My Top 17 Horror Stories

My Top 17 Horror Short Stories

I've been reading horror stories since 1970, when I was 9 years old and I saw a copy of Alfred Hitchcock's Monster Museum (Random House, 1965) on the shelf of my grammar school library. 

While most of the stories in the book were rather tame - it was aimed at an audience of juvenile Baby Boomers, after all - Joseph Payne Brennan's story 'Slime' immediately gripped my attention, and from then on, my interest in the genre began, and has lasted since.

After some contemplation, I've decided to stand forth with a list of 17 short stories that in my humble opinion are the better ones I've encountered in 50 years of reading all manner of horror fiction. Since it's the interval covered by this blog, I've concentrated on stories that first saw print from the 1960s into the mid-1990s. 

I've posted a brief, one-sentence  synopsis for each story, to jog memories or to give the reader a sense of what to expect.

One problem with focusing on such stories is that in many instances the books where they first appeared are long out of print, and copies in good condition have steep asking prices. Accordingly, where available, I've tried to provide alternate sources for obtaining these stories.

My Top 17, in chronological order:

The First Days of May, by Claude Veillot, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, December 1961; Tales of Terror from Outer Space, 1975

‘Alien invasion’ theme, well done.

***

Longtooth, by Edgar Pangborn, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1970; The Best of Modern Horror, 1989

Eerie doings in the Maine woods.

***

Goat, by David Campton, New Writings in Horror and the Supernatural #1, 1971; Whispers: An Anthology of Fantasy and Horror, 1977

Creepy goings-on in an English village.

***

Satanesque, by Alan Weiss, The Literary Magazine of Fantasy and Terror, #6, 1974; The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, 1975

Starts off on a thoroughly conventional note, then unexpectedly transitions into something entirely imaginative and offbeat.

***

The Taste of Your Love, by Eddy C. Bertin, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, 1975; The Whispering Horror, 2013

One of the better Serial Killer tales I’ve read.

***

What Dark God, by Brian Lumley, Nameless Places, 1975; Haggopian and Other Stories, 2008

Riding on UK trains never will be the same.

***

The Changer of Names, by Ramsey Campbell, Swords Against Darkness II, 1977; The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories: 4, 1978; Far Away and Never, 2021.

I've never been a fan of Campbell’s horror stories and novels, but his sword-and-sorcery stories featuring the ‘Ryre’ character are entertaining exercises in creepiness. There are metaphors and similes abounding in the Ryre tales, to be sure, but as compared to Campbell's horror stories the purple prose is reduced in scope, and plotting receives due consideration. 

While the Swords Against Darkness paperbacks have exorbitant asking prices, a new (October 2021) reprint of Far Away and Never from DMR Press collects all four of the Ryre stories, along with other fantasy tales from Campbell's early career.  

***

Long Hollow Swamp, by Joseph Payne Brennan, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, January 1976; The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V, 1977

Another great 'monsters-on-the-loose' tale from Brennan.

***

Sing A last Song of Valdese, by Karl Edward Wagner, Chacal #1, Winter 1976; The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V, 1977; Night Winds, 1978, 1983

One of two entries by Wagner, who wrote a lot of duds, but when he was On, he was On. In a remote forest, a lone traveler comes upon an inn filled with sinister characters.

***

Window, by Bob Leman, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May 1980; The 1981 Annual World’s Best SF, 1981; The Best of Modern Horror, 1989

A neat mix of sci-fi and horror, revolving around a portal to another dimension.

***

Where the Summer Ends, by Karl Edward Wagner, Dark Forces, August 1980; In A Lonely Place, 1983; The American Fantasy Tradition, 2002

 

A second entry from Wagner. It’s hot, humid, and dangerous in 1970s Knoxville. Stay away from the kudzu !

***

The New Rays, by M. John Harrison, Interzone #1, Spring 1982, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XI, 1983; The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, 2012

A disturbing tale with proto-steampunk leanings. 

***

After-Images, by Malcolm John Edwards, Interzone #4, Spring 1983, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII, 1984; Interzone: The First Anthology, 1986

Another fine melding of sci-fi and horror, this time set in an English suburb. It’s too bad that Edwards, a playwright and editor, didn’t write more short stories.

