Pan Horror 22: The flame-grilled face

[Nightmare]

I'm waiting for #11 now if it's the right book. I might read 22 again during the wait.

[dem bones]

Jane Louie - The Trump Card: Time to get out your Ziggy Stardust album and give Five Years another spin because "Note it down, gentlemen. March 4 in the year 2020. It will be a historic date." That's Byfield Rochester, President of the United States addressing the media on the eve of his visit to the Kremlin to discuss arms reduction with his equally slippery counterpart, Premier Anatole Dubrovsky. The Presidents implants - a pacemaker and, far more significant in the scheme of things, a micro-computer - are wired to ensure the outcome of this prestigious meeting is world peace. For "world", of course, read America as, should things go to plan, what's left of the rest of the planet will be buried under a radiation cloud. Dubrovsky may be a lecherous fat slob but he's a wily lecherous fat slob and his spies are on top of their game. The tension mounts.

Gregory Alexander - The Singer not the Throng: I've changed my opinion on so many of these stories that I had to make sure I'd not been rotten to 'The Singer' (that's his name) but, no, he's still as underwhelming as ever.

Tony Richards - Child Of Ice: Its the most severe snowstorm Montreal has seen in sixteen years and the Mangolds are marooned in their car a few miles from the General Hospital with Celeste on the verge of giving birth. When Jack sets off in the blizzard to find help, the snow seizes the opportunity. Love the pay-off line!

[andydecker]

What better time to read a Pan than Christmas? As usual I do without summaries, there are already enough better ones above than I could ever mangage.


Elsie Karbacz - The Girl with the Violet Eyes
A possessed child story done right. Short and effective. While the ending is not very original, it works for me.

Roger Clarke - Pond Weed
Rather short and more of a vignette. Not an instant classic, but entertaining.

Tony Richards - Child of Ice
Horror in the snow. The case of the melting baby. Loved the ending. And the last line was inspired. Drip, drip.

Norman P. Kaufman - From the Depths of the Earth
While I have become a fan of Mr. Kaufmann, I thought this weak. Maybe because I read the plot already and more than once. Basically this is an old EC story (Reflections of Death) which was also filmed by Amicus. No doubt there were a few nice touches, even the end was an original idea. And the writing was fun. But on the whole it was a bit forced.

Fay Woolf – Sideshow
Guess stories like these are meant when critics later complained about the excesses in sadism. Black humour and slow strangling of an innocent victim. The idea was fun, and I liked it. Maybe a few pages too long, but that is a matter of taste.

Jane Louie - The Trump Card
Another of these supposedly dated Cold War stories, which sadly have become actual again. Chilling title. (Okay, this is how you construct conspiracy theories and Nostradamus readings, I know.) It's a bit too long for its own good and, like some reviewer wrote, a bit tedious. Still …

Bessie Jay - Incident in Cairo
Those comedy murder stories can be witty or dull. This is a bit of both. Its pretty ridiculous on the whole, and while the ending is worth a chuckle, the story felt rather forced.

Carolyn L. Bird - Dante’s Bistro
I will never understand why the editor put similar themed stories right after another so often. So after a comedy the next comedy. As unsubtle and daft as they come, and this should have aged badly, but in the era of the cook show where one could think that cooks are better than brain surgeons in their craft, this cannibal cuisine is funny and worth a chuckle.


To be continued …

[andydecker]

And the rest of vol. 22.


Edwin Brown - The Clock
A short and rather nasty black magic tale. It is a bit obvious like some reviewers remarked, sure, still I liked that the writer was consequent right to the unhappy end. The two punch ending also works pretty well.

Gregory Alexander - The Singer not the Throng
A lame satire with a stupid ending. This actually would have needed an EC ending; in this form it is just dumb.

Harry E Turner - Love Bites
I am a bit baffled by this. My first thought was 'A Indiana Jones parody, really?'. But this surely doesn't add up chronologically as Raiders was released the same year. It is the usual OTT story in which Harry Turner excelled, and through no fault of its own it nowadays ticks so many boxes, from the satire of the Club tale to every "ism" under the sun. It is still a hoot. Hard to imagine this in any other publication than the Pan Book of Horror Stores. But the most interesting thing for me was how explicit it was, another sign of the changing times.

Ian McEwan – Pornography
Too long for the mundane ending which no doubt worked better back then when it was new. This being Pan I expected more in the pus and dripping department. Yes, the setting was interesting and, again, more relevant at the time. Which of course is no fault of the story. But the plot would have been the same if the guy would have been a trucker or some cruising bloke. The 'pornography' didn't add much except making it maybe a bit more controversial and giving it a dubious context.

Ken Johns - Waste Nothing
No Pan without some backwoods hilarity. I am a bit torn, some nice ideas, but the "experimental writing style", as someone put it so aptly, was more distracting than successful.

David Case - A Cross to Bear
I have always been a bit critical of Case in Pan because of the length of his tales, but as the end of the collection this is perfect. I liked the story a lot. Not only a clever variation of the Club tale, but a very well written tale in every regard. The supernatural element was a bit subdued, but I didn't mind, as the rest was quite convincing. The whole colonialism and missionary stuff was critical yet subtle, with a lot of common sense and humanity, and some part were truly moving. As far as the writing is concerned, for me the best story in the book.

Pan 22 is noticeable missing some of its old drive. That the stories persistently refuse to fall in step with their contemporaries should be seen as a good thing, sadly only a few manage to do something memorable. There is nothing here to give the idea that this sullen resistance to changing times is something other than inertia and conservatism. The attrition is undeniably there. Of course hindsight is a great thing; if I had read this in 1981, I don't think I would have liked it much. Today I can appreciate the work of Kaufman, Turner and Case.