Book Review: The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIII

Book Review: 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIII' edited by Karl Edward Wagner

4 / 5 Stars

'The Year's Best Horror Stories: Series XIII' (251 pp.) is DAW Book No. UE 2086, and Book Collector's No. 608. It was published in October, 1985, and has fine cover art by Michael Whelan.

This is the 12th 'Year's Best Horror Stories' volume I've reviewed here at the PorPor Books Blog, so I pretty much know what to expect with volume XIII. Editor Wagner has entries from his usual list of favored contributors, as well as some newer authors. Most of the entries in this anthology first saw print in 1984, in magazines such as The Twilight Zone Magazine or in other anthologies, like Shadows. Others saw print in literary journals, or even convention booklets (?!).

My capsule summaries of the contents:

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut, by Stephen King: Mrs. Todd likes to save time in her errands in rural Maine by driving her sports car down obscure, backwoods roads. Some of the places she transits aren't on any map. A good story from King, and one of the best here in Series XIII.

Are You Afraid of the Dark ?, by Charles L. Grant: on a dark and stormy night, three obstreperous boys confront their babysitter. According to Wagner, this story was an inclusion in the program book for Fantasycon IX. I think it's intended to be a satire due to the purple prose (at one point, shrubs cringe under a window), but I can't be sure. Which doesn't say much for 'Are You Afraid'....

Catch Your Death, by John Gordon: two kids in a misty, drizzly English seacoast town encounter the notorious 'Black Shuck.' I had heard of this entity before, as it's the title of one of the tracks on the celebrated Darkness album, Permission to Land (2003). Now I know who Black Shuck is. Who says reading horror fiction isn't educative ?!

Gordon also contributes 'Never Grow Up,' about a boy troubled by his parent's marital discord

Dinner Party, by Gardner Dozois: in an alternate, dystopian USA, on a bleak Winter's day, private first class Hassmann goes on a fateful excursion. It's a powerful story, although strictly speaking, it's science fiction, not horror. 

Tiger in the Snow, by Daniel Wynn Barber: little Justin walks home from a friend's house. There is menace in the quiet, Winter-time streets and yards of his hometown. This story is a refiguring of the Conrad Aiken short story 'Silent Snow, Secret Snow.'

Watch the Birdie, by Ramsey Campbell: editor Wagner introduces this tale by claiming that Campbell is "the best writer working in this field (i.e., horror) today."

'Watch' is a 'true' ghost story, about the haunting of the Baltic Fleet, a pub in Liverpool. Perhaps because of its brevity (it's only 5 1/2 pages long) it's one of Campbell's more accessible stories.

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You, by David J. Schow: a splatterpunk sneaks into a Year's Best Horror Stories anthology ???!!!! This novelette is about Jonathan Stoner, a handicapped Vietnam Vet who finds his favorite theater in downtown L.A. has some.......peculiarities. A story that takes the 'sleazoid' cinema affection of Bill Landis's 42nd Street, and drops it into the City of Angels, to good effect.

Hands with Long Fingers, by Leslie Halliwell: a deceased man's library of Eldritch Tomes is coveted by a sinister character. A competent, British-style horror tale.

Weird Tales, by Fred Chappell: Sterling Croydon, an acquaintance of H. P. Lovecraft, is doing some worrisome activities in a Cleveland apartment. This is a good Mythos tale, if more than a little highbrow (I encountered the noun 'poetaster').

The Wardrobe, by Jovan Panich: yet another story about a little boy convinced that there are monsters hiding in the wardrobe / closet / under the bed / attic / basement, etc. Other authors have done better, with this trope.

Angst for the Memories, by Vincent McHardy: this story consists entirely of dialogue, involving disembodied voices inhabiting a dark space. There is a 'shock' ending, with splatterpunk tones, that would have worked much better had the preceding paragraphs not been so unintelligible.

The Thing in the Bedroom, by David Langford: genuinely funny treatment of the theme of the 'occult detective.'

Borderland, by John Brizzolara: the borderland is the U.S. - Mexico border, where CBP agents discover something very strange is going on in Dead Man's Canyon.

The Scarecrow, by Roger Johnson: a very readable English ghost story, in the classical mode. This should have been included in 'The Mammoth Book of Folk Horror' (2021), but that's just my opinion.

The End of the World, by James B. Hemesath: a family of New Yorkers transiting the plains of South Dakota discover the empty landscape can be unsettling. One of the best stories in this anthology.

