Monday, November 8, 2021

Young Turks November 1981

Young Turks
by Rod Stewart
November, 1981

November 7, 1981, and Rod Stewart's single 'Young Turks' is at position 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and in heavy rotation on MTV.

The single, released in October 1981 from Stewart's album Tonight I'm Yours, would eventually peak at No. 5 on the Hot 100 in December.


The video for the song was filmed in Los Angeles in the summer of 1981. It features a dance performance - likely inspired by the 1980 movie Fame -  at a railyard, while Rod and the band mime and lip synch. 


There's also a guy breakdancing, something that was comparatively novel in 1981 (the movie Breakin' didn't appear in theatres until 1984).

Some 80s fashion and flash, from 40 years ago.........

Billy left his home with a dollar in his pocket and a head full of dreams
He said somehow, some way, it's gotta get better than this
Patti packed her bags, left a note for her mama, she was just seventeen
There were tears in her eyes when she kissed her little sister goodbye
They held each other tight as they drove on through the night, they were so excited
We got but one shot at life, let's take it while we're still not afraid
Because life is so brief and time is a thief when you're undecided
And like a fistful of sand, it can slip right through your hands
Young hearts be free tonight
Time is on your side
Don't let 'em put you down, don't let 'em push you around
Don't let 'em ever change your point of view
Paradise was closed, so they headed for the coast in a blissful manner
They took a two room apartment that was jumping every night of the week
Happiness was found in each other's arms as expected, yeah
Billy pierced his ears, drove a pickup like a lunatic, ooh
Young hearts be free tonight
Time is on your side
Don't let 'em put you down, don't let 'em push you around
Don't let 'em ever change your point of view
Come on Billy
Woo
Young heart, be free tonight
Time is on, on your side
Billy wrote a letter back home to Patti's parents tryin' to explain
He said we're both real sorry that it had to turn out this way
But there ain't no point in talking when there's nobody listening, so we just ran away
Patti gave birth to a ten pound baby boy, yeah
Young hearts be free tonight
Time is on your side
Young hearts be free tonight
Time is on your side
Young hearts be free tonight
Time in on your side
Young hearts gotta run free, be free, live free
Time is on, time is on your side
Time, time, time, time is on your side
Is on your side, is on your side
Young heart be free tonight
Tonight, tonight, tonight, tonight, yeah
Ooh, ooh, ooh

Thursday, November 4, 2021

Book Review: Far Away and Never

Book Review: 'Far Away and Never' by Ramsey Campbell

4 / 5 Stars

'Far Away and Never' (139 pp.) was published in October, 2021 by DMR Books, a small press publisher specializing in sword and sorcery books. The cover art was done by Stephen Fabian. It's a reissue of a book first published in 1996 by Necronomicon Press, albeit with the inclusion of an additional story, 'A Madness from the Vaults'. [The Necronomicon Press edition, being long out of print, has rather high asking prices by its sellers.]

'Far Away and Never' is print-on-demand, so I got my copy from amazon within three days of ordering.

I have always found Ramsey Campbell's horror stories to be over-praised and unimpressive. That said, I quite liked the sword-and-sorcery stories he wrote during the 1970s, featuring his 'Ryre' character, for Andrew Offutt's Swords Against Darkness anthologies. All four of the Ryre stories from Swords Against Darkness are here in 'Far Away and Never': 

-The Sustenance of Hoak (Swords Against Darkness, 1977)
-The Changer of Names (Swords Against Darkness II, 1977)
-The Pit of Wings (Swords Against Darkness III, 1978)
-The Mouths of Light (Swords Against Darkness V, 1979)

The Ryre stories are a blend of horror and sword-and-sorcery. While they feature the ornate, metaphor- and simile-laden prose style affected by Campbell during the 1970s, they also have functioning plots, something occasionally absent in Campbell's horror stories of that era. 

The landscapes through which Ryre moves are dark and disturbing, and the people he encounters in these landscapes often are abject and helpless in the face of particularly unpleasant breeds of monsters. It's up to Ryre to make a stand, although so doing often leaves him in dire straits. 

