My top 22 horror short stories, October 2023

 October 2023 is Spooky StORIES MOnth 
at the PORPOR BOOKS BLOG !

My Top 22 Horror Short Stories
October 2023 

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 22 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 long are 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 22, 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.

***

One of the Dead, by William Wood, The Saturday Evening Post, October 31, 1964; Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Scream Along with Me; A Walk with the Beast, 1969; Great American Ghost Stories, 1991

Although a bit over-written, this is a well-crafted melding of the haunted house theme with the anomie of mid-1960s life in suburban Los Angeles.  

***

The Road to Mictlantecutli, by Adobe James, Adam Bedside Reader, 1965; The Sixth Pan Book of Horror Stories,1965; The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural, 1981

Morgan, a ruthless criminal, is travelling on a mysterious road in Mexico. The strange sights and passions he encounters will lead him to change his life........for good, or for ill.

'Adobe James' was the pseudonym of American writer James Moss Cardwell (1926 – 1990), who had his short stories published in a variety of magazines and anthologies during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. 

***

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

A resident of rural Maine discovers something disturbing in the deep, dark 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 Shortest Way, by David Drake, Whispers #3, March 1974; From the Heart of Darkness, 1983; Vettius and His Friends, 1989;  Night & Demons, 2012

A 'Vettius' story set in the days of the Roman empire. Our hero elects to travel on a road that the locals take care to avoid. An atmospheric, memorable tale.

***

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.

***

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.

***

High Tide, by Leanne Frahm, Fears, 1983

Frahm, an Australian writer, sets this novelette in the vicinity of the Newry Islands in coastal Queensland. A family camping trip to Mud Island discovers something strange is going on amidst the mangrove swamps: Eco-horror at its creepiest !  

***

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.

***

The Picknickers, by Brian Lumley, Final Shadows, 1991, The Year's Best Horror Stories: XX, 1992.

Unsettling events are happening in the graveyard of a Welsh coal-mining village.

***

The Bacchae, by Elizabeth Hand, The Year's Best Horror Stories: XX, 1992.

In a decaying near-future America, women have gained mysterious, and deadly, powers. This story has the amorphous quality of Weird Fiction, but laces it with splatterpunk imagery.

***

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 ?

Splatterpunks in Penthouse

 October 2023 is Spooky StORIES MOnth 
at the PORPOR BOOKS BLOG !

Splatterpunks in Penthouse
Penthouse magazine, September 1988

It's only a one-page article, but it shows that by the early Fall of 1988, Splatterpunk was getting attention from one of the largest-circulation periodicals in the media. The subjects of this profile by Robert Sabat: Skipp and Spector, Richard Christian Matteson, and David J. Schow, are perfectly happy to bear the splat label and are adamant about replacing 'pedestrian horror' with something '....fast and frenetic and in your face.' Cool !

Book Review: The Stephen King Companion

October 2023 is Spooky StORIES MOnth 

         at the POrPOR BOOKS BLOG !

Book Review: 'The Stephen King Companion' edited by George Beahm

5 / 5 Stars

‘The Stephen King Companion’ first edition (365 pp.) was issued in 1989 as a trade paperback by Andrews McMeel Publishing. Followup editions were issued in 1995 and 2015 (with the page count necessarily expanded to 624 pp.).

By 1989 it was quite clear that King had become a pop culture and economic phenomenon unique in America’s literary history. Whether published under his own name, or the pseudonym 'Richard Bachman', King’s works were immensely popular. So much so, that a sector of the publishing industry was thriving by issuing both popular, and scholarly, studies of King’s output. Thus, ‘The Stephen King Companion’.

The 'Companion' is a grab-bag of King ephemera, with pieces of varying length covering his books, audiobooks, and films since the publication of his first short story, ‘Graveyard Shift’, in Cavalier magazine in 1970. The text has black-and-white photographs sprinkled throughout.

