Book Review: Nukes

Book Review: 'Nukes' edited by John Maclay

 2 / 5 Stars

'Nukes' is a paperback chapbook of 92 pages, printed in 1986 by John Maclay, a Baltimore-based editor, writer, and small-press publisher. 

I usually don't review chapbooks, mainly because they always have small print runs and can be hard to find (and expensive when you do find them). But I decided to obtain 'Nukes', because in the 1980s, nuclear war replaced Global Cooling as the existential threat. The intelligentsia and pop culture, as I explain in this post about the Judge Dredd comic 'Apocalypse War', were quite preoccupied with the nuclear scenario, making 'Nukes' something of an exhibit in how writers from the horror genre approached the topic.

'Nukes' features four short stories, all written for this anthology, by established writers active in the horror and fantasy genres. My capsule summaries of the contents:

The House of Life, by J. N. Williamson: Amidst landscapes of death and destruction, the survivors of World War Three find themselves at a loss. 

I can't say I'm a big fan of Williamson's fiction, and this story did nothing to change my opinion. It's one of the worst stories I've ever read, coming across as a first draft pressed into service by 'deadline-itis'. There is much stilted prose, and awkward efforts at a 'poetic' syntax:

She only spun away in an encore to her vanished grace, manner frivolous and her face, when she turned, openly terror stricken.

Tight Little Stitches in A Dead Man's Back, by Joe R. Lansdale: this is the inaugural appearance of one of Lansdale's most memorable stories. It's about the travails of Paul Marder, a survivor of World War Three and a man who must deal with all manner of strange monsters spawned by the radiation. This easily is the best story in the anthology.

The View from Mount Futaba, by Jessica Amanda Salmonson: this features Tomoe Gozen, a figure of Japanese legend who is the recurring character in several of Salmonson's 'Naipon' novels. While Salmonson's Gozen saga is set in a fantasy version of medieval Japan, in this tale, our heroine finds herself transported to the aftermath of one of the atomic bombings of August 1945. Strong imagery of the dead and dying gives this story valid horror underpinnings.

And of Gideon, by Mort Castle: this tale combines two beloved 1980s tropes: the crazed Vietnam veteran, and the Bible-thumping Christian preacher (whose scriptural rhetoric conceals his deep moral failings), and tosses them into the post-nuclear wasteland. There is a splatterpunk sequence that doesn't lend much to the narrative, and some Bible-based blank verse passages (?!) that laboriously try to impart some sort of moral insight into the narrative. Needless to say, this story did not impress me.

The verdict ? While the editor deserves recognition for trying to do something interesting with the nuclear apocalypse theme, of his contributors, only Lansdale and Salmonson really came through with quality material, and thus I can't give 'Nukes' more than a Two-Star Rating.