Book Review: 'Nameless Places' edited by Gerald W. Page
'Nameless Places' (280 pp.) was published in hardback by Arkham House in 1975. Copies of these Arkham House books are rare and costly items nowadays, but I was able to procure this one for about $20.
Gerald W. Page was active in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s as an author and editor. In the mid-70s he edited four volumes of DAW's 'The Year's Best Horror Stories,' and unsurprisingly, some of the entries in 'Nameless Places' were featured in both DAW horror and fantasy anthologies of that decade.
In his Introduction, Page states that 'Nameless' was a showcase for newer, younger authors in the fantasy and horror genres, as such things stood in the mid-1970s. In this, it served a worthy cause, as back in those days outlets for short stories of genre fiction were few and far between. In keeping with the ethos of Arkham House, the entries all deal with either the 'macabre,' or Lovecraftian topics, or, sometimes, both.
My summaries of the contents of 'Nameless':
Glimpses, by A. A. Attanasio: an Eldritch Artifact does strange things with time and space, including bringing the unwelcome attention of an Older Deity. This novelette has an interesting premise, but is ruined by the author's stilted prose (which seems to have been inspired by the New Wave movement then in high fashion in science fiction).
There are a number of short (i.e., under 5 pages) stories. 'The Gods of Earth,' by Gary Myers, and 'In 'Ygiroth,' by Walter C. DeBill, Jr., are Clark Ashton Smith / Randolph Carter pastiches. 'The Night of the Unicorn,' by Thomas Burnett Swann, is a fable about the mythology of rural Mexico. 'The Warlord of Kul Satu,' by Brian Ball, is a horror story centered on an archeological expedition. 'More Things,' by G. N. Gabbard, is a clever tale about what nowadays is referred to as 'Dark Academia.'
Fables and allegories are represented by 'Businessman's Lament' and 'Botch,' by Scott Edelstein, and 'Worldsong,' by editor Page, which is mawkish and sentimental and reads as a Ray Bradbury pastiche.
David Drake, who in '75 was beginning to emerge as a significant contributor to the horror and fantasy short fiction markets, gets two entries: 'Awakening' features urban witchcraft, while 'Black Iron' is sword-and-sorcery.
A short tale with an emphasis on humor is 'The Stuff of Heroes,' by Bob Maurus. A grimmer entry is 'Before the Event,' by Denys Val Baker. Carl Jacobi's 'Chameleon Town' has the flavoring of a Twilight Zone episode.
Lin Carter gets to contribute two tales. 'In the Vale of Pnath' is a Clark Ashton Smith pastiche, one of the better ones that Carter has penned. A longer piece, 'Out of the Ages,' is a Mythos entry and serves as an introduction to the gods and monsters of that franchise.
I consider Robert Aickman to be a very over-rated author, and 'The Real Road to the Church' does little to change my mind. Underneath its stilted, overwritten prose is something to do with a middle-aged woman living on a vaguely Mediterranean island; the locals consider her home to be a mystical place.
One of the best entries in the anthology is the Brian Lumley tale, 'What Dark God ?' about a sinister encounter in the berth of a UK train. Also standing out is Joseph Payne Brennan's 'Forringer's Fortune,' which takes place in the sorts of dank caverns where unpleasantries abound.
'Walls of Yellow Clay,' by Robert E. Gilbert, mingles humor with the unworldly in a tale that could have appeared in an issue of an EC comic from the 1950s.
Ramsey Campbell, then an up-and-comer in horror fiction, gets two entries. 'The Last Hand' is about a poker game, played by a creepy group of card sharks, in a train car on the line from Liverpool to London. 'The Christmas Present' is set in Liverpool, where the first-person narrator allows an argumentative young man to join a holiday houseparty…..with unforeseen consequences.
'In the Land of Angra Mainyu,' by Stephen Goldin, features the recurring character 'The Black Angel.' Goldin utilizes Zoroastrian mythology in this story, giving it an offbeat, imaginative character that in my opinion makes it one of the standouts in the anthology.
'Lifeguard,' by Arthur Byron Cover, is a modern ghost story.
The worst story in the anthology is 'Selene,' by pulp veteran E. Hoffman Price. Having something to do with modern-day California witches, and efforts by an unscrupulous wife to poison her husband, this story has profoundly stilted prose: at one point, Price deploys the noun (?) 'quadrupedalian.'
Also failing to impress is 'Simaitha,' by David A. English, which features the sentence: The moon, for example, now moved Thestyllis like the sight of an animal vomiting, which is (possibly) the most fatuous simile I've ever read.
The verdict ? I'm OK with awarding Four of Five Stars to 'Nameless Places.' Some of that might be due to the fact that it evokes nostalgia in me, recalling a time (i.e., the 1970s) when fantasy and horror fiction still were very much in the pop culture basement, consigned to the category of 'fringe' literature. Anthologies such as this one were written to appeal to a small but devoted following, and among the baby boomers, there was a sense of community for those who pursued this stuff.
