| Author | Message | ||
     Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I guess it's up to me to inaugurate the new thread….  So I've now read all the short stories (i.e., <20 pages) of the mostly horror anthology Alfred Hitchcock Presents: Stories That Scared Even Me (1967). My memory served me well, because the ones I had remembered some decades after first venturing herein, were among the better ones—the rest, were not bad, but they were either dated or forgettable or one-notes or simply not all that spectacular. The stand-outs among the shorts? Gerald Kersh's nightmare-weaving "Men Without Bones" (1954); Fritz Leiber's dystopian black-comedy "X Marks the Pedwalk" (1963); and Irvin S. Cobb's lyrical slice of backwater brutes, "Fishhead" (1913). But by far the gem among the shorts, is one of the finest horror stories I think I've ever read—T.H. White's "The Troll" (1935). It's very straightforward, moves almost too swiftly, and concludes with a somewhat hackneyed deus ex machina wrapping things up. No matter: White combines black humor with psychological deterioration and tangibly chilling, skin-crawling terror. And he does it fully violating King's famous formula: we see in literal and exquisite detail just what is behind the door, and the horror of what we see is only heightened by our taking it in. Just a superb-on-every-level horror story that deserves to make any list for which it qualifies. It makes me wonder now, about the fantasy novels mainly associated with his name… but never bothered to check out. Okay, next, an assessment of the five remaining longer stories (I've already weighed in on Nugent Barker's superb "The Curious Adventure of Mr. Bond"). | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
"The Troll" has long been a favourite short story of mine, Craig. The idea of one man catching sight of something impossibly nightmarish in plain view that no one else is aware of is the true essence of terror, imho. Is he insane or gifted or cursed or deliberately singled out by an ancient and unimaginably cruel evil, that has no place in a rational universe, for a glimpse into the hell that exists beyond the veil of reason? | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 94.5.80.37 |
100 pages into "The Algebraist" by Ian M Banks. I've read his "mainstream" (loose term, "Walking on Glass" is far from mainstream) fiction but why, oh why haven't I read his sf before now? This is a rich meal, an endless delight of invention, drama and wonder. It puts epic back into epic. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.162.219.128 |
Half way through Barry England's "Figures in a Landscape":- http://www.amazon.co.uk/Figures-Landscape-Barry-England-ebook/dp/B00DDXLSHU/ref= sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1388838913&sr=8-2&keywords=Figures+in+a+Landscape | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Indeed, Stevie, that story compacted so many things into its few pages: terror, surreality, psychological horror, comedy, suspense, extreme gore, philosophy, religion, coming-of-age, etc. It's a marvel. Have you read any other T.H. White? "Casablanca" (1967), by one of my favorite short-story writers, Thomas Disch, is a gem of psychological/urban horror. Nothing supernatural here—just the chilling account of two elderly American retirees, who were vacationing in the Middle East at the same time the bombs dropped on their faraway civilized world; and as their living conditions deteriorate, so too do they.... Brilliant. Alfred Hitchcock could, sometimes, pick some good ones. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
I just read Thomas Disch's "Minnesota Gothic" in 'Night Chills' and found it a wonderfully original and evocative kind of updating of the Hansel & Gretel fairy-tale to contemporary America. It involves the insidious corruption of a curious little girl by an old hag, rumoured to be a witch, and her mysterious brother, who is confined to his room upstairs, to which he is keen to lure the child. Disturbing stuff... | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 90.205.248.223 |
Long long ago, I read a great Disch story in an obscure sf magazine, the name of which has faded from my memory. The story was called "Descending" I think, or possibly "Going Down". It was about a man who steps onto an escaltor in a dept store. The escalator journey never ends... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
I have vague memories of trying T.H. White's Arthurian fantasies as a young child but, enthralling as those timeless tales always are, they were rather eclipsed, in my mind, by the more beguiling magic of Lewis's Narnia books, the frightening impossibilities of Garner's dark fantasies and, later, Howard's bloodthirsty Conan stories and, of course, the epic discovery of Tolkien and just what literature was truly capable of. Really my very early education in fiction was largely via the fantasy genre, from Ladybird fairy-tale books on, come to think of it. Horror exploded in my consciousness when I hit my teens and discovered the pulp shockers of Smith, Herbert, Masterton and a host of others in the mid to late 70s. But I digress... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Indeed, the story was called "Descending," Terry (Fantastic, 1964). The late Mr. Disch almost couldn't write a bad story, from those I've read—another author that must be revisited properly.... Perhaps, Stevie, youth neglected the author? Conan and Tolkien were always going to be more alluring to the teenage mind, as they were to mine; so many authors were more beguiling than more challenging pieces (let alone—heavens forfend!—what we called literature!) But then, who knows? It takes going back and actually reading those books. And there's a long queue lined up 'round here already. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.170 |
Almost finished 'Night Chills' (1975) edited by Kirby McCauley - another exceptionally fine anthology - and then I'll be starting the final Fontana horror anthology in my collection, 'Gaslight Tales Of Terror' (1976) edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes. Having finished all the Fontana anthos I'll then be moving on, at long last, to a complete chrono reading of the 'Best New Horror' series for the first time! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.170 |
Just read one of the greatest modern Cthulhu Mythos horror stories ever written. Karl Edward Wagner's "Sticks" (1974) is the equal of anything achieved by T.E.D. Klein or Ramsey Campbell. It is a towering and very frightening masterpiece of a novella!! And it also had one hell of an unacknowledged influence on 'The Blair Witch Project'. A truly terrifying horror masterpiece that represents one of the ultimate culminations of Lovecraft's indefatigable influence!!!! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Oh, yes, "Sticks" is one of Wagner's best, Stevie—one of my favorites by him. Me too, I just read a fantastic one, "One of the Dead" (The Saturday Evening Post, 1964), by William Wood. Oddly, this story is longer than Ted Sturgeon's "It," also herein—but Sturgeon's is put under the special heading "Novelette," whereas this one's collected under "Stories." No matter. I've never heard of William Wood; apparently he was mostly a TV/film writer, with one of his credits being the teleplay for Haunts of the Very Rich (1972), based on a fantastic T.K. Brown, III, novelette (1971) I read in DAW's Year's Best Horror: Series II—T.K. Brown also being an author, like Wood, who seems to have written one fabulous horror story, then vanished (the TV movie's quite good, worth catching on youtube, btw). I guess he made more money in the Hollywood he by-the-way criticizes in the course of this tale. "One of the Dead" is about a wealthy couple who move out to to the hills around Hollywood, where they build a brand new home on a tract of land that's long been abandoned, or maybe was the foundation for another home in some distant past; there's rumors surrounding the site, that a Spanish rogue was hanged there for bestial crimes—and of course, those rumors contain superstitions about the land being haunted. Think you know where it's going? Not exactly: Wood weaves a quite sophisticated tale of psychological horror, with excellent style and pace and development, and a deliciously ambiguous ending. Truly masterful work, and it's a lamentable thing, that he seems to never have written another piece in the horror genre… though this one's been collected in some six or seven various anthologies so far, which speaks to its quality. Truly worth the time and effort of any fan of the genre, seeking this one out. It's worth rooting around in these old forgotten horror anthologies—you find real gems! | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.12.92 |
"Sticks" has been a firm favourite since I first read it nigh on forty years ago. It was one of those "you must read this" stories I raved to friends about. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 202.174.163.204 |
I've just finished reading this year the 87 submissions for the HWA awards. Next year I'll read for myself more. I'll probably be back for a suggested reading list Stevie and all... Actually what are your favourite dystopian novels... anyone? | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
I thought it would be fun to list the books we read last year. Okay. Perhaps it isn’t fun, perhaps it’s sad, but I’m going to do it anyway. My 2013 reading list - in order. "c" Single author collections “ed” means an anthology Little Women by Louisa M Alcott Extended Play ed Gary Couzens Atonement by Ian McKewan Another Santana Morning by Mike Dolan c Entanglement by Douglas Thompson The Virgin and the Gypsy by D H Lawrence c Adrian Mole: The Cappuccino Years by Sue Townsend The Acceptable Face of Tyranny by Gary Fry Feather by David Rix Vile Bodies by Evelyn Waugh Automatic Safe Dog by Jet McDonald Exit, Pursued by a Bee by Geoff Nelder Under the Dome by Stephen King Where are we going? Ed Allen Ashley Nemonymous Night by D F Lewis Leonardo da Vinci: Flights of the Mind by Charles Nicholl Dying to Read by John Elliot For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway The Tallest Tales by Rhys Hughes c The Creakers by Paul Kane The Ironic Fantastic Vols I and II ed Rhys Hughes Mechagnosis by Douglas Thompson Hadrian VII by F R Rolfe Air by Geoff Ryman The Designated Coconut by John Travis Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King The Mammoth Book of The Best New Horror ed Stephen Jones Siblings ed Stuart Hughes Possibly, Perhaps, Maybe by Terry Martin c Portrait of a Lady by Henry James The Silver Wind by Nina Allen Kingston to Cable by Gary Greenwood PopCult by David Barret Songs from Spider Street by Mark Howard Jones c The Nine Deaths of Dr Valentine by John Llewellyn Probert The Emporium of Automata by D P Watt c Phoenix by Steve Byrnes Shocks by R Chetwyn Hughes c Plus a year’s worth of Black Statics, Sein und Werduns, Horrorzines and BFS Journals | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
Ally, long, long ago I read a novel called "Level 4" (author long forgotten and it may be a different level!). It was in the form of a diary written by one of the people sent to a deep underground shelter during a nuclear war. It is a short novel but I have never, ever forgotten it. That has to be my favourite. And, of course, "I am Legend" which I read at the 1975 Reading Rock Festival between acts. Cheers Terry | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.160.12.92 |
Terry, would that be "Level 7"? I recall an episode of OUT OF THE UNKNOWN with that title, although I can't say I've read the story on which it's based. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
I love you, Terry. You're a man after my own heart. Thanks, man! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
You're going to think I'm making this up, Craig, but I distinctly remember reading "One Of The Dead" a couple of years ago and raving about it to all and sundry at the time! I think it was in one of the Fontana Horror anthologies. I remember it disturbing the crap out of me! | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.206 |
Mick, it probably was "Level 7". It was a long, long time go. The only thing I'm sure of is that it wasn't Level 42. Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
Ally, 'Friday' (1984) by Robert A. Heinlein is the greatest dystopian sci-fi novel I have read in recent years and features the single most memorable female protagonist I have encountered in literature - Friday Jones. It tackles sexism and racial prejudice without ever appearing preachy and is also an absolutely thrilling, unputdownable all-action and unpredictable intrigue adventure novel set in a brilliantly realised nightmare future of disintegrating nation states ruled over by blind corporatism. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
But if we're talking post-holocaust sci-fi novels then only one book can seriously be considered as topping the heap. I envy anyone who still has to read George R. Stewart's 'Earth Abides' (1949). | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.107.43 |
Post holocaust novels that could be seriously considered to top the heap? Cormac MacCarthy - The road. King's The Stand, McCammon's Swan Song, Z for zachariah (if only I could remember who wrote that) | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
What makes 'Earth Abides' so great is it's calm matter-of-factness. No one has ever portrayed the breakdown of civilization and return to the basics of survival as powerfully or as convincingly before or since, imho. You really believe what is happening and feel desperately for the host of unforgettable characters. If that book doesn't move you to tears then nothing will. It is one of the great masterpieces of 20th Century literature, irrespective of genre, and should be as revered as Orwell's '1984'. Yeah, it is that good. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Ha! That's great, Stevie. Indeed, "One of the Dead" appeared in the 13th Fontana edition. Wonderful tale—reads a bit like a film or teleplay, but thankfully, not too much so.... I have mixed feelings about McCarthy's The Road—it was okay, but hardly worth all the hype surrounding it (Oprah notwithstanding). No, but, the greatest post-Apocalyptic novel remains... John of Patmos' original, Book of Revelation.  | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
We all know the great dystopian sci-fi novels; Wells' 'The Time Machine' and 'When The Sleeper Wakes', Zamyatin's 'We', Kafka's 'The Trial', Huxley's 'Brave New World', Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four', Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451', Wyndham's 'The Chrysalids' and 'Consider Her Ways', Dick's 'The Man In The High Castle', Burgess's 'A Clockwork Orange', Christopher's 'Tripods' trilogy, Harrison's 'Make Room, Make Room', Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' and 'Oryx And Crake', etc... It's one of the greatest lists in literature. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.107.43 |
Stevie, have you read The Road? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
No, Weber, but I saw the film. I thought it was just okay. A bit too low key to be truly effective, imo. I haven't read any of McCarthy's stuff but have long intended to. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
Then there are those post-apocalypse novels that turn into dystopian visions of the future. Heinlein's 'Farnham's Freehold' (1964) ingeniously uses time travel to show us the immediate horror of global nuclear conflict and the grim fight for survival that follows before transporting us into the far future slave-based cannibalistic society that arose from the wreckage. It's another one of my all time favourites and one of Bob's most moving books. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 5.69.111.97 |
I agree Stevie, read it in 1976 while in hospital, recovering from a moped accident. And, of course, "Farhenheit 451", how could I have forgotten that masterpiece. Oh, I know why, because I thought it was a commentary on our present world; everlasting wars, wall-to-wall, anaesthetic television and an all-consumingly negative attitude to the written word. Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.42.246 |
About to read, for the first time, a short story called "What Was It?" (1859), written by Fitz-James O'Brien, and confidently hailed, by R. Chetwynd-Hayes in his intro, as one of the 20 or so best and most frightening horror stories ever written. I'll let you all know what I think anon... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
Well it was a great piece of weird fiction and startlingly original for its time but I can't say it scared me. Unless the second half of the story was all an opium induced dream? O'Brien's story of a drug addled nightmare in the dark becoming all too tangible reality in front of numerous witnesses by the cold light of day is more akin to the disturbing psychological satire of Kafka's 'Metamorphosis' and certainly has to be seen as one of the most groundbreaking narratives of its era. I am also reminded of Melville's "Bartleby The Scrivener" in the effect this story has on the reader. | ||
| Playloup66 (Playloup66) Username: Playloup66 Registered: 05-2011 Posted From: 86.128.223.13 |
Only been reading these three lately. 'The Blair Witch Project - A Dossier' - an entertaining read, fits nicely in with the film. 'The last Voice They Hear' - Ramsey Campbell - Only about 90 pages in and it's turning out to be pretty good, i hope the rest matches up. 'Ghosts know' - Ramsey Campbell - Around 80 pages in and it seems from the start to be classic Campbell.We've got menace, paranoia, black comedy and word play.What's not to like! }} | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.52.21 |
That's me finished all the Fontana horror anthologies.  'Gaslight Tales Of Terror' was as entertaining as any of the rest of the series and I'd single out "Mrs Raeburn's Waxwork" (1932) by Lady Eleanor Smith and "The Phantom Of The Lake" (1886) by Edmund Mitchell as the two finest tales here. Both classic and very frightening gaslit ghost stories of particular originality and power. Now starting 'The 27th Pan Book Of Horror Stories' (1985) edited by Clarence Paget. What to replace this epic series with in just four books time? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.94.101 |
I have been rather pleasantly surprised by the quality of the later Pan Horrors. While they are marked by a somewhat higher percentage of filler material the quality stories still hold sway with the likes of Alan Temperley, David Case and Ian C. Strachan, among others, standing out as writers of real forgotten gems. This one includes tales by; Chris Barnham, Harry E. Turner, Samantha Lee, Buzz Dixon, J. Yen, Alan Temperley, Norman P. Kaufman, Stephen King, Ray Askey, B. Seshadri, Jonathan Cruise and Jay Wilde. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.80.133 |
Well that first story, "On The Fisherman's Path" by Chris Barnham, was a real classic, imo. Literate and compelling it tells of a young student hitch-hiking through Europe on his summer break who finds himself pursued by something monstrously evil and irresistibly seductive. I found it quite Jamesian in its evocation of place and subtle deliberate pacing. Great stuff! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.55.106 |
I envy anyone who still has to read George R. Stewart's 'Earth Abides' (1949). I still have to read this! I don't think I've even seen this. To me the most haunting and indeed frightening post-apocalyptic short story is Will Worthington's "Plenitude". I've mentioned it before, I think. I don't think I've ever seen anything else by this author either. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.41.70 |
Harry E. Turner's "Ms Rita And The Professor" is a hilariously OTT and sickening piss-take of militant feminism that would have Germaine Greer tearing her hair out and wanting to boil the author alive in oil, I have no doubt!! Sick, fearless and unforgettable! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.30.94 |
It's never been out of print, Hubert. I read it in the recent Gollancz edition. It was the author's one genre novel and is one of the greatest works in sci-fi literature, imo. He was a professor of ecology, or something like that, and worked out with fascinating exactitude what exactly would happen if 95% of the human population were wiped out by a super plague. He also had the literary ability to turn his researches into a wonderfully gripping and intensely moving epic about ordinary people having to deal with a very real and plausible apocalypse. What I loved about the book was its relentless unsensational ism and refusal to sink into melodrama. The big deaths are all handled unsensationally as just part of the new natural order of things but the power of the book comes from the subtle deliberate accumulation of painfully poignant little details that create a terrible sense of unfolding tragedy in the reader. The final pages are amongst the most emotionally affecting I have ever read. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.43.127 |
Alan Temperley has done it again. His novella "Pebbledene" is completely enthralling and a brilliant satire of all those 'Ilsa : She Wolf Of The SS' type exploitation movies of the 70s. Stomach churningly sick and lurid but written with real style and verve and extremely entertaining! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.29.174 |
Yeah, I think "Pebbledene" is the best thing of Temperley's I have read. Nowhere else could such a grotesque and potentially offensive but impossibly gripping story have appeared than in the Pan Horror series. This guy knew how to horrify and then some. Sheesh!!  | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.120.36 |
The Stephen King story in this antho is one of his great early tales that I had completely forgotten about: "I Know What You Need" (1976). It has much of the same strengths as 'Carrie' being a highly personal and emotional story of High School life and a lonely misunderstood teenager with a tremendous gift/curse but who, in this case, is by no means the victim but the predatory stalker of the girl he idolises. It is when King is in this kind of incisive form that he is at his very best and most affecting. It even qualifies as a Cthulhu Mythos story, by the back door. A really great tale! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.77.210 |
"Red Recipe" by Ray Askey has to be the most blackly humorous and nauseating cannibal horror story I have possibly ever read. One can almost feel the author's relish as he relates this tale of unrelenting brutality. Only in the Pans! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.105.24 |
Bit of a late reply but since when do films hold a candle to the books? (except for LOTR which eclipse the badly paced dreary works by Tolkien on all counts) The Road is one of the most emotionally affecting novels I've ever read. The film is good, but not a patch on the written version. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Weber, I've heard—don't know, haven't read it, but heard—that The Godfather is a pretty pedestrian novel.... Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express, Altman's The Long Goodbye, the Pinter-scripted The French Lieutenant's Woman: all hold candles to their originals. And dare I say it? George Roy Hill's Slaughter-house Five holds a candle, too... though a dim and guttering candle, admittedly. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.206 |
I enjoyed "The Godfather" when I read it. Perhaps I'm a pedestrian kind of guy! Regardignt the film/book comparison...I enjoyed the Gregory Peck starring, Ray Bradbury-scripted "Moby Dick" far more than the book. Okay, the first and last hundred pages of the novel are fantastic, it's the 10,000 pages in between that are the problem. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.90 |
Finished the 27th Pan which was made memorable by the stories of Chris Barnham, Alan Temperley, Stephen King, Ray Askey and, best of all, Jonathan Cruise's excellent Irish ghost story, "The House That Remembered", a bang on the nail accurate portrayal of the distinctive eccentricities of country life in the wilds of Kilkenny and the haunting legacy of unthinkingly callous British colonialism and the horrors of the Great Potato Famine. Now starting the seminal anthology 'Frights' (1976) edited by Kirby McCauley for the first time. Authors included this time are; Russell Kirk, Brian Lumley, Joe Haldeman, Poul & Karen Anderson, R.A. Lafferty, William F. Nolan, Davis Grubb, Ramsey Campbell, David Drake, Dennis Etchison, Robert Aickman, John Jakes & Richard E. Peck, Robert Bloch and Gahan Wilson. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
Read a one-off and memorably nightmarish horror story by Brian Lumley in 'Frights' called "The Whisperer" that is easily the most effective and truly frightening story by this author I have read to date. He's often hit-and-miss but with this tale he created a modern masterpiece and one of the scariest and most original monsters of the modern era. The fact it has nothing to do with the Cthulhu Mythos or vampires makes the story all the more powerful. Magnificent!! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.106.111 |
Under Heaven by Guy Kay is a heavenly read. It's not a book to race through, it deserves to be savoured and enjoyed properly. The prose is sumptious and lucid, the storyline absorbing and intriguing. I'm not normally a fan of books about court politics etc but the quality of the writing in this makes it exciting, scary and funny in turns. This is one of Guy Kay's best works to date. It won't be long till I read the follow up (it doesn't sound like a direct sequel) River of Stars. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Read a beautifully written story in this "literary" anthology I've been nursing for some months (The Oxford Book of Short Stories, ed. by V. S. Pritchett [1981]), maybe you're familiar with it, Stevie—it appeared in one of the Pan Book of Horrors, and other horror anthologies: "Various Temptations," by William Sansom (1951). I was wholly unfamiliar with this British author, but apparently he's written a number of crime/thriller/horror stories. This one's a psychological portrait of a serial killer, who falls for a plain girl he was about to murder, and how that all falls out. But wow, what a deliciously written story! The kind or writing that makes you fall instantly in love; lush, evocative, not obfuscating, never showing off, just... wonderful. I am definitely going to keep this writer on my look-for-more list. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
William Sansom was a Pan and Fontana regular, Craig. His stories all have that Greenian quality of cutting right to the heart of the human condition in even the most horrifying of circumstances. That particular story is like a sly twist on the themes evident in 'Brighton Rock'. My favourite Sansom story, and one of the best ever written, is "The Vertical Ladder" (1948). It also appeared in the Pan series and is a truly unforgettable masterclass in raw terror and suspense. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
As I'm virtually bedbound after seriously damaging the cartilage in my knee - can't move it without extreme pain, can't walk without crutches, leg in a splint - I'm going to pass some of the time ranking all the short stories I've read over recent months, book by book. Easiest to work backwards. I've included brief plot sketches in the inverted commas so beware of POTENTIAL SPOILERS! Here goes... 'The 27th Pan Book Of Horror Stories' (1985) edited by Clarence Paget [R2] 1. 'On The Fisherman's Path' (1985) by Chris Barnham ***** [17 pages] "English student backpacking through Europe finds himself stalked by seductive female demon" [R2] 2. 'Ms Rita And The Professor' (1985) by Harry E. Turner **** [15 pages] "journalist uncovers cannibalistic cult of militant feminists led by charismatic female psychopath" [R2] 3. 'Medium Rare' (1985) by Samantha Lee *** [2 pages] "fascist torturers in Spanish Civil War resort to cannibalism to make prisoner talk" [R2] 4. 'Spiders' (1985) by Buzz Dixon *** [15 pages] "arachnophobe haunted by intelligent plague of black widow spiders infesting his house" [R2] 5. 'A Weird Day For Agro' (1985) by J. Yen **** [3 pages] "quarrel between neighbours over loud music descends into nightmare surrealism" [R2] 6. 'Pebbledene' (1985) by Alan Temperley ***** [36 pages] "female run rehabilitation farm for released male borstal inmates hides terrible dark secret" [R2] 7. 'Wanted : Dead Or Alive' (1985) by Norman P. Kaufman ** [6 pages] "husband's sordid love affair with his own attractive mother-in-law ends in murder and necrophilia" [R2] 8. 'I Know What You Need' (1976) by Stephen King ***** [22 pages] "teenage occult prodigy and unattractive misfit uses black magic to ensnare popular attractive girl he is infatuated with" [R3] 9. 'Red Recipe' (1985) by Ray Askey ***** [8 pages] "girl lost on country walk falls foul of cannibalistic farmer and his wife" [R2] 10. 'Joint Family' (1985) by B. Seshadri **** [21 pages] "patriarch of Indian family resorts to murder of close relative by deliberate infection with plague to protect the family honour" [R2] 11. 'The House That Remembered' (1985) by Jonathan Cruise ***** [24 pages] "English couple inherit remote Irish mansion haunted by terrible legacy of cruelty from the Great Famine years" [R2] 12. 'Rothschild's Revenge' (1985) by Jay Wilde *** [12 pages] "insanely disgruntled consumer launches campaign of murder against company bosses whose products let him down" [R2] 1st: 'The House That Remembered' (1985) by Jonathan Cruise. 2nd: 'Pebbledene' (1985) by Alan Temperley. 3rd: 'I Know What You Need' (1976) by Stephen King. Wooden Spoon: 'Wanted : Dead Or Alive' (1985) by Norman P. Kaufman. 5/12 perfect scores = 42% 48 out of a possible 60 *'s = 80% => **** overall. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