I consider 'The Changer of Names', which sets Ryre loose in an entropy-stricken desert city where a sinister magician operates with impunity and mutilated corpses are found lying in the streets, to be one of the best horror stories of the 1970s. The other Ryre tales also present very well in this regard.

[ An article on the Ryre stories, along with illustrations by Jim Pitts done when they were printed in the UK semi-professional magazine Fantasy Tales, can be found here at the Dark Worlds Quarterly website. ]

Also included in the DMR edition of 'Far Away and Never' are three 'Tond' stories from 1964, 1974, and 1975. These are pastiches of the pup-era writings of Clark Ashton Smith. They seemed to me to be competent pastiches. But then, I cheerfully acknowledge that dedicated Clark Ashton Smith fans are better qualified than I to opine on this subject.

Finally, there is a chapter Campbell wrote for a multi-author novel (based on yet another 'fragment' miraculously recovered from Robert E. Howard's personal effects) intended to be published circa 1977 in a short-lived magazine called Fantasy Crossroads.

Summing up, there is enough worthwhile content in this book to justify a solid four-star rating, and with the Swords Against Darkness books long out of print and very expensive, this DMR printing of 'Far Away and Never' is an affordable way to access the Ryre stories. 

If you are a fan of Ramsey Campbell, then 'Far Away and Never' is worth acquiring. But even if you are not a Campbell fan, if you like good sword-and-sorcery tales, then the book will have its appeal.

Tuesday, November 2, 2021

A Trip to Second Story Books Warehouse

A Trip to Second Story Books Warehouse

A couple of weeks ago it was time for my annual pilgrimage to the Second Story Books warehouse in Rockville, Maryland, on 12160 Parklawn Drive. 

It was a fine day Autumn day, low 70s and clear blue skies, but the drive in was no fun. I-66 into the DC suburbs is a mess due to the construction associated with widening the highway (it's the biggest civil engineering project in the history of the state). Then a serious accident just before the I-495 exit brought six emergency vehicles creeping past on the shoulder, and stopped traffic on I-66 for 45 minutes. In all, it took me over three hours of trip time to arrive at the warehouse. Luckily they have a restroom available for use by customers.......... 

I was able to gather a nice collection of vintage paperbacks, all for a couple of bucks each, in a variety of genres:


These should see me through the upcoming colder months.................I'm just really glad I don't have to commute into DC every day on I-66. It must be hell..........

Sunday, October 31, 2021

Book Review: The Year's Best Horror Stories: XX

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

2 / 5 Stars

'The Year's Best Horror Stories: XX' (349 pp.) was issued by DAW Books in October 1992. The cover art is by Jim Warren.

Well, here we go with another of the DAW 'Year's Best' anthologies, copies of which have long been out of print and fetch steep asking prices from used book retailers. Is it worth shelling out $20 (or more !) for volume XX ? 

Ermmm........nah.

All of the stories in this anthology saw print in various magazines, digests, and other anthologies during the intervals from 1989 - 1991. I noticed that almost all of the entries in this particular volume are short, i.e., fewer than 10 pages in length, which made getting through its 349 pp. a little easier.

[It's impossible not to evaluate Wagner's performance in assembling stories for this anthology without noting that at this point in his life he was an alcoholic and suffered from myriad health problems (he died in 1994 at age 48).] 

Wagner opens the book with an Introduction, titled 'Garage Band Fiction', in which he complains that selecting the stories in this volume was made very difficult by the need to wade through piles of artless Serial Killer tales. 

(As pointed out by Grady Hendrix and Will Errickson in Paperbacks from Hell, the publication of Thomas Harris's novel The Silence of the Lambs in 1988 triggered an early 90's boom in paperbacks dealing with serial killers, a development that curtailed the appearance of new horror fiction). 

Why are these people writing the same bad stories over and over ? wails Wagner. Ahhh, the indignities one must endure in the course of selecting The Year's Best.........

Anyways, my capsule summaries of the contents:

Ma Qui, by Alan Brennert: in combat in Vietnam, a U.S. soldier discovers the ghostly world that underpins 'reality'. Competently written, and imaginative.  