Deadlights, by Charles Wagner: another story set in the Midwest, this time in rural Kansas. It's 1975 and on U.S. route 24, something spooky is looming up in the darkness of the roadway. 'Deadlights' takes its mid-70s setting, and does something Stephen King-ish with it. I liked this story. 

Talking in the Dark, by Dennis Etchison: the obligatory Etchison entry. Victor Ripon is a damaged loner who finds some purpose to life via a correspondence with the bestselling horror author Rex Christian. Maybe Rex can come visit Victor, and instruct him in how to write horror fiction ? This tale has an interesting premise, but a Quiet Horror diet of figurative language, metaphors, and similes leads to a conclusion that I found contrived.

The verdict ? Somewhat surprisingly, I found myself willing to give 'Series XIII' a Four Star Rating (I usually give two or three Stars to these 'Year's Best' volumes). The contributions from King, Schow, Dozois, and the less well-known authors more than compensate for the duds from Grant, Campbell, and Etchison. The 'Year's Best Horror Stories' volumes have high asking prices in the used book markets, but this volume is worth spending a little extra money to obtain.

Penthouse October 1974

Penthouse

October 1974

It's October, 1974, and if we take a look at the top albums on the Billboard Hot 200 chart, If You Love Me Let Me Know by Olivia Newton-John stands at Number One, a clear indicator that she would be one of the best-selling female artists of the decade.

 

 

The latest issue of Penthouse magazine is on the stands, with Laura Doone, a stunning Linda Carter look-alike, as our cover girl.

 

Looking at the Penthouse Forum, alas, 'monopede mania' still endures, having emerged as a Forum obsession about two years previously (where and when K. W. Jeter decided to immortalize it in his 1972 cyberpunk novel 'Dr. Adder'). 

 

In the 'Music' column, coverage is given to some up-and-coming acts that embrace the 'glitter' sensibility. There is Dana Gillespie, a backing vocalist on some of David Bowie's records. Dana is (gasp) a lesbian ! Despite this provocative marketing angle, Dana's LP, Weren't Born A Man, never got much traction among the public. 

There's also an eccentric crossdresser named Wayne Country, who doesn't have an album out yet, but, we are assured, is the Next Big Thing. 

 

Then there is another glitter act, some guys calling themselves 'Kiss,' who are '...having an incredible amount of money pumped into them by Casablanca Records.' 

Kiss, we are informed, '....all wear bats wings and black leather boots, with red spots and stars painted across their faces, and the group's bassist is a dead ringer for Divine, the three-hundred pound drag queen of the film Pink Flamingos.' 

 

What a gimmick ! This band will be dropping out of sight very soon, now.........

 

 

In the magazine's text pieces, we have an article by Robert Sherrill titled 'The Old Shell Game,' which asserts that the oil companies are leveraging the Oil Crisis to extort money from the public. This was a common theme throughout the 1970s.

 

 

Thanks to the success of the movie The Godfather, the 1970s were preoccupied with gangsters and the Mafia, and so we have an excerpt from the book 'The Last Testament of Lucky Luciano' by Martin Gosch and Richard Hammer. Even before the book was published in January 1975, it was being criticized for having fictitious content.

 

 

There's also an excerpt from the novel 'Emmanuelle,' as by Emmanuelle Arsan (it later would be revealed that it was her husband, Louis-Jacques Rollet-Andriane, who in fact wrote the book). 

 

While it chronicles all sorts of sexual escapades on the part of the heroine, 'Emmanuelle' is perhaps a bit too highbrow for the readership of Penthouse. But Bob Gucccione got, what Bob Guccione wanted. The story does have a striking illustration by surrealist artist Paul Birkbeck.

 

Now, on to the nudies. The portfolio for Laura Doone is, in my opinion, one the best that Guccione ever did. Lots of soft-focus, lots of accessories: pearls, scarves, stockings, floppy-brimmed hats. Purely Seventies !

 

Let's not quit while we're ahead, and proceed to another portfolio: this one, 'The Cincinnati Kid,' features the lissome brunette Karen Dermer !

And that's how it was, fifty years ago, in the pages of Penthouse magazine..................

Book Review: Junkyard

Book Review: 'Junkyard' by Barry Porter

3 / 5 Stars

'Junkyard' (284 pp.) was published by Zebra Books in November, 1989. The cover illustration is one of the best of any entry in the Paperbacks from Hell era; sadly, the artist is uncredited (I can't make out their signature).