***

The Man with Legs, by Al Sarrantonio, Shadows No. 6, October 1983, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII, 1984

Two kids learn some disturbing secrets about their family history.

***

Mengele, by Lucius Shepard, Universe 15, 1985, The Jaguar Hunter, 1988

Troubling things are going on at an estate located in a remote region of Paraguay.

***

Red Christmas, by David Garnett, The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIV, 1986

What seems like a conventional Mad Slasher story has a neat little twist at the end.

***

Shining On, by Billie Sue Mosiman, Future Net, 1996

A mutant suffering from severe handicaps finds a friend online. But you know what they say about online friends……..just who are they in person ?

Book Review: The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales

Book Review: 'The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales'

2 / 5 Stars

Fantasy Tales was a semi-professional magazine published in the UK from 1977 to 1991 for a total of 24 issues (spaced over two Volumes). 

Editors Stephen Jones and David Sutton consciously modeled their magazine on the classic pulp Weird Tales, and thus, Fantasy Tales published as many (if not more) horror stories than fantasy, and featured black-and-white and graytone illustrations by artists such as Stephen Fabian and Jim Pitts. 

Fantasy Tales can be seen as the British counterpart to American semi-professional magazines of the 1970s and 1980s, such as Whispers, Grue, Cemetery Dance, and Midnight Graffiti.

Along with reprints of vintage stories from the Pulp era, each issue featured new stories by contributors who would go on to become prominent names in the genre. For many of these contributors, their earliest works appeared first in Fantasy Tales, giving the magazine a special place in the hearts of British fandom.

After 1991 Jones and Sutton decided to discontinue publishing Fantasy Tales and instead went into assembling and editing anthologies of horror and fantasy fiction incorporating previously published content as well as newly commissioned stories. As of 2021 three volumes of these anthologies have been issued: The Best Horror Stories from Fantasy Tales (1988), The Giant Book of Fantasy (1991), and The Giant Book of Fantasy and the Supernatural (1994).

Jones has had a very prolific and very successful career as an editor and packager of books on all aspects of fantasy media, including the 500+ page Best New Horror series of trade paperbacks (which, as of 2020, was up to Volume 30).

This Carroll and Graf trade paperback edition (268 pp.) of The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales was issued in 2003, with cover art by Brom, and features the original illustrations that accompanied the stories when they appeared in the magazine. With the exception of the reprints of Pulp era stories, all of the entries in The Best Horror first saw print between 1975 - 1986. Some are the recipients of the British Fantasy Award and / or the World Fantasy Award.

My capsule summaries of the contents:

The Forbidden, by Clive Barker (1985): a graduate student named Helen Buchanan, who is writing her thesis on 'Graffitti: The Semiotics of Urban Despair', investigates a notorious murder committed in a public restroom of the Spector Street Estate, a decaying Liverpool apartment complex. This novelette later became the basis of the 1992 film Candyman. It remains one of the best of Barker's works, and is the standout piece in this anthology.

The Dark Country, by Dennis Etchison (1981): Jack Martin, an American, is living a dissipated life in a crumbling beachfront hotel in Baja Mexico when an incident involving fellow gringos places a pall on the holiday atmosphere.

This is not a horror story, but a crime story with a simplistic plot and a narrative overloaded with figurative prose and empty sentences designed to communicate a noir-ish atmosphere:

He had been lost in a nightmare of domination and forced acquiescence before people who meant to do him harm. It returned to him in fragments. What did it mean ? He shook it off and rolled out of bed.

  

'The Dark Country' wouldn't have passed muster in an early 80s crime magazine or digest but when submitted to a horror magazine it was considered a great example of Quiet Horror. Meh !

Dead to the World, by Allen Lucas (aka Allen Ashley) (1982): the first-person narrator finds himself beset with an unusual medical condition.

The Generation Waltz, by Charles L. Grant (1984): on a rainy Fall day in Oxrun Station, a man attends the wake for his late Gram.........yet another 'Quiet Horror' dud from Grant. The bulk of the narrative is devoted to creating a 'disquieting' atmosphere, so much so that the closing page is an exercise in hurried silliness, as if Grant suddenly realized he was writing a horror story and not a psychodrama and needed to interject Something Disturbing into his denouement.