What does anyone think of Dean Koontz? He is hardly ever mentioned on this thread, in fact, on this message board. In the 80s and 90s he wrote scores of novels. Every Dean Koontz book I've ever read has been vivid, well written, imaginative and a damn good read. Including "Winter Moon", which I am two-thirds through at this moment. Is my credibility somehow at risk here? Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
I read quite a bit of Koontz in my wayward youth, Terry, and would call him a moderately talented hack writer of pulp potboilers. That may sound harsh but I've read far, far worse in my time as well. I'd rank him as superior to Shaun Hutson and inferior to James Herbert. An entertaining but disconcertingly prolific yarn spinner for the easily pleased. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.204.182 |
Terry - you play in a band on occasion - how on earth could your credibility *ever* be threatened? | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
Easily pleased eh? I always thoroughly enjoy his books. The very height of cool, that's me Mick. But would you have said the same thing if I said I play in a Bay City Rollers tribute band? | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
I'm not by the way! | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
I mean...I don't (play in a Bay City Rollers tribute band that is) I'm panicking now. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.106.111 |
Well I've now finished Under Heaven and it was, as stated previously, a sumtiously well written book that absorbed me completely while reading it. Possibly one of Guy Kay's best books (and he's one of my favorite writers in any case) Next on the to read list is The Years of Rice and Salt by Kim Stanley Robinson. A behemoth of a book based on the premise that the plague wiped out Europe and the Tang dynasty became the world's ruling power as a result. After a dodgy couple of first pages it seems to have settled down into a very easily readable style. Hopefully it will continue in that vein. By complete coincidence, Under Heaven was based on the fall of the Tang Dynasty. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
Terry, I have a great deal of affection for Guy N. Smith and consider him one of the most influential figures of my youth so don't beat yourself up. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I've not read Koontz, anything by him—but I have a collection of short-stories and novellas that's long, long been on my TBR pile (I figure if they put him in one of the Night Visions series from the 80's, he must have warranted it). It will happen, someday, God willing.... (Kim Stanley Robinson & Kay are authors, too, who, though not on the pile [no books], would be there.) Not only have I read none of those stories on your Pan list, Stevie—I've heard of none of those authors! (Except King, of course.) Thanks for the recommendation for the Sansom story, too; you nailed it, a Greene-ian sensibility, and it just makes me thirst for more. It's also nice knowing that, at least at one time, a "serious" writer included him and other authors even edging into the sensational genres, in compilations of "great literature." (Oates is another highly-respected writer who does the same.) | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
I was curious that was all, and rather enjoyed your "easy to please" comment. Almost as much as Peter Tennant's "Black Static" review description of my novel "Axe" as "balls to the wall horror" which I think is a wonderfully vivid description of the book and the genre in general. Anyway, I left "Winter Moon" in the car last night, was too lazy to go and get it, so grabbd John Galsworthy's "The Forsythe Saga" (next on the pile) for my bedtime and lie-in read. I will be involvd with that book for some time. It is almost 800 pages long and presented in something that looks like Times New Roman font size 8. But engaging so far. A fantastic cast of characters already. Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
'Gaslight Tales Of Terror' (1976) edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes [R] 1. 'The Last Victim' (1976) by Roger Malisson *** [15 pages] "sickly sculptor sells his soul to the Devil for health and fame but must kill to stay healthy" [R] 2. 'A Tale Of A Gaslight Ghost' (1867) - Anonymous **** [11 pages] "wealthy recluse physically tormented in front of witnesses by tangible ghost of the man he murdered" [R] 3. 'The Paupers' Feast' (1976) by Sydney J. Bounds ** [5 pages] "artist of the macabre falls foul of flesh-eating zombie children in paupers' graveyard" [R] 4. 'Number 13' (1904) by M.R. James ***** [16 pages] "hotel guests plagued by demonic occupant of haunted room that only appears by night" [R4] 5. 'Up, Like A Good Girl' (1976) by Dorothy K. Haynes **** [10 pages] "revenge from beyond the grave on weird little girl in orphanage who murdered her false friend" [R] 6. 'An Authentic Narrative Of A Haunted House' (1862) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu ***** [13 pages] "family move into haunted house and are tormented by trio of bloody spectres from infamous murder" [R2] 7. 'The Glass Staircase' (1956) by R. Thurston Hopkins **** [12 pages] "family move into haunted house and are tormented by pair of doomed ghostly lovers" [R] 8. 'The Maid, The Madman And The Knife' (1976) by Rosemary Timperley **** [12 pages] "maid sets out to rescue child abducted from her care by psychopathic hunchback dwarf" [R] 9. 'What Was It?' (1859) by Fitz-James O'Brien ***** [13 pages] "tenants in haunted boarding house encounter and trap invisible demonic creature" [R] 10. 'The Veritable Verasco' (1976) by James Jauncey *** [14 pages] "slighted chorus girl sabotages stage magician's act with gruesome results" [R] 11. 'The Silver Highway' (1946) by Harold Lawlor ***** [16 pages] "museum visitor encounters beautiful ghost in Victorian street scene display and traces her tragic story" [R] 12. 'Mrs Raeburn's Waxwork' (1931) by Lady Eleanor Smith ***** [13 pages] "newly appointed guide to waxwork museum develops psychotic obsession with figure of notorious murderess" [R] 13. 'The Phantom Of The Lake' (1886) by Edmund Mitchell ***** [12 pages] "family haunted by visions of ghostly ice-skater on lake that always presages sudden death of one of their own" [R] 14. 'Keep The Gaslight Burning' (1976) by R. Chetwynd-Hayes **** [19 pages] "elderly murderess haunted by bloody spectres of her victims must stay forever in the gaslight that keeps them from her" [R] 1st: 'Mrs Raeburn's Waxwork' (1931) by Lady Eleanor Smith. 2nd: 'The Phantom Of The Lake' (1886) by Edmund Mitchell. 3rd: 'Number 13' (1904) by M.R. James. Wooden Spoon: 'The Paupers' Feast' (1976) by Sydney J. Bounds. 6/14 perfect scores = 43% 58 out of a possible 70 *'s = 83% => ***** overall. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.82.188 |
Just read another wonderful piece of fiction by one of the most underrated American writers of the 20tb Century, Davis Grubb, called "The Idiots" (1976) in Kirby McCauley's 'Frights' (1976) anthology. One of those beautifully written and impossibly affecting tales that I know will haunt me for a long time to come. It has everything a GREAT short story should have, imho!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.99.114 |
Ah, that's the first time I've read Ramsey's "The Companion" (1976) in many years (and third time overall) and what a brilliant exercise in pure psychological terror it is! A lonely old man regresses to his troubled childhood to face the demons he would never allow himself to admit to. A bona-fide masterpiece!! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.106.94 |
Have youy ever read the novel of Night of the Hunter Stevie? It's one of my very few 10/10 novels. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.106.94 |
Years of Rice and Salt continues as readable, but not much more than that. He has a habit of ending each chapter with an invite to read what happens next in the next chapter. That's beginning to get irritating very quickly. Unless there's a major change for the better, this isn't going to anywhere near my best book of the year list. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 213.106.77.123 |
Some recent reads: The Peter Grant series by Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers of London, Moon Over Soho, Whispers Underground and Broken Homes) - an urban fantasy series involving a police department that deals with London's hidden magical side, consisting of DI Nightingale (who looks 40 years old but was born in 1900 and is still trying to get the hang of the post-colonial world) and PC Peter Grant - the mixed-race son of a heroin-addicted jazz musicion and a West African cleaning lady. By turns funny, scary, and packing an emotional punch when you least expect it to, it's a meatily enjoyable series and very, very worth reading (especially as it's just reached a cliffhanger point...) The Palace Of Curiosities by Rosie Garland - set in Victorian London and narrated by two protagonists - Ada the Lion-Faced Woman and Abel, who wakes each morning unable to remember his past and whose body automatically heals any injury, however grievous. Both end up in a freak-show run by Josiah Arroner. It's a love story of sorts, and a rich London novel written in gorgeous, musical prose. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant. The Book Of The Crowman by Joseph D'Lacey - this was an ARC sent for review, but it'll be out soon and it's the follow-up to the same author's Black Feathers, published last year. Again, two narrators tell the story, separated by centuries. The first, set in a near-future Britain devastated by environmental catastrophe as the Earth rebels against humankind and governed by the tyrannical corpocracy of the Ward, tells the story of Gordon Black, who has to seek out the mythical being known as the Crowman to help overthrow the Ward. In the second, set hundreds of years later in the society that has risen in the aftermath, a young woman called Megan Maurice sets out on a quest to find and tell Gordon's, and the Crowman's, tale. You really need to have read Black Feathers to appreciate this one, but as it won't be out for a while yet you've got plenty of time to. Currently reading Mayhem by Sarah Pinborough - another Victorian London novel, combining fact and fiction, crime and supernatural horror, as medical examiner Thomas Bond, haunted Jack the Ripper suspect Aaron Kosminski and a nameless priest hunt the Thames Torso Killer (a murderer operating around the same time as Jack the Ripper, but far less well known.) So far it's got everything you'd expect from the author - good writing, great characterisation and a powerful, gripping narrative. Plus opium. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
This was a great anthology: 'Night Chills' (1975) edited by Kirby McCauley [R] 1. 'At Midnight, In The Month Of June' (1954) by Ray Bradbury ***** [10 pages] "scared woman makes it home to find serial killer who is terrorising town waiting in her house" [R] 2. 'A: B: O' (1899) by Walter de la Mare ***** [17 pages] "pair of treasure seeking antiquarians uncover buried chest containing mummified demonic creature" [R] 3. 'Minnesota Gothic' (1964) by Thomas M. Disch ***** [15 pages] "curious young girl is corrupted by old hag rumoured to be a witch and her sinister brother upstairs" [R] 4. 'The Jugular Man' (1973) by Joseph Payne Brennan **** [6 pages] "victim is saved from serial killer who slashes throats by ghostly intervention of long dead but still faithful manservant" [R] 5. 'Alice And The Allergy' (1946) by Fritz Leiber **** [9 pages] "survivor of attempted murder by serial killer is haunted by mystery allergy somehow related to the attack" [R] 6. 'The Island' (1948) by L.P. Hartley **** [15 pages] "young man is invited to remote island mansion of his married lover only to find her missing and her husband unexpectedly home and waiting for him" [R] 7. 'Yesterday's Witch' (1972) by Gahan Wilson *** [7 pages] "persecuted old woman rumoured to be a witch exacts ghastly revenge on local children" [R] 8. 'Wet Season' (1965) by Dennis Etchison **** [12 pages] "husband discovers his beautiful new wife and her twin boys are part of an invasion of aquatic shapeshifters" [R] 9. 'Innsmouth Clay' (1971) by H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth ** [12 pages] "weird sculptor returns to town of his ancestors and uncovers monstrous secret of his lineage" [R] 10. 'People Of The Black Coast' (1969) by Robert E. Howard ***** [10 pages] "couple shipwrecked on uncharted coast find themselves at war with race of intelligent crab beings" [R] 11. 'Call First' (1975) by Ramsey Campbell ***** [5 pages] "curious interloper into house of black magician falls foul of the skeletal undead guardian that patrols the place" [R] 12. 'From Beyond The Stars' (1975) by Richard L. Tierney ***** [20 pages] "explorer of shunned caves discovers vast underground spaceship with monstrous man-eating alien occupants that have terrorised area for centuries" [R] 13. 'The Funny Farm' (1971) by Robert Bloch *** [11 pages] "murdered collector of comic books is avenged by corporeal manifestations of the characters he loved" [R] 14. 'The Face In The Wind' (1936) by Carl Jacobi **** [22 pages] "inheritor of country estate falls foul of family curse involving manifestation of the Harpies from Greek mythology" [R] 15. 'Goodman's Place' (1974) by Manly Wade Wellman ***** [14 pages] "black magician builds house in shunned forest and woos local girl intending her for human sacrifice in his summoning of demons" [R] 16. 'Kellerman's Eyepiece' (1975) by Mary Elizabeth Counselman *** [10 pages] "amateur astronomer becomes convinced he has discovered proof of an alien invasion massing on the Moon" [R] 17. 'Sticks' (1974) by Karl Edward Wagner ***** [21 pages] "artist stumbles upon old house with demonic occupant and covered in weird symbols that he uses in his own art with nightmarish results" [R] 18. 'The Sign Painter And The Crystal Fishes' (1952) by Marjorie Bowen **** [17 pages] "revenge from beyond the grave on rich man who murdered his poor rival for the undying love of a woman" [R] 1st: 'Sticks' (1974) by Karl Edward Wagner. 2nd: 'A: B: O' (1899) by Walter de la Mare. 3rd: 'From Beyond The Stars' (1975) by Richard L. Tierney. Wooden Spoon: 'Innsmouth Clay' (1971) by H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth. 8/18 perfect scores = 44% 75 out of a possible 90 *'s = 83% => ***** overall. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
I've heard of night chills Stevie, and it is a book I will certainly seek out. The anthologies and collections discussed on this thread intrigue me. Well, i gfinished Dean Konntz's "Winter Moon" this morning and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Good, tight story with vivid characters and a very original, and truly frightening monster. Recomended. Cheers Terry | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
That's Koontz, not Konntz, by the way. I need to go to bed. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
I remember enjoying Dean Koontz's 'Phantoms' (1983) back in the day mainly because of the monster. It was a kind of cross between The Blob and The Thing and was made into a fairly entertaining B-movie in 1998 starring Peter O'Toole of all people! His best book is probably still 'Demon Seed' (1973) that was memorably filmed by Donald Cammell in 1977. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.250.194 |
Koontz is fun. Quick reads, but literate and engaging. I enjoyed a lot of his stuff back in the day. But then I felt I was just reading variations of the same premise, so gave up. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
Way way back, I read a Dean Koontz science fiction novel called "Anti-man". It was in the early 1970s. Now that was a great piece of writing. There was a scene in which the protgonists were out in a snowbound forest being tracked by wolves that I have never forgotten. That was before he turned to horror. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
Oh and my Black Static 38 came through the letterbox today, congratulations on the interview Gary. I've yet to read it, and it may be a while because I am a mere 70 pages into "The Forsyte Saga". Now that is a great novel, so far... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
Koontz did have a great imagination and was a more than capable writer but he became a victim of his own success. In his day he was as big as Stephen King but familiarity bred contempt sadly. 'Demon Seed' is also a great sci-fi novel. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
A fairly typical and entertaining later Pan anthology: 'The 26th Pan Book Of Horror Stories' (1984) edited by Clarence Paget [R2] 1. 'The River Bed' (1984) by B. Seshadri **** [7 pages] "poor Indian woman with baby walking on long journey over mercilessly hot sand gives way to homicidal madness" [R2] 2. 'Mandragora' (1984) by Rosemary Timperley *** [5 pages] "lonely young man develops psychotic obsession with beautiful lifelike mannequin in antique shop of sinister old man" [R2] 3. 'Chatterbox' (1984) by Alex White *** [11 pages] "beautiful gold digger determines to win love of rich Arab unaware that he is the sadistic serial killer of all his ex lovers" [R2] 4. 'Special Reserve '75' (1984) by Harry E. Turner **** [5 pages] "vineyard owner murders his hated brother and disposes of dismembered remains in wine press creating limited range of special reserve bottles" [R2] 5. 'Fire Trap' (1984) by Rosemary Timperley *** [3 pages] "priceless collection of antique dolls are heard screaming by witness to warehouse fire that destroyed them all" [R2] 6. 'Flies' (1984) by John H. Snellings **** [15 pages] "bullied wife of pteronarcophobe breeds thousands of oversized bluebottles fed on blood as plan to scare her husband to death" [R2] 7. 'Masks' (1984) by J.J. Cromby ** [5 pages] "serial killer of women chats up the wrong victim and gets more than he bargained for when she takes him home" [R2] 8. 'The Bath' (1984) by Trustin Fortune ** [4 pages] "wife is brutally murdered in the bath by who she thinks is her loving husband but is really his secret psychopathic twin brother" [R2] 9. 'Time To Get Up' (1984) by Nicholas Royle **** [5 pages] "unstable young man who detests getting up for work in the mornings descends into homicidal madness" [R2] 10. 'An Immaculate Conception' (1984) by B. Seshadri ***** [10 pages] "patriarch of Indian family regrets the marriage of his son and plans perfect murder of his pregnant daughter-in-law for the family honour" [R2] 11. 'Death Of A Council Worker' (1984) by Ian C. Strachan ***** [11 pages] "simple computer error starts nightmarish chain of events that lead to the horrible death of a lowly council worker" [R2] 12. 'Micro-Process' (1984) by Ralph Norton Noyes ***** [12 pages] "misanthrope purchases android manservant that looks exactly like him and develops unhealthy sexual obsession" [R2] 13. 'The Loft' (1984) by John H. Snellings **** [13 pages] "young girl falls in love with needy young man unaware that he has a collection of his former girlfriends' corpses in the loft" [R2] 14. 'No Mark Of Respect' (1984) by Oscar Holmes *** [17 pages] "rich husband imprisons his wife's lover with the help of faithful employees and subjects him to hideously long drawn out revenge" [R2] 15. 'Firework Night' (1984) by St John Bird *** [6 pages] "local children exact horrible 'justice' on old woman rumoured to be a witch on bonfire night" [R2] 16. 'Silent War' (1984) by Jessica Amanda Salmonson **** [10 pages] "disabled Vietnam veteran with no legs and only one arm engages in deadly battle of wits with psychopathic killer in his own home" [R2] 17. 'Henry And The Beautiful People' (1984) by Alan Temperley **** [22 pages] "bullied unattractive worker at modelling agency deliberately infects everyone at his retirement party with leprosy" [R2] 1st: 'Death Of A Council Worker' (1984) by Ian C. Strachan. 2nd: 'Micro-Process' (1984) by Ralph Norton Noyes. 3rd: 'An Immaculate Conception' (1984) by B. Seshadri. Wooden Spoon: 'The Bath' (1984) by Trustin Fortune. 3/17 perfect scores = 18% 62 out of a possible 85 *'s = 73% => **** overall. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.186 |
Just finished 'Frights' (1976) edited by Kirby McCauley - another excellent anthology - and about to start my long awaited first complete chrono read of the 'Best New Horror' series with Volume 1 (1990) edited by Ramsey Campbell & Stephen Jones. Some familiar names in here including; Robert R. McCammon, Cherry Wilder, Stephen Gallagher, Alex Quiroba, Ramsey Campbell, Laurence Staig, Steve Rasnic Tem, Kim Newman, Gregory Frost, Donald R. Burleson, Nicholas Royle, Thomas Ligotti, Chet Williamson, Robert Westall, Brian Lumley, Des Lewis, Thomas Tessier, Ian Watson, Karl Edward Wagner & Richard Laymon. I've really been looking forward to this!! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Well, I finally gave in to temptation and bought a Kindle. Now don't worry, those of you who don't like ebooks, no way will I be deserting real books. However, there is one *big* advantage of having a Kindle - I can now buy, at a fraction of the cost, books which were way to pricey for me in proper paper format. Hence, I'm just reading Mark Valentine's 'Herald of the Hidden' (Tartarus) - and I'm loving it! My first love in horror fiction when I was a youngster was supernatural horror. I've rekindled (sic) that feeling in recent years when I discovered how good Reggie Oliver is at writing it. And Mark Valentine certainly runs a fairly close second behind Reggie in terms of quality supernatural fiction. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.108.205 |
Except that that book has actually cost you the price of the kindle, the month messing about with the kindle trying to get it to work, sending it back to amazon and the hassle of getting a new one, plus the cost of downloading a few strings of electronic data onto the nasty looking thing. I'm guessing thats more than the book would have cost in paper terms. Then in a few years time, when the savings in buying the e-books is almost reaching the amount you'd save by going second hand or discount book shop route, suddenly te thing will be out of warranty, break down and you'll need a new one all over again. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.145.204.226 |
There appear, on this board, to be two points of view on the Kindle:- That held by regular folk who think "take it or leave it - if you want one, do so, if you don't, don't", and that held by you, Marc - "I don't want one so no-one else should have one". That's as selfish as someone hoping all books become ebooks and that paper books are no longer made just to annoy you. Lighten up for goodness' sake. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 90.200.125.152 |
I got myself one of WH Smith's Kobo readers at Christmas (they went on sale for £29.99 and I got a £30 gift voucher. It was fate.) I've mostly been reading stuff from Project Gutenberg on it, but I've bought a couple of cheap books on sale (Susan Hill's Dolly and Adam Nevill's Apartment 16) as well as a couple of free books authors like Chuck Wendig and Robert Rankin have put out for promotional reasons. Like digital music I think it's going to be great for impulse buys, especially for small press books. If I quite like the sound of something and it's on sale or at a good price I'll just jump in and buy it without having to worry about extra postage costs or anything. Before I bought a lot of stuff at charity shops, but now I'll actually be contributing something directly to the authors - like Apartment 16, I originally read it from the library but saw it cheap and bought it because I liked it so much, and it won't be taking up space on my shelves. I thought it might take a while to get used to but using it is perfectly fine. Just tapping the screen with my thumb is easier than turning pages. And for £30 it'll probably pay for itself in a matter of months. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
I haven't got a Kindle, but I'm beginning to read stuff on my tablet - mostly manuals and textbooks (I'm trying to learn Japanese) I find on the internet. As for literature, I fear the thing is too cumbersome to hold in my hands for a very long time, especially in bed. But so was the hefty Maurice Renard book I was reading a few months ago. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Oh dear, I didn't want to start up another RCMB argument about the pros and cons of ebooks vs. real books. Actually, my Kindle was on special offer too (not as cheap as your Kobo though, David) - which is why it tempted me. And, like Hubert, I'm finding it great for textbooks and stuff to do with my work. So, sorry Marc, but I do now feel I made the right decision in getting it (you're right though - that month spent faffing around trying to get a working one out of Amazon was a damn nuisance). Anyway, back to what we are reading, if you don't mind. I don't want all that arguing starting up again, thank you very much.  | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.108.205 |
OK Mick. My point of view is not the same as yours therefore I will not speak it again. I realise that your opinion is the only one worth stating and humbly beg forgiveness for thinking that mine is worth ever speaking out loud. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.154.89.250 |
OK Marc. My point of view is not the same as yours therefore I will not speak it again. I realise that your opinion is the only one worth stating and humbly beg forgiveness for thinking that mine is worth ever speaking out loud. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.154.89.250 |
Good idea Caroline. Currently reading PKD's The Crack in Space; once that's done it'll be Tim Lebbon's new Alien book. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.108.205 |
Mick, you're the one telling me not to say what I think about something. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.154.89.250 |
...and then probably one of the two R. R. Ryan novels I've been loaned... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.108.205 |
Wow! Mature Since it's going to be ignored in any case, why the hell shouldn't I post an opinion on here. The first I saw about Caroline's new e-reader was a complaint about a month long battle to get it to work. Personally, I've never had that from a real book Clearly these e-books are such a great leap forward in reading technology that we can now have that kind of issue with a book instead of just being able to open one and lok at the words. The whole "pushing a button is easier than turning a page" arguement is the most ludicrous thing ever. Oh hang on, wasn't turning a page in a book one of the twelve tasks of Hercules because it's such a horribly difficult thing to do? Maybe it wasn't. I wonder why not. There was a book which Amazon decided last year that they weren't going to sell any more because they deemed the content inappropriate. In addition to stopping selling it, they wiped it from every e-device they'd sold it to. Whether the contents of the book were appropriate or not is irrelevant to the fact that censorship on that scale is suddenly possible through the use of these devices. They can't be used on a plane on take off or landing because they're internet devices. A real book can be. Which is better to take on holiday? Kindle fans will try to insist that a couple of paperbacks in your luggage or coat pocket is somehow equivalent to carrying three elephants with you onto the plane. It really isn't. If I want to buy a real book that's only available in the USA, I order it from the states and they post it to me. If I wanted an e-book that's only available from the states, I'd have to pirate it as there would be no legal way to get on my reader. The pros of real books outweigh those of the e-readers by so far that I really cannot see the point in an electronic device that's going to be outmoded in a few years so you have to buy all your books all over again in a new format. Oh hang on, that's what the point is. They're better for the publishers and for amazon. They ain't better for us readers. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
*sigh* Wish I hadn't bothered with this thread now. The last thing I wanted was another argument. Here's a little song for you all: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TxE6OsIO58 | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.154.89.250 |