Author Barry Porter published one other horror paperback for Zebra Books; 'Dark Souls' (1989).

'Junkyard' is set in the small Midwestern (?) town of Winsome. In the opening chapter we are introduced to a common plot device in Paperbacks from Hell: a wino / vagrant / bum / Unhoused Person has the misfortune to wander into someplace they shouldn't; in this case, it's the town junkyard. Where the monsters depicted on the book's cover lurk in the darkness.

It's no spoiler to reveal that the junkyard monsters are mutant rats the size of a German shepherd dog. These mutants are ravenous and will unite to take down prey larger than themselves.

In due course we are introduced to a foursome of teens, who have been friends since childhood and who just happen to have erected a makeshift club house, called the 'Pit,' deep inside the passageways of the junkyard.....! 

(these sorts of contrivances are a major driver of the storyline in 'Junkyard').

For the teens, their childhood refuge has morphed into a hangout for drinking beer and watching porno VHS tapes. It's also a place to take chicks when it's time for a hot n' heavy makeout session. But of course, what Nick, Larry, Ray, and Mark don't realize is that not only are there man-eating rodents loose among the trash and debris, but that the rats are getting hungrier and more aggressive. And the junkyard is the last place anyone should be when night falls, and the rats come out of their warrens, seeking warm flesh to devour........

I had to struggle through 'Junkyard.' Like so many Paperbacks from Hell, the author laboriously devotes the first three-fourths of the novel to frame the plot and set things up for the climatic confrontation. We get all sorts of adumbrations and foreshadowings and intimations of EVIL !!!!!!!!!!!  And there is a lot of padding in the form of telling, not showing, the mental and emotional states of the characters, presumably to get the reader to care about who survives and what will be left of them (the characters, not the readers). I kept wondering when, finally, the narrative would gain some kind of momentum. 

At page 222, 'Junkyard' does kick into higher gear, and there is enough gore and action (including the liberal use of flamethrowers) to impart some degree of redemption to the novel for trying my patience in plodding through the first 221 pages. 

The verdict ? Like so many Paperbacks from Hell, 'Junkyard' now is selling for exorbitant sums at the hands of bookjackers and speculators. I've seen starting prices of $19, all the way up to $188 (!). If you are a Paperback Fanatic, spending about $20 for this title may be justified, but the novel doesn't have enough impact to justify paying more than that.

Fall 2024 is spooky stories season

FALL 2024 IS SPOOKY STORIES SEASON AT THE PORPOR BOOKS BLOG !

That's right, friends ! Every October, we here at the PorPor Books Blog dedicate our reviews and overviews to all manner of spooky tales, be they fiction or nonfiction. For 2024, we have an inventory of reviews sufficient to devote the season, rather than just a single month, to horror content. 

 

So stand by for reviews of novels and anthologies, all during these next two months, here at the PorPor Books Blog !

On the shelf in the back of the store

On the Shelf in the Back of the Store

The other day I stopped in at a rather disheveled comic book shop in upstate New York and walking into the lesser-trafficked back portion of the store, I saw they had shelving set aside for paperback and hardcover books. Most of the titles were Star Trek and Star Wars franchise stuff, but they had a surprisingly large collection of vintage sci-fi paperbacks from the 1960s and 1970s. I purchased the five books, pictured above, for $2 each. 

I doubt any of them are memorable works, but still, it's always worth poking around those neglected little corners of the store where the owners stash the more obscure items in their inventory......

The Science Fiction Encyclopedia

'The Science Fiction Encyclopedia / The Encyclopedia of  Science Fiction'
Edited by Peter Nicholls

Over the past few months, I've been dipping into my rather battered copy of the 1981 Granada edition of 'The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction ' (672 pp.), which first appeared in 1979 in the UK and USA (where it was titled 'The Science Fiction Encyclopedia').

'The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction' (TEoSF) was one of a number of such tomes that appeared in the late 1970s, signals that the genre, in the aftermath of the release of Star Wars and the visibility of the New Wave movement, was rapidly becoming a powerful commercial presence not just in book publishing, but the entire mass-media environment. 

It's impressive to consider that the encyclopedia was assembled in an era well before the internet and Google. Indeed, it's about as comprehensive as one could expect given the data gathering technology of the late 70s. 

Editor Nicholls was joined by 33 other contributors, including Brian Aldiss, John Brosnan, David Masson, Franz Rottensteiner, John Saldek, and Brian Stableford. Nicholls acknowledges that the reference library at the the Science Fiction Foundation of North East London Polytechnic (now titled the Polytechnic of East London) was crucial to compiling the encyclopedia.