The Frolic, by Thomas Ligotti (1982): cozy in their living room, a prison psychiatrist and his wife converse about a very disturbing inmate. This early tale from Ligotti suffers from turgid prose. I found the ending to be too contrived to be effective.

The Strange Years, by Brian Lumley (1982): the End of the World, related within less than five pages. Tries to do too much within too little space, and comes across as hasty and unconvincing.

Ever the Faith Endures, by Manly Wade Wellman (1978): a North Carolina man finds ancient evil lurking at the family homestead in the UK. Another well-crafted 'folk horror' tale from Wellman. 

Extension 201, by Cyril Simsa (1979): evil lurks in the dusty corridors of the Museum of Natural History........a 'traditional' horror story, done with straightforward plotting and competent prose (by an author for whom English was presumably not a first language, no less).

The Last Wolf, by Karl Edward Wagner (1975): in the future, books have been superseded by electronic-based media; the Last Writer stubbornly refuses to capitulate. This story is a homage to Ray Bradbury. I'm not a Bradbury fan, so I can't say it did all that much for me.

Tongue in Cheek, by Mike Grace (1984): When her car breaks down, Annabel is forced to walk down a dark, deserted road in rural England.......it's very spooky. This short story is amateurish, but it does feature an amazing illustration (below) by Mark Dunn.

The Bad People, by Steve Rasnic Tem (1984): another 'gringo in Mexico' entry. This time it's uneasy single father Cliff, who encounters a strange apparition roaming the hot and dusty streets of Mexico. A standard-issue 'weird fiction' tale, where you can't tell if the Horror is external, or simply a manifestation of the protagonist's psychological trauma. Meh.

A Place of No Return, by Hugh B. Cave (1981): an arrogant American academic investigates rumors of zombis in rural Haiti. While most readers undoubtedly will see the ending coming from a long way off, as always, Cave's prose is straightforward and unadorned and a welcome alternative to the clotted style of the Quiet Horror practitioners.

The Terminus, by Kim Newman (1985): a policeman investigates disappearances in the tunnels of the London Underground. This story, from early in Newman's career, is only three pages in length, but its denouement is as effective a demonstration of 'Quiet Horror' as anything Charles L. Grant, Dennis Etchison, and T. E. D. Klein ever wrote.

The Green Man, by Kelvin Jones (1983): an Anglican pastor discovers that disturbing things are taking place on the grounds of his church. A successful effort at infusing the classic English ghost story setting with a modern sensibility.

The Voice of the Beach, by Ramsey Campbell (1982): two friends staying at a beach resort on the English coast see strange apparitions in the surrounding landscape. 

Reading this tale was like sputum forced from the distended lips of a sickly pensioner, clutching his stained tweed jacket with its odor of pipe tobacco left too long in its foil packet. I felt detached; why did the spectacle of the hazy sky project disquiet ?  A trash can, spattered with seagull droppings, trespassed on the pedestrian walkway. Crossing the sand provoked a feeling of helplessness; from the corner of my eye, I noticed a patch of darkness appear on the verge. Did it writhe ? Another glance and it was gone; it had never been.

There are a number of reprinted Pulp Era stories:  'Dreams May Come' by H. Warner Munn (1939), 'Don't Open that Door' by Frances Wellman (1940), 'The Sorcerer's Jewel' by Robert Bloch (1939), and 'In the X-Ray' by Fritz Leiber (1949). 

The black and white illustrations, done by Jim Pitts, John Stewart, Andrew Smith, David Lloyd, Dave Carson, Randy Broecker, Allen Koszowski, Alan Hunter, Russ Nicholson, Mark Dunn, and Tom Campbell, all are very good and perfectly capture the Weird Tales sensibility sought by the editors.

The verdict ? I finished The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales thinking that this anthology offered too little truly noteworthy material to be a must-have. 

If you are a dedicated horror fiction enthusiast, then if you find a copy of The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales on the shelves of a used bookstore, and it's reasonable priced, you might want to pick it up. But all others can pass.  