Marc - firstly, I don't feel my comment above is 'immature' as you so politely put it; I was merely responding to an earlier request by Caroline to revert the thread back to the original discussion. My feelings towards ebook readers are that they're fine. You don't like them. I'm fine with that. What I get really pissed off at is how a reasonable discussion about books folk have read on such devices immediately get trolled by you with all your reasons they don't suit you. Great. They suit me. They suit other people on here. It doesn't worry me that your opinion differs from mine; what gets me is that you don't feel able to accept that others' opinions differ from yours. Maybe you should consider borrowing one and use your own experience of them. Originally you, Caroline and Des were highly sceptical of such things. They've both given the devices a go and appear more than happy to use them now. I don't doubt that you'll reply but you'll not change my opinion any more than I'll change yours - let it rest. Go read a book, in whatever format you wish - after all that's why we're on this message board. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 109.154.89.250 |
I thought that might be the song, Caroline - a real favourite. Glad you didn't choose the Sade version which is a bit lifeless! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Sade? Who's she? Don't forget, I'm an oldie! Anyway, please let's get back to what you're all reading - never mind what format you're reading it in. Thanks! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
They can't be used on a plane on take off or landing because they're internet devices. My tablet has a flight modus which one is supposed to turn on before take off. Not sure what it does since I haven't been on a plane since March last year. At any rate over here one is no longer obliged to turn cell phones etc. off when boarding an airplane. I'm not sure how it is with intercontinental flights. @ the Sade fans: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXlH6pGLvLM. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.108.205 |
I wasn't aware that simply stating an opinion was trolling. I've not insulted anyone or told anyone to shut up and stop talking about the subject. I've merely stated my opinions and given counter points to some of the reasons given to why I should waste my money on a device I don't either want or have need for in my life. If that pisses you off, that's your problem not mine. Anyway. Years of Rice and Salt is not getting any better. The style is still readble. He seems to have quit with the irritating "read on in the next chapter" at the end of each chapter, but what there is of a story is deathly dull. The last 40 pages have been dull characters talking about their interpretations of the Quran. This might be fascinating to some people but this may be my first book of the year that I simply fail to finish and pick up something entertaining instead. I've got the latest Dexter books or several Joe lansdales or Dr Sleep or dozens of other books that would be so much better than this one. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 90.200.125.152 |
Bloody hell, I wish I hadn't bothered posting about mine either I'm just getting started on John Connelly's most recent Charlie Parker novel, The Wrath of Angels. It seems like it's going to be one of the more heavily supernatural ones, and might have a fair bit of Blackwood-esque wilderness horror in it. I've also been dipping into Self-Made Man by Poppy Brite. The title story is the most gruesome thing I can remember reading in a long time but she has such a skillful way of letting you relate to damaged characters. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.140.22 |
Here's my assessment of another seminal horror anthology: 'Frights' (1976) edited by Kirby McCauley [R] 1. 'There's A Long, Long Trail A-Winding' (1976) by Russell Kirk ***** [38 pages] "wandering simpleton arrives in ghost town and stays at old house haunted by a violent family tragedy he finds himself re enacting " [R] 2. 'The Whisperer' (1976) by Brian Lumley ***** [15 pages] "fussy little man finds his well ordered life being systematically destroyed by sinister tramp whom no one else seems aware of" [R] 3. 'Armaja Das' (1976) by Joe Haldeman **** [21 pages] "victim attempts to defeat gypsy curse using AI computer technology with disastrous results" [R] 4. 'The Kitten' (1976) by Poul & Karen Anderson ***** [27 pages] "unstable misanthrope with marriage problems takes in stray kitten on a whim and gradually descends into insane sadistic cruelty" [R] 5. 'Oh Tell Me Will It Freeze Tonight' (1976) by R.A. Lafferty *** [18 pages] "four Native American friends on hunting trip find their legends concerning a cursed tree and giant man-eating bird coming impossibly true" [R] 6. 'Dead Call' (1976) by William F. Nolan *** [5 pages] "one of life's losers receives impossible phone call from friend who committed suicide coaxing him to do the same" [R] 7. 'The Idiots' (1976) by Davis Grubb ***** [17 pages] "mad old man who refuses to believe there is any world outside his own county sets out to kill 'Hitler' on hearing Second World War news reports" [R] 8. 'The Companion' (1976) by Ramsey Campbell ***** [13 pages] "maudlin old man visits rundown amusement park and is made to face demons from his childhood on ghost train" [R] 9. 'Firefight' (1976) by David Drake **** [22 pages] "platoon of US Marines in Vietnam fight battle with demonic creatures after disrespecting customs of obscure jungle tribe" [R] 10. 'It Only Comes Out At Night' (1976) by Dennis Etchison **** [14 pages] "husband and wife driving across America stay the night at desert rest stop haunted by psychopathic killer of motorists" [R] 11. 'Compulsory Games' (1976) by Robert Aickman **** [26 pages] "fastidious husband descends into hallucinatory madness after his wife leaves him to live with a predatory other woman" [R] 12. 'Sums' (1976) by John Jakes & Richard E. Peck ***** [16 pages] "man returns to his derelict old school on learning it is to be demolished and encounters ghosts from his childhood" [R] 13. 'The Warm Farewell' (1976) by Robert Bloch **** [13 pages] "white family terrorised by Ku Klux Klan for hiding a black man exact fitting revenge on their tormentors" [R] 14. 'End Game' (1976) by Gahan Wilson *** [6 pages] "stolen corpse of eccentric millionaire who had himself stuffed is used in cheap carnival sideshow as dummy chess player" [R] 1st: 'The Companion' (1976) by Ramsey Campbell. 2nd: 'The Whisperer' (1976) by Brian Lumley. 3rd: 'The Idiots' (1976) by Davis Grubb. Wooden Spoon: 'End Game' (1976) by Gahan Wilson. 6/14 perfect scores = 43% 59 out of a possible 70 *'s = 84% => ***** overall. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.13.53.213 |
"The first I saw about Caroline's new e-reader was a complaint about a month long battle to get it to work." I can't see where Caroline said this - am I being stupid or unperceptive? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
It was on Facebook, Ramsey. You clearly haven't been reading my status updates regularly!  To cut a long story short, I bought a refurbished Kindle. Amazon sent me a duff one and made me jump through quite a few hoops to get it replaced. Now it's replaced with a working one, I'm glad I bought it though. As I said above, it's great for being able to access books I wouldn't otherwise be able to afford - like the Mark Valentine book, which I'm still enjoying immensely. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
Like them or loathe them (to me they're just another tool like the iPad I'm typing this on) e-readers and e-books exist and serve a useful purpose and they're not going to go away barring the complete breakdown of civilization on Earth. My preference is for the tangibility of a printed book but if I was given an e-reader as a present I certainly wouldn't throw it in the bin but use it to track down impossible to find books and stories I'd have no way of reading elsewhere. I'm assuming this facility is possible of course... | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.13.95.68 |
Ah - got you, Caroline! Jenny's very enthusiastic about her Kindle as a holiday item. At the same time, our house is full of books. I haven't got a Kindle myself, but along somewhat similar lines, I greatly prefer proofreading on the computer to proofreading hard copy. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
"My preference is for the tangibility of a printed book but if I was given an e-reader as a present I certainly wouldn't throw it in the bin but use it to track down impossible to find books and stories I'd have no way of reading elsewhere. I'm assuming this facility is possible of course..." Yep. That's precisely my view on it now too, Stevie! No way am I giving up real books - but it's great to be able to get ones I simply couldn't get otherwise. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 213.106.77.123 |
I have both ebooks and treebooks. My Kindle is very handy for electronic documents, and also for sampling new work by unfamiliar authors. Example: I recently downloaded Steve Byrne's Vietnam horror novel Phoenix. I probably wouldn't have risked the print-book price, but the download was considerably cheaper and was with me within seconds. It actually does lend itself very well to impulse-buying, which is a pretty good way to discover new authors. But given the choice, I prefer the physical artifact. You can get them signed and personalised, you can lend them to others (although I tend to agree with Battlestar Galactica's Admiral Adama: 'Never lend books'), and, yes, nobody can make a paper book vanish all over the world, by remote control, at the push of a single button... But it isn't an either/or thing. Yes, Kindles can go tits-up and you lose your stuff (until you can get a new one - and Amazon were pretty helpful to me on that score) but you can make the same criticism of computers as a writing tool, and I'm sure nobody would want writers to be without those, whether they compose initially in longhand or not. I love my books. I love my Kindle. Simple as that. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.129.35.40 |
It's the end of the world. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I have a Kindle Fire, but I rarely use it to read books... I prefer paper, like Weber and Stevie. I am indifferent to it all. Except that as more and more becomes exclusively available on the e-readers, the price of tangible books will necessarily skyrocket—those old paperback scifis/fantasies/mysteries/horrors will no longer be so cheap or easy to find. In my area, all the independent bookstores have vanished, and many of the monster ones too—soon, they'll all be gone (like video/dvd rental/stores: Simi Valley had 10 at one point... and as of just a couple weeks ago, it's stands at zero). | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
My reading in general's tapered off this month, sadly—too much of the other usual boring-ass life crap to deal with. I do keep dipping into this "literary" anthology when I can; some stories are good, some great, some... meh. There was a hilarious one by one R.K. Narayan, "A Horse and Two Goats" (1960)—that was a real delight. Otherwise, I'm not reading much, not watching movies (I've been binge watching the American "Shameless" [1st & 2nd Seasons = superb; 3rd Season so far, alas, a considerable drop in quality], Lena Dunham's "Girls" [really quite good!], "Episodes," "Parks and Recreation," etc.): otherwise, just not tuned into books like I usually am. But it'll pass. Oh wait, my bathroom reading is Gibbons' Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (V.2, Bk. 1)... believe it or not, it does well in there.  | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.108.176.47 |
My girlfriend got me a Kobo e-reader and I've really taken to reading on it. It's got so I now prefer reading on it to reading tree-books, something I thought would never happen. The Kobo does rather worryingly appear to be the Betamax of e-readers, however. A few tech mags rate it as a superior product to the Kindle - and having seen both, I'd agree - but the might of Amazon means that Kindle ebook prices tend to be considerably lower than Kobo and Nook ebooks, and, being particularly crafty, the sods have started buying up product and keeping it to sell exclusively. Don't believe me, try reading Ed McBain's work anywhere but through Amazon . . . Another example: Ramsey's HOLES FOR FACES only appears to have a Kindle release in e-book format. This is, to say the least, annoying. But price and availability for my Kobo aside, I'm greatly enjoying reading electronically. I once thought e-books were a fad and a "very bad thing". Now I love them. Marc, me old sweetheart, I'd love to know: do you own an e-reader? And what am I reading right now? Well, in treebook form I've finally got around to THE SATANIC VERSES by Suuur Salman Rushdie, and (69) Shades of Nothingness by Professor Gary of Fry. In ebook format I'm really enjoying jumping between titles, in a way I haven't done so enthusiastically since I was a kid. Among other things I've got Dan Simmons's CARRION COMFORT and SUMMER OF NIGHT on the go, some Thomas H Cook (read him: his prose is like reading a skinny Peter Straub), some Arthur C Clarke, and Rob Holdstock's IN THE VALLEY OF THE STATUES . . . to mention but a few. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.108.205 |
Mark - you really didn't need to ask. Used one once. Couldn't see the point in the damned thing. Managed to hit the next page button accidentally half a dozen times on the first page. Got fed up with the piece of crap and gave it back to its owner. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Fwiw, Weber: I did use the e-reader that Barnes & Noble put out, the Nook, a version that must by now be about 3 years old. It was terrrrrrrible... a stinky rotten hard-to-use-and-read e-reader. But that was that one. I think they've vastly improved these things, the Kindle most of all. Things do get better, keep that in mind. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
My novel reading has gone for a burton this last while as I'm now firmly hooked on horror anthologies again so it looks like 2014 may turn into the year of the short story for me. I'm really loving this first 'Best New Horror' antho and looking at the shelves of other volumes still to come is like gazing on untold riches. Due to not being able to get about with this bloody knee injury means my cinema going has been non-existent since early December but also that I'm overdosing on the joys of Stevie TV these days, especially as I'm off work. 'Boris Karloff's Thriller', 'Colditz', 'The Water Margin', 'Danger Man', 'Star Trek' and 'Captain Scarlet' are particular favourites to gorge on at the minute and I just recently completed my first complete chrono watch of all ten series of 'Red Dwarf'. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.232.228 |
My Kindle is very useful for several reasons: it's a lot easier to read while walking the dog, which is about the only time I get to read while working so many hours. I like the neatness of it, the way I can keep so many titles stored and dip in and out of them, especially living in an apartment with little space. I liked the automatic timing function that lets me know how long it will take me to read the next chapter -- useful at lunch breaks. I like the adjustable font size, which allows me to tailor the text to my preferred format -- quite an important thing for me, because I don't get on with small fonts. Those are all solid reasons for owning one, I believe. It took me a few weeks actually using one before I realised how valuable they were. Suck it and see, Marc, you might just be surprised. Oh, and thanks, Mark -- hope you enjoy the interview and my latest book. Sorry it's only available in paper. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.232.228 |
Oh yeah, and when my partner nods off at 9pm (cos she starts work at 5am), I can continue reading without troubling her with any light. I guess my present lifestyle just suits the Kindle. | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.108.207.157 |
Pleasure, Gary. I'm enjoying. Even having tried them, a lot of people have a similar distaste for e-readers, Marc. It is frustrating that certain titles are now only appearing in one format or another (Mobi, ePub, Tree-Book, Ltd Edition Treebook). But to some extent, in terms of general availability, that's often been the case. Think of all the mid-list authors who've disappeared from publishers' lists because they've not made enough money for the publisher. At least the e-book gives some writers a second chance. To my mind, the twiddly bits -- font adjustment, back lights, pressing a button instead of turning a page -- aren't really the arguments to put forward in favour of e-readers. It's the (mostly) affordable aspect of books that I'd otherwise be unable to buy. It did take me a while to get the hang of reading on-screen as such, but now it's not an issue. The content of the book is what matters. (That said, I've got some tree books that have such dog ugly fonts they've given me headache and I've stopped reading them.) | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
For better or worse, the things are with us, so why not use them? They probably won't disappear of their own accord. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
This untypical and ridiculously entertaining anthology will probably turn out to be the best of the Fontana Tales Of Terror series: 'Tales Of Terror From Outer Space' (1975) edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes [R] 1. 'I, Mars' (1949) by Ray Bradbury ***** [10 pages] "old man who is the last colonist on an abandoned Mars goes slowly mad fighting with the recorded ghosts of his younger selves" [R] 2. 'Eight O'Clock In The Morning' (1963) by Ray Nelson **** [6 pages] "after being awakened from hypnosis one man becomes aware of the truth that alien reptiles rule the world and move unseen among us" [R] 3. 'The Girl From Mars' (1950) by Robert Bloch *** [7 pages] "carnival worker falls foul of beautiful flesh-eating alien girl who was drawn by fake 'girl from Mars' freak display" [R] 4. 'Heresies Of The Huge God' (1966) by Brian W. Aldiss **** [11 pages] "far future human race have come to worship the corpse of a giant moth monster that devastated the Earth centuries before" [R] 5. 'The Head Hunters' (1954) by Ralph Williams ***** [15 pages] "hunting party in the wilds of Alaska find themselves the quarry of monstrous alien big game hunter for their heads" [R] 6. 'The Animators' (1975) by Sydney J. Bounds **** [11 pages] "six man expedition to Mars is killed off one-by-one by alien force that murderously reanimates each of their corpses" [R] 7. 'The Night Of The Seventh Finger' (1966) by Robert Presslie ***** [17 pages] "confused alien being lost in space and time and stranded on Earth seeks help from hopelessly shallow young woman with disastrous results" [R] 8. 'No More For Mary' (1966) by Charles Birkin *** [11 pages] "Englishman holidaying in Italy captures bizarre metallic insect in jar unaware that it is the space suited last survivor of an alien expedition" [R] 9. 'Invasion Of Privacy' (1971) by Bob Shaw ***** [23 pages] "one man becomes aware of subtle alien invasion in his town in which the terminally ill and the elderly are duplicated and replaced" [R] 10. 'The Ruum' (1953) by Arthur Porges ***** [14 pages] "lone explorer is implacably hunted through wilderness by unstoppable alien machine programmed to collect him as a sample of native fauna" [R] 11. 'The First Days Of May' (1961) by Claude Veillot ***** [18 pages] "one man futilely seeks his wife in the apocalyptic aftermath of an alien invasion by merciless insectoid monsters" [R] 12. 'Specialist' (1953) by Robert Sheckley ***** [16 pages] "organic spaceship made up of co-operating amalgamation of alien lifeforms seeks to abduct human being to act as power source" [R] 13. 'No Morning After' (1954) by Arthur C. Clarke **** [6 pages] "aliens telepathically contact scientist warning that the Sun is about to explode and only they can save the human race but he believes it a hallucination" [R] 14. 'Shipwreck' (1975) by R. Chetwynd-Hayes **** [16 pages] "self-replicating shapeshifting alien blob creature crash lands on Earth and sets about 'assimilating' the human race one-by-one" [R] 1st: 'The Ruum' (1953) by Arthur Porges. 2nd: 'The Head Hunters' (1954) by Ralph Williams. 3rd: 'The First Days Of May' (1961) by Claude Veillot. Wooden Spoon: 'The Girl From Mars' (1950) by Robert Bloch. 7/14 perfect scores = 50% 61 out of a possible 70 *'s = 87% => ***** overall. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.108.205 |
Why not use them? Because I don't want to? Because there is no technological problem with the traditional book that needs an e-reader to fix it...? Sorry. that was a rhetorical question. What's the point in rhetorical questions? Ans Stevie, I asked you ages ago on this thread if you've ever read Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb? you ignored me completely | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.103.103.174 |
Everybody respects your right not to use them, Weber. It's just that you leap on the backs of others who hold an alternative view, people who are being entirely reasonable in explaining why. Surely you see that. For information, quite a few people have told me, as moderator, that they've deleted their accounts here, often because of your attitude (as demonstrated in the thread above, and in others, where you've written tasteless/offensive jokes). You might want to think about that. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.108.205 |
If I'm so hated round here just delete my account and tell people it's safe to come back then. I won't bother posting again. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 2.103.103.174 |
Your choice. I won't be deleting your account unless you ask me to do so. I'm just reporting what I've experienced as moderator. That's simply the truth. Nobody's saying they hate you. They're saying your attitude *sometimes* is unpleasant. How you choose to deal with that information is up to you. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 82.145.222.42 |
Just delete my account. Compared with everything else that's happened to me this last 12 months, losing this place really isn't important. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.229 |
All I'm suggesting is that you interact with other forum members with less obvious bullishness. I don't see what other aspects of your life have to do with it (though I hope they're not too onerous). I dare say we've all got problems. I'm on the verge of redundancy, but I hope that concern doesn't "leak" into places like this. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Not to offend, Gary, but... I'm not in sync with Weber's view on Kindle's. But then, I expect him to be over the top against it, and make those kinds of comments. So, I could care less when he does—that's just Weber, who's on a crusade against the e-readers (kind of like I'm on a crusade against the movie version of The Mist). So what? Let's all tolerate each other, even in our cranky crotchety moments; we all have them. And God knows we could all use some people forgiving us our faults sometimes... or at least, nodding, smiling, and walking away. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.21.180 |
Not ignored, Weber. Missed the question. And the answer is no but it does reside in my TBR pile. Anything I have read of Grubb's has been of the highest literary quality. No one hates or is out to get you, Marc. I've had a dreadful couple of years too involving floods, the loss of most of my book collection, pay day loans getting out of control, illness of family members and debilitating personal injury as well as a heap of shit in work but I refuse to give way to bitterness, paranoia or feeling sorry for myself. Life's too short and unpredictable, for better or worse, not to enjoy every single second of it and keep friends and loved ones close. I consider you a good mate but you're also sometimes your own worst enemy, man. Hope 2014 is a better year for you. It certainly couldn't be any worse for me! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.62.253 |
Losing Joel's voice on here was bad enough and I, for one, don't want to lose your voice as well through sheer bloody pig-headedness! And I say that as a true friend. Wind your neck in, man. Yeah, e-readers are shit but so bloody what?! Focus on what's really important. End of lecture. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.107.137.105 |
But in fairness, Craig, you're not getting emails from people saying they've decided to delete their account because of episodes like this. What am I supposed to do in those circumstances? How would you moderate it? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.9.236 |
Give him time to calm down, Gary. Marc is a headstrong fecker but I'll talk to him. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
I honestly can't understand how my comment about me now using a kindle above has sparked all this off. It's almost surreal. I feel responsible for all the unpleasantness here. If only I hadn't mentioned the kindle. Can't believe how this has all spiraled out of control. Feeling very guilty. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.41.149 |
Caroline, it was your feelings I was thinking about when I told Marc to wind his neck in. The man is obviously in a bad place at the minute but that is no excuse for taking an innocent comment and turning it into a pitiful argument about nothing. Other people using e-readers in no way impinges on Marc's civil rights and he needs to realise that. Luddites never win they only alienate themselves from the people who truly care about them. I am happy for you, Caroline, that you are enjoying your new e-reader. Marc should be happy for you too because anything that brings happiness to a friend is a good thing! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.108.205 |
Gary Please delete my account. then all the nice peopel I've chased away can come back. Caroline, It's not your fault. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.60.79 |
Piss off, Marc! There's a thing called admitting you were in the wrong. Now wise the fuck up! | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.134.108.205 |
I can't remember the last time I was in the right about anything. That's why I'm asking for my account to be removed. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Hold it, you two - please don't you two start too! I don't think anyone's "in the wrong". People have different opinions. Some like ebooks, some don't. Some, like me, didn't like them - now they do (but not in preference to real books, I hasten to add). That's a simple difference of opinion. End of argument. Enough said. Or that's the way it should be. What I find almost surreal (if it wasn't so serious as people are getting hurt here - ALL people, no matter what side of the debate you are on) is the fact that this has blown up into such a problem. We've already lost at least one person from the forum over this. It's just totally ridiculous! Stevie, I really appreciate your concern for me but I'm fine - honest. Thanks for stepping in (and trying to emulate Joel, if I may be so bold, as I'm sure he'd be doing the same thing to try to placate everyone). But please don't fall out with Marc. I suspect you've been a great friend to him, and I'd really like you to continue being one. Now, folks, maybe we should all just go and do some .. er .. reading? After all, that's what this thread is supposed to be about. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.88.233 |
Wise the fuck up, man! You're always in the right when you express your own opinion. The mistake you make is trying to impose your own RIGHT opinion on others which only comes across as arrogance and, let's face it, bullying. I've suffered enough under a bullying bitch in work over the last few years to make me realise the symptoms ffs! If you still value my friendship and that of every other decent person on this site, of which I consider you one when you are in your right mind, then apologise to Caroline and let the matter drop. That beautiful woman has enough to cope with without your petulant strops and if e-redears are making her happy and, most importantly, able to read when getting about is an issue (as I know all too wel now) then direct your wrath (the Deadly Sin to which you are most prone - mine is Sloth with Lust a close second [yeah, it's a complicated life but I'm happy with it] towards where it really belongs. Think on, man. I love ya! But not in that waty ffs !! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Stevie, did you read my post above yours? There's no apology needed from Marc to me. Now, you two, you make up, do you hear? You're friends off the board, right? Then, let's keep it that way please! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.50.21 |
"It Helps If You Sing" - fuck what a great horror story! I read it once before many years ago but forgot how bloody brilliant it was! Thanks, Ramsey! What the fuck did they do to that poor bastard! No, don't tell me . I beg you! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.59.103 |
