Best Decade For horror fiction since WW2!

[dem bones]

Stone the crows! Hot on the heels of Eighties - coolest decade ever!, another startlingly original idea! Some might think that the result is a foregone conclusion, or are we in for a big surprise? A reason or two for your selection would be dead appreciated, and if you want to mention other stuff that was great about the decade in question please do so!

And to make matters even more exciting ....

Worst Decade For horror fiction since WW2!

[alansjf]

Hmmm ... I'm going to have to give this one some thought.

[alansjf]

I've voted 1990s.

I have favourite writers, stories, books, from every decade on the list, so really I could argue in favour of any one of them. But I actually discovered many of those 60s, 70s, and 80s favourites during the 1990s, not to mention numerous pre-war classics, so in a weird way they all sort of belong to that decade - they're part of the reason it's my best decade for horror fiction.

But if that seems a little like having my cake and eating it, you can remove all of the above from the equation and I'd still choose the 90s. Here are 10 reasons why:

1990: Midnight Sun (Ramsey Campbell)
1991: Grimscribe: His Life & Works (Thomas Ligotti)
1992: Bad Brains (Kathe Koja)
1993: Under the Crust (Terry Lamsley)
1994:Throat Sprockets (Tim Lucas)
1995:The Off Season (Jack Cady)
1996: The Tooth Fairy (Graham Joyce)
1997: Signs of Life (M. John Harrison)
1998: Silk (Caitlin R. Kiernan)
1999: White (Tim Lebbon)

And then there are the anthologies: Metahorror, Foundations of Fear, Darklands, the Borderlands series, Midnight Never Comes, all the Mammoth Books of ...

If I had the time I could happily list a hundered reasons instead of the handful I've given, and then there's the list of short stories published between 1990 and 1999 ... But that's actually part of the reason too. Horror was still thriving in the 90s. It wasn't the horror of the 80s, or the 70s, or the 60s, but it was still horror, still being written, still being published, and still creating lifelong fans of the genre.

I should know. I'm one of them.

[andydecker]

This is kind of hard to answer. I voted the 80s, even if the 70s laid the foundations.

But the 80s - or their begining - saw the success of so many writers some of them still write today.

Robert McCammon
Peter Straub (okay, Ghost Story was published 79)
Dan Simmons
Skip/Spector
Michael Slade
King´s best novels.
Michael McDowell
Shaun Hutson

The 90s saw a lot of pretentious boring horror, especially Kathe Kojas Dell Horror comes to mind in this regard, all style and no bones. They spawned the Dark Fantasy (ugh) and of course the rise of the Vampire, which in turn spawned the Paranormal Romance. Also mostly ugh ;D

[alansjf]

I kinda suspected Koja would be a bit of a contentious selection. I know she's not to everone's taste, but in my book she was one of the 90s best writers of horror fiction, and I regard her 1992 novel Bad Brains as one of the very best horror novels of that decade.

Some great stuff came out as part of the Dell Abyss line - Brian Hodge, Poppy Z. Brite, Melanie Tem, Michael Blumlein, not to mention two excellent anthologies - Matahorror and Post Mortem. Sadly though, things quickly sank into medicrity.

[dem bones]

Thanks very much for these! After much consideration I predictably went with the golden age of the anthology - the 'seventies. Peter Haining at the top of his game, Hugh Lamb, Michel Parry, Mary Danby and her stable, RCH at Tandem and Fontana , Bernard Taylor, Ramsey Campbell, every Nel atrocity, etc. It was close, though. I've now realised that there was miles more going on horror-wise in the 'sixties than I thought with Birkin, classic Pan Horror's, the 'Hitchcock' antho's ghost-edited by Robert Arthur, Aicken and the Fontana Ghosts, John Burke, 'Peter Saxon' ..... it hadn't been this much fun since the glorious 'twenties and 'thirties.

Of the post-war decades, the only one that wouldn't be in with a shout is ... the 'nineties! That's mainly due to me getting fed up with the genre toward the close of the 'eighties when I felt it was becoming too clever, pretentious and pompous for its own good. Subsequently, I skipped the 'nineties almost entirely. A few cursory dips into the Mammoth Best New Horrors that came my way didn't exactly inspire me that things had changed much, and it's only of recent years that i've started trying post-eighties horror. There's clearly a long way to go, though: looking down Alan's list, I've not read one of his recommendations! I've got a copy of Post Mortem hanging around unread, heard great things about it, so maybe I'll get around to that soon.

[alansjf]

I was very tempted to vote 70s, simply for the vast number of great anthologies that decade produced ... in fact, if the poll was 'Best Decade for Horror Anthologies' I think I would have.

There's some good stuff in Post Mortem, I recall; the Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Tessier, and Charles L. Grant stories would be my top picks.

[dem bones]

Actually, the big word I left out of the thread heading was 'British'!

[benedictjjones]

I VOTED for the 80's

-the books of blood!!! (probably what really got me writing horror or at least decieding to keep going with it)
-the damnation game
basically the 80's for clive barker.

[corpsecandle]

RATS BOLLOCKS!