Rodney Matthews, Michael Moorcock, and Fantasy Illustration in the 1970s

Rodney Matthews, Michael Moorcock, and Fantasy Illustration in the 1970s

The UK artist Rodney Matthews (b. 1945) emerged as a prominent commercial artist in the early 1970s when the Big O poster company began issuing posters based on his fantasy paintings.

At his blog, Matthews has an entertaining series of posts about how, in 1975, he initiated a collaboration with author Michael Moorcock about providing illustrations for the 'Elric' franchise. The collaboration is still going strong - as prints and NFTS - as of 2021. Matthews's posts also provide some interesting insights into the financial realities of being a commercial artist in the UK in the 70s and 80s.

Book Review: The Fog

Book Review: 'The Fog' by James Herbert

Signet paperback, US, 1975

New English Library paperback, 1975, UK

un-used cover artwork by Tim White for the 1975 New English Library edition, UK

5 / 5 Stars

If you read horror fiction at all during the 70s, then it's highly likely that at some point during that time you encountered a James Herbert novel, and it's also likely that none grabbed your attention quite the way The Fog did.......

I remember being intrigued by the Signet paperback copy of this book (275 pp) when it first was published in December 1975. 

I was then a sophomore in high school, and The Fog wound up being passed hand to hand among most of the kids in my class. It was like 'literary crack'.

The book's uncredited cover artist provided a masterpiece of lurid, eye-catching illustration........all you needed to see was the nude bodies smeared with blood, and the faces gleaming with Depraved Intent, to know that this was no 'traditional' 70s horror novel like The Other, Carrie, Julia, Burnt Offerings, or The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane. Mannered books, devoid of much in the way of explicit horror or violence.

The Fog, as is now quite clear, was - along with Herbert's 1974 novel The Rats - a primordial Splatterpunk novel. Even today, nearly 50 years later, both of Herbert's novels still retain their offbeat and provocative nature.

Steve Crisp's cover art for the 1988 New English Library edition, UK

I won't offer a full synopsis of The Fog, mainly because there are plenty of in-depth reviews available online. 

I will say the plot is relatively straightforward: a freak earthquake takes place near a small village located close to the Salisbury Plain in southern Britain. A strange gas escapes from the newly opened fissure in the ground, and begins to spread over the countryside. All people and animals exposed to the Fog undergo a rapid loss of their inhibitions, and revert into a crazed fugue state, one that sees them overly prone to carry out violent acts with no hesitation or remorse.

John Holman, a square-jawed, no-nonsense Department of the Environment employee, has survived a firsthand encounter with the Fog, and quickly becomes the lead actor in the government's efforts to locate, and counter, the phenomenon. 

But for Holman and the UK, time is running out. For the Fog is heading for London....... !

The main plot thread centers on the adventures of John Holman and his mission to defeat the Fog. 

This is interspersed with vignettes gleefully depicting the various acts of mayhem and gory atrocities that the Fog-crazed denizens of the British countryside and city are wont to indulge in. Throughout his novel, Herbert relies on a detached prose style that lends itself well to recounting the increasingly gruesome toll taken by the psychotic victims of the Fog.

And, Herbert avoids the obvious cop-out in making the Fog an occult or supernatural menace; there is a sf subtext to the plot that, in my opinion, gives the book an edge over his related work, The Dark (1980). In this regard, The Fog acquires the sort of quasi-documentary style that is typified by Michael Crichton novels.

Summing up..........if you haven't read The Fog (or for that matter, The Rats) then it should be on your reading list. 

It's by no means a triumph of 'literary achievement' (as such things might be counted), but it's a seminal novel in the birth of 'modern' horror.

Before there was Clive Barker, Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back, Book of the Dead, and Jerry's Kids Meet Wormboy - there was James Herbert and The Fog. 

At the Library Sale October 2021

At the Library Sale 
October 2021

Time once again for the local library's Fall 2021 Used Book Sale. As always, I elbowed my way past the predatory Dealers who tote cardboard boxes and scan titles with apps on their smartphones, and carefully examined the sci-fi section. 

Amidst the predictable surfeit of books from Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Mercedes Lackey, James Blish, and David Webber, I was able to find some nice vintage paperbacks (above) for a buck each.