There is, Caroline. You would never dare impose your will in a bullying way on anyone and Marc, my friend, needs to realise that his consciousness is no more important than your own. He needs a good slap! Fuck e-readers! Let's think about people - Marc included if he can only wind his fecking neck in and admit, for once, that he was, temporarily, in the wrong. Christ, sometimes I can't believe that this human being's favourite writer is Ray Bradbury ffs . Fuck me! WS there ever a more empathic writer in the whole of "creation" ffs! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.72.36 |
Think about Caroline's feelings and not your own understandable crusade against e-readers, Marc. They're here to stay for better or worse and you're fighting a self defeating battle. Now wind you're fucking neck in and invite me over to Manchester as I'm paid again! S | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.108.185.12 |
The Luddites really do get a bad press, you know. Think about how different the present would be had mill owners invested in the talents of the poor sods they made redundant when they got their machines in to replace them. Instead of maximising profits and sacking men, they could've invested in education for them . . . Am reading LAURA LAMONT'S LIFE IN PICTURES, by Emma Straub -- yup, Peter Straub's daughter. And the girl can write. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 213.106.77.123 |
And let me know next time you're in Manchester, Stevie! Twould be nice to meet you in the flesh. And yeah - I don't want to see Marc go either. He's been part of this board for a long time. I'm sick to the back teeth of seeing pointless feuds and squabbles erupting in fan communities like this. Those of us who like horror and imaginative literature have to deal with enough hostility, ignorance, crassness and stupidity in that horrible thing called 'real life' without making more for one another. At times like this I really miss Joel. (Well, let's be honest, I bloody miss him anyway.) But this would be the point at which he would make a long, pithy and highly intelligent point about how the interwebs are destroying human interaction and civilisation in general. Followed by a terrible pun and/or a clever knob joke. (And probably featuring the phrase 'fuck the internet.') Cheers anyway, Stevie, for trying to fill his place. Come to think of it, Joel would have made a pun about that too... | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Stevie says: ".. and invite me over to Manchester .." And you guys had better invite me over there too (I'm only the other side of the Pennines) the next time you're over here, Stevie. I've been wanting to meet you and Marc in the flesh for ages. And it would stop you calling me "beautiful" too!  | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I'm not sure how I'd have moderated it, Gary... it's easy for me to posit now, after the fact, but what the hell, I will anyway. Someone maybe could have stepped in and said: "Weber*, please keep in mind that some people really love their e-readers, and feel slighted when you talk so vehemently against them. I'm not saying that entitles them to any special treatment, and I do understand you're not so keen on these things; but if you don't mind, to avoid any unnecessary rancor, maybe we could keep the excessive negative opinions concerning these to a minimum. Yes, it's a form of censorship; but as a bulletin board family, let's just agree on this one, especially since your opinions are so well documented. We all fully understand why you don't like e-readers, and believe it or not, we're not entirely unsympathetic—any invention by man has its downsides. So it's not like anyone's completely ignoring you. But really, we get it. So the constant vitriol concerning it, is just wearying at the present. I understand I'm asking a lot of you as a contributor to this board, to quell your opinions; but if you wouldn't mind going along with this for the general peace, everyone would be wonderfully grateful to you." *I know Weber's real name is Mark; but since he has here chosen the nom de plume "Weber," I'm sticking to that appellation, out of respect for that choice. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.107.137.105 |
That's pretty much what I said. Really, guys, it doesn't have to complicated. We're all adults. Weber was behaving in a way that made some people unhappy enough to leave. I pointed that out. All Weber had to do was accept that reality. Not MY reality. THE reality of the situation. It's happened before, several times. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 90.200.125.152 |
Regarding Mark's point a few days ago about formats, DRM and some books only being available on Amazon and not for other readers, it's fairly simple to get around that with a Google search and a quick software download. You'd be breaking Amazon's terms and conditions, but some people are of the opinion that once you've bought something it's your right to read it however you like. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.177.161.230 |
DOGS WITH THEIR EYES SHUT by Paul Meloy And reviewing it here: http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/01/30/dogs-with-their-eyes-shut-paul-me loy/ | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
Jack the Ripper: the Final Solution by Stephen Night. The best thing about saucy Jack I've read thus far. Truth or hoax? If this is a hoax, it sure is an incredibly elaborate one. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
It's Marc, not Mark - like Marc Bolan! That's another thing that really pisses him off. Sorry, folks, but I've been offline for a few days due to an unpaid bill but now I'm back - God help you all!! I've just read one of the best and most enigmatically disturbing horror stories it has ever been my (questionable?) joy to experience by one Thomas Ligotti. After reading his fantastic short novel, 'My Work Is Not Yet Done', and the two stories appended, last year, I can now categorically state that the man is the greatest and most "take no prisoners" original literary horror writer I have experienced since first discovering Ramsey Campbell & Robert Aickman. There is no other way to describe the man's unique imagination and prose. I know I'm talking to the converted (for the most part) but, Jesus Christ, this man is an incendiary bomb of pure "what the fuck" psychological horror. That story, "The Strange Design Of Master Rignolo", is a fucking masterpiece - and I thought nothing in this brilliant collection could top Gregory Frost's "Lizavetta"! It's the mood Ligotti conjures and the unanswered questions the reader is left pondering long after the story has been completed that make him great. Ramsey and Robert had the same rare gift. And so do Des and Tony, imo. Quality will out, people! Quality will fucking out!!!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
I'm a bit of an amateur Ripperologist myself, Hubert, and have my own theories about what really went on way back then. They are both down to earth (involving no complicated conspiracies) and incredibly disturbing. The killer was not one of the upper classes or some tortured artist but one of their own and it is a story as old as time. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Yeah, Marc... I knew "Mark" looked wrong when I typed it.... I can now categorically state that the man is the greatest and most "take no prisoners" original literary horror writer I have experienced since first discovering Ramsey Campbell & Robert Aickman.... Well, it was bound to happen—here, we finally part company, Stevie. I think Ligotti an okay writer, but I've never been bowled over by anything he's written. I've not read a lot, and not that particular story; what I've read, didn't do it for me. He's a tad too affected, too deliberately obfuscating, too stylized, for my tastes. He doesn't hold a candle to Ramsey or Robert: they both honor the traditions and writers whose styles they reflect (Lovecraft, Henry James, etc.), and exquisitely filter them into their wholly original creations. Harold Bloom has said the sign of great artists, is that they make their prior influences, appear themselves to be copies. Not so Ligotti, to to my tastes; quite the opposite. But that's just me, I'm in the minority; I'm finicky, and impatient; and perhaps not benefiting from the finer work you've encountered. In time, I'll revisit, and reassess. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
You think it might have been Jill the Ripper instead of Jack, Stevie? It's odd that the case should have remained unsolved - 1888 is terribly close to our own day - but I for one find the Masonic killers theory a trifle farfetched. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.97 |
Certain writers of weird fiction have what can only be called an indefinable haunting ambiguity to their work. You know it as soon as you read it and it lingers in the mind begging to be worked out and reasoned with. When I get that feeling after reading a story, that unsettling demand for answers that hang just outside of the mind's grasp, then I know I have been in the presence of greatness. Ligotti would appear, on the evidence of three short stories and one short novel, to have that quality in spades! Walter de la Mare had it and Franz Kafka and Robert Aickman and Ramsey, Des and Tony have it too, imho. It's the rarest of all literary gifts to be able to create dreamscapes in prose that lift a veil and show us a glimpse of something behind everyday reality. They write stories that cry out to be re-read and puzzled over while forever haunting the darker recesses of the mind and that's something I absolutely love! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.97 |
Have you ever read 'The Complete History Of Jack The Ripper' (1994) by Philip Sugden, Hubert? It's easily the finest and most authoritative and compulsively gripping book ever written on the subject and one of my all time favourite reads. Every single aspect of the case and the lives of those involved is presented in forensic detail without any theorising or author's pet agenda. There was unquestionably an occult aspect to the murders and a deliberate and successful attempt to generate terror for terror's sake. They changed the business of prostitution in the city as was always the killers' intention... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.97 |
The ritualistic elements of the murders increased in elaboration with each killing along with the deliberately terrifying savagery. There was a concerted effort being made to terrify those in the prostitution racket and the ghoulish interest of the gutter Press at the time, who forged the letters from Jack, played into the hands of the new breed of foreign, mostly Eastern European, organised crime elements who I believe were most likely behind the murders. Once their point had been made and turf wars had been settled the killings stopped and the prostitution trade went back to business as usual with a new set of criminal overlords in the city. One needs to look into the underworld of those times for answers rather than to high society, imho. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.97 |
I don't believe there ever was a single individual called Jack the Ripper but rather a bogeyman made to frighten vulnerable women into obeisance by the machinations of a new influx of foreign organised crime "families" and a cynical popular Press who make today's tabloids look like paragons of virtue by comparison. They were brutal times and those killings were symptomatic of a new breed of criminal from abroad infesting the streets of London. The novel 'Dracula' is a near perfect allegory of what was going on back then. The ritualistic elements, like the Mafia and their packages of dead fish, were all part of the terror strategy. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
I must confess I've never read a single Ligotti story. I keep meaning to rectify that. But, though I know many people who rave about his work, I've heard others say, just like Craig has said, that his writing is too affected - so that's put me off. But maybe I'd better give him a go sometime ... Currently, I've taken a completely different direction to the sublime supernatural fiction of Mark Valentine that I was reading. Last night, I picked up The Screaming Book of Horror. As you might expect of a Johnny Mains edited antho it's very much Pan Book of Horror inspired. Only read a few stories so far, including Alison Moore and Steve Rasnic Tem (both of which were excellent short pieces which really packed a punch). But stand-out story so far has to be 'What Shall We Do about Barker?' by Reggie Oliver. Honestly, is there no limit to the number of different styles Reggie can write in? It's bloody, crude, funny .. and quite unlike anything I've ever seen come from Reggie's pen previously. Great stuff! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.97 |
I don't find his voice affected but rather uniquely disturbing in a nightmarishly surreal way. I've never read anything with quite the same flavour but Kafka and Aickman are probably closest. That huge face buried in the field haunts me yet. What the feck was that story about? I'm not at all sure but it certainly got under my skin! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Well, I've just bought 'Teatro Grottesco' thanks to your comments here, Stevie - so let's see what I think of it ... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.97 |
If you like non-linear stories packed with originality then prepare to be wowed, Caroline. I hope lol. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.97 |
Ligotti writes like a man lost in time and impossibly insane. That's the only way I can begin to describe his writing. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.97 |
There are writers of tangible horrors and those of intangible horrors by which I mean horror writers of concrete stories (like King, Matheson or Bloch) and those who write, with a kind of dream logic, of oddly beguiling impossibilities (i.e. Campbell, Aickman or Ligotti). | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
The Complete History Of Jack The Ripper (1994) by Philip Sugden. No, never seen it. I'll try and find it. Your theory (or is it Sugden's?) is plausible, after all there was a great deal of social unrest going on at the time, with famine, massive rioting and so forth. But why did the attention shift to Dr Gull after a fashion? Solely to compromise the royal family? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.17 |
Sugden just presents the evidence as a historical story without advancing any theory of his own which is what is so good about the book. It is as gripping as any novel. He mentions the most popular theories of the time and since and presents the case for and against each one with admirable dispassion. The organised crime from abroad muscling in on local prostitution theory is my own after sifting all the evidence and studying the sociological climate of the time. There were some truly barbarous Eastern European elements making their presence felt right about then. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.17 |
Everyone loves a scandal and one involving the Royal Family was bound to capture the public imagination. Look at how many people are convinced nowadays that Prince Philip ordered the death of Princess Diana! The theory itself is completely untenable if examined dispassionately. The most reliable eye witness description of the killer (from the night of the double event) was of a shabbily dressed foreign looking individual in a cloth cap and scarf not some top hatted cape wearing toff. It has been virtually proven that the famous letters were a publicity stunt by one particular paper to boost sales. A common practice of unscrupulous editors back then. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 90.244.33.134 |
Read a couple of Human Target graphic novels by Peter Milligan: Chance Meetings and Second Chances. Christopher Chance assumes the identities of those marked for death but the stress of his job means the lines between his own sense of self and those of his clients becomes increasingly blurred. Add in the fact that his clients represent different facets of contemporary America -- Hollywood producers, sporting superstars, political activists, 9/11 survivors -- and you get some social commentary alongside the action scenes and psychodrama. Good fun. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 90.200.125.152 |
I saw the Human Target TV series, but I've never read the source material. It was fun, but it sounds like the comics were a bit more interesting. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.139 |
I've just read possibly the best and yet not slavishly imitative homage to M.R. James it has been my pleasure to enjoy by one Robert Westall, called "The Last Day Of Miss Dorinda Molyneaux"' in the first 'Best New Horror'. It's a joy of a story! If the very last sentence doesn't hit you where it hurts and have you beaming at the author's storytelling skills then nothing will. Marvellous stuff!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.139 |
Has the a Weber man done a moonlight flit on us or what? I, for one, hope not. He was the only man on here made me seem half cogent ffs! Only kidding, mate. ;-) | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 90.244.32.18 |
David, there have been two TV series of Human, Target one in the '90s and one in 2010. I'm not sure how faithful either of them are to the comics. And just to muddy the waters even further I'm not sure how much of the identity crisis/psychodrama stuff was in the original Len Wein/ Carmine Infantino comics from the '70s and how much was introduced in the Milligan series which was aimed at older, more sophisticated readers. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 213.106.77.123 |
Stevie, The Last Day Of Miss Dorinda Molyneux is a superb story. The collection it's taken from, Antique Dust, is likewise excellent - think it was Westall's only collection of ghost stories for adults. He was a great storyteller, as you say: one of the tales in Antique Dust is what's usually my least favourite type of ghost story, the kind that turns out to have a rational explanation, but Westall carries it off so well, and with such a poignant pay-off, that I still love it. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
"The Last Day Of Miss Dorinda Molyneaux" It's in Best New Horror (1990) as well. I recall reading the story as a marvelous experience. It reminds me a bit of James's "An Episode of Cathedral History". I've never even seen Antique Dust. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 90.200.125.152 |
It was the most recent series of Human Target I watched. As I say it was fun, but I can't actually remember that much about it so it must have been pretty lightweight. From what I recall his colleagues were more worried about him having a death wish than any kind of identity crisis plot. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
"Has the a Weber man done a moonlight flit on us or what? I, for one, hope not." I fear he has, Stevie. I hope he'll be back. And Mick too. But I'm still having fun with my Kindle - despite the trouble it's caused. Christopher Barker's "Tenebrous Tales" and Ligotti's "Teatro Grottesco" are next on my list. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.240 |
Why? What has happened Mick? He's one of the nicest guys on here! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.31.66.109 |
Mick won't be back. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 213.106.77.123 |
Aw, fuck. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.177.161.230 |
I trust Mick is Ok. Having not been a member of Facebook for 6 months or so, I often don't see the context of such statements. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.232 |
He's fine. He just got tired of being harangued. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Yes, he's fine, Des. It was all the hassle which blew up when I mentioned the dreaded k-word (Kindle) in this thread (so it was here, not on Facebook) and Mick and Weber got into an argument about it. Silly and pointless. I'm still feeling guilty but I guess I shouldn't feel responsible for what they do. A real shame though. I hope they do both come back at some point. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Lord. You'd think the passing of one of our own, would have prevented such pettiness for a little longer than it has.... | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Exactly, Craig. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 88.107.137.105 |
It was just one more example of things that have happened in the past. The straw that broke the camel's back, if you will. It might be petty, but with so many alternatives to hand, people won't frequent online venues when they perceive a lack of level headed decency. I can understand that. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Well, I've just "discovered" Ligotti and all I can say is "Wow! Why did I resist reading him for so long?" You know those old fairground attractions - The Hall of Mirrors - where you enter and find that reality is distorted in a terrifying fashion by all the mirrors? Reading Ligotti feels like that to me. I can't wait to read more, but sadly I have lots of work to do today ... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.171 |
Glad you like him, Caroline. That's a big "phe-ew" from me lol. I've only read three short stories and a short novel by him so far and already think the man is some kind of mad genius! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.171 |
I've just finished 'Best New Horror : Volume 1' (1990), edited by Ramsey Campbell & Stephen Jones, and what a stunning embarrassment of riches it is!! The quality of those stories - all of them - really did justify the title of this series. To think of all the volumes to come... oh, joy!!!! | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.206 |
Halfway through "The Forsyte Saga" and what a subtle, shifting, endlessly engaging novel this is. Galsworthy was way ahead of his time when it came to light and dark, shades of characterisation. and bureid within its canvas, a light-touch of humour and wit. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.177.161.230 |
I am tentatively revisiting FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce and real-time reviewing it here: http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/finnegans-wake-james-joyce/ | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.171 |
Now starting 'The 28th Pan Book Of Horror Stories' (1986) edited by Clarence Paget. Authors included are; Alan Temperley, Rebecca Bradley, J. Yen, John H. Snellings, Stephen King, Christopher Fowler(!!), David Williamson, J.M. Pickles, Jay Wilde, Philip Lorimer, F.R. Welsh and Brent R. Smith. After finishing this series in another two books time I'm going to replace it with those venerable anthos I have in the collection from early last century - starting with Lady Cynthia Asquith's famous 'The Ghost Book' (1927). | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.171 |
Well that first story, a novella called "The Abandoned Dam", was another absolute classic of suspense and cruelty by Alan Temperley. Two headstrong young Englishmen, and cousins, embark on a foolhardy adventure into the vast Australian outback and end up engaged in a deadly battle of wits and survival against each other that pulls no punches - as is typical of this most fearless of authors. What even the most civilised of us will resort to when faced with starvation, thirst and merciless heat against even our own blood is taken to the limit in this breathlessly gripping tale. It qualifies as as much of a classic of suspense and adventure as it does a grotesque horror story. But there's a twist that brings the tale firmly into Highsmithian psychological thriller territory as well. I loved it! Whatever happened to this criminally underrated and forgotten horror author? He was one of the Pan series greatest sons, imho!! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
"Whatever happened to this criminally underrated and forgotten horror author?" I bet Johnny Mains could answer that, Stevie. Is he the one who wrote/writes children's stories, in fact (or that may be his wife, Rosemary)? If I've got the right Pan author there, then I think I remember Johnny saying he's a bit embarrassed by his involvement with the PBoHs. I may be thinking of someone else though. Johnny's your man for questions like that! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
"The Abandoned Dam" - what a great title for a story! One can imagine a lot in conjunction with it. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.171 |
Apparently the outback is littered with such abandoned projects, Hubert, due to the sheer harshness of the terrain. Temperley describes the horror and desperation of a slow sun tortured death out there with gut-churning detail. The reader's sympathies keep switching from one protagonist to the other as they descend into a no holds barred battle for survival against each other. The suspense is electric! He's a great writer, imo. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.171 |
Of all the excellent horror anthologies I've read over recent months this one takes the prize! It's an absolute classic of the form I was very lucky to come across in an old second hand bookshop: 'When Evil Wakes' (1963) edited by August Derleth [R] 1. 'The Eye And The Finger' (1936) by Donald Wandrei ***** [7 pages] "man haunted by visions of disembodied staring eye and pointing hand seeks psychiatric help with shocking results" [R] 2. 'The Feasting Dead' (1954) by John Metcalfe ***** [61 pages] "impressionable young English boy falls under the vampiric spell of sinister vagrant met on holiday in France who follows him relentlessly while frightened father battles for his soul" [R] 3. 'Death Waters' (1924) by Frank Belknap Long **** [11 pages] "arrogant white interlopers in darkest Africa fall foul of abused native servant's curse invoking vengeful plague of snakes" [R] 4. 'An Invitation To The Hunt' (1960) by George Hitchcock ***** [10 pages] "ordinary 'commoner' is inexplicably invited to high society hunt ball unaware there are sinister ulterior motives for his presence" [R] 5. 'The Tsantsa In The Parlour' (1948) by August Derleth ***** [13 pages] "unscrupulous nephew plans the murder of rich uncle by sending him a cursed shrunken head that will invariably kill its owner" [R] 6. 'Moonlight, Starlight' (1959) by Virginia Layefsky **** [10 pages] "wealthy lady throws Halloween party at her house for local children but two of the guests are the ghosts of a long dead brother and sister" [R] 7. 'The Kite' (1937) by Carl Jacobi **** [10 pages] "doctor called to treat dying white woman in remote India finds she is the victim of a native curse as revenge on her boorish husband" [R] 8. 'Sweets To The Sweet' (1947) by Robert Bloch ***** [9 pages] "creepy little girl causes the horrible death of her hated father by witchcraft using a figure of him made from candy" [R] 9. 'A Thin Gentleman With Gloves' (1943) by Simon West ***** [9 pages] "crooked barrister steals money from legacy of dead black magician and is remorselessly stalked by his demonic skeletal familiar" [R] 10. 'The Horror At Red Hook' (1926) by H.P. Lovecraft ***** [22 pages] "New York police detective investigates sinister cult activities of notorious satanist involving influx of weird immigrants with disastrous results" [R4] 11. 'The Triumph Of Death' (1949) by H.R. Wakefield ***** [16 pages] "evil old woman living in remote haunted house tortures a succession of terrified maids into madness and death by pretending to be unaware of the ghostly manifestations" [R] 12. 'The Lips' (1929) by Henry S. Whitehead ***** [13 pages] "sadistic captain of slave ship falls foul of hideous voodoo curse after being bitten on the neck by vengeful negress" [R2] 13. 'A Piece Of Linoleum' (1933) by David H. Keller ***** [4 pages] "brutally hen-pecked husband is driven to suicide by battle axe wife but all she cares about is the mess he left behind" [R] 14. 'The Seed From The Sepulchre' (1933) by Clark Ashton Smith ***** [12 pages] "explorers in South American jungle discover ancient monument infested with insidious species of man-eating plant with hypnotic scent" [R] 15. 'Canavan's Back Yard' (1958) by Joseph Payne Brennan ***** [12 pages] "concerned friend seeks explanation for an inexplicable vanishing in densely overgrown back yard that seems to go on forever" [R] 16. 'The Shuttered Room' (1959) by H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth *** [33 pages] "inheritor of remote New England farm investigates mystery of locked room with instructions never to open that he foolishly disregards releasing monstrous inhabitant" [R3] 1st: 'The Feasting Dead' (1954) by John Metcalfe. 2nd: 'Canavan's Back Yard' (1958) by Joseph Payne Brennan. 3rd: 'The Seed From The Sepulchre' (1933) by Clark Ashton Smith. Wooden Spoon: 'The Shuttered Room' (1959) by H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth. 12/16 perfect scores = 75% 75 out of a possible 80 *'s = 94% => ***** overall. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
