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Post by andydecker on Oct 21, 2009 10:30:56 GMT
This is the third of the HWA theme anthologies. Horror Writers of America Present Deathport: Ramsey Campbell (Ed.) - Deathport (Pocket Books, 1993, 356 pages) Cover: Ben Perini
Contents: Ramsey Campbell – Introduction Chelsea Quinn Yarbro – Echoes Ron Dee &P.D. Cacek – Jet Lag Don D´Ammassa – Cleansing Agent Matthew J. costello – Thank You for Your patience Les Daniels – The Man in the Mirror Gregory Nicoll – 55-Gallon Drums Along the Mohawk David Niall Wilson – To Feed the Sun Nancy Holder – Tire Fire Edo van Belkom – War Cry Roberta Lannes – When Prayers Are Answered Nancy Baker – Consent Michael A. Arnzen – The Man in the Moon Kathryn Ptacek – Bruja Lawrence Watt-Evans – Beneath the Tarmac Peter Crowther – In Country Dawn Dunn – Just a Few Drops of Blood Dan Perez – The smoking Mirror Patricia Ross – Sacred Wheel Clark Perry – Buzzkiller Brian Hodge – Sacrament Steve Rasnic Tem – Passing Through Adam-Troy Castro – The Telltale Head Stephen M. Rainey – Piranha Wendy Webb – Soulcatcher Nancy Killpatrick – I Am No Longer Douglas D. Hawk – Plane Scared Chet Williamson – Scalps Charles Grant – In the Still, Small HoursRunway to Horror
Don´t dream of taking off from Dry Plains International Airport. Doard a jetliner and you´ll risk more than your life. Cut yourself shaving in the terminal washroom, and you´ll draw the blood-hungry legions that vigilantly guard their domain. For Dry Plains was built in the sun-blasted heart of nowhere … ober the bones of a sacred, wrathful people. Their tome of vengeance is now. Their victims die alone, wearing the face of torture. And their glorious, terrible madness is poised to fly out in the world …
Deathport
Now, the Horror Writers of America – creators of Under the Fang and Freak Show – put the fear in flying. Fasten your seat belt. Return your seat to the upright position. Extinguish all smoking materials. It won´t do any good. The devil is your copilot … and you´ve got a one-way ticket into terror.Here are no writers introductions, and the cover is truly uninspired and lame. A haunted airport, built on an indian burying ground. Well, a concept is a concept, no matter how slight it is I just read the first 3 stories, on which only the Ron Dee was kind of memorable. Gore, sex and vomit on a planeflight to Hellsinki, which even had nothing to with the airport. Still it was typical Ron Dee The line-up here isn´t uninteresting. I don´t think Les Daniels did a lot of shorts. But if those 3 stories are a hint, Doomflight this is not
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Post by dem bones on Oct 21, 2009 11:36:34 GMT
Sends out some odd messages, that. Forming a Horror writers of America super league then importing a Brit to edit your book? I gave up - on horror - after Freak Show, so didn't even realise there was a third. Is it another where you're supposed to read them in order? Can't comment on a book i've never read, but i'm guessing Deathport is not among RC's finest achievements as we've had so many of his fans pass through our turbo-charged revolving doors you'd have thought one of them would've mentioned it before.
Les Daniels' hasn't written that many shorts but those i've read have been good-to-great like his novels, usually always reprinted in an anthology or two, but i don't remember seeing The Man In The Mirror elsewhere?
Happy birthday, Andy!
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Post by andydecker on Oct 21, 2009 13:02:03 GMT
Thanks dem!
I had totally forgotten that I had this one. I think I skipped on Freak, as I don´t share the american fascination with the circus and the freak show. For me this is an absolute bore.
The stories can be read in any order. After reading a paragraph here or there, I thought that this aged very badly. This isn´t of course the fault of the writers, but somehow it is weird to read about the smoking on planes and no security. Also you get the impression that most of writers hadn´t a clue how an airport works, but all flew of course and had seen Airport on the tv. So a lot of tales could be about any airport or any flight.