The Same in Any Language, by Ramsey Campbell: by the late 1980s Campbell belatedly realized that his magniloquent prose style had long since turned into unintentional self-parody, and he began to adopt a more coherent approach to his wordsmithing. This story is gratifyingly simple and direct in its recounting of a visit by an English boy, his father, and Dad's new girlfriend, to a Greek Isle. The story seems to be as much about the British as awful tourists, as anything else......

Call Home, by Dennis Etchison: the obligatory Etchison entry. Surprisingly, this one isn't that bad. It's about a man who aids a person in crisis. But sometimes being the good guy has its drawbacks......

Root Cellar, by Nancy Kilpatrick: a man returns to the home where he grew up, under trying circumstances. The ending is too vague to be effective.

An Eye for An Eye, by Michael A. Arnzen: this story first appeared in Outlaw Biker's Tattoo Revue (?!). It's a well-told tale of a vagrant who pesters a tattoo shop owner for an unusual piece of 'skin art'.

The Picnickers, by Brian Lumley: strange things are happening in the graveyard of a Welsh coal-mining village. This is one of the best stories in the anthology; it takes its time getting underway, but has an imaginative premise and delivers a creepy ending.

With the Wound Still Wet, by Wayne Allen Sallee: a short-short tale about witnesses to a traffic accident. It's more coherent than Sallee's usual entries in the 'Year's Best' anthologies. 

My Giddy Aunt, by D. F. Lewis: in his Introduction to this story, editor Wagner informs us that author Lewis has published over 300 short stories in the 'small press' over the interval from 1987 - 1991, an average of about 60 stories per year. I was alarmed by this statistic. Still, 'Giddy Aunt' has a quirky sense of black humor to it. I did notice one sentence read: 

Bill stirred the stew, discovering tiny succubic faces staring up at him from the configurations of the mince. 

Baseball Memories, by Edo van Belkom: Sam Goldman likes to make bets with strangers about baseball statistical minutiae, a field in which Sam excels. But there's always someone, somewhere, who knows more than you think you do........

This story, which first appeared in 'Aethlon', a journal of sports literature published by East Tennessee State University, has no horror content. Its inclusion likely was a reflection of Wagner's desire to showcase his masterful awareness of the presence of 'weird' fiction in non-genre outlets.  

The Bacchae, by Elizabeth Hand: in a decaying near-future America, women have gained mysterious, and deadly, powers. Surrealistic imagery and sharp episodes of violence make this one of the better stories in the anthology. 

Common Land, by Joel Lane: Rosalind goes to live in a depressing Birmingham suburb where her boyfriend Steven shares a squat with people suffering from an unusual ailment........ 

This is an early 'weird fiction' tale and shares the affectations of that sub-genre: the plot is cursory, with the narrative emphasizing the relentless use of figurative language, and empty sentences, to impart an atmosphere of Strangeness. It is stylistically inspired by the stories  Ramsey Campbell wrote in the 70s and 80s. The ending has a perfunctory quality.

An Invasion of Angels, by Nina Kiriki Hoffman: in a particularly warped version of Purgatory, people do unpleasant things to hapless messengers from Heaven. There is a Clive Barker-ish vibe to this story that makes it one of the best in the anthology.

The Sharps and Flats Guarantee, by C. S. Fuqua: yet another story of old black bluesmen and the supernatural.

Medusa's Child, by Kim Antieau: a young artist living in New York City takes in a Bag Lady, who turns out to be someone unique. The horror content is mild.

Wall of Masks, by t. Winter-Damon: a pervert obtains a mask steeped in Evil. This story is so overwritten, and so plodding, it was a chore to finish.

Moving Out, by Nicolas Royle: the first-person narrator likes to scare his girlfriend. This story tries too hard to be clever, and I suspect most readers will see the denouement coming well in advance.

Better Ways in a Wet Alley, by Barb Hendee: two teenage prostitutes struggle to survive on the Mean Streets of the Uncaring City. The denouement is so cryptic that I couldn't tell if this was a horror story, or simply an examination of existential despair. Probably the latter.