The content ranges far and wide, and includes reprints of newspaper articles about King, his works, and his Maine roots. There are pieces by critics and editors, and an overview of illustrators (Berni Wrightson and Michael Whelan) associated with King properties. Along with synopses of the books, there are reprints of features about King that first saw print in the national media. Of most interest here likely is King’s 1983 interview with Playboy magazine.

 

There are two features with Harlan Ellison. One is a 1989 interview where Ellison tells us why King is so popular, and tells us about those works of his that Harlan thinks are worthy of greatest merit. Then there is an essay published in 1984 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in which Harlan fulminates about the film treatments of King’s novels. Here, Harlan uses obscure words like ‘agora’, ‘scansion’, ‘tenebrous’, ‘dialectic’, and ‘sui generis’ (twice) to remind us how very, very smart he is................

For me, reading ‘The Companion’ revives 1980s pop culture in strange and somewhat jolting ways. For example, there is a review of the 1984 movie Firestarter by none other than Joe Bob Briggs - ! 

Briggs was a prominent figure in the 1980s and early 1990s, thanks to his well-crafted persona as a down-to-earth Good Ole Boy who wrote folksy, ‘redneck’ reviews about movies and TV and suchlike. In reality, Briggs was a nice Jewish boy named John Irving Bloom who grew up in Little Rock. As the 1990s dissolved into the 2000s, Briggs persevered as an author and television host; his 2016 nonfiction book 'Eccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story', garnered considerable critical praise.

‘The Companion’ contains all manner of interesting little factoids and tidbits that I was not familiar with, such as King’s ownership (from 1983 – 1990) of the Bangor oldies radio station WZON. King apparently purchased the station after renting a car that had only AM radio in the dash, and discovering that the AM band was devoid of rock-and-roll programming.

Summing up, if - like me - you think King's most meritorious works were those published between 'Carrie' and 1974, to 'The Dark Half' and 1989, then this book is well worth reading.

Spooky stories month October 2023

 October 2023 is Spooky StORIES MOnth 
at the PORPOR BOOKS BLOG !

Here the the PorPor Books Blog, every October is 'Spooky Stories Month', where we review books devoted to horror and the supernatural, books that first saw print in the interval from the late 1960s to the late 1980s. This October, we take a look at some anthologies, movie tie-ins, encyclopedias, novels, and a 'Stephen King Companion'. Stand by for reviews of these Spooky Stories !

MTV programming list week of September 28, 1983

MTV Programming List, Week of September 28, 1983

Here is a neat little 'blast from the past', courtesy of shatterdaymorn at the IMDb website: the 86 songs on the MTV programming list for the week of September 28, 1983. 

Some of the videos are noted as being in 'heavy rotation' (3-4 plays per day) while others are in 'light rotation' (1-2 plays per day). 

Mingling with the more remembered compositions are quite a few obscurities. I mean, I certainly remember Big Country doing 'In A Big Country', but does anyone remember Three Dog Night doing a reggae song titled 'It's A Jungle Out There' ?! 

Or a group called 'Units', doing a New Wave song called 'A Girl Like You' ?! Even Lou Stathis, the 'rok' critic at Heavy Metal magazine, never referenced 'Units', and he was among the hippest of the hip when it came to New Wave bands !

Don't be surprised if going over the list results in spending an hour (or hours) searching for video and audio clips for some of those oldies, but goodies. A reminder of how influential MTV was, forty years ago......

Book Review: Orbit 11

Book Review: 'Orbit 11' edited by Damon Knight

3  / 5 Stars

Well, here we go with another review of another installment in the 'Orbit' franchise, the franchise that delivers pure and unadulterated New Wave sci-fi. Or 'Speculative Fiction', as they were fond of saying back in those New Wave days. Editor Damon Knight always was receptive to stories that pushed the boundaries of the genre, which sometimes worked, but more often, didn't. Anyways.........

