| Author | Message | ||
     Alansjf (Alansjf) Username: Alansjf Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 94.194.134.45 |
I was taking a look at Stephen Jones' website just now - click here http://www.stephenjoneseditor.com/coming01.htm and scroll down a bit - and I spotted something that makes me very happy: Scream Quietly: The Best of Charles L. Grant. I'm a huge fan of Charles L. Grant, as an editor but especially as a writer, and a representative volume of his best short fiction such as this is long overdue. There's no mention of it on the PS website as yet, so the 2009 publication date may turn out to be a bit optimistic, but even so this is one I'm really looking forward to. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
I asked Pete Crowther about this recently, and he said it will probably end up being two volumes. I can't wait. Grant's short fiction is superb. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.159.87.217 |
I remember him, plus I met him a handful of times as he was a bit of a fixture at 'eighties FCons - he was a really nice chap and a good writer. | ||
| Alansjf (Alansjf) Username: Alansjf Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 94.194.134.45 |
That's great news. There are probably enough uncollected short stories to fill a couple of volumes alone. | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 213.219.8.243 |
My favourite Grant story is "Out There". Brilliant. | ||
| Alansjf (Alansjf) Username: Alansjf Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 94.194.134.45 |
So many favourites: 'Every Time I Say I Love You', 'One Life, in an Hourglass' (my favourite Bradburyesque story written by somebody other than Bradbury), 'Josie in the Fog', 'In the Blood' ... I hope at least a couple of his Oxrun Station novellas make it into the Best Of. Those four collections - The Orchard, Nightmare Seasons, Dialling the Wind, and The Black Carousel are right up there with the best stuff he ever wrote, the first two books especially. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.20.31.211 |
A class act, Grant. | ||
| Richard_gavin (Richard_gavin) Username: Richard_gavin Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 67.71.38.203 |
I'm looking forward to this one as well. In many ways, Grant the editor got me interested in contemporary horror fiction with the excellent Shadows anthologies. I later became a fan of the man's own work, his short stories in particular. I met the man once, albeit briefly, in New York City and found him very congenial. When Hellnotes reviewed my collection Omens last year, the reviewer favourably compared my work to Grant's "quiet horror" stories, which made this writer proud. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.181.3 |
I'm looking forward to this. His Arkham House collection was very good indeed. | ||
| Thomasb (Thomasb) Username: Thomasb Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 69.236.173.94 |
Yes, he was one of the first I read when I started delving into horror fiction in the late 1970s; eerily evocative style; I admire the way he eschewed extreme gore; I know I liked most of his stories (I think the first I read was "The Garden of Blackred Roses" in Kirby McCauley's "Dark Forces." In fact that was the anthology that probably introduced me to both him and Our Landlord. But his anthologies that I liked best of all. Superb taste! | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
Funnily enough I saw one of his old Oxrun Station books in a charity store the other day. (And although it's not a thread about him, I thought I'd mention that it's been a year since Arthur C Clarke died. Just wanted to say that.) | ||
| Alansjf (Alansjf) Username: Alansjf Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 94.194.134.45 |
And did you buy the Oxrun Station novel? Because, you know, I doubt they turn up in charity shops all that often. (At least they don't in the ones I frequent.) | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 212.74.96.200 |
I didn't Al. I'm pretty sure I already own it. And yes, it was a surprise seeing it there... A nice one, though, brought back the memories. I ran my fingers over it, had a sneaky sniff of the paper when I was sure no one was looking. | ||
| Steve Bacon (Stevebacon) Username: Stevebacon Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 90.211.103.83 |
As a teenager who had only ever read Pan Horror anthologies, Guy N Smith, James Herbert and Stephen King, I wandered into an independent bookshop in Sheffield one day in 1987. I came out with a Dennis Etchison collection (The Dark Country), The Doll Who Ate His Mother, and Tales From the Nightside by Charles L Grant. Talk about an epiphany... | ||
| Zed (Gary_mc) Username: Gary_mc Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.96.241.143 |
Wow, what a grand trio of classics! The Dark Country is, to me, personally, one of the most important books ever written. It opened some strange doors in my teenage mind... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.251.0 |
I've read lots from THE DARK COUNTRY, but never had a chance to read the actual collection. TALES FROM THE NIGHTSIDE is a great Grant selection, and THE DOLL WHO ATE HIS MOTHER, well.... Here's a question that's... been posed many times before?... not been posed?... too stupid to ask?... But why hasn't more of Ramsey Campbell's work been translated to film? I don't get it.... (wow, I'm just skewing things completely tangentially tonight - witness my IN BRUGES posting) | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.190.160 |