I also picked up a couple of hardcovers; one is a trilogy of 'Riddlemaster of Hed' novels by Patricia McKillip, the other, an anthology of Leigh Brackett short stories.

 

Always good to visit the Library Sale. You can find some offbeat little treasures.....

Graveyard Ghosts by Gilbert Shelton

Graveyard Ghosts
by Gilbert Shelton
from Zap Comix No. 13, 1994

Gilbert Shelton - best known for 'The Furry Freak Brothers' - was a skilled draftsman, as demonstrated in this black-and-white two-pager from a later issue of Zap Comix.

Book Review: The Architecture of Fear

Book Review: 'The Architecture of Fear' edited by Kathryn Cramer and Peter D. Pautz

2 / 5 Stars

'The Architecture of Fear' first was published in hardcover by Arbor House in October, 1987. This Avon Books paperback edition (278 pp.) was published in January, 1989. The cover artist is Tim O'Brien.  

Editor Cramer has assembled numerous anthologies in the horror, fantasy, and sf genres.

In his Introduction, editor Pautz, who takes himself very seriously, tells the reader that this anthology has a Purpose:

.......Always the stories. I hope they horrify you. I hope they awaken you, help you to do something about the horror. Call a cop, protect a child, vote, read another book. But do something !   

I'm afraid that for my part, with 'The Architecture of Fear', I simply was looking for some entertainment, not inspiration to take action against Social Injustice.............so call me brutish and uncaring, then.

My capsule reviews of the contents:

In the House of Gingerbread, by Gene Wolfe: Tina Heim's husband died of lung cancer, despite not being a smoker. The life insurance company sends an investigator to interview Tina about this peculiarity..........perhaps there is something in the house that was responsible ?

Wolfe's prose style is surprisingly accessible, and although the story ends on something of an oblique note, it does feature some convincing villains.

Ellen, In Her Time, by Charles L. Grant: in their Introduction to this entry, the editors announce that:

 

....Charles L. Grant is a pervasive presence in contemporary fantasy.....a successful author who reads human reaction like a country physician. He is a writer who knows the darker sides of love.

'Ellen' sees our protagonist, Tim Edding, trying to climb over the wall into a Winter-time cemetery.........most readers will see where this story is going well in advance. I can't say that I found this story to be a remarkable exploration of the 'darker sides of love'. Maybe someone else did.

Nesting Instinct, by Scott Baker: Paris, 1968, and innocent young American girl Tracy arrives at a peculiar apartment building. The communal first floor toilet smells horrible (this is France, after all) but soon she learns there are much stranger things going on further up the staircase.......a decent tale.

Endless Night, by Karl Edward Wagner: a plotless series of vignettes about someone's nightmares. The Editors assure us that Wagner's contribution is a powerful reminder of The Banality of Evil. For my part, I thought this story was an example of how Wagner would meet commitments to anthology editors by grabbing something from the Reject Pile and turning it around with minimal effort............

The Fetch, by Robert Aickman: I had no illusions about a novelette from Aickman, and 'The Fetch' didn't steer me wrong. The plot has something to do with a haunted house situated in a remote area of Scotland. There is a housekeeper named Cuddy, who says enigmatic things. There is a caretaker named Mason, who serves overcooked steaks. There is a maid named Aline, who finds the house disturbing. None of these make the story at all interesting. 

Aickman's prose style is wordy and tedious; more talented authors would have taken the thin plot of 'The Fetch' and easily bounded it within a six-page story. Readers will need to prepare to encounter the words 'meiosis' (understatement), 'maquillage' (cosmetics, makeup) and 'hereditament' (an item of inheritance).

Trust Me, by Joseph Lyons: a 2-pager about the Boogeyman, competently done.

Visitors, by Jack Dann: A young man named Charlie, who is suffering from peritonitis, is in the hospital. He Sees Dead People. An effective story with an ending that avoids contrivance.

Gentlemen, by John Skipp and Craig Spector: what are the Splatterpunks doing in this anthology ?! 'Gentlemen' is about first-person narrator Dave, a Sensitive Guy who finds himself obliged to visit a Manhattan dive bar in order to comfort a girl he long has pined for. By the story's end, Dave has become a Real Man.