>>> 8. 'Sweets To The Sweet' (1947) by Robert Bloch ***** [9 pages] "creepy little girl causes the horrible death of her hated father by witchcraft using a figure of him made from candy" Was that one the inspiration for one of the segments in Amicus' "The House That Dripped Blood"? (think I've got the right Amicus film there - it was the one where Christopher Lee plays the doomed father) >>> 16. 'The Shuttered Room' (1959) by H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth *** [33 pages] "inheritor of remote New England farm investigates mystery of locked room with instructions never to open that he foolishly disregards releasing monstrous inhabitant" And that one, I believe, was made into a rarely seen, but nicely creepy, film starring Oliver Reed. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
Probably the only Lovecraft-inspired film I've never seen. I wonder to what extent it takes its cue from the Lovecraft/Derleth 'collaboration'. Not a bad story, as Derleth collaborations go. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.225 |
It's one of the better Lovecraft/Derleth collaborations, I agree, but still suffers from the repetitiveness and lack of originality of all Derleth's completions of the master's fragments. I'd much rather read just the bare bones of Lovecraft's input into the story and let my imagination do the rest. Derleth's intentions were in the right place but his enthusiasm for the material got the better of him I fear. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.225 |
Caroline, Robert Bloch seems to have been responsible for quite a few of the Amicus segments as I'm discovering in my viewing of the wonderful 'Boris Karloff's Thriller' (1960-62) where they were often first adapted by himself. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.153 |
This was another representative and entertaining later Pan antho - the last to be edited by the founder of the immortal series: 'The 25th Pan Book Of Horror Stories' (1983) edited by Herbert Van Thal [R2] 1. 'Baby's Blood' (1983) by Alan Ryan **** [11 pages] "supervisor of shopping centre creche secretly extracts the babies' blood to make his own brand of popular alcoholic drink" [R2] 2. 'Upon Reflection' (1983) by Terry Jeeves ** [5 pages] "wandering warrior in mythical times seeks out ancient tomb said to contain fabulous treasure but reckons without its demonic guardian" [R2] 3. 'Josie Comes To Stay' (1983) by J.I. Crown *** [20 pages] "scheming local beauty marries wily old farmer hoping to steal his hidden fortune but their battle of wits ends in a grisly comeuppance for both of them" [R2] 4. 'Just One Of The Family' (1983) by Norman P. Kaufman *** [16 pages] "reclusive misanthrope who mistrusts doctors decides to operate on himself on being told he has a parasitic twin growing within him" [R2] 5. 'Job Centres Are Less Dangerous' (1983) by Curt Pater ***** [12 pages] "four unemployed youths approach local warlock asking him to find them jobs by witchcraft but for each of them there is a terrible price to pay" [R2] 6. 'Let's Do Something Naughty' (1983) by Alan W. Lear ***** [12 pages] "family with young children move into old house and fall prey to possessing spirits of notorious satanic lovers who practiced their evil deeds there" [R2] 7. 'Grave Business' (1983) by Christina Kiplinger *** [2 pages] "demented gravedigger digs up corpses of just buried beautiful women for private romantic meal followed by violent necrophilia" [R2] 8. 'Onawa' (1983) by Alan Ryan **** [8 pages] "kindly couple of early American settlers take in abandoned little native girl unaware she is a vampiric creature" [R2] 9. 'The Architect's Story' (1983) by Ian C. Strachan ***** [14 pages] "architect surveying derelict old house that belonged to reclusive occultist finds antique mirror that reveals his satanic undead presence" [R2] 10. 'The Boogeyman' (1976) by Stephen King ***** [12 pages] "unstable father of children who died mysteriously in their own bedrooms insists to psychiatrist it was the work of the closet boogeyman" [R3] 11. 'Tell Mommy What Happened' (1983) by Alan Ryan **** [10 pages] "couple grow fearful of their strange little boy's relationship with an imaginary friend who warns him when bad things are going to happen to the family" [R2] 12. 'The Squatters' (1983) by Carl Shiffman ***** [10 pages] "vagrant couple set up comfortable squat in abandoned country house but fall foul of the hideous spectre of a drowned suicide victim" [R2] 13. 'The Woman In The Room' (1976) by Stephen King ***** [14 pages] "tortured son battles with his conscience and his courage as to whether to put his painfully dying old mother out of her misery" [R3] 14. 'Black Silk' (1983) by Barbara-Jane Crossley *** [5 pages] "rich fashion mogul falls in love with mysterious designer who specialises in black silk but she turns out to be a shapeshifting spider woman" [R2] 1st: 'The Architect's Story' (1983) by Ian C. Strachan. 2nd: 'The Boogeyman' (1976) by Stephen King. 3rd: 'The Squatters' (1983) by Carl Shiffman. Wooden Spoon: 'Upon Reflection' (1983) by Terry Jeeves. 6/14 perfect scores = 43% 56 out of a possible 70 *'s = 80% => **** overall. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.153 |
I remember seeing 'The Shuttered Room' (1967) on TV one night when I was a teenager but cannot recall any inclusion of the more monstrous Cthulhu Mythos elements of the story. I think it was watered down into a more mainstream tale of witchcraft and dark family secrets. It was directed by David Greene and starred Gig Young, Carol Lynley, Oliver Reed and Flora Robson and was nicely atmospheric without being particularly Lovecraftian. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.153 |
This was another extremely entertaining entry in the Fontana Tales Of Terror series that even just pipped the great Outer Space antho: 'Sea Tales Of Terror' (1974) edited by J.J. Strating [R] 1. 'A Descent Into The Maelström' (1841) by Edgar Allan Poe ***** [18 pages] "two brothers out sailing find themselves caught in freak storm and helplessly sucked down by gigantic monster whirlpool" [R3] 2. 'The Devil's Rescue' (1940) by L. Ron Hubbard ***** [18 pages] "lone survivor of shipwreck is picked up by ghost ship manned by souls of the damned but bargains with the Devil that he does not belong there" [R] 3. 'The Captain Of The Polestar' (1883) by Arthur Conan Doyle ***** [25 pages] "frightened sea captain of polar vessel is remorselessly followed by weird vampiric entity seen out on the ice" [R] 4. 'Man Overboard' (1895) by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez ***** [5 pages] "poor fisherman falls overboard unseen by his crewmates and suffers a lonely terrifying death by slow drowning" [R] 5. 'South Sea Bubble' (1973) by Hammond Innes **** [8 pages] "intrepid new owner of one man yacht found drifting abandoned witnesses ghostly reenactment of the violent tragedy behind the mystery" [R] 6. 'Stowaway' (1974) by Claire D. Pollexfen *** [8 pages] "fugitive jewel thief and murderer stows away in anchor chain locker of ship to escape London but comes to horrible end when they set sail" [R] 7. 'Fog' (1931) by James Hanley **** [8 pages] "terrified sailor awakens to find himself seemingly alone on deserted ship in impenetrable fogbank without any explanation" [R] 8. 'Posted Missing' (1923) by Bill Adams ***** [14 pages] "hysterical murderous mutiny breaks out on old sailing ship with polluted water supply and infested by starving rats" [R] 9. 'I Have Been Drowned' (1945) by Tom Hopkinson ***** [12 pages] "stubborn yachtsman whom gypsy predicted would die by drowning tempts fate by forcing unwilling crewmate into insane race in dangerous conditions" [R] 10. 'The Story Of The Haunted Ship' (1826) by Wilhelm Hauff ***** [10 pages] "master and servant survivors of shipwreck manage to board drifting vessel littered with bloody corpses that rise as undead crew when darkness falls" [R] 11. 'The Fisherman Of Falcon Point' (1959) by H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth *** [5 pages] "reclusive New England fisherman catches strange mermaid like creature in his net and enters into a monstrous pact with her" [R] 12. 'The Recall' (1934) by Elinor Mordaunt **** [12 pages] "morbid young islander with obsessive fear of the sea relives horrible death as a galley slave in former life with tragic results in the present" [R] 13. 'Markland The Hunter' (1974) by R. Chetwynd-Hayes **** [21 pages] "daughter of cruel preacher in puritanical fishing town prays for deliverance from the sea and is answered by demonic sea captain and his monstrous crew" [R] 14. 'The Death Of The Sea' (1964) by José Maria Gironella ***** [14 pages] "father and son lighthouse keepers are the first to witness the encroaching inexplicable petrification of the surrounding sea" [R] 1st: 'The Captain Of The Polestar' (1883) by Arthur Conan Doyle. 2nd: 'A Descent Into The Maelström' (1841) by Edgar Allan Poe. 3rd: 'The Death Of The Sea' (1964) by José Maria Gironella. Wooden Spoon: 'The Fisherman Of Falcon Point' (1959) by H.P. Lovecraft & August Derleth. 8/14 perfect scores = 57% 62 out of a possible 70 *'s = 89% => ***** overall. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.175 |
The second of an excellent pair of horror anthologies by Hugh Lamb that sadly didn't result in the long running series he had hoped for and that the nice mix of obscure old and all new stories deserved: 'The 2nd Star Book Of Horror' (1976) edited by Hugh Lamb [R] 1. 'The Ultimate Thrill' (1947) by Oswell Blakeston *** [3 pages] "jaded young rich kid seeking thrills is introduced to secret society of wealthy sadists who pay to fish for alligators with live babies" [R] 2. 'Edifice Complex' (1958) by Robert Bloch **** [12 pages] "space criminal kidnaps young woman to barter her with primitive aliens on desert planet for fortune in diamonds but appearances aren't what they seem" [R] 3. 'Into Outer Darkness' (1939) by H.R. Wakefield **** [9 pages] "hard headed sceptic dares renowned psychic friend to spend night in notorious haunted mansion with him with tragic results" [R] 4. 'The Field Of Blood' (1976) by John Blackburn **** [5 pages] "group of lunatics in asylum who each believe they are a great evil man from history do what must be done when Jesus Christ is admitted to their ward" [R] 5. 'The Death Of Halpin Frayser' (1893) by Ambrose Bierce ***** [17 pages] "poet living as hermit in mountains falls prey to guilt at abandoning overbearing sickly mother and is visited by her terrifying spectre" [R] 6. 'The Crimson Plague' (1926) by C.D. Pamely ***** [7 pages] "crew of 18th century cargo vessel caught in the weeds of Sargasso Sea succumb one-by-one to demonic possession and a hideously bloody death" [R] 7. 'Marlston Water' (1976) by Joy Burnett **** [7 pages] "two friends holidaying in country are intrigued by legend of shunned lake that draws people to their death and one of them gradually succumbs" [R] 8. 'Murderers' Corner' (1934) by Charles Duff *** [6 pages] "foreman in charge of demolishing notorious Irish prison stays the night there when terrified workers down tools after one goes mad and another vanishes" [R] 9. 'Laocoön' (1926) by Bassett Morgan *** [13 pages] "scientist travels to remote tropical island to work with his great mentor who has captured a live sea serpent and transplanted a man's brain into it" [R] 10. 'One, Two, Buckle My Shoe' (1951) by Nugent Barker ***** [12 pages] "walker on moors seeks shelter at old house with demonic occupant and is made to re enact her bloody murder and its nightmarish aftermath" [R] 11. 'The Man Who Photographed Beardsley' (1976) by Brian Lumley **** [7 pages] "artistic photographer obsessed with recreating the macabre drawings of Aubrey Beardsley descends into homicidal madness" [R] 12. 'Compartment 1313A' (1976) by A. Erskine Ellis ***** [15 pages] "train compartment is ordered to be kept locked and unused following a number of deaths and a ghastly haunting" [R] 13. 'Baby' (1976) by Ramsey Campbell ***** [20 pages] "murderer of sinister bag lady who was always wheeling a battered old covered pram is remorselessly stalked by its demonic occupant" [R] 14. 'The Wrong Turning' (1907) by Richard Middleton **** [6 pages] "traveller inadvertently returns to country woman he abandoned pregnant with his child but she spurns him and exacts terrible cold blooded revenge" [R] 15. 'Podolo' (1924) by L.P. Hartley ***** [11 pages] "English couple holidaying in Venice unwisely set out by gondola to visit a shunned island that hides a monstrous inhabitant" [R] 1st: 'One, Two, Buckle My Shoe' (1951) by Nugent Barker. 2nd: 'The Death Of Halpin Frayser' (1893) by Ambrose Bierce. 3rd: 'The Crimson Plague' (1926) by C.D. Pamely. Wooden Spoon: 'Laocoön' (1926) by Bassett Morgan. 6/15 perfect scores = 40% 63 out of a possible 75 *'s = 84% => ***** overall. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Des - Finnegans Wake, yeah, read that. But I understood little, on my own. It gets a bit more lucid towards the end, but it's about the most difficult artistic work in English (?—can we even say this is in English?) to read. Alas, there's too many other monumental books I've neglected that I must get to, before I do this one again.... So many of those authors I'm so unfamiliar with, Stevie. And so many of those stories, too. Me, I just read Ted Sturgeon's "It" (1940): a shambling man-shaped mound of muck becomes sentient, and wanders through the forest, completely destroying whatever it comes in contact with. A far more intelligent, engaging, poignant story than that horror-genre (and yes, it most certainly is horror) logline conveys: a short novella, it nevertheless packs all the rise and fall of a full novel. In fact, "It" reads 50 years ahead of its time, like a modern prose screenplay. I'm late to the party in realizing just how brilliant a writer Sturgeon was.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.175 |
That's the joy of reading old horror anthologies, Craig. It's like delving into a bottomless mineshaft of literary riches. Yeah, there are duds we have to chip past but the precious gems we find are worth all the effort. I'm completely hooked again on the short horror form. As a guideline to my tastes; of all the anthos I've listed on this page up to now the single best horror story I would select is 'One, Two, Buckle My Shoe' (1951) by Nugent Barker, which just fractionally pips 'Sticks' (1974) by Karl Edward Wagner. Before a few months ago I had read neither of them before! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.183 |
Talking of Theodore Sturgeon. I have one of his novels unfinished at the minute - 'Venus Plus X' (1960)! I kind of got sidetracked from it due to recent events and must dig it out again. I was about a third through and it was just opening up into an intriguing dystopian nightmare that imagines a future human race devoid of gender and sex. The very idea!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.183 |
Anyone here heard of J.M. Thornton? I just read a brilliant horror story by him that was probably inspired by, and, to me, is worthy of J.G. Ballard, called "Death By Autophilia", in the 28th Pan. A real jewel of psychological horror that one can imagine really happening to some poor sod out there. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 213.106.77.123 |
Just read it, Stevie - a strong piece, and I see what you mean by the Ballard reference. Not as stylish as J.G., but has his spirit. Interestingly, the story appears under the byline 'J.M Thornton', but the Contents and Acknowledgements pages both give the author's name as 'Jay Wilde'. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.183 |
Simon, read the next one! It's another absolute classic, imo. Ballard is one of the ten best writers of the 20th century so that story couldn't possibly have been as stylish or well written but, I contend, it successfully translated the horror of 'Crash' into a more emotionally palatable form for the general reader. And without any recourse to sex! Both stories are ultimately about grief and the insularity that being encased within our own car brings. I don't drive, btw, but this story communicated perfectly to me the comfort of being in one's own car. I'd call it a masterpiece of psychological horror. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.183 |
Just been thinking again about Ambrose Bierce story, "The Death Of Halpin Frayser" (1893). An overly sensitive artistic soul flees the cloying domestic duties that are stifling him but is literally haunted to death by what he left behind. It almost reads like a suicide note. "There is some rascally mystery here." Indeed! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.183 |
This was easily the strongest of the later Pan anthos being up to the standard of any of the early ones, imho. 'The 24th Pan Book Of Horror Stories' (1982) edited by Herbert Van Thal [R2] 1. 'The Moment Of Death' (1982) by Ken Alden *** [9 pages] "doctor makes bargain with prisoner awaiting the guillotine for him to test how long the head remains alive after being severed" [R2] 2. 'Obsession' (1982) by Miranda Seymour **** [15 pages] "art dealer purchases antique mirror and falls in love with the ghost of a woman he sees in it but obsessive jealousy gets the better of him" [R2] 3. 'Gypsy Candle' (1982) by Alan Temperley ***** [23 pages] "little girl is given weird candle by old gypsy woman that when lit conjures monstrous killer bear demon from the smoke" [R2] 4. 'Woodrow Wilson's Neck-Tie' (1979) by Patricia Highsmith ***** [15 pages] "insane young man murders his colleagues at wax museum and swaps figures for their posed corpses as a 'hilarious' joke on the public" [R2] 5. 'The Golden Teddy Bear' (1982) by Philip Sidney Jennings **** [9 pages] "obsessively fastidious shopkeeper drives her mild mannered colleague into homicidal madness over a display of teddy bears" [R2] 6. 'The Landlady' (1959) by Roald Dahl ***** [10 pages] "young man seeking lodgings books into guest house of eccentric old woman with an unusual hobby and he never leaves" [R3] 7. 'Love On The Farm' (1982) by Alan Temperley ***** [57 pages] "sexual relationship of arrogant young drifter with jealous older spinster who loves him descends into mutually destructive bizarre sex, mutilation, rape and murder" [R2] 8. 'Twisted Ash' (1982) by Tom Cunniff ***** [14 pages] "couple move into country house and unwisely use the wood from a felled hanging tree to line the study walls with nightmarish results" [R2] 1st: 'The Landlady' (1959) by Roald Dahl. 2nd: 'Love On The Farm' (1982) by Alan Temperley. 3rd: 'Woodrow Wilson's Neck-Tie' (1979) by Patricia Highsmith. Wooden Spoon: 'The Moment Of Death' (1982) by Ken Alden. 5/8 perfect scores = 63% 36 out of a possible 40 *'s = 90% => ***** overall. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I had just read "The Landlady," a couple months back, in Dahl's collection Kiss Kiss—good story. Great writer. Goes without saying, but... I did. Stevie—where does the "wooden spoon" come from? Is this a reference to something, or something you invented? Re-reading Budrys' "Master of the Hounds" (1966), and that will do it for this HItchock anthology... except for the novel that closes it, Wyndham's Out of the Deeps (The Kraken Wakes) (1966). Has anyone here read that novel? Is it worth my time? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.183 |
The wooden spoon is awarded to whoever comes last in a race, Craig. Kind of a booby prize. Doesn't always mean the story is rubbish but just the weakest (imo) in that particular collection. It's a little game I play. I am a huge John Wyndham fan and 'The Kraken Wakes' (1953) has long been my favourite novel of his! It's one of the most bleak and nightmarish alien invasion stories ever written and has haunted me since first reading it as a teenager. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.183 |
Weird that they included such a long and very fine novel in a horror anthology. It is extremely horrifying though. The human race is literally swatted away and this time not even the common cold can save them. Wonderful book!! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Okay, guess I'll be reading that one soon, Stevie. Thanks. But I'm still, like you, enjoying the short stories—I'd like to range around for another one. Let's see, let's see.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.94 |
Read whatever feels right to read for you at whatever particular moment in your life you find yourself in, my friend. I wasn't saying you MUST read 'The Kraken Wakes' or I'll fall out with you and take it as some kind of a paranoid personal insult (unlike some I could mention, who shall remain nameless and forever aloof, Marc!) but rather that it is one of my personal favourite genre novels. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Oh no, I know Stevie—like you I'm sure, the TBR pile is larger than time and energy permits (there's so much I have and want to read in my apartment alone: will I ever get to it all?!) And so much of AFH's anthology was so good, I can only see Wyndham's novel as the fitting climax.... As to Weber, who knows? Maybe he's going through some personal issues, stresses. It happens to us all, and our patience wears thin, and the tiniest things can set it off. We'll give him space and time. I'm sure if he realized people here weren't his enemies, but his friends, he'd return soon enough. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
Kraken is a good read, Craig. Just don't expect anything along the lines of Midwich Cuckoos, Triffids or Chrysalids. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.94 |
I always found the aliens in TKW to be truly frightening in their weird otherworldliness and what they were capable of doing. Wyndham took the basic idea of Wells' 'The War Of The Worlds' (1898) and took it to the extreme, giving us no get out clause. It and 'The Midwich Cuckoos' (1957) are the closest he came to pure horror. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.94 |
At first glance it may appear puzzling that Van Thal suddenly saw fit to include a story by Roald Dahl, from 1959, in the 24th Pan but a little thought provides the obvious explanation. At that time the mighty Roald had become a TV celebrity, due to the excellent 'Tales Of The Unexpected' (1979-88), perhaps the best half hour show of its kind since the glory days of 'Alfred Hitchcock Presents' (1955-65), and both series had successfully dramatised the unforgettable story, "The Landlady". The editor was playing to the public in his story selection and introducing a whole new generation to Dahl's often overlooked adult tales of terror. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.94 |
This 28th Pan is turning into something of a classic! The story "All Souls" by Rebecca Bradley just scared the crap out of me. It reads like a modern day nightmarish fairy-tale. Truly horrible!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.94 |
Just finished it and the last story was another well written joy of unrelenting horror. Now for... wait for it., yes... 'Dark Forces' (1980) edited by Kirby McCauley! I've never read this anthology before but know well its reputation. Do your worst, Kirby!! | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 90.244.39.89 |
Currently rereading the Charles L Grant section of Night Visions: In the Blood. | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 92.8.27.67 |
Just coming late to the discussion of The Shuttered Room - yes, the film dispensed with the Mythos, I'm afraid. The first-person viewpoint of the monster leads us to expect something worse than a madwoman in the attic, which is all we get. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
Pity. I saw some extracts on Youtube which looked pretty intense. The idea of keeping a mad relative uner lock and key in a basement, attic or secret compartment was not unusual in New England and may have inspired Lovecraft to fantasise about miscegenation and monstrousness in the first place. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 94.0.168.119 |
My problem with that movie was that when you have Oliver Reed playing a potential rapist any other threat pales in comparison. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
I watched Gladiator again the other night and paid more attention to the Reed character this time around. That bullet-like menace is still there. I love him in The Brood as well; the scenes with Samantha Haggar are electrifying. Magnificent actor. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.191 |
Couldn't agree more! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.136 |
'Welsh Tales Of Terror' (1973) edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes [R] 1. 'Jordan' (1971) by Glyn Jones ***** [14 pages] "trio of roguish vagrants trick demonic black magician by delivery of fake corpse for money and he exacts a nightmarish revenge" [R] 2. 'A Cry Of Children' (1969) by John Christopher **** [17 pages] "doctor staying in house of children's author is haunted by sound of crying children and discovers that he and his wife murdered their own" [R] 3. 'The Shining Pyramid' (1895) by Arthur Machen ***** [25 pages] "two friends investigating disappearance of local girl in Welsh hills and weird symbols appearing on wall discover they were the work of a malign race of little people" [R] 4. 'Animals Or Human Beings?' (1955) by Angus Wilson *** [6 pages] "new maid arrives at house of eccentric old animal lover and is horrified when her 'babies' turn out to be a roomful of vicious rats" [R] 5. 'The Morgan Trust' (1961) by Richard Bridgeman **** [14 pages] "Englishman holidaying in Wales stumbles upon ghostly village of eternal happiness and stays on in the area hoping to someday gain residency" [R] 6. 'Water Horses And Spirits Of The Mist' (1909) by Marie Trevelyan *** [12 pages] "storyteller relates various legends of the water horses and other supernatural beings that are said to haunt the Welsh countryside" [R] 7. 'Be This Her Memorial' (1915) by Caradoc Evans ***** [6 pages] "lonely old woman discovers God after listening to charismatic preacher and descends into self-harming religious mania with horrific results" [R] 8. 'The Lost Gold Mine' (1973) by Hazel F. Looker **** [10 pages] "Englishman holidaying in Wales is drawn by legend of lost gold mine that ghostly pit ponies are said to lead the way to" [R] 9. 'Mrs Jones' (1973) by Dorothy K. Haynes *** [7 pages] "two little girls come across magical cave at the beach in which an old woman abducted by the fairies is forced to bake for them without end" [R] 10. 'The Reverend John Jones And The Ghostly Horseman' (1966) by Ronald Seth *** [8 pages] "clergyman travelling on horseback is saved from attack by cut-throat vagrant by the appearance of a ghostly horseman at his side" [R] 11. 'Cadi Hughes' (1937) by Glyn Jones **** [6 pages] "loyal wife tending husband dying from gangrenous leg attempts to bargain with Death himself when he comes to collect the man's soul" [R] 12. 'Black Goddess' (1966) by Jack Griffith ***** [17 pages] "group of miners trapped by cave-in succumb to terror of asphyxiation while one of them descends into superstitious madness" [R] 13. 'The Stranger' (1923) by Richard Hughes ***** [9 pages] "kindly clergyman and his wife take in lost little horned demon found on doorstep and care for it out of Christian charity despite the risk to their souls" [R] 14. 'Lord Dunwilliam And The Cwn Annwn' (1973) by R. Chetwynd-Hayes **** [22 pages] "tyrannical Lord falls foul of ancient demonic hunter and his hellhounds by trying to lay claim to beautiful peasant girl who has accepted the thing as her lover" [R] 1st: 'The Shining Pyramid' (1895) by Arthur Machen. 2nd: 'Jordan' (1971) by Glyn Jones. 3rd: 'Black Goddess' (1966) by Jack Griffith. Wooden Spoon: 'Water Horses And Spirits Of The Mist' (1909) by Marie Trevelyan. 5/14 perfect scores = 36% 57 out of a possible 70 *'s = 81% => ***** overall. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 90.244.37.163 |
Finally got round to buying a copy of The Penguin Encyclopaedia of Horror and the Supernatural. Been meaning to get a copy for years. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
Is it a new printing? My copy is from from 1986. One of the better reference works. Outdated as it is it always manages to surprise me. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.140.8 |