I think it's partly because a lot of people involved in making horror films haven't really read much beyond Stephen King, Dean Koontz and a few other bestsellers. The same can be said of a lot of today's would-be horror writers, unfortunately. I've lost count of the number of aspiring writers who claim to love the field, but have never heard of, say, Machen or Aickman, or contemporary authors such as Ligotti. There do seem to be a few filmmakers who are aware of the greats of horror fiction, however: Guillermo Del Toro, for one. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.5.5.78 |
Fine! I'll make one, then... I gotta do everything.... | ||
| Alansjf (Alansjf) Username: Alansjf Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 94.194.134.45 |
Could you make it Trilogy of Terror type portmanteau, featuring 'The Chimney', 'The Other Side' and 'Trick or Treat'? Either that or The House on Nazareth Hill. In cinemas by September, please, with the DVD release timed to cash in on the lucrative Xmas market. | ||
| Alansjf (Alansjf) Username: Alansjf Registered: 09-2008 Posted From: 94.194.134.45 |
^^ Spot the missing 'a'. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.167.124.163 |
Craig- 'But why hasn't more of Ramsey Campbell's work been translated to film? I don't get it....' Good question. I'm going to play the Devil's advocate here for argument's sake. While lots and lots of Mr.Campbell's work is ideal for cinematic interpretation, 'reducing' the language of some of his work to a formalist cinematic interpretation might take away some of the power of the work. While cinematic language can work effectively to convey perceptive uncertainties for example, I think some filmmakers might find this very challenging to translate to the big screen. On top of that the cinema of horror doesn't strike me to be all that humanist these days (is anything these days) and Mr. Campbell's often very compassionate approach to his subject matter might be way over the heads of the current flavour of the commercial horror cinema yes? (or atleast those who decide what films to finance at the top) Of course I don't see the above to be an issue personally, but making a thirty million dollar avant garde horror film is kind of hard these days...as it's always been. Again a film should be seen as a completely separate thing from the book upon which it is based. Different creatures. Huw 'I think it's partly because a lot of people involved in making horror films haven't really read much beyond Stephen King, Dean Koontz and a few other bestsellers.' For argument's sake again, you would be surprised how well read in the genre some practitioner's of the horror cinema are in their field- sometimes more than those attempting to write in it. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.167.124.163 |
Lets just hope that I'm completely wrong and that there are 3 Campbell feature films in the pipeline :-) Maybe there will be world peace, maybe the ice caps won't melt, maybe AIG will give 1% of their profits to the world's poor. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.248.116 |
Just focusing on one little thing - the use of "portmanteau": didn't we have a debate here about this? To me, and this is based on my definition, the "portmanteau" film is the rarest of film - well, it's not a genre, it's a style, so it's the very rarest of styles, and most anthologies don't fit it - I'm not sure I'd include TRILOGY OF TERROR. The clearest example of a "portmanteau" film is the feature HOUSE OF DARK SHADOWS: there, the same characters basically traverse the same film, but there are distinct "episodes" to the whole - it's not an anthology, it's not "episodic" perse like a Bond film (or a million other films) - it's X Characters in Story A, that becomes Story B, then Story C... each "story" is completed, before the next one begins.... I've seen a few others like this... I just saw a recent one, that I can't for the life of me pull to memory right now... but I believe all the examples I'd been able to pull to mind were mostly horror, of all things, or something fantastic.... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 75.4.248.116 |
Karim, Huw, I can't believe a good script based on a RC novel, done properly, would go unnoticed - because the stories are that demanding of attention. I just can't believe you could adapt one, and then have it slide by unnoticed. Yes, horror has always been practiced with a hammer in Hollywood. But... maybe I have more faith in the power of story.... I think a great one, said it before, would be NIGHT OF THE CLAW. But it would be so relentlessly stressful, unsettling... well, that's why it would be a great one.... | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 218.168.176.216 |
Karim, I'm not saying that there aren't any well read people working in cinema (far from it - I already mentioned one exception, and I can think of several more offhand), just that they don't seem to be in the majority when it comes to people who make horror films. If more of them were aware of the good stuff, I have to wonder why they aren't adapting more of the good stuff for film? Craig, I agree - I think some of Ramsey's stuff would make for excellent cinema, if done properly. | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.167.124.163 |
Craig- I mean look at all the amazing properties and stories out there that are not making it to the screen, and look at all the crap which is. Producers are interested in sales figures and then adapt accordingly.(They then have to answer to their financiers and so forth) I've just been through a year of trying to get one property made. Huw: You're right as well, I was just sort of venting this morning. Sorry. I mean didn't Mr. Campbell mention Del Toro fighting to make an anthology horror film based on some of his work- and if he can't push it through, then who the fuck can...(sorry for venting again). ;-) | ||
| Karim Ghahwagi (Karim) Username: Karim Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 80.167.124.163 |
And not to highjack the thread about Grant's very fine work... |