978, published by such well-known paperback publishers as Avon and Pocket Books. Others of his novels have been published in hardback by firms such as Holt, Rinehart, & Winston. Since 2002, McCammon has focused on historical thrillers featuring his character Matthew Corbett.
'Blue World' is an anthology of 12 short stories written by McCammon during the interval from 1981 to 1990, some of these seeing print first in other anthologies, or Twilight Zone magazine. Also included in 'Blue World' is an eponymous novel.
[A reprint of 'Blue World', featuring three additional stories, was issued by Subterranean Press in 2015.]
My capsule summaries of the contents of 'Blue World':
Yellowjacket Summer: Jerome Bixby's It's A Good Life, with nasty vespids.
Makeup: petty thief Calvin Doss heists a makeup case formerly owned by the horror film actor Orlon Kronsteen. There are consequences. A fun story, with a fun ending.
Doom City: Brad wakes up from a bad dream, only to find reality is even worse.
Nightcrawlers: just when it's dark and stormy, Bad Company arrives at a diner in the Alabama countryside.
Yellachile's Cage: prison, and a Magic Negro. McCammon shows he can do the theme as well as, if not better, than Stephen King.
I Scream Man ! : a Twilight Zone - style tale set in what seems to be an idyllic suburban neighborhood.
He'll Come Knocking at Your Door: life in Dan Burgess's suburban Alabama neighborhood is really nice.....maybe too nice. A nice treatment of the 'deal with the Devil' theme.
Chico: in a sweltering tenement apartment, the odious Marcus Salomon copes with the unfairness of life. The story's subdued splatterpunk flavoring works well with its offbeat premise. One of the best entries in the anthology.
Night Calls the Green Falcon: an elderly man who portrayed a costumed hero in prewar serials decides to reprise his role in the seedy landscape of modern Los Angeles. This story fulfills its goal of being an affectionate homage to the heroes of the Pulp Era (one character is named Lester Dent).
Pin: a psycho, and his monologue. Not that exciting.
The Red House: in a joyless Factory Town, the arrival of an eccentric family brings with it an appreciation for Diversity, and the awareness that Being Different can be a Good Thing.
The virtue messaging in this story is very earnest (the eccentric family obviously are stand-ins for Black People).
Something Passed By: the End of the World comes to a small Nebraska town. Imaginative, and another of the better entries in the anthology.
Blue World: Father John Lancaster, a priest at the Cathedral of Saint Francis, befriends Debbie Stoner, a beautiful but witless young woman who works in the porno industry in San Francisco's Tenderloin district. Things get quite complicated when Father John's emotions turn from the brotherly to the romantic, emotions reciprocated by Debbie. Father John finds himself distressed by the tension between his priestly avocation, and his infatuation with an adult film star.
Making things worse, a serial killer is leaving corpses strewn in the Tenderloin........and he has a particular interest in Debbie Stoner........
'Blue World' is an effort by McCammon to write a novel devoid of supernatural trappings, focusing on Humanistic Issues and Psychological Suspense.
The novel starts promisingly, with a man reading a Slash Maraud comic book inside of a XXX Live Show Theatre. But the remaining narrative never fulfills the early promise. It tends to lumber along, handicapped by its low-gear prose (on wet pavement, neon lights stream like the rivers of Hell; leg muscles scream; grins are big-toothed; when people sweat, they sweat cold sweat; voices take on a hint of acid, etc., etc.) and a sense of indecision as to whether it's meant to be a suspense novel with Melodrama, or a Melodrama novel with suspense.........
The verdict on the anthology 'Blue World' ? There are enough good stories to justify a four-star rating. I will note that over at Too Much Horror Fiction, Will Errickson was much less impressed with the book than I was. Let's just say that McCammon fans will want to have a copy in their collection.
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