Close to the Earth, by Gregory Nicoll: Tacker, driving late on a cold Winter night, decides to stop at the diner in the hamlet of Maryswood, Virginia. It's never a good sign when the waitress seems more than a little.........odd. One of the better stories in the anthology.

Churches of Desire, by Philip Nutman: Meredith, a dissipated Englishman, wanders the night-time streets of Rome in search of louche pleasures; the reader is made to understand - in laborious fashion - that the seedy vistas Meredith encounters are external manifestations of his own moral and psychological rot. After some inconclusive lumbering about, the narrative devolves into gay porn (?!). 

This is the worst story in the anthology. Surely, even one of the Serial Killer stories editor Wagner had to wade through to assemble this collection could have possessed greater merit ?

The anthology includes two stories molded around the classical English ghost story. 'The Lodestone', by Sheila Hodgson, features M. R. James as a character and introduced me to the gerund 'invigilating' (to supervise test-taking). 'Carven of Onyx', by Ron Weighell, attempts to give an edgy sensibility to its recounting of the travails of a convent whose nuns have come into possession of an evil artifact. 

The verdict ? There are too few good stories to justify picking up a copy of 'The Year's Best Horror Stories: XX' for the high prices being asked by those few sellers offering the book. Unless you are adamant about collecting every volume of 'The Year's Best', you can pass on this entry.

Friday, October 29, 2021

Halloween Special 1976

The Paul Lynde Halloween Special
October 29, 1976
I don't remember watching this show in October of 1976........at the time I was 16 years old and I probably thought it the height of cheese.

But watching the grainy clip on YouTube nowadays brings forth nostalgia for the Fall of '76, disco music, and CB radios.

Lynde (1926 - 1982) was an 'eccentric' (wink-wink) actor who, during the 60s and 70s, played supporting roles on many TV shows, including Bewitched, as well as hosting the short-lived The Paul Lynde Show.

For his 1976 Halloween Special, Lynde shared air time with Donny and Marie Osmond, Carol Burnet Show regular Tim Conway, Betty White, Billy Barty, and Florence Henderson (who lip synchs 'That Old Black Magic' while wearing a slinky sequined black gown).

But the most idiosyncratic moment of the show comes at the 26:11 mark, when Kiss comes onstage to lip synch to 'Detroit Rock City'. 

Later in the program the band returns to do Peter Criss's ballad 'Beth', after which the host exchanges some repartee with the band (who tower over him due to their platform shoes). 

Kiss segues to another lip synch, this time for 'King of the Night Time World'. 

The show closes with a disco dance number led by Roz Kelly (best known for playing 'Pinky Tuscadero' from Happy Days). 

It's all corny, clean, wholesome fun from 45 years ago.........

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Book Review: Softly Walks the Beast


Book Review: 'Softly Walks the Beast' by Thomas O'D. Hunter

2 / 5 Stars

'Softly Walks the Beast' (205 pp.) was published by Avon Books in December, 1982. The cover artist is unattributed.

This is the only published novel by Thomas O'Driscoll Hunter (1932 – 2017) whose Wikipedia entry states that he was an actor in European films in the 1960s and 1970s. His memoir, 'Memoirs of a Spaghetti Cowboy: Tales of Oddball Luck and Derring-Do' recounts his experiences in that trade. He was  co-writer of the screenplay for the 1980 sci-fi movie The Final Countdown.

'Softly' is set in April 1988, five years after World War 3 has devastated the US. Fifteen survivors, representing a variety of ages and ethnicities, have taken up residence on the grounds of a former insane asylum in rural Georgia. Their leader, Dr. Frank Alden, keeps everyone alive and healthy via regular injections of a compound that staves off radiation sickness.

Despite the psychological trauma that comes with the awareness that They Are the Last People on Earth, the survivors enjoy a comfortable lifestyle; their only main concern is the sterility besetting the younger women, a sterility that bodes ill for any future for Mankind.  

As the novel opens two young men, Sonny and Billy Bob, decide to embark on a motorcycle trip into neighboring Florida and the Atlantic Coast. There are scenes of poignancy as they traverse deserted villages and towns where nature is well under way in reclaiming the Earth. However, when the boys stop to explore the ruins of an ICBM silo, they catch the attention of a sentient being lurking in the nearby undergrowth..........a being with malevolent intent.