This story tries oh-so-hard to say something Important about misogyny and the corrupting nature of traditional masculinity, but comes across as preachy. It's saved by a stomach-churning description of the worst Bar and Grill men's room ever to be presented in a work of fiction.......... 

Down in the Darkness, by Dean R. Koontz: Jesus Gonzalez has purchased a very fine home in Laguna Beach, California. He discovers a door leading down to a basement. But the Realtor never mentioned anything about a basement.......didn't she ? One of the better stories in the anthology.

Haunted, by Joyce Carol Oates: Melissa and her friend Mary Lou like to visit the abandoned houses in their rural neighborhood. Someone should've told them to stay away from one house, in particular........I found this story to be a little too over-written (do we really need exhaustive descriptions of the interior contents of old houses ?) to be effective.

In the Memory Room, by Michael Bishop: while Gina Callan lies in her coffin, being viewed by her relatives in the funeral parlor (the eponymous 'memory room'), she has a telepathic conversation with the parlor hostess. More of a humor tale, certainly not horror or dark fantasy.

Tales from the Original Gothic, by John M. Ford: a team of paranormal researchers investigate the apparition of a haunted house. Things do not go well when a damsel seemingly in distress makes her appearance.

This is the worst entry in the anthology. I have no idea why editors Cramer and Pautz accepted it. Ford deploys a self-consciously 'metafictional' prose style that reads like something Philip Jose Farmer did in his New Wave stories, like 'Riders of the Purple Wage', back in the late 60s. 

If you can't work up a functioning plot and characters, then don't try and pass off stream-of-consciousness as coherence. Tell the editors 'sorry, I can't contribute', and let someone else get the call to contribute...........

The House that Knew No Hate, by Jessica Amanda Salmonson: middle-aged couple Nona and Donald move into the latter's childhood home. Soon Donald is seeing ghosts from the past.....or are they hallucinations ? Salmonson invests considerable effort in building up mood and atmosphere, but the denouement is too vague to be effective. 

The verdict ? 'The Architecture of Fear' is like the majority of horror anthologies that saw print in the 1980s: a surfeit of unremarkable, phoned-in entrants, along with a few worthwhile tales. I can't give it more than a 2-star rating.

October 2021 is Spooky Stories Month

October 2021 is Spooky Stories Month at the PorPor Books Blog !

Traditionally here at the PorPor Books Blog we celebrate the month of October, and Halloween, by reviewing horror titles. 

For October 2021 we have a nice lineup of anthologies and novels..........look for reviews of these titles throughout the month !

Book Review: Hiero's Journey

Book Review: 'Hiero's Journey'
Hiero's Journey

The Unforsaken Hiero 
by Sterling Lanier

5 / 5 Stars

‘Hiero’s Journey’ first was published by Chilton books in hardcover in 1973. A Bantam paperback edition was released in 1973, and a Del Rey paperback in 1983. 

A sequel, ‘The Unforsaken Hiero’, was released in 1983 by Del Rey. 

[Apparently, Lanier had prepared a third manuscript, with the intention of completing a Hiero trilogy, but it never saw publication.] 

Both Del Rey versions had excellent cover art by Darrell Sweet.

All these editions, being long out of print, nowadays have ever-steeper asking prices. 

An omnibus edition of both novels, titled ‘Hiero Desteen’ (532 pp), was published by the Science Fiction Book Club / Doubleday in 1984 and while it, too, has high asking prices, it probably is the most economical way to obtain the series. I was able to find a rather beat-up copy at Wonder Book and Video in Frederick, MD, for under $5.

Sterling Lanier (1927 – 2007) was an American sci-fi and fantasy author who, during the 60s, 70s and 80s, wrote a number of short stories for the digests, including many entries in the so-called ‘Brigadier Ffellowes’ series. Along with the two novels in the ‘Hiero Desteen’ series, Lanier wrote ‘Menace Under Marswood’ (1983), another sc-fi novel, for Del Rey.