As coincidence wills it, I discovered another another Les Daniels tale in an theme-antho I will put on the board. ;D Spooky.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 22, 2009 5:30:00 GMT
To my way of thinking, Les Daniels is one of the greats and it's a shame that his small but incredibly significant contribution to the genre amounts to the Don Sebastian novels, three anthologies and the odd, usually very E.C.-inspired short. At first i thought there might be enough of the latter to compile a neat stand alone collection - Locus list nine and there may be more - but then i remembered that those i've read are only five-six pages long. For the record: By the Light of the Silvery Moon aka Wereman (most recently made available in Mammoth Book Of Wolf Men but also Mammoth Book Of Werewolves, 100 Twisted Little Tales Of Torment, Borderland. The Good Parts (Skipp & Spector's Book Of The Dead) They're Coming For You (Denis Etchison's Cutting Edge, Hot Blood, Mammoth Book Of Zombies & Co. The Little Green Ones ( Dark Voices 4 but often reprinted: Best New Horror 4, Giant Book Of Terror, 100 Tiny Tales Of Terror, etc. Loser ( Dark Voices 5) The Man In The Mirror DeathportRoom Service ( The SeaHarp Hotel) also, The Dead Man in Lovecraftian publication Tekeli-li! #1 (1991) and Monster Tales: Return of the Jumbo Shrimp in something called Necon Storiesi've a fondness for his Living In Fear, too, his fascinating take on horror entertainment in all its guises. I'm glad for him that he's struck it big with his Marvel and Wonderwoman coffee table jobs, but the Comics world's gain is definitely our loss. Les Daniels - Living In Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media (Da Capo Press, n.d., originally Scribner, 1975) Cover design by Joseph del Gaudio Design Group Inc./Lauren Maddaleno: Cover photo from Movie-Star News The Plague Years: A Background Of Belief Strawberry Hill: Gothic Ghosts Imps Of The Perverse: Afraid In America My Favourite Murder: Victorian Villainy The Golden Dawn: A Secret Society The Silver Key: Mass Markets The Invisible Ray: Mass Media Slime: The Retreat To Reality Blood Sons: A Ruthless Revival Heaven And Hell: Inner Space
also includes the following:
Edgar Allan Poe - The Imp Of The Perverse Ambrose Bierce - My Favourite Murder M. R. James - Rats Arthur Machen - Novel Of The White Powder H. P. Lovecraft - The Outsider Joseph Payne Brennan - Slime Jack Davis, Albert Feldstein & William M. Gaines - Model Nephew Richard Matheson - Blood SonFrom the lengthy blurb: ''A sober and quite fascinating appraisal of the history and meaning of horror from The Iliad to The Exorcist ... This well-researched and highly readable work includes not only 80 illustrations of your favorite ogres, vampires, and mad scientists, but seven actual horror stories, such as The Imp of the Perverse by Edgar Allan Poe and My Favorite Murder by Ambrose Bierce. '' — Playboy
''It might seem that there are enough things to be afraid of in real life. Poverty and pain, crime and corruption, oppression and depression, disease and death—all these lurk in the shadows, and sooner or later they pounce on everybody. And yet for a substantial audience, purely imaginary terrors represent an authentic experience."
With these words Les Daniels shuts the door on ''real life'' and opens a shady path into the horrible, the terrible, the macabre, and the uncanny. Why do people like to be scared? What scares them? How do Hitchcock, Shakespeare, Poe transform our ordinary fears into ''purely imaginary terrors?'' What is the appeal, on otherwise sensible people, of pulp fiction, horror films, haunted houses, and murder mysteries? Les Daniels explains in this far-reaching and pioneering history of mass media psychology. With a list of topics that runs from Dracula, Frank Franzetta, and Robert Louis Stevenson to Charles Manson, H. P. Lovecraft, Christopher Lee, and The Rolling Stones, Living in Fear unearths images overlooked or forgotten in the history of the movies, literature, comics, radio, theatre, and television. Guaranteed to send a frisson through the most jaded horror fan, here are a host of insights and leads for the student of popular culture and hours of entertainment for fans of Stephen King, John Carpenter, and other contemporary terror inspirers.
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