All too soon, the survivors will find themselves in a life-or-death struggle against a new form of life that has persevered despite exposure to lethal levels of radiation and biological agents. Unless Frank Alden and his assistance Eric can find a vulnerability in the horrors attacking them, a grim outcome is assured......... 

Is 'Softly Walks the Beast' a classic Paperback from Hell ? 

Nope. 

It's something of a dud. It doesn't help matters that the novel takes an indolent approach to setting things up; indeed, the monsters don't make an appearance till page 65, nearly a third of the way through the book. 

After that, the narrative adopts the tone of a teen slasher film from the late 70s and early 80s, in which suspense is enabled by the willfully idiotic behavior of the potential victims. This behavior includes having horny teenagers groping one another in dark and empty places, a trope so cliched that it signals that the author was winking at the reader. 

Given that Thomas Hunter was a screenwriter, it shouldn't be all that surprising that 'Softly' is constructed like a screenplay, but the regular veering from horror to facetiousness starts to wear thin well before the novel's half-way point. 

Toss in passages in which our besieged survivors sing hymns to bolster their courage against the monsters fumbling at the doors, later followed by passages in which they sing sea shanties (?!), along with additional set pieces clearly designed to represent tongue-in-cheek homages to horror movie tropes, and I finished 'Softly' more from a sense of duty rather than because it was very entertaining.

The verdict ? Unless you are fixated on acquiring and reading every horror paperback published during the 1980s, 'Softly Walks the Beast' can safely be passed by. 

Saturday, October 23, 2021

Dracula: Vlad the Impaler

Dracula: Vlad the Impaler
by Roy Thomas (story) and Esteban Maroto (art)
IDW, March 2021
The Great Comic Book Boom of the early 1990s saw comic book companies issue trading cards.........and trading card companies issue comic books. So it was that in February 1993 Topps published the first of a three-issue series of color comic books about 'Dracula: Vlad the Impaler'.
Written by comics veteran Roy Thomas, and featuring art by the great Spanish artist Esteban Maroto, the series was one of a number of Public Domain properties issued by Topps from 1993 to 1998. 


In March 2021, IDW issued a 96-page graphic novel compiling all three issues, albeit in black and white rather then the original color. 

'Dracula: Vlad the Impaler' is a companion volume to other IDW graphic novels presenting past work by Maroto: 'Prison Ship' (2018) and 'Lovecraft: The Myth of Cthulhu' (2018).
Thomas's plotting for 'Dracula: Vlad the Impaler' relies for the most part on historical accounts of the rise and rule of Vlad, the Prince of Walachia in the 15th century. Throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe, this was an era of fratricidal conflicts among the princes of the various provinces, who would occasionally cease from their infighting in order to take on the Turks and Sultan Mehmet II. 

Thomas portrays Vlad as a psychopath with a lust for cruelty and torture, which, if you believe the accounts of his life that circulated in the 15th century, is condign. It also makes for a provocative comic book, one with lots of scenes of blood and death and gore and, of course, impalements.
The supernatural / occult themes of the Dracula legend don't really show until later, in the closing pages of the third issue, but Thomas lays plenty of ground work in terms of presenting Vlad as someone predestined to become a villain of profoundly ill repute.

Maroto's artwork for 'Dracula' is really not his best. Perhaps because he knew the comic would be printed in color, Maroto used a loose, sketchy style that doesn't translate well when presented in back-and-white.

Summing up, I can't recommend this black-and-white printing of 'Dracula: Vlad the Impaler' as a must-have, like Maroto's 'Prison Ship' and 'Lovecraft' volumes. Given that the original comic book series can be found for a reasonable price, these better represent this franchise. Diehard fans of the artist, or those dedicated to early 90s comics, may be sufficiently motivated to acquire the IDW version of 'Dracula', but others can pass without penalty. 

Wednesday, October 20, 2021

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 ?

Sunday, October 17, 2021

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, GrueCemetery 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.  

Thursday, October 14, 2021

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.