'Orbit 11' was issued in hardcover (216 pp.) in 1972 by G. P. Putnam, and in paperback, from Berkley Books, in March 1973. The cover art is by Paul Lehr.

The cover blurb tells us that Orbit 11 offers 'The Most Exciting Fiction of Our Time !'. Does it really ?

Well...............no. It's just another 'Orbit' volume. A few good stories, and some bad ones. Many stories have no sci-fi content. All exclusively were written for this anthology.

My capsule summary of the contents:

Alien Stones, by Gene Wolfe: a miles-long Terran spaceship, the Gladiator, meets up in deep space with an alien ship that is also miles long. Are the aliens friendly or not ? How do you find out ? This novelette stakes a claim to the Giant Spaceship theme a year before Arthur C. Clarke and his 'Rendevous with Rama', which I guess is to author Wolfe's credit. It's a hard sci-fi story, competently written, so it's one of the better entries in 'Orbit 11'.

Spectra, by Vonda N. McIntyre: the first-person narrator endures a dystopian future where dissent is punished by messing with your eyesight. This story is more horror than sci-fi, and is effective.

I Remember A Winter, by Fredrik Pohl: a middle-aged man ponders the choices he made in life and wonders how things could have, and would have, been different...... had he not made those choices. There is no sci-fi content.

Doucement, S'il Vous Plait (Gently, if it pleases you), by James Sallis: I challenge anyone to dispute my contention that James Sallis was the most pretentious of New Wave authors. And yet, the editors of New Wave anthologies never could turn down a Sallis submission. This story is the first-person narrative of a letter, experiencing the process of being delivered. Is such a concept the apogee of Speculative Fiction, or what ?!

The Summer of the Irish Sea, by Charles L. Grant: clad only in a loincloth, a feral man navigates the terrain of a near-future United Kingdom. This early-career story from Grant is quite untoward, reading more as a Harlan Ellison tale than the kind of overwritten, decorative fiction that would come to represent Grant's literary style. Because it emulates Ellison, it's a good story and one of the standouts in the anthology. 

Good-Bye, Shelley, Shirley, Charlotte, Charlene, by Robert Thurston: this tale opens with an allegorical scene of the narrator playing cards with God. I sighed and prepared for metaphysical, artsy-fartsy bullshit in that inimitable New Wave style. But after the prologue, 'Good-Bye' settles into more conventional storytelling, about a man whose girlfriends are so similar in looks and temperament as to suggest otherworldly forces at work. There's little sci-fi content, but it's a readable story.

Father's in the Basement, by Philip Jose Farmer: Millie's father is busy writing the Great American Novel, and he must not be disturbed. A subdued horror tale from Farmer, one that would have been more at home in Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine than 'Orbit'.

Down by the Old Maelstrom, by Edward Wellen: some people in a research laboratory have dreams, which are related to the reader in surrealistic prose. The verbs 'amoebaed', 'alligatored', and 'depontiated' are encountered. This easily is the worst story in the anthology.

Things Go Better, by George Alec Effinger: allegory about a nice Jewish Boy named Steve Weinraub who decides to hitchhike across Pennsylvania, to 'find' both himself, and America. It's devoid of sci-fi content.

Dissolve, by Gary K. Wolfe: the author of 'Killerbowl' addresses the philosophies of Marshall McLuhan, who, in 1972, was very much an influential figure in both pop and highbrow culture. The narrative, which is designed to mimic the changing of channels on a TV, is choppy and a bit contrived.

Dune's Edge, by Edward Bryant: some people find themselves in the desert, and compelled to climb a dune. It's all so very existential.

The Drum Lollipop, by Jack C. Dann: Her parents' marital quarrels lead Maureen Harris to project her anxieties onto a toy drum, which in turn leads to all sorts of phantasmagorical phenomena. An exemplar of seventies, New Wave, speculative fiction. I found it boring.