This was another absolute classic of an anthology: 'The 1st Star Book Of Horror' (1975) edited by Hugh Lamb [R] 1. 'Drink To Me Only' (1975) by John Blackburn **** [10 pages] "string of deaths and misfortunes of their enemies convinces businessman his sister partner has the Evil Eye and he grows to fear her" [R] 2. 'The Head Of Wu-Fang' (1933) by Don C. Wiley ***** [15 pages] "Chinese bandits who tortured ancient mandarin for his secret of eternal life succumb one-by-one to his hideous dying curse" [R] 3. 'Lot 87' (1975) by Joy Burnett **** [6 pages] "man purchases painting of exotic orchid at auction and becomes obsessed with a detail of a spider that seems to move and grow with each viewing" [R] 4. 'Punch And Judy' (1948) by Frederick Cowles ***** [9 pages] "Punch and Judy man is haunted into alcoholism, madness and suicide by gruesome spectres of sailor and dog he had murdered" [R] 5. 'Waiting For Trains' (1968) by Charles Birkin ***** [18 pages] "British lieutenant is haunted by his inability to save German POWs from execution by the Russians at end of Second World War" [R] 6. 'Run Through' (1975) by Ramsey Campbell **** [6 pages] "man holidaying in country cottage explores near-by wood and is terrified into disoriented madness by demonic thing rising from ancient pit" [R] 7. 'The Thing In The Hall' (1912) by E.F. Benson ***** [14 pages] "amateur dabbler in spiritualist phenomena falls foul of monstrous elemental entity he inadvertently summons from the other side" [R3] 8. 'The Trunk' (1932) by Philip Murray **** [3 pages] "terrified old woman begs nephew to burn antique trunk on her death and on investigating he finds it haunted by a bloody history" [R] 9. 'This House Is Evil' (1975) by Robert Haining ***** [15 pages] "walker enters abandoned old house populated by weird clockwork figures arranged in reenactment of a tragic murder and execution" [R] 10. 'Untouchable' (1962) by Robert Bloch **** [8 pages] "bullishly racist white guest of Indian nobleman is tricked into a ghastly revenge by being tempted to rape the wrong victim" [R] 11. 'Now Wakes The Sea' (1962) by J.G. Ballard ***** [12 pages] "wife fears for husband's sanity as each night he is obsessively haunted by visions of the town inundated by ghostly prehistoric sea" [R] 12. 'A Christmas Game' (1949) by A.N.L. Munby ***** [11 pages] "grisly revenge from beyond the grave during macabre game in the dark on brutal colonial administrator who had a Maori prisoner blinded" [R] 13. 'Hands' (1944) by John Keir Cross ***** [21 pages] "kind hearted conscientious schoolteacher is driven into homicidal madness and mutilation by his hatred of tyrannical headmaster" [R] 1st: 'Now Wakes The Sea' (1962) by J.G. Ballard. 2nd: 'The Thing In The Hall' (1912) by E.F. Benson. 3rd: 'Hands' (1944) by John Keir Cross Wooden Spoon: 'The Trunk' (1932) by Philip Murray - and even it was very good! 8/13 perfect scores = 62% 60 out of a possible 65 *'s = 92% => ***** overall. | ||
| Stu (Stu) Username: Stu Registered: 04-2008 Posted From: 90.244.35.183 |
Hubert, not a reprint I'm afraid. Just a secondhand copy. One of those books I've always meant to buy but never got round to until now. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
I've just been introduced to another "new" (to me) author. That nice Dave Sutton at Shadow Publishing has released an affordable paperback version of L.A. Lewis' "Tales of the Grotesque: A Collection of Uneasy Tales". Got my copy yesterday and couldn't wait to see what it was like, so I read a couple of stories before bed last night. Perhaps not a good time to read this book ... if you don't want nightmares! Really good creepy stuff. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.129.38.214 |
I am also also reading this collection of LA Lewis stories, Caroline. I agree they are highly horrific. I am reviewing them here: http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/02/14/tales-of-the-grotesque-by-l-a-lew is/ | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
I won't read your RTR yet, Des .. not until I've finished reading it. I know you tend not to give spoilers anyway, but I want to come to the stories completely fresh and new. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.237 |
'The 23rd Pan Book Of Horror Stories' (1981) edited by Herbert Van Thal [R2] 1. 'The Sleeping Prince' (1981) by Angus Gellatly **** [13 pages] "unstable nurse falls in love with handsome coma victim but is driven into homicidal madness by his inevitable rejection on waking" [R2] 2. 'Dengué Fever' (1977) by Paul Theroux ***** [11 pages] "white dengué fever victim suffers horrific hallucinations that turn out to be ghostly visions of Chinese torture and execution victims of the Japanese during wartime" [R2] 3. 'You Can't Be Too Careful' (1976) by Ruth Rendell ***** [14 pages] "unstable young woman's obsessive paranoia about locking up due to groundless fear of faceless male intruders ends in tragedy" [R2] 4. 'A Rhyme' (1981) by Elizabeth Naden-Borland **** [3 pages] "rhyming serial killer of women recites poem about his latest victim butchered in a train compartment" [R2] 5. 'Fat Old Women Who Wear Fur Coats' (1981) by Harry E. Turner **** [3 pages] "Englishman holidaying in Brussels politely ignores the 'mercy killing' of a fat old blind woman as her loving husband feeds her pastries until she drops dead" [R2] 6. 'Daughter Of The House' (1981) by Heather Vineham *** [12 pages] "driver of broken down car approaches remote house of old woman and discovers her daughter is kept locked in the attic due to having two heads" [R2] 7. 'Dr Dichter And The Terminal Cosmetic' (1981) by Jane Louie **** [6 pages] "plastic surgeon marries unattractive young woman and transforms her into a stunning beauty but for her one flaw of never shutting up" [R2] 8. 'Foster Parents' (1981) by Gregory Alexander *** [11 pages] "elderly couple living in the mountains find abandoned baby with wings and raise it as their own son but it grows into carnivorous hawk man" [R2] 9. 'A Backwards Shadow' (1981) by Rosemary Timperley **** [6 pages] "woman haunted by sounds of a child in distress in the flat above her where no child lives finds out too late it was a premonition of future tragedy" [R2] 10. 'Chance Governs All' (1981) by W.S. Rearden **** [14 pages] "Englishman on fishing holiday in Ireland encounters ghost of notorious IRA man the seeing of whom always presages death for the hated 'enemy' intruder" [R2] 11. 'The Dogs' (1981) by Alex White *** [15 pages] "itinerant old woman cons her way into reclusive misanthrope's house as cleaner unaware he is a psychopathic sadist who loves his vicious dogs more than people" [R2] 12. 'Rightfully Mine' (1981) by Norman P. Kaufman **** '" [14 pages] "decades after the War unsuspected Nazi war criminal undergoes heart transplant and is haunted to death by teenage girl it came from" [R2] 13. 'Kowlongo Plaything' (1981) by Alan Temperley ***** [30 pages] "white brother and sister in African colony are subjected to unimaginably grotesque ordeal of sexual humiliation, cruelty and mutilation by despotic General they had offended" [R2] 1st: 'Kowlongo Plaything' (1981) by Alan Temperley. 2nd: 'Dengué Fever' (1977) by Paul Theroux. 3rd: 'You Can't Be Too Careful' (1976) by Ruth Rendell. Wooden Spoon: 'The Dogs' (1981) by Alex White. 3/13 perfect scores = 23% 52 out of a possible 65 *'s = 80% => **** overall. | ||
| Huw (Huw) Username: Huw Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 118.166.85.179 |
Stevie, Dark Forces is a hell of an anthology - great stories by Lisa Tuttle, TED Klein, Ramsey Campbell, Joyce Carol Oates, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury and Theodore Sturgeon, among others. I envy you reading it for the first time. Kirby McCauley put together some great collections. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.237 |
Yeah, Huw. You can read my thoughts on his 'Night Chills' (1975) and 'Frights' (1976) above. 'Dark Forces' is a marvellous collection. I'm about a quarter through it and loving every story. | ||
| John Llewellyn Probert (John_l_probert) Username: John_l_probert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.155.64.121 |
Wow, Stevie! KOWLONGO PLAYTHING, widely regarded as one of the most infamous Pan Horrors, gets 1st place from you in Pan 23. Do you know, all those years ago when I was buying the Pans as they came out, this was one of the stories that made me think ithe series had gone too far? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.44.188 |
Exactly, John! Ex-fucking-zactly!! The story has disturbed the fuck out of me since I first read it at the tender age of 16 and hasn't lost any of its revolting power with the years. But I consider Temperley's "Love On The Farm" even more extreme ffs! I wish I could write stories even half as memorably grotesque and yet undeniably well written and impossibly gripping. This isn't torture porn but Graham Greene on acid and crystal meth after a hefty spliff, imho!!!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.58.47 |
But I think his best story is probably "Pebbledene" and would love to see someone turn into a film in the Pete Walker style... perhaps as a homage? I mean look at the likes of 'Martyrs' and 'Antichrist' in recent years and just think of the possibilities!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.52.44 |
Meanwhile... I've just read another instant classic Karl Edward Wagner horror story in 'Dark Forces' called "Where The Summer Ends". In its own exciting way it is as memorable as Klein's "Children Of The Kingdom", imho. I love the physicality of this man's writing and hail him again as the only true heir to the legacy of Robert E. Howard. A masterpiece of visceral horror!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.55.127 |
Okay, you were right, Craig. I've just read the first piece of prose by Joyce Carol Oates it was my pleasure to experience - "The Bingo Master" in 'Dark Forces'- and it completely blew me away by its in-depth personal characterisation. Jesus H. Christ but the spirit of Dostoevesky is alive and well and I think I've just fallen in love again. Patricia, please don't be jealous. Maybe this is just a fleeting infatuation? Right thread! Now marry me you impossibly talented minx!! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Speaking of Twitter—check out Oates' feed, Stevie. I've not been in a bit, but I know in the past she was a constant, like, non-stop Twitter-er. Is there anything she doesn't do way too much of?! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.58 |
What the fuck has Twitter got to do with anything? But thanks for the tip, Craig. Is she, like, single? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
She's, like... 76. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.27.114.151 |
Stevie's love life aside. I've just finished "The Forsyte Saga" and believe me, that is one hell of a novel. Utterly compelling and subtle and revealing as layer on layer of the soul of the Forsyte family is carefully sliced away. A very adult novel, way ahead of its time. Moved onto Quinton S Crisp's "Defeated Dogs" collection. The opener, "Fairy Killer" is a fairy-tale masterpiece that makes "Jonathon Strange" read like Jeffrey Archer. Do you want me to set you up with a date with Joyce Stevie? I'll see what I can do. Cheers Terry | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
But, but, Stevie - I thought I was the only one for you? Anyway, still reading LA Lewis' "Tales of the Grotesque". You know that moment when you find a writer who's new to you and think "Where have you been all my life?" Well, that's what I've been experiencing with this book. 'The Tower of Moab' in particular must be the best story ever written imho. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.74.246 |
Curiously, "The Bingo Master" never worked for me. "Family", on the other hand . . . You'll find it in Datlow & Windling's The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 3 (1990). | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.58 |
You know her, Terry?! Now I'm getting nervous. I have a habit of falling for beautiful minds lol. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.129.38.214 |
Yes, Caroline, I agree about THE TOWER OF MOAB. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Just read your RTRs of the stories I've read so far, Des (I don't want to read your RTRs of the ones I haven't read yet). I *suspect* the story you may have read before and remembered from then might be 'The Child'. I'm sure I've read that somewhere before too - it was lurking at the back of my mind. It must have been in an anthology I've got somewhere. Would love to find out which one. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.129.38.214 |
None of them seem familiar, Caroline , although I'd agree that 'The Child' is the most likely as I now see it was in a Hugh Lamb anthology entitled THE WAVE OF FEAR. I have long divested myself of all my old horror books and I can't recall if I had that one. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Hmmm. I don't remember ever having read that Hugh Lamb anthology. Strange. I wonder where I know "The Child" from..? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.58 |
I'm not at all familiar with this author, you two. Sounds good. Those two Hugh Lamb anthos I read above were exceptionally fine. I loved his mixture of brand new and forgotten old stories. Back then Ramsey Campbell was the new kid on the block! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.58 |
'Scottish Tales Of Terror' (1972) edited by Angus Campbell [R] 1. 'Brown God In The Beginning' (1965) by Angus Stewart ***** [14 pages] "weird teenage loner living on the Scottish coast displays increasingly bizarre and cruel behaviour as he follows instructions from the 'god' that speaks inside his head" [R] 2. 'The Body Snatcher' (1884) by Robert Louis Stevenson ***** [19 pages] "Edinburgh medical student working for Dr Knox uses the crimes of Burke & Hare to cover up his own murder and is haunted by the hideous spectre of the man he had killed and dissected" [R2] 3. 'The Inheritance' (1968) by Simon Pilkington ***** [17 pages] "young man visits his rumoured to be dead old uncle on remote Scottish island that is to be his inheritance and discovers the terrible dark secret of his weird longevity" [R] 4. 'Shona And The Water Horse' (1972) by R. Chetwynd-Hayes *** [18 pages] "one young woman is saved from the Devil's clutches when he descends on her village to take all souls by the intervention of a demonic water horse who wants her for his own" [R] 5. 'The Silver Mirror' (1908) by Arthur Conan Doyle **** [9 pages] "clerk working late witnesses ghostly reenactment of the infamous historical murder of Rizzio in front of Mary Queen of Scots in antique mirror" [R] 6. 'The Horns Of The Bull' (1931) by W.S. Morrison **** [11 pages] "old fisherman relates the legend of the feud between two sorcerer brothers who brought the Isle of the Bull and the Isle of the Lamb to animate life in a fierce sea battle" [R] 7. 'Wandering Willie's Tale' (1824) by Sir Walter Scott ***** [18 pages] "poor peasant who has fallen behind with the rent to his laird due to an unpaid debt is approached by the Devil who takes him to Hell to see the man who owes him the money" [R] 8. 'Consanguinity' (1965) by Ronald Duncan **** [14 pages] "young woman has whirlwind romance and marries soldier on leave from the War but he vanishes after their wedding night and turns out to have been killed in action before they met" [R] 9. 'The House In The Glen' (1955) by John Connell **** [10 pages] "lost driver is given a warm welcome and shelter for the night at remote house of charming family whom he later finds out were all long dead and the house an abandoned wreck" [R] 10. 'The Lovers' (1944) by John Keir Cross ***** [8 pages] "electrician called to make repairs at remote house of old recluse discovers he has had his beloved wife's corpse stuffed and treats it as if she were still alive" [R] 11. 'The Head' (1972) by Dorothy K. Haynes **** [5 pages] "prisoner humiliated in village stocks in mediaeval times goes slowly mad as he 'befriends' the spiked head of an executed traitor opposite him" [R] 12. 'The Lass With The Delicate Air' (1952) by Eileen Bigland ***** [15 pages] "Englishman holidaying in remote Highland cottage falls in love with the beseeching ghost of a beautiful girl who haunts the surrounding hills and he unearths the tragic story of her death" [R] 13. 'Sawney Bean And His Family' (1843) by John Nicholson **** [5 pages] "true story of the infamous Scottish cannibals Sawney Bean and his inbred family and their reign of terror" [R] 14. 'The Brownie Of The Black Haggs' (1828) by James Hogg ***** [15 pages] "cruel Lady who practices witchcraft engages in battle of wits with weird little man she obsessively hates but who seems able to counter her every attack and of whom it is whispered he is not human" [R] 1st: 'The Body Snatcher' (1884) by Robert Louis Stevenson. 2nd: 'Brown God In The Beginning' (1965) by Angus Stewart. 3rd: 'The Inheritance' (1968) by Simon Pilkington. Wooden Spoon: 'Shona And The Water Horse' (1972) by R. Chetwynd-Hayes. 7/14 perfect scores = 50% 62 out of a possible 70 *'s = 89% => ***** overall. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Stevie - LA Lewis' "Tales of the Grotesque" has been republished (is there such a word?) in an affordable paperback by David Sutton at Shadow Publishing. See here: http://www.shadowpublishing.webeasysite.co.uk/shadow7_012.htm He's a between-the-wars, largely-forgotten author (Lewis, I mean, not Dave Sutton). If you love the weird and wonderful, spooky and supernatural (as I know you do), then you'll love this. Honestly, 'The Tower of Moab' will blow you away! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.16 |
Yeah, looked him up and sounds right up my street, Caroline. I think the 1920s-40s was the finest period ever for weird fiction so he's part of an elite group of writers. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.16 |
Looking at many of those Welsh and Scottish 'Tales Of Terror' there is an interesting hinterland where the fairy-tale/folk tale tradition morphed, almost imperceptibly, into the short horror story form of the last 200 years. Stories like; 'Wandering Willie's Tale', 'The Brownie Of The Black Haggs', 'The Stranger', 'The Horns Of The Bull' and 'Cadi Hughes', etc, with their witches, devils, fairies and sorcerers, exist somewhere between the two and show the classic features of both forms of narrative. I would contend that many of the groundbreaking stories of Poe fall into this bracket. The fantasy genre also grew out of oral folk tales but with the attention more on the heroic action and magical elements while horror literature went with the weird and frightening monsters and evil curses they gave us. Interesting to see the merge. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.42 |
Another classic horror anthology, of nice long stories and novellas, that was a worthy follow up to August Derleth's original 1969 collection: 'New Tales Of The Cthulhu Mythos' (1980) edited by Ramsey Campbell [R] 1. 'Crouch End' (1980) by Stephen King ***** [39 pages] "American couple visiting London get lost in Crouch End and wander into an alternate dimension of nightmarish evil" [R] 2. 'The Star Pools' (1980) by A.A. Attanasio ***** [53 pages] "pair of petty criminals on the run from gangsters with fortune in stolen drugs fall foul of black magician and his voodoo cult who plan to conjure Nyarlathotep" [R] 3. 'The Second Wish' (1980) by Brian Lumley ***** [35 pages] "English couple touring Eastern Europe visit shunned ruins and husband unwittingly resurrects mummified corpse of ancient sorceress who sets about seducing him for his soul" [R] 4. 'Dark Awakening' (1980) by Frank Belknap Long **** [18 pages] "boy exploring at the beach with his family finds weird amulet that possesses whoever holds it with the hypnotic call of Cthulhu from the ocean depths" [R] 5. 'Shaft Number 247' (1980) by Basil Copper ***** [38 pages] "far future mine workers on remote planet discover high level cover up of the discovery of nightmarish alien lifeform in one of the tunnels" [R] 6. 'Black Man With A Horn' (1980) by T.E.D. Klein ***** [52 pages] "writer of weird fiction and disciple of Lovecraft discovers truth in the Mythos when he encounters missionary fleeing a monstrous evil from the East that relentlessly stalks him" [R2] 7. 'The Black Tome Of Alsophocus' (1980) by H.P. Lovecraft & Martin S. Warnes **** [12 pages] "dabbler in the occult delves into notorious book of black magic and leaves himself open to possession by the dark god Nyarlathotep" [R] 8. 'Than Curse The Darkness' (1980) by David Drake **** [33 pages] "Victorian adventuress and student of the occult arranges expedition into darkest Africa in search of fabled lost tribe and does battle with monstrous entity they worship" [R] 9. 'The Faces At Pine Dunes' (1980) by Ramsey Campbell ***** [39 pages] "angst-ridden teenage son of eccentric couple who live in travelling caravan discovers the dark secret of his birthright at ancient site he is drawn to in the woods" [R] 1st: 'Black Man With A Horn' (1980) by T.E.D. Klein. 2nd: 'Shaft Number 247' (1980) by Basil Copper. 3rd: 'The Faces At Pine Dunes' (1980) by Ramsey Campbell. Wooden Spoon: 'Than Curse The Darkness' (1980) by David Drake - and even it was a highly entertaining pastiche! 6/9 perfect scores = 67% 42 out of a possible 45 *'s = 93% => ***** overall. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.42 |
Now about to read T.E.D. Klein's "Children Of The Kingdom" (1980) for only the second time ever and I'm unfeasibly excited. He's that type of writer. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 81.165.252.153 |
It's one of those stories one can keep re-reading. Much like a Lovecraft story one discovers something new every time around. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.42 |
Thanks, Hubert. You have just reinvigorated my faith in the RCMB. The only intelligent online forum for discerning horror fans, imho. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.42 |
Half way through it and every word, every sentence is perfection. The pacing, the characterisation, the evocation of New York street life, the sheer amount of detail in his elaboration of the Mythos and the "drip, drip" subtlety with which the supernatural intrudes is any horror reader's dream come true. This is one of the finest and most effective horror novellas ever written and eclipses everything else in this great anthology - including even King's mighty "The Mist". A monumental achievement in the literature of the weird!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.62 |
Just finished it and what elevates this story to the level of genius is its internal logic that still leaves room for multiple readings of what was really going on or not. To me that is the very essence of brilliantly written and convincing horror! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.62 |
Fuck me! That's the best English language horror story since 'Dracula' ffs! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Methinks you are too drunk on the afterglow, Stevie. "Children of the Kingdom" is indeed great, but the best since Dracula?... Let's just chalk up as a simple error in calculation, the fact that the very next year (after Stoker's novel appears) we have James' "The Turn of the Screw" (1898). For the truly sublime in horror, we still have (post Dracula): Blackwood's "The Willows" (1907); various entries by Lovecraft; Collier's "Bird of Prey" (1941); Bradbury's "The Next in Line" (1947); Jackson's "The Lottery" (1948); King's The Shining (1980); etc.... And then White's "The Troll" (1935), Leiber's "Smoke Ghost" (1941), Wagner's "Sticks" (1974), Aickman's "The Hospice" (1975), Ramsey's "The Companion" (1976), Tuttle's "The Horse Lord" (1977), Simmons' Song of Kali (1985), Barker's "The Forbidden" (1985), and more here, too, all are rightfully elbowing for room up at the top. No, Stevie, you're passingly drunk on the admittedly superb writer Klein, like you got infatuated with Oates... resist, man! Resist the mad urge you have to hyperbolize! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.236 |
You're right, of course, Craig. But hyperbole is only my way of making love to the universe. TIHR for "that I have read" or maybe IME for "in my experience" should perhaps join IMO in common usage? Believe it or not I have yet to read; "The Willows", "Bird Of Prey", "Smoke Ghost", "The Hospice", "The Horse Lord" or 'Song Of Kali'! Life is good!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.236 |
You're right, of course, Craig. But hyperbole is only my way of making love to the universe. TIHR for "that I have read" or maybe IME for "in my experience" should perhaps join IMO in common usage? Believe it or not I have yet to read; "The Willows", "Bird Of Prey", "Smoke Ghost", "The Hospice", "The Horse Lord" or 'Song Of Kali'! Life is good!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.236 |
So good I thought I'd say it twice ffs. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.236 |
Although I stand by my declaration that "Children Of The Kingdom" is as close to perfection as the horror novella has ever come, IME. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Hmmm... the horror novella... well, we still have Bradbury's "The Next In Line," for that category, and I'd have to say it's finer—more perfect? Not necessarily. Is "Turn of the Screw" a novella? Or just a very short novel? Morrell's "Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity" (1988) is a phenomenal horror novella, and I'd say I liked it better. As for better-ers—Klein alone, "Petey" and "The Events at Poroth Farm" I think somewhat edge out "Children." In the end, it all boils down to taste, I suppose.... So you've not read those works I listed?!? Holy God, we're all gonna need boxes of Kleenex here, when you finally get to them! But me too, Stevie, I've missed out on a lot of work I should have read by now. For example: Hammett's The Glass Key (1931)... which I'm now 1/3 of the way through, and loving every bit of it! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.236 |
This was one of the weaker later Pans but still gruesomely entertaining in its own way: 'The 22nd Pan Book Of Horror Stories' (1980) edited by Herbert Van Thal [R2] 1. 'The Girl With The Violet Eyes' (1980) by Elsie Karbacz **** [19 pages] "grieving couple adopt little girl who reminds them of their dead daughter but the child falls under the influence of her malicious ghost as an 'imaginary friend'" [R2] 2. 'Pond Weed' (1980) by Roger Clarke ***** [5 pages] "boy fishing in pond notorious for drownings falls foul of the undead skeletal corpse that waits under the weeds for victims to drag down" [R2] 3. 'Child Of Ice' (1980) by Tony Richards *** [10 pages] "woman in labour trapped alone in her car in a snowdrift battles against the cold to keep herself and her unborn child alive until rescue arrives" [R2] 4. 'From The Depths Of The Earth' (1980) by Norman P. Kaufman ** [8 pages] "twenty years after he was murdered by his wife and her lover husband rises from his grave as a rotting zombie intent on revenge" [R2] 5. 'Sideshow' (1980) by Fay Woolf **** [8 pages] "boy held in stocks to be pelted with wet sponges at carnival sideshow suffers agonisingly horrible slow death in unsuspected freak accident" [R2] 6. 'The Trump Card' (1980) by Jane Louie ** [17 pages] "dying US President on state visit to Moscow plans to bring the Cold War to an end by sacrificing himself with doomsday device implanted in his chest that will wipe out the city" [R2] 7. 'Incident In Cairo' (1980) by Bessie Jay ** [12 pages] "husband's plans to murder his wife's lover on a visit to the Great Pyramid of Cheops disastrously backfires consigning him to a slow death by entombment" [R2] 8. 'Dante's Bistro' (1980) by Carolyn L. Bird **** [8 pages] "eccentric owner of elite London restaurant for the super rich resorts to cannibalism in his obsession to continually top his haute cuisine menu" [R2] 9. 'The Clock' (1980) by Edwin Brown **** [8 pages] "young girl who wishes she could grow up is given a clock for her bedroom by the Devil that ages her into a withered hag overnight" [R2] 10. 'The Singer Not The Throng' (1980) by Gregory Alexander ** [5 pages] "famous singer who arrogantly despises his fans gets his comeuppance at the hands of a gang of vicious young thugs wanting his autograph" [R2] 11. 'Love Bites' (1980) by Harry E. Turner **** [22 pages] "intrepid British explorer lost in the Brazilian jungle is taken captive by sex starved tribe of beautiful Amazonian warriors and gets too much of a good thing" [R2] 12. 'Pornography' (1978) by Ian McEwan ***** [15 pages] "pair of ex lovers of sleazy serial womaniser who had given them venereal disease team up to exact a ghastly and fitting revenge" [R2] 13. 'Waste Nothing' (1980) by Ken Johns **** [8 pages] "girl lost driving approaches remote house and falls foul of inbred family who use the body parts of passers by to renew themselves by transplant" [R2] 14. 'A Cross To Bear' (1980) by David Case ***** [36 pages] "puritanical new priest in charge of Amazon mission angrily denounces native superstition and falls foul of the curse of the jaguar man" [R2] 1st: 'A Cross To Bear' (1980) by David Case. 2nd: 'Pornography' (1978) by Ian McEwan. 3rd: 'Pond Weed' (1980) by Roger Clarke. Wooden Spoon: 'The Singer Not The Throng' (1980) by Gregory Alexander. 3/14 perfect scores = 21% 50 out of a possible 70 *'s = 71% => **** overall. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.236 |
I have Klein's "The Events At Poroth Farm" coming up soon for the first time in one of the 'Best New Horror' volumes, Craig. Can't wait! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.116.51.41 |
"Orange is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity" This has always been one of my all-time favourite stories. I'd never have thought Morell had it in him! I wouldn't say it's a novella, though. Nor is the equally magnificent "The Next in Line". They're both too short for that, imho. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.96 |