I thought this was films and voted 1970's

Looking at the question properly I eould have to say 1980's because of....:

The Rats
Domain
Guy N Smith pulp insanity
Books of Blood
Swan Song
Warday
When the Wind Blows (graphic Novel)

and other stuff.

[funkdooby]

For me personally, the 1980s.

[humgoo]

I think book-wise, the last few years were really great. I mean if you look at the old Vault posts (like, those of a decade ago) you see a great deal of frustration: I can't get the book! It's been sold out prior publication! Who needs these numbered-traycased-nukeproof-delux editions … etc etc.

Fast-forward to today. The strictly-for-the-suckerscollectors stuff is still there, but things have changed and for the better, as there's now a constant supply of well-made, affordable paperbacks.

No doubt this has a lot to do with the maturing of the POD technology (do you remember how the earliest POD "books" looked like? I do. They were no more than bundles of printouts perfunctorily stapled together. Quite scandalous).

And then the big publishers have entered the fray (the British Library seems to have stolen the spotlight on Vault, but there's also HarperCollins, which has reprinted both Lamb's and Dalby's works), and the traditional small presses have also gone paperback (Tartarus, Swan River etc) and then we have e-books, which are necessary not only to save space but also due to the fact that many excellent works are only available in e-format (case in point, Christmas Tales of Terror; also very worth your while to check out the Black Heath stuff).

Still buy old paperbacks though, which actually account for the biggest chunk of my paltry monthly book budget (due to the shipping fee). But it's worth it if only just to get the cover art!

Just take a look at the stuff on your precarious shelves (and your electronic device, if any) you got in the last decade … can't complain, can you?

[cauldronbrewer]

May 17, 2022 6:01:09 GMT humgoo said:

I think book-wise, the last few years were really great. I mean if you look at the old Vault posts (like, those of a decade ago) you see a great deal of frustration: I can't get the book! It's been sold out prior publication! Who needs these numbered-traycased-nukeproof-delux editions … etc etc.

Fast-forward to today. The strictly-for-the-suckerscollectors stuff is still there, but things have changed and for the better, as there's now a constant supply of well-made, affordable paperbacks.

No doubt this has a lot to do with the maturing of the POD technology (do you remember how the earliest POD "books" looked like? I do. They were no more than bundles of printouts perfunctorily stapled together. Quite scandalous).

And then the big publishers have entered the fray (the British Library seems to have stolen the spotlight on Vault, but there's also HarperCollins, which has reprinted both Lamb's and Dalby's works), and the traditional small presses have also gone paperback (Tartarus, Swan River etc) and then we have e-books, which are necessary not only to save space but also due to the fact that many excellent works are only available in e-format (case in point, Christmas Tales of Terror; also very worth your while to check out the Black Heath stuff).

Still buy old paperbacks though, which actually account for the biggest chunk of my paltry monthly book budget (due to the shipping fee). But it's worth it if only just to get the cover art!

Just take a look at the stuff on your precarious shelves (and your electronic device, if any) you got in the last decade … can't complain, can you?

Agreed--I've appreciated the greater availability of some long-out-of-print works. The past decade or has also seen some excellent new works by the likes of Paul Tremblay, Gemma Files, Adam Nevill, and Elizabeth Hand.

[andydecker]

I am not so sure. You are of course right in many things.

But:

The death of the cover art, in my opinion an unforgivable sin,  horror as a niche literature for the initiated only, no noteworthy mass-market presentation any longer. The concentrated elimination of the mid-list writer hurt the whole genre. It takes a serious effort to find new product and deep pockets to buy it. Yes, there are Ebooks and PoD -which remain reading copies - which reprint a lot of OoP stuff. But so much flies under the radar. Not the best way to find a new audience.

Contentwise I think horror is in an even more difficult position than pre-2000. Even if there was a market, novels like Herbert's The Rats or Simmon's Song of Kali - just to name some random titles - wouldn't find a publisher today. No editor would touch them because they don't want any controversy. Violence is okay, but things they deem not political correct have become a no-go. 

[Dr Strange]

Just some random thoughts -

Horror publishing seems to me to be very much on the up right now. I certainly see many more new horror books than I have the time or money to buy and read. Of course this says nothing about quality, just quantity. I have to say that I think people who claim they can't find any new horror to read aren't really looking for it.

I wonder if horror's share of overall book sales is really any worse now than it was in whatever "golden age" you might want to claim existed in the past. A quick look at the stats available on the net would suggest that horror books make up about 10% of fiction sales. Romance, crime/thriller, SF/fantasy, and YA all have (much) bigger shares - but was it ever any different? Most people who read fiction don't read horror - I've known that since I was a kid.

Does anyone know what sorts of numbers the likes of the Pan Horror anthologies sold in their heyday?

Stephen King - let's not go there.

I don't believe that the likes of The Rats or Song of Kali wouldn't get published today. After all they do get republished, along with Lovecraft and whoever else. If concerns over "political correctness" is such a big force in publishing, why are they still in print?

Controversy sells, and "extreme horror" is currently a thing if that's what you are in to.

Horror films and TV series (on Netfix and the like) are very popular right now, and big money makers - and the people who watch these will surely also read horror books, if they read fiction at all.