In addition to being a writer of science fiction, Lanier is remembered as an editor who made a momentous decision: in the mid-60s, while an editor for Chilton books, who mainly published manuals for automobiles, Lanier received the manuscript for 'Dune' and persuaded the company to publish the book in hardcover. 'Dune' of course became a publishing phenomenon, thanks to Lanier’s willingness to have Chilton take a chance and issue its first-ever fiction title.

I remember reading the Hiero novels back in the early 80s, and finding them quite entertaining. How do they stack up when re-read nearly fifty years later ? Quite well, all things considered.......... 

The novels are set in North America, some 5,000 years after the late 20th century and the advent of World War Three (referred to as ‘the Death’). Most of the continent is a wilderness inhabited by small outposts of civilization. Due to the effects of radiation, mutant animals of all types have evolved to roam the fields, swamps, and forests. Some are harmless, while others are ferocious predators that must be treated with respect - if not fear. 

The territory of Kanda (i.e., Canada) is governed by the Metz Republic, which in turn operates under the precepts of the Kandan Universal Church, a kind of post-apocalyptic manifestation of Catholicism. The titular Hiero Desteen is a priest in the Church, and, despite his youth, an experienced woodsman and explorer.

Technology in North America is at a 19th-century level, but the absence of communications infrastructure is compensated for by the telepathic abilities of the priestly class of the Metz Republic. Hiero Desteen’s telepathy is powerful enough to enable him to befriend a sentient moose, named Klootz, and an intelligent bear named Gorm. 

These animals accompany Hiero on his eponymous Journey south from Kanda into the vast wilderness of what once was known as the United States. Hiero’s mission ? Find and recover a lost technology that will aid the Metz Republic in its clandestine war against the Dark Brotherhood, a coalition of fanatics who seek to empower themselves by reviving the destructive forces of the pre-apocalyptic era.

In his adventures in 'Hiero's Journey' and 'The Unforsaken Hiero', Hiero will encounter all manner of deadly adversaries, such as a psychic vampire who plucks its victims as they trudge though the marshes; S'duna, the malevolent leader of the Brotherhood who oversees a specialized torture chamber; and a mutated slime mold capable of absorbing and digesting grown men. 

But Hiero will benefit from the company of both human and animal allies in his struggle with the forces of evil. And the ultimate conflict to decide the future of Kanda will be decided by the clash of armies on the shores of the Lake of Weeping............

I mused long and hard as to whether or not the Hiero novels deserved a four star or a five star score. In the end, I settled on a five star score. 

While it's true that in the second volume the narrative begins to get a bit repetitive, it's also true that author Lanier's prose style throughout the series is clear and devoid of New Wave era self-indulgence. The books include an interesting collection of memorable characters and villains. The books impart their overarching theme of eco-awareness, and the benefits of a Return to Nature, in a subtle manner that avoids belaboring the reader with a 'message'. And the second volume culminates in a well-crafted battle scene that, although providing a predictable ending, does so in a suspenseful manner.

And finally, 'Hiero's Journey' and 'The Unforsaken Hiero' are, first and foremost, fun. They don't take themselves too seriously (a sin made by many New Wave era novels), and they provide a very readable, modernized interpretation of the Planetary Romance genre. Accordingly, I'm comfortable with a five-star rating for the Hiero novels.

More Old School treasures

 More Old School Treasures

Poking around in the boxes in the back of the store continues to yield some nice Vintage Treasures, at affordable prices. Recent acquisitions include:

Conan the Barbarian: The Skull of Set: A Marvel Graphic Novel from 1989. Some great artwork by Paul Gulacy.

Hard-Boiled Defective Stories: an oversize compilation of Burns's 'El Borbah' comics from 1983 - 1988. 

Turbo Jones: Pathfinder : a 1991 compilation of the black-and-white sci-fi comic that first appeared in the UK magazine Wildcat (1988 - 1989).

And then we have..........

Daddy Cool: this 1984 graphic novel is a real rarity. It was issued by 'Melrose Square', an imprint of L.A. - based paperback publisher Holloway House. It didn't do well despite the fact that Holloway simultaneously released the book in paperback format (below). Which is a shame, because Daddy Cool features outstanding artwork by the talented Filipino artist Alfredo Alcala.

So, let the fanboys gather around the front of the store holding their 30 Pulls for the month, I'll head to the back........... where the good stuff resides.