Machines of Loving Grace, by Gardner R. Dozois: in the Future City, machines will do everything for you. And perhaps that can be a bad thing. Sardonic humor makes this one of the standout stories in the anthology.

They Cope, by Dave Skal: in the future, everyone is bipolar, which makes for a complicated society.

Counterpoint, by Joe W. Haldeman: some are born into wealth and privilege, while others, into poverty and misery. This is a very good story, but it's devoid of sci-fi content and would have been more at home in Esquire, Playboy, Penthouse, Cavalier, or any other early seventies 'slick' that published fiction.

Old Soul, by Steve Herbst: a nurse's interactions with a dying elderly man are complicated when his memories of his younger days 'infect' her mind. This story is supposed to say something profound about The Human Condition. I was bored.

New York Times, by Charles Platt: a three-and-a-half page prose poem about the dangers of living in the city. There is no sci-fi content. I was bored.

The Crystallization of the Myth, by John Barfoot: a two-page prose poem about the aftermath of Armageddon. Meh.

To Plant a Seed, by Hank Davis: using something called the 'McJunkins Field', researcher Roy Cullins wants to put a spaceship into suspended animation for billions of years, with the goal of having humans present when a new universe emerges from the old. It's an interesting premise for a sci-fi story but the author's prose veers from the straight-faced, to the awkwardly comedic, even puerile:

Cullins, Cain, and Erika realized simultaneously that the thing looked like an enormous athletic supporter. Looking at it made Erika hornier than ever. 

On the Road to Honeyville, by Kate Wilhelm: Elizabeth and her mom are making the long drive on two-lane blacktop to the town of Salyersville, by way of the town of Honeyville. En route, they enter the Twilight Zone. The story lacks sci-fi content.

The verdict ? As with the other entrants in the 'Orbit' series, Damon Knight's eccentric approach to selecting content meant that the anthology has more than its share of duds. I am comfortable giving 'Orbit 11' a three-star rating based on the contributions from Wolfe,  McIntyre, Grant, Dozois, and Haldeman.

National Lampoon April 1973

National Lampoon

April 1973

Let's take another trip back in time, fifty years ago, to April, 1973 and the latest issue of the National Lampoon. Like many of these 1973 issues,the April issue is not very good: still overly reliant on lengthy, boring text pieces. But it's also true that, with the collapse of the underground comix industry later in 1973, the Lampoon was one of the few outlets where comix artists could publish their work (and be paid for it).

The April issue is devoted to the theme of 'Sweetness and Light', and has plentiful advertisements for newly released LPs from various artists, some of whom were rather obscure.........I have to say, I never heard of Doug Sahm, back in the 1970s. He apparently was a Country and Western singer / songwriter.

One LP ad is for a new artist from Asbury Park, New Jersey, a guy named Springstein, or something. 

A guy who, in the era of glam rock, very much was trying to portray himself as a working-class poet, what with his scruffy beard and proletariat clothing (no polyester and sequins here !) Certainly, something of an odd duck...............

Don McLean, who had a massive hit with his album and single 'American Pie' in 1972, released an eponymous album in November of that year. It suffered somewhat from not having a hit single.

Chris Miller, who normally could be relied upon to create something funny and offensive, has a rather tame piece, 'Pharmocopoeia', that presents vignettes of drug use by various personages.

Well, at least the Foto Funnies gives us what we always hope to see: a glimpse of boobies !!!!!

Mary K. Brown provides a comic, done in her usual quirky style:

In the early 70s, there was considerable interest in the occult and the supernatural, and there was a book club that could supply you with necessary tomes on these topics.

Edward Gorey, someone who perhaps was a little too highbrow for the Lampoon, nevertheless had a lengthy portfolio in this April issue.

We'll close with some recurring feature cartoons: a 'Trots and Bonnie' comic from Sherry Flenniken, and a new installment of 'Cheech Wizard' from Vaughan Bode. It's vintage early 70s humor, rendered in black and white............