Okay, this one has to be the best of the series: 'London Tales Of Terror' (1972) edited by Jacquelyn Visick [R] 1. 'Various Temptations' (1948) by William Sansom ***** [17 pages] "serial strangler of women begins serious relationship with dowdy young woman who seems to understand him but she tempts fate by dolling up her appearance for him" [R3] 2. 'Confession' (1921) by Algernon Blackwood ***** [19 pages] "man lost in the London fog encounters terrified young woman and witnesses ghostly reenactment of her bloody murder before unwittingly running for help to the real killer himself" [R] 3. 'Happy Birthday, Dear Alex' (1944) by John Keir Cross ***** [18 pages] "man arranges surprise birthday present of an articulated human skeleton for his medical student cousin from disreputable backstreet supply shop and it is a gruesome surprise indeed" [R] 4. 'Gone Is Gone' (1953) by Joan Fleming **** [6 pages] "when his hated partner dies miserly old antique shop owner plans to cheat his widow out of her half of the business but is thwarted from beyond the grave" [R] 5. 'Time Fuse' (1931) by John Metcalfe ***** [17 pages] "gullible old woman whose belief in the powers of her medium 'friend' kept her free from pain and injury suffers horrific effects of a loss of faith when he is exposed as a charlatan" [R] 6. 'A Little Place Off The Edgware Road' (1939) by Graham Greene ***** [7 pages] "shabby self loathing little man encounters the ghastly corporeal spectre of a bloody murder victim while trying to escape the world in the darkness of an old flea pit cinema" [R4] 7. 'A Pleasure Shared' (1962) by Brian W. Aldiss *** [14 pages] "serial killer of women discovers that two other tenants in his building are also in the murder game and they agree to help each other dispose of the corpses" [R] 8. 'The Old Man' (1931) by Holloway Horn ***** [7 pages] "crooked gambler is given copy of tomorrow's newspaper by mysterious old man but his attempt to cash in at the races doesn't take in one small story he had missed" [R] 9. 'Spooner' (1952) by Eleanor Farjeon *** [12 pages] "old woman's pet cat fights a running feud with the ghost of a loyal terrier while they are staying in the house of its dead owner who had been her best friend as a child" [R] 10. 'Mrs Manifold' (1949) by August Derleth ***** [13 pages] "revenge from beyond the grace on hideous fat landlady by the implacable undead corpse of the husband she had drowned in a cask of Madeira" [R3] 11. 'Someone In The Lift' (1955) by L.P. Hartley **** [6 pages] "young boy living in hotel with his family is haunted by ghostly figure seen through the bars of the old lift that he realises too late was a warning of future tragedy" [R] 12. 'The Trial For Murder' (1865) by Charles Dickens & Charles A. Collins ***** [12 pages] "head juror at notorious murder trial is haunted by the beseeching bloody spectre of the victim in his unholy determination to see justice done" [R] 13. 'August Heat' (1910) by William F. Harvey **** [6 pages] "weird series of coincidences all seem to predict a man's death on that particular day and he locks himself away in an attic and goes mad trying to escape his fate" [R] 14. 'The Demon Lover' (1945) by Elizabeth Bowen ***** [7 pages] "on their twenty-fifth anniversary widow of a soldier killed in action is made to honour a forgotten promise to his malignly possessive corporeal ghost" [R3] 15. 'Harry' (1955) by Rosemary Timperley ***** [10 pages] "adoptive parents of little girl grow concerned by her relationship with an imaginary older brother who grows increasingly protective and possessive" [R] 1st: 'A Little Place Off The Edgware Road' (1939) by Graham Greene. 2nd: 'Mrs Manifold' (1949) by August Derleth. 3rd: 'Harry' (1955) by Rosemary Timperley. Wooden Spoon: 'A Pleasure Shared' (1962) by Brian W. Aldiss. 10/15 perfect scores = 67% 68 out of a possible 75 *'s = 91% => ***** overall. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.28.157 |
"The only intelligent online forum for discerning horror fans, imho". But Stevie, there's hardly anyone left! Certainly not enough to call it a 'forum'. Where is everyone? Where are all the original members? Why did they leave? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.96 |
A lot of people seem to have migrated to Facebook, Lincoln. And then of course losing Joel didn't help. It's up to the diehards to keep chipping away on here. Specialist interest in all forms of human endeavour is becoming ever more rarified into smaller and smaller select groups of like minded individuals because of the staggering advances in technology and ease of global communication over the last few decades. The negative aspect of that is that all the big money "popular" stuff becomes ever more manufactured and devoid of interest for the true connoisseur. To keep one's sanity and one's integrity in such a world one most find one's own comfortable niche, away from the herd, and be happy in it. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.129.38.214 |
Nicely put, Stevie. Meanwhile, I've just read and reviewed most of FINNEGANS WAKE by James Joyce who, like me, suffered from recurrent iritis. Why have I only read and reviewed most of it? Well, you'll have to read my review to get to the point of Real Absence... http://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2014/02/05/finnegans-wake-james-joyce/ | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 141.135.213.43 |
Lovecraft couldn't have put it better. That said, there's no denying a certain slump in interesting participation. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
It hasn't helped that we lost both Weber and Mick over the ebook affair either. Personally, I'm wondering whether to try and give up Facebook. It's a *real* time-waster. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
Thanks, folks. I think we have to stop concentrating on only what's new and lump the interesting material from all eras in together as equally worthy of our time and discussion. I have no time for the attitude that decries styles of prose, cinema or television as not worth the effort due to their being "antiquated" when what I always look for, first and foremost, is the quality of the writing and how gripping the storytelling is - not the datedness of the characters' or makers' un-PC or otherwise attitudes or whether it was in black and white or how "good" the special effects were! This current enforced sabbatical from cinema going has actually done me a power of good I believe. I'll return to the medium suitably refreshed after watching only good stuff. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.28.157 |
Finished my first Charles Grant novel last night - 'Raven'. Really enjoyed it, will definitely check out more of his novels, as well as his short fiction. Started 'A Cold Season', by Alison Littlewood - so far, so good. Like her style, and the story grabs you straight away. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
Charles L. Grant is possibly the best of the big four of the popular American horror authors of the 70s & 80s, Lincoln. In my opinion the other three were Stephen King, Peter Straub & Robert R. McCammon. They were prolific and yet also consistently great writers of weird fiction. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
While in Britain you had (and still have) Ramsey Campbell, Clive Barker & Christopher Fowler as the big three, imho. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Maybe Anne Rice, Stevie? I say "maybe," because I read Interview With The Vampire and thought it a fine work... but never went on to another by her; though judging from what I'd heard, I didn't miss out on much. But maybe I did? I'm a big Grant fan. The five Oxrun novels... superb. Though it was sad reading them, on a distant level; they felt nostalgic somehow, of a time and place that isn't around anymore. Not that *I* was there—which is where, exactly? It's like a displaced, or maybe faux, nostalgia. I can't quite explain it; but I didn't and don't get it from other novelists. I don't even know if I'm making sense... maybe I'm projecting sadness that there won't be anymore Oxrun novels for me to read, onto a past reading experience that didn't contain anything of the sort... maybe I should have just left it at, "superb." (Wow, that's a lot of "maybes"!) | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Oh, I just finished The Glass Key. Wonderful! Though I don't know if I'd place it quite as high in the canon as even Hammett did (apparently, it was his own favorite of his novels [more accurately, connected & revised collections of novellas]). Red Harvest I think best, and remains my favorite; and even though The Dain Curse gets downright nutty, it had a crackling vigor that's lacking in Glass Key (frankly, The Maltese Falcon, too). Maybe Hammett was reading too much Hemingway at the time he wrote this one. But don't get me wrong—still excellent in every way! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
I wasn't fussed on 'Interview With The Vampire' when I read it back in the day and think of Rice more as a moderately talented hack writer, Craig. That book was responsible for watering down the vampire myth into doomed romantic melodrama and ultimately took all the horror out of it, imho. I much preferred 'Salem's Lot' and 'They Thirst' - truly frightening vampire novels. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
I'd say 'The Glass Key' is his darkest and most cynical novel as well as having the best structure, Craig, and I would put it in front of 'Red Harvest'. Then 'The Maltese Falcon', 'The Thin Man' and 'The Dain Curse'. His short stories and novellas are also sensationally good going by what I read in 'The Continental Op'. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I read Interview back in high school... so maybe my memory is, aptly, romanticizing it.... Glass Key is dark, yes; it's quick and the relatively easiest of Hammett's novels to read. But the madcap explosiveness of Red Harvest and even Dain appealed to me more. You can have these novels of insidious and overt corruption in America—here, you have however many numbers of States, essentially mini-countries, connected but running like little empires. And so you have in these "pulps" a cast of dirty politicians and governors and police officials and so on. I'm speaking from complete ignorance here, and I'm wondering—do the British have an equivalent? Did these gritty tales of corruption appear over there? At the same time Hammett & Chandler were spinning tales of societal darkness, it seems (from my distant vantage) that the British were more satisfied with drawing room murders and anomalous, individual killers; lapses in decorum that result in bothersome deaths, get in the detective to solve it and so restore the status quo, which is essentially beyond reproach. Am I totally missing forms of literature there? Or was America—which produced an entirely unique genre, the Western; lawlessness and corruption, and high heroism, running rampant over vast untrammeled areas—the only place really you could have not only such crime literature, but the breeding ground of what would be the basis for it?... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
Graham Greene's crime novels of the 1930's - the books that made his name as a writer - were all about gangsters and crooked officials, Craig, and had an eye always on the turbulent state off affairs in Europe and the last days of the crumbling British Empire. 'Stamboul Train', 'A Gun For Sale' and his masterpiece 'Brighton Rock' are as great as any of the most cynical novels of Hammett or Chandler. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
All the Hammett novels are great in their own distinctive ways, imo. 'Red Harvest' is the most fast moving and exciting. 'The Dain Curse' is the most bizarre and closest to weird fiction. 'The Maltese Falcon' is the most emotional and has his most fully rounded and memorable character in Sam Spade. 'The Glass Key' is his most scathingly cynical and has his best structured plot. 'The Thin Man' is his most witty and entertaining pure mystery story. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
About to read Ramsey Campbell's "The Brood" in 'Dark Forces' for, I believe, the first time. This is the fecking Godfather of horror anthologies!!!! | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.29.37 |
One of the best stories, in a great antho, Stevie. Tell us what you think, when you're done. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
Give me your mobile number man. I like you. You're an intelligent fan of this stuff and you don't take yourself too seriously. My email is (ignore the hyphens) s-walsh@hot-mail.com. The world and this site needs people like you. Same goes out to David Lees and people like him who read our witterings. Okay! You are all welcome. Weird fiction needs you!!!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
Sorry man, make that... s-walsh-123-@-hot-mail.com Again ignore the hyphens! There is a hideous course on anyone who ignores this instruction!! You have been warned... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
Curse ffs! I hate these bloody spell checkers! But then again maybe a hideous course learning how a smile goes miles, even over the telephone, would be a worse fate than eternal burning? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
Yes, I'm a teensy bit drunk. Well it is a long awaited pay day ffs! But even my drunken witterings are quality! So suck on that all you sad sober bastards out there! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
You know... if I ever got to meet the legendary Caroline in the flesh (down boy) I would probably spontaneously combust on the spot. But, fuck it, what a way to go! Manchester here I come.... wish me luck guys! | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.28.37 |
Posted on Wednesday, February 26, 2014 - 11:49 pm: Give me your mobile number man. I like you. You're an intelligent fan of this stuff and you don't take yourself too seriously. My email is (ignore the hyphens) s-walsh@hot-mail.com. The world and this site needs people like you. Same goes out to David Lees and people like him who read our witterings. Okay! You are all welcome. Weird fiction needs you!!!! This is for...? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
Well if you don't bloody well consider yourself, LINCOLN, an intelligent fan of this stuff then I don't know who the else I was fucking talking to ffs! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
I deleted a "fucking" before the "else" because I thought it might have come across as a bit too strong. Sorry, man. You have no idea the self control it takes to type this shite out when in extremely drunk and in a bar surrounded by baying lunatics and sexy women - and loving every minute!!!! | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.29.37 |
Well, I'm in Melbourne, so a mobile # wouldn't be much good;) I'm certainly not intelligent, just a 'regular joe', who happens to like Ramsey, Aickman etc. Not very good at articulating my thoughts, so don't contribute as much as I'd like to. Good luck with the 'sexy women'! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
Look, guys, we're all mates and genuine Ramsey Campbell fans on here and outside of that everyone else can go fuck! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 212.183.128.40 |
Fuck that, Lincoln! Two of my Top 20 novels of all time came out of Australia ffs!! One was written in the 19th century and the other was written in the 1980s. Now think about it and name them for me! | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.29.37 |
Mmmm... 19th century - For the Term of his Natural Life? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.198 |
Actually it's 'His Natural Life' (1872) by Marcus Clarke - the full unexpurgated version in which Rufus Dawes... no, I couldn't possibly spoil it. Fantastic book!! It's as great as any of the masterpieces of Dickens or Dostoevsky and a great deal more gritty. Once read never forgotten. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.198 |
All I'll say is that the story continues on for years after 'For The Term Of His Natural Life' ends and it has possibly the most perfect ending in literature. That book should be as venerated as 'Moby Dick' - with which it has much in common. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.29.37 |
And the 1980's? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.198 |
'The Doubleman' (1985) by C.J. Koch that I read on the recommendation of Graham Greene and it blew me away. An epic horror/fantasy spanning the 1940s-60s in Hobart and Sydney and encompassing the birth of the Australian rock music scene. It's a brilliant reinvention of the Faustian pact/doppelgänger themes with a powerful emotional sweep and characters that will live with you long after finishing it. He's an awesome writer. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.198 |
Come to think of it 'His Natural Life' could qualify as epic horror as well. It's certainly one of the grimmest and most horrifying novels I've ever read. The cannibalism sequence haunts me yet and I'm surprised it hasn't been anthologised as a short horror story. Did you know that most of the book is based on intensively researched historical fact, Lincoln? The horrors of transportation and brutal penal servitude echo any of the nightmare details of the Holocaust, imo. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.198 |
Btw, "The Brood" (1980) is one of Ramsey's most brilliant horror stories. Truly frightening. This antho is exceptionally strong. Not even one weak story so far and several masterpieces already. Now two thirds through. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.198 |
Talk to me, people. And profound apologies for posting while extraordinarily pissed last night. Well it was pay day! | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.28.37 |
I'll have to check out 'The Doubleman' - I was born and raised in Hobart, which also gets a mention in 'At the Mountains of Madness'. Have you seen the film based on the cannibalism? - 'Van Diemens Land'. Good, grim stuff, and Tasmania looks amazing on film. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.198 |
No, man, I had no idea there was such a film but I'm not surprised. If only those escaped convicts had been able to watch 'Bush Tucker Man' lol. Hobart feels like a place I've been to and know well after reading 'The Doubleman'. You'll love it! It is one of the greatest novels of the 20th century, imho. And Graham agreed. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Been dipping into 'The Screaming Book of Horror' when I get the chance. Most stories I've read in it so far are good but not exceptional - but, every now and again, a gem pops up. One gem I think I mentioned above was Reggie Oliver's 'What Shall We Do About Barker?' But now I've found another gem - Paul Finch's 'The Christmas Toys'. That would be perfect for reading round the tree on Christmas Eve, I can tell you! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.31 |
I think it may be time to do a survey of all the genuine diehard Ramsey Campbell and horror fans still determined to stay on this site as a tribute to the man's greatness. Please state your case here. For me he is the greatest horror writer who has ever lived. Not perfect but the closest to perfection and honesty to the craft that this genre has ever produced. That's not in my opinion, nor even in my humble opinion, and will probably embarrass the man immensely, but the truth must out, people. The truth must out! Stevie. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.244 |
I still now believe that Ramsey's best horror story is in front if him.. Wisdom, in that man's case, has bred not cynicism but excellence. Anyone disagree? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Of course we don't disagree, Stevie - we're here, aren't we? Talking of reading Ramsey, 'Holes For Faces' is getting closer to the top of my TBR pile. Looking forward to that. But, last night, I started reading a considerably lesser-known weird fiction writer - Jeremy C. Shipp's collection 'Attic Clowns'. 'Tis good. The best way to describe it - it's like taking a walk through someone's strange and surreal nightmares. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.244 |
Ramsey Campbell is, in my humble experience, the only living HORROR author who has written this stuff from deep within his own psyche and has proved that plumbing the depths of one's subconscious through literature, buoyed up by the unconditional love of those who really know the MAN, that us mere mortals (and Ramsey's writing has assured him of literary immortality), could only ever dream of aspiring to! Where the hell was I? Oh yeah! Ramsey Campbell is fucking great! So, people, make it so! That is positively the most difficult post it has ever taken me to post on here with one squinted through a drunken haze and pressing keys very fucking carefully! Thank fuck for that beautiful delete button ffs! Thank fuck I made it... | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.28.142 |
For me, Ramsey's work is the perfect mix of out-and-out horror, and creepy, atmospheric 'weird' stories. When I'm not reading RC, I miss the world he has created, and the characters that populate that world. Even if I'm reading a novel, by another author, I sometimes pause and read a RC short. Have you read anything by Laird Barron, Stevie? Totally different style, but has a similiar effect on me. I have an idea - I have a spare copy of Barron's first collection, 'The Imago Sequence'. How about I send it to you, so you can check him out? When you've finished, pass it on to any other RCMB member that's interested. When finished, sign the inside of the front cover, with a short note, before passing it on to the next member. We'll see if I can get it back by the end of 2014. The book didn't cost me a cent, and I'll pay for the return postage when everyone is finished. Anyone interested? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.157.188.166 |
Ramsey is the horror writer I first appreciated after I had read Poe and Lovecraft = who got me into horror in the mid 1960s. | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.77.107 |
There's a certain insidiousness to Ramsey's tales that truly disturbs. It's not too far-fetched to say that after reading him I began to experience reality in a different way. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.244 |
Sounds like a great idea, Lincoln. I know the name but have read nothing by him. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 176.253.221.53 |
Last night I had a dream that BBC4 were showing three adaptations of Ramsey's stories back to back that night, along with a short appreciation programme. I was desperately trying to work out how to inform everyone here because it hadn't been advertised. I'm so committed to this messageboard it haunts my dreams | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Ramsey's work, too, I graduated to after glutting myself on fantasy, and horror in the form of Lovecraft/Poe/King. He has remained consistently committed (unlike King and Barker, say) to the pureness of the genre we call "horror"; and he has excelled them all. Imho. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
I agree with all of the above... obviously. Halfway through and absolutely loving my first reread of King's "The Mist" since the 1980s and then that'll be me finished the phenomenal 'Dark Forces' (1980). After that I'll be plunging straight into 'Best New Horror : Volume 2' (1991) and, after the excellence of the first volume, I'm really looking forward to it. Email me on s -walsh - 123- @- hot- mail.- com (ignore the hyphens and spaces), Lincoln, or anyone else who wants to. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.136 |
It's making me appreciate all the more the almost complete faithfulness of Darabont's excellent and grossly underrated adaptation - particularly in the casting. Going to have a sneak preview of the BNH:V2 contents list now. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
Great line-up to come: K.W. Jeter, Peter Straub, Elizabeth Massie, Jonathan Carroll, Harlan Ellison, Ray Garton, Michael Marshall Smith, Melanie Tem, Nicholas Royle, Thomas Ligotti, Ian R. McCleod, Karl Edward Wagner, Kim Antieau, Garry Kilworth, Jean-Daniel Breque, J.L. Comeau, David J. Schow, Poppy Z. Brite, Kim Newman, Des Lewis, Cherry Wilder, Gregory Frost, F. Paul Wilson, David Sutton, Gene Wolfe, Steve Rasnic Tem, Gahan Wilson & Elizabeth Hand. Nearly finished "The Mist". Stephen King at the very top of his storytelling game and impossibly gripping even though I know everything that's going to happen. No prizes for guessing what will come second in this great anthology after Klein's "Children Of The Kingdom", imho. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.28.79 |
Emailed you a couple of days ago, Stevie - you didn't receive it? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
No, can't see it, Lincoln. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.29.79 |
Will try again shortly | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
Oh, wow!! I just read the Jonathan Carroll story and it blew me away! I love this guy. He's the best surreal psychological fantasy/horror writer I've ever read | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 176.253.221.53 |
I just finished Peter Watts' Blindsight. I don't generally have much interest in hard sci-fi but this had been recommended to me a few times so I gave it a try and thought it was excellent. It's about the crew of a spaceship trying to make first contact with an alien structure that has appeared at the edge of the solar system. Basically, it's cosmic horror that's completely rooted in real science, which makes it even more frightening/depressing. It's also available for free on the author's website, if you have an e-reader (or can cope with reading a novel on a monitor, which I know I couldn't): http://www.rifters.com/real/Blindsight.htm | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.28.79 |
Stevie - did you receive my email this time? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
Still nothing, Lincoln. It's swalsh123 at hot mail dot com. Dear God! "Shock Radio" by Ray Garton... what a great, great story!! The type that has you racing back to re-read it as soon as the final shocking paragraphs are over. This would have graced any of the meatier Pan Horrors with perfection. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
Just read a quite brilliant story by Melanie Tem that is (sorry, Steve) going to haunt me for a lot longer than any of her husband's stories that I have read. It puts you into the mind of a new mother with post natal depression in a way that shows rare skill in psychological characterisation and communication. Well done, love. Moments like this are the very reason I read at all. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
And now it's Thomas Ligotti time again. "The Last Feast Of Harlequin" is only the fifth work of his I will have read. Here goes... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
I've just had another Stevie revelation today and it as simple as it is profound. Pride may come before a fall but Humility follows if one is wise enough to recognise it as such. Thank you, God (or whatever the feck You are - or any of Us Is). | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.77.154 |
Picked up for 50 eurocents: The Exorcist. Should I read it? The film didn't do much for me. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
I now worship the Grey/Gray God and its name is Wisdom. Yeah, the one attribute I never properly got in D&D... There I go doing a Monty Python again ffs!! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
There is no Existence and there is no Nothingness. There is only that which is outside both states and that is the only true Reality. Think of an Infinite Surfaceless Sphere and then try to imagine what must "exist" outside of it. That is the answer. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Prove it. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
The need for proof is the biggest mistake that sentience ever made, Craig. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.29.79 |
Just sent another one, Stevie. Maybe they're landing in your 'junk' box? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
Fuck this is good grass!! And, yet, beneath its myriad shades of green there is only the Gray/Grey giggling God. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
You're a genius, man! Your emails were going to my junk box ffs! Just replied... | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
You know, people, I'm not black but there's a whole heap o' times I wish I weren't white. I'm neither. I am forevermore The Jackalmaster. | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
Hey, it worked! One really can change colour. | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
iweamar the zZero on the roulette wheel of life. I am The Jackalmaster. no cracks about Jaegermeister, folks | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
The need for proof is the biggest mistake that sentience ever made, Craig. That's either a typo, Stevie—or one fascinating concept indeed. | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
I found the Great grEy Giggling God and sheesh beautiful... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
But seriously—how can there be no Existence or Nothingness, yet the third thing ("the only true Reality") is "outside" those things? What's the difference between such a statement/assertion and, literally, pure nonsense? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Okay. Just for clarity's sake—um—you and Gary here aren't—uh... hooking up or nothing, are you?... | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
http://youtu.be/Oj3VphK9AMk | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