Any encyclopedia is vulnerable to criticism that it neglects some topics in favor of others, and this criticism could of course be leveled af TEoSF. But of course, emphasis would be given to topics that were deemed important in the period of the late 1970s, and other topics, such as Cyberpunk, either simply didn't exist back then, or were in too nascent a state to be given a full treatment. So the book's themes of 'television', 'esp', 'suspended animation', and 'mainstream writers of SF' may seem quaint in 2023, but 44 years ago, they were very au courant.

Thumbing through the pages of TEoSF brings with it all sorts of strange and entertaining little revelations that Baby Boomers like myself will cherish. And of course, I wound up making a list of paperbacks that, based on entries in the book, seemed worthy of attention.

The writing in TEoSF can be uneven, as the contributors are given the rather difficult task of providing content for a reference book that also is intended to be read for some degree of pleasure. Nicholls's entries are well-written and successfully balance the goals of being scholarly, but accessible. 

But the worst offender is the UK critic and editor John Clute, who is second only to Nicholls in the number of contributions. Clute's entries have the self-consciously pretentious and jargon- riddled quality of someone who very much wants to be perceived as a Serious Scholar. I've criticized Clute in another post here at the PorPor Blog, so I won't beat a dead horse...........

One thing that becomes apparent in reading TEoSF is the the degree of dedication and commitment to the project displayed by editor Peter Nicholls, an Australian writer for whom the book was his first major foray into the editorial landscape. Nicholls would go on to write two books that were quite informative, and well served both fans and the general public, 'The Science in Science Fiction' (1982), and 'The World of Fantastic Films: An Illustrated Survey' (1985). 

Nicholls would co-author another print edition of TEoSF in 1993, but thereafter, increasing ill-health limited Nicholls's efforts as writer and editor. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2000, and died in 2018. One can only wonder what contributions to the genre he could have made, had he not been stricken while still at a relatively young age.

Who will want a copy of 'The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction' ? Well, Baby Boomers, who can remember how the genre was nearly 45 years ago, likely will find perusing its pages to be worthwhile and nostalgic. 

But I doubt newer sci-fi fans will find the printed version from 1979 to be very useful, given that the current, online version - which is free - constantly is updated, and reflects the enormous growth in the subject that has taken place in the past four decades. Perhaps it's best to view the Encyclopedia of 1979 as a product unique to its time and place, and those interested in such things are its recommended audience.

James Blish's A Light to Fight By

 A Light to Fight By

by James Blish

Penthouse, June, 1972

The June, 1972 issue of Penthouse magazine featured a short story from sci-fi writer James Blish.

'A Light to Fight By' is mildly sci-fi. It's set in a near-future New York City where the gap between the haves and the have-nots is wider and the police are prone to addressing street incidents via interdicting with armored vehicles.

Protagonist Ken Cassidy is a white savior (back in '72, the term was revered, mind you) who has turned aside a potential lucrative career as a stockbroker to instead provide counseling and supervision to Puerto Rican youth patronizing the Third Avenue Youth Center in East Harlem.

Ken had served in Vietnam, and upon arriving back in the City, had undergone a transformation:

When Ken had come back, he had made the mistake of going to see the quiet Puerto Rican who had been his First Sergeant; and there he had seen also the families jammed together five and six to a room, the kids just able to walk playing with empty beer cans for lack of a better toy, the 12 year-old boys hustling their 13 year-old sisters, the useless young men blustering and shooting craps or pitching pennies by the stoops, the screaming bruised women, the black-eyed unwanted babies, the dried old men who had arrived too late to learn English....and the cops hovering around them, waiting for any damn excuse at all to bring one of their expensively armored riot-control crawlers.

Wow......what a terse, hardboiled, description of life in the dark corners of the American dream !

Facetiousness aside, I found 'A Light' to be one of the better fiction works of Blish that I have yet read (although, to be honest, I tend not to seek out his stuff). The story has a subversive little twist at its end that keeps it from being yet another glib Moral Message about discrimination, poverty, and privilege.

Unfortunately, 'A Light to Fight By' doesn't appear in any of the Blish story collections published to date, probably because it's not a sci-fi tale.

So, I'm going to post the printed pages here at the PorPor Blog. They are as legible as I can make them from 300 dpi scans of a 52 year-old magazine............