Not a typo, man. If you thINK about it it makes perfect non-sentience. Gene Wolfe is/was right and he is/was so wrong. Read 'The Knight/Wizard' again. The truth lies not in the physical nor the spiritual realm but in all that slips between the cracks onbetween. That is/was not a typo either. | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
iweamar The Knightwizard and iweamar alsoandnot The Jackalmaster. The truth is...? | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
We am The Onbetween. You heard it here first. | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
Remember the moment that Alice was falling or Able was rising? There is no fear of the future. There is no truth in the past. There is only The Onbetween. | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
For the guy in 'Hunger' it was his night in the cell - probably the most terrifying passage of literature ever written - and in 'The Doubleman' it was when he tried to recapture his faith by going back to Mass. | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
William Golding hit the nail on the head too when he wrote the pivotal sequence in 'Free Fall'. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Okay... but I'm not sure what the problem is that you're solving here, Stevie. What is the problematic issue to which you have the solution, that I can apply, and therefore be unshackled? Or, mixing metaphors: What is the ointment, and where do I rub it? | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.81 |
Not so much solving problems as brainstorming, Craig. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 176.253.221.53 |
Actually, the nature of sentience and intelligence was one of the big themes of Blindsight too. I sent you an email today myself, Stevie, lemme know if you get it! | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.81 |
Thanks, man. Just replied. This one didn't go to my bloody junk box. Must be something to do with having to travel through the centre of the Earth. | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.81 |
Just going in for an MRI scan on my knee and I'm unfeasibly excited. | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.81 |
The Onbetween just spoke to me again, people. Filling in the form for my MRI scan I had to tick YES to the box for "Have you ever suffered from gout?". Having handed it back I opens up my iPad while I'm waiting and Immediately checks out the latest play, by my opponent, in an online game of Scrabble I'm having... and the word I read was the same word echoing around in my head at that precise second. Gout! What, if anything, does this mean? Feck knows! | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.30 |
I want to say, here and now, that Thomas Ligotti's "The Last Feast Of Harlequin" is the greatest 'town with a dark secret' story I have read since the originator of the form in horror, "The Shadow Over Innsmouth". It is a work of quite staggering homage and complete inversion. Congratulations to that man! | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 2.220.81.156 |
Halfway through an amazing French crime thriller called "Rough Trade", by Dominique Manotti. Strange, economic, curt style and an increasingly complex murder investigation carried out by a police dept that seems as brutal and malevolent as the criminals themselves. Reminds me of the "Spiral" French TV police dramas. to hll with the plot, lost that pages ago, I just love the way it is written. Cheers Terry | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.28.79 |
Dipping into 'Seeing Red', a collection by David J Schow. Love his style. Not sure why he wasn't more popular back in the boom time of the 80's. Much better than a lot of his contempories - F.Paul Wilson, Garton, Laymon etc. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.28.79 |
Make that 'contemporaries'  | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 94.118.28.50 |
I never annoy myself about online typos, Lincoln. They are the written equivalent of saying the wrong word, but everyone knows what you mean, in oral conversation. Chill, man. Just read another brilliant 'Best New Horror' story by Kim Antieau called "At A Window Facing West". An absolute classic shocker. Sean will know what I mean by that lol. | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 31.74.41.17 |
The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by HP Lovecraft | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.232.163 |
Lovecraft at his most 'stream of subconscious'. I always felt it reads like a plea for understanding. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 176.253.221.53 |
I'm re-reading the King in Yellow right now, thanks to True Detective. I want to be sure I don't miss any sneaky references. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I'm re-reading the King in Yellow right now.... There's also the Raymond Chandler novella of the same name, David, mind—I read it, not even that long ago, but dammit if I can't recall what that title referred to in the story.... Me, I've gone back to some "comfort food" for my reading, i.e. your classic British murder mystery: Ruth Rendell's second Wexford novel, Sins of the Fathers (A New Lease of Death) (1967). Should polish this off in a day or so, and then... mm, we'll see.... | ||
| The Jackalmaster (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.158 |
Wasn't it a man killed in yellow pyjamas, Craig? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
You're right, Stevie. I've just looked it up, and it referred to a dead trumpet player who's found in his yellow pajamas; Marlowe (changed to be his character, from the originally published story) remarks on how this dead "king in yellow" reminds him of a book, assumed to be Chambers'. On a side note: I'd much prefer you lose the "Jackalmaster," Stevie. It feels kind of aggressive, and smacks of pomposity. Two traits I don't, and'd rather not, associate with you.... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.158 |
I'm back!! That was one wild trip, folks... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.158 |
I have 'The King In Yellow' (1895) here somewhere. Must hunt it out and read the thing. I read the story "The Yellow Sign" in one of my beloved Fontana anthos and thought it was a startlingly original and disturbing masterpiece of weird psychological horror. Surely like nothing else of its time. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Now, I've recently read a story called "The King in the Yellow Wallpaper" or something similar. It's in a fairly recent antho - and is, unsurprisingly, a kind of homage to "The King in Yellow" and "The Yellow Wallpaper". Can I remember who wrote it and which antho it's in? Nope! Going to drive myself crazy trying to find it now. Can anyone enlighten me so I know where to look? | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
Found it! It's actually called "The Queen in the Yellow Wallpaper" and it's by Lynda Rucker. It's in the recent BFS antho "The Burning Circus", ed. Johnny Mains. I knew it'd come to me eventually ... | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.206 |
Finsihed "Rough Trade". Seriously, find it and read it. A strange,amoral,compelling French crime thriller. Also devoured "The Great God Pan" by Arthur Machen an its 2013 sequel, "Helen's Story" by Rosanne Rabinowitz. Now I know that "Pan" is considered to be a classic but I found it an extraordinarilly dull book. I love 19th and early 20th century novels, so that wasn't the problem. It was the characters. They were all the same. Villiers and the rest, no distinguishing marks as it were, I found it hard to tell them apart, just a bunch of over-sensitive toffs. "Helen's Story", however, was excellent; sensual, explosive, bold. And it threw a very bright, and critical, fictional light on the original. Shame it was so short. My advice, don't read one without the other. Bit like love and marriage really. Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
Thanks, Lincoln. The book arrived today and looks good. I've never read Laird Barrion before and the blurb makes him sound quite Lovecraftian. Thanks, again. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.206 |
Reading "Human Game". Now, think back to that film "The Great Escape". Near the end, a large group of the recaptured British POWs were shot in cold blood en masse. This is based on a true event in which 50 of the escaped POWs were indeed murdered by the Gestapo, on the orders of Hitler himself. however unlike the film portrayal, they were shot in pairs and fours in remote locations, while being "transported back to the camp". shot in the head at close range after being offered a "toilet break" during the journey. Their deaths were then covered-up by frightened Gestapo officials who feared reprisals, and the noose, after the war, which they knew was lost. What I didn't know was that a British policeman was sent out to Germany at the close of the war to hunt down and bring those responsible to justice - the subject of this marvellous, rivetting book. Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
There is a chilling episode of 'Colditz' in which three captured British commandos are being transported from the castle to "another camp" by the Gestapo and suffer exactly the same fate, Terry. What made that series great was the reaction of genuine outrage on the part of not only their fellow prisoners but the honourable Wehrmacht staff back at Colditz as well. The final episodes when the war is all but lost and those culpable Germans realise that retribution is just around the corner and all pretence of law and order breaks down are wonderfully played and intensely gripping. Best World War II drama series I've ever seen - including 'Das Boot'! | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
Apparently late in the war Hitler gave out an order that all commando POWs should be treated like spies and be taken out and shot. He really had descended into petty minded vindictiveness by that stage. Also, in the last days of the war, VIP prisoners i.e. POW relatives of important enemy politicians, diplomats and Generals, etc were held hostage at gun point until signed assurances of no reprisals were given to certain SS and Gestapo officers. To their credit the Americans and Brits were remarkably civilised in their treatment of German prisoners at the end of the war, unlike the Russians, who carried out mass executions in reprisal and were already being seen by the west (including Germany) as the new enemy in Europe. They were fascinating times. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.206 |
Civilised, yes...apart from the infamous London Cage, where Gestapo, SS and other assorted Nazi low-lives were subjected to "vigorous" interrogation. The guards there were chosen for their physical size and presence rather than IQ - nuff said, everything but the orange overalls... | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.206 |
...not that I feel sorry for Gestapo and SS types. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
There were some western reprisals against Germans at the end of the war - not surprisingly when the full horror of the concentration camps became apparent - but it was nothing like on the scale of what the Red Army carried out as they swept to victory. There is a particularly disturbing short story by Charles Birkin, written from his own wartime experience, that deals with a British lieutenant who is haunted by having had to stand by while a train load of German POWs - including young boys and old men hurriedly drafted in the last days - were taken off for execution by their vengeful Russian conquerors. 'Colditz' dealt with this same phenomenon in a particularly moving way that still haunts me. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.28.15 |
Why is it that I can't read an anthology from cover to cover? It's a terrible habit, one that I hope to break. Last year I managed to read six RC collections without skipping a story, and it was very satisfying. Also read a couple of Laird Barron collections, cover to cover. When it comes to anthologies, I jump around a lot, picking stories by authors that I know, and when I hit a story or two that I don't like, I usually pick something else up - sometimes never to return to finish the rest of the book. I'm determined to change this, so I started 'Dark Forces' this weekend - have read about half the stories before, but still so much to discover in there. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 86.24.62.55 |
I'm the opposite, Lincoln. I read an anthology from cover to cover in the order the stories are presented. I enjoy the feeling of not knowing what to expect next. I just read 'Dark Forces' (1980) for the first time myself recently and will be posting my appraisal any day now. There's not one weak story in there and there are several all time masterpieces. Klein's "Children Of The Kingdom" tops the heap, for me. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.29.15 |
I've read the Klein before, and yes, it's a classic isn't it. Only a few stories in, and the only weak one was the Isaac Singer. The Ed Bryant story, 'Dark Angel', was terrific. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Klein's and King's are probably the best from Dark Forces (both, also, the longest); and, of course, Ramsey's. But is it the very best all-original horror anthology out there? Mmm... | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.172.85.80 |
Don't forget the Wagner, Craig! | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I liked the Wagner, yes, but I just didn't feel it was his best. Still, yes, it's a very good one. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Reading Graham Greene's This Gun For Hire (A Gun For Sale) (1936). Man, it starts of with a bang, and doesn't let up! He instantly builds fascination and pathos for his anti-hero lead, as well as strong emotional investment towards the other characters—movies rarely do it this swift or efficiently. I've been reading various crime novels/stories of late, but Greene just sweeps in in a few pages and makes them all look like they've been doodling. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.40 |
I envy you reading it, Craig. It's an absolute classic thriller that pulls no punches and has real compassion for its characters. Then you've got the sequel, and Greene's masterpiece, imo, to look forward to in 'Brighton Rock'! Crime fiction doesn't get any better. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.206 |
"Brighton Rock" - a vicious, rivetting, tightly wound masterpiece, with a shockingly nasty ending. Didn't know it was a sequel though. interseting. I also loved, on the other end of the dramatic scale, "The End of the Affair". Tremendous atmosphere and sense of its time. I also have a copy of "The Comedians" which I am looking forward to. Personally, I've just started "A Tale of Two Cities". It took a chapter for me to dig my way back into Dicken's dense, exuberant prose and enjoy myself again. I like Dickens, I love getting lost in his wild, swirl of a world. But nothing, so far, has come near the sheer fun of "The Pickwick Papers". Cheers Terry | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.40 |
It features some of the same characters and fills us in on Raven's background before the events of 'A Gun For Sale', Terry, while being a completely different story set in the world of low-life English hoodlums. Pinkie is the best written and most fascinating criminal psychopath in fiction, imo. I love that book more than any other of Greene's that I have read. The Boultings' film version, with young Richard Attenborough, is also a film noir masterpiece but still pales beside the book. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
What's great about This Gun For Hire is how it just grips with suspense, unrelentingly, and just keeps at you, never letting you take a breath. I'm reminded most of Cornell Woolrich, but this beats even (what I've read from) him. I'm looking forward to continuing on to the sequel (the main reason I started this!). I do mean, every year, Terry, to get back to Dickens and read the massive amount of his output I've missed. Pickwick Papers is a good start, I know (being one of his earliest); it's sitting right here in a nice edition... but damn, it's so long.... On a completely unrelated subeject: I found a nice edition at the library, for a buck, Barbara Tuchman's Pulitzer Prize-winning The Guns of August (1962). I know this is the 100 year anniversary of the start of WWI, the "Great War"; I've long been wanting to read something on that period of history. I've heard good things of Tuchman (especially concerning her more widely known [I believe?] A Distant Mirror [1978]), and thought this might be an apt time/place to delve in. Anyone read this one? Opinions concerning?... | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.208 |
Have you read that chapter yet, Craig? If you have you'll know the one I mean. It's the pivotal moment in the story and one of the most moving things Greene ever wrote, imho, while still being incredibly suspenseful and unpredictable. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
If you mean when THAT character dies? I can only assume, dies, because I've not crossed to the next chapter yet. Yes, then, yes, that was pretty shocking. Greene went there before others did, apparently—pre-Psycho, pre-Dressed to Kill, pre... er... Scream? | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.208 |
I was thinking of Raven and the girl's long dark night of the soul together. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Ah... no. I actually thought our heroine had been killed off early! But it looks like I'm just upon the scene you're talking about, Stevie. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.172.255.225 |
Still going on 'Dark Forces'. Didn't care for 'The Crest of 36', and I just didn't get 'The Bingo Master', which is a shame because I really enjoyed Oates' style. Which says more about me, than the story of course. A couple of re-reads were next - the fantastic 'Where the Summer Ends', by Wagner, and the even better 'Children of the Kingdom', by Klein. I find both of these have high re-read value, especially the Klein. Also dipping in and out of Schow's collection 'Seeing Red'. Are you from LA, Craig? Are you familiar with David Schow? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
I live basically in the L.A. area, Lincoln, yes, but I've not read a whole lot by Schow. What I have read, I've really liked, so I don't know why I haven't sought him out more. He wrote a killer short-story a while back, "Coming Soon To A Theater Near You" (1984) that I remember particularly/fondly. I should get that collection myself. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.27.205 |
Yes, that one is great, Craig. Another one that I always remember, but can't remember where I read it, is about a serial killer who picks up hitchhikers, for his victims, and what happens when he picks one up who is also a serial killer. | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 176.249.22.155 |
Ah Lincoln, I remember that one! I read it in a Fontana Book of Horror Stories, must be about a hundred years ago now. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.27.205 |
It may have been in one of the 'Dark Terrors' or 'Dark Voices' anthologies, as well. Will try and find it. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.173.170.146 |
Paused 'Dark Forces', to read 'The Events at Poroth Farm', by TED Klein. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.26.95 |
...and it's very unsettling. Wish I could have read it in one sitting, but will take me two. I still have one more story to read in 'Dark Gods' - 'Black Man With a Horn', and I think I'll get to that before returning to 'Dark Forces'. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.27.95 |
Well, what an absolute masterpiece! Such a powerful novella, I find it strange that Klein chose to expand it to 'The Ceremonies'. I have always held the novel in high regard, but compared to this shorter version maybe it was diluted, rather than opened up, expanded. I might read it again, when I feel like tackling a novel. What I might try is reading the amazing prologue to the novel, then continue with the novella. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.7 |
Having just finished the excellent anthologies, 'Best New Horror : Volume 2' (1991) and 'The 29th Pan Book Of Horror Stories' (1987), I'm about to start 'New Terrors Omnibus' (1980) edited by Ramsey Campbell. It's the first time I've read this famous collection and it begins with a Robert Aickman story that is new to me - "The Stains". I know I'm in for a rare treat, folks. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.7 |
"The Stains" by Robert Aickman was truly marvellous. Perhaps the best of his stories I have read since "The Inner Room". Weird and indescribably haunting it reads like a unique spin on the seductive female vampire or succubus theme and also works as a truly touching doomed love story. A masterpiece with one of the author's most enigmatic endings. One is left wanting to read it again almost straight away! | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.177.161.250 |
A great Aickman story, THE STAINS, Stevie. I am now looking forward to my pre-ordered copy of Johnny Mains' AICKMAN CENTENARY ANTHOLOGY. Anyone see it yet? Not being on Facebook, I lose track of any news! | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.237.187.186 |
"Anyone see it yet? Not being on Facebook, I lose track of any news!" I haven't seen it mentioned for a while, Des. I'll keep an eye out and let you know if I see anything said about it. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.26.95 |
June, for the Aickman centenary. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
There are still so many stories of Robert Aickman's I have to read and I'd do anything for a complete collection. What's in this anthology? | ||
| Des (Des) Username: Des Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 86.177.161.250 |
The Johnny Mains Aickman Centenary book is as far as I know original stories and essays inspired by Aickman, not work by Aickman himself. Original details of it here: http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/5321/aickman-centenary-anthology | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.233.0 |
Thanks, Des. "The Stains" reminded me of one of your own short stories, "Madge" (1991), in the 'Best New Horror' volume I just read. I read that as a unique twist on the bewitching siren of the sea theme. Someone should do an antho on the subconscious fear of women in horror fiction! Or could we face it? | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.173.170.168 |
Stevie, you should be able to pick up reading copies, fairly cheaply, of Aickman's collections. The Tartarus hardcover reprints are beautiful, but not cheap. Make sure you get 'We Are For The Dark', the collection he shares with Elizabeth Jane Howard - her stories are superb as well. Let me know if you can't find any, I have a couple of reading copies (ie - battered paperbacks) I'd be happy to send your way. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.235.30 |
I've only ever come across Aickman in random anthologies one story at a time but the experience of reading him and being haunted by his imagination goes back to my teens, Lincoln. I'm not one for spending vast amounts of money on pristine copies of books or prints of films but do prefer to own them in some tangible form rather than watching bloody YouTube or reading text off a screen. To connect with the physical reality of the art form is an act of communing with the creator for me - and that demands respect and a certain amount of physical interaction. That is my firmly held belief! | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 2.218.180.58 |
I just finished The Ghost Hunters by Neil Spring, which was a fictionalised account of Harry Price's investigation into the Borley Rectory haunting. I don't know how true to life the Price in the book was, but he was a compelling character and his relationship with the narrator was fascinating. It was also a pretty decent ghost story (and quite a fast read too). I'm now about halfway through Jonathon Aycliffe's The Talisman, which in the intro he states is more of a horror story than his usual ghost stories, but so far it's not vastly different to his usual work, it's just clear from the start that there's something very unambiguously evil at the heart of events. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.26.39 |
Still reading 'Dark Forces'. 'Vengeance Is' is predictable, but ok. 'The Brood' is another RC classic. The climax is superb - another set in an abandonned house/cellar. I love 'urban horror', my favourite sub-genre. 'Where the Stones Grow' - very creepy short, by Lisa Tuttle. I love her style, and look forward to reading 'A Nest of Nightmares' soon. (Was lucky enough to pick it up, in unread condition, for a very reasonable price). Also - 'Black Man With a Horn', from Dark Gods, by TED Klein. I enjoyed it, but would rank it behind 'Petey' and 'Children...'. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 90.200.126.55 |
I just finished Susan Hill's Dolly, which was good, quite slight but enjoyably weird. I was disappointed with the last Hill I read, The Mist in the Mirror, as the ending felt rushed and extremely unsatisfying, but Dolly was definitely a return to form. I'm currently halfway through Simon Maginn's Sheep and also dipping into an old collection of ghost stories I got from Project Gutenberg. I'm on The Willows in that one, which I think is the only entry in it that I've read before. Always worth revisiting though. | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.119.14.82 |
'The Forbidden' - a very Ramsey-ish short by Clive Barker. So, so much better than the film adaptation, 'Candyman'. Not sure why so many silly extra bits and pieces had to be added to the film - saying his name to the mirror etc. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
"The Forbidden" is probably my favorite of Barker's stories, Lincoln. And I agree, the movie hardly did it justice. | ||
| David Lees (David_lees) Username: David_lees Registered: 12-2011 Posted From: 176.252.183.3 |
I recall bullying a friend who thought Barker was all just cheap blood and guts into reading The Forbidden. She found it extremely disturbing. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 85.255.234.162 |
Just read another brilliant Karl Edward Wagner story in 'New Terrors Omnibus' called ".220 Swift". I've loved this man's writing ever since having the good fortune to discover his 1970s Kane books as a teenager. The horror stories I have read over recent years in random anthos only confirm his status, in my mind, as the only original talent ever to have equalled the rare pulp genius of Robert E. Howard. The man had it in spades! Wonderful stuff!! | ||
| Mbfg (Mbfg) Username: Mbfg Registered: 09-2010 Posted From: 212.219.63.206 |
Three-quarters of the way through "A Place of Greater Safety" by Hilary Mantel. set in the lead-up to, and during, the French Revolution, it curls itself around a quiet, dark kernel of horror. Dear God, they were horrible times to live through. Cheers Terry | ||
| Lincoln (Lincoln_brown) Username: Lincoln_brown Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 101.173.127.244 |
David, I also found it very disturbing. Been a while since reading the Books of Blood, but this story feels different to the rest. The style is very different to Ramsey, but I thought the plot was very 'Campbellian'. Maybe a tribute to Ramsey? Now there's an idea - a 'tribute to Ramsey' anthology, featuring heavy-hitters, like Barker, King etc, and newer writers who have been inspired by Ramsey. | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Terry, I read the description of that novel, and I wish I had the patience to pick up big books, I'd definitely be checking that one out! I love the premise. Maybe I'll find a way to sit down and read the big tomes, not be so afraid of them all the time.... And I'd love to see a Ramsey tribute anthology, too! ".220 Swift" is just great Wagner. As I slowly work my way through Stephen Jones' superb (so far) Mammoth Book of Terror (1991), I'll get to revisit Wagner's "The River of Night's Dreaming" (1981) soon. This one has some really phenomenal samplings from horror heavy-weights... though the Barker one isn't my favorite, "The Last Illusion"; one of the weaker ones from the Books of Blood, imho. | ||
| Simon Bestwick (Simon_b) Username: Simon_b Registered: 10-2008 Posted From: 176.27.119.204 |
Reading Aickman's Cold Hand In Mine. I've read his stuff before, but I think this is the first time I've finally fully clicked with his work - maybe just an effect of growing up. A friend of mine gave me a copy of Painted Devils years ago, and I always knew there was something special and distinctive about it, but now I'm getting the full force of his work. And I'm reading it on my Kindle: one great thing about these gadgets is that they're making a lot of rare or prohibitively expensive stuff available again. I miss Mick and Weber, particularly Mick. If Weber hadn't thrown a hissy fit and stormed off when called out on his behaviour, he'd still be here; Mick is as difficult a person to annoy as you can get. But yes, the biggest loss has been Joel, on so many levels. | ||
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