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Post by David A. Riley on Apr 17, 2008 8:52:36 GMT
There is a fine balance between acceptable amounts of "gore" in a story and going over the top with it. Clive Barker, for instance, in his Books of Blood handles the balance right, delivering a hard punch in stories that could also be labelled "brainy" horror too. The both can go hand in hand when written by someone who knows his craft well. On the other hand, I just read an excerpt from a novel called Snuff which the author has made available on Shocklines which goes just a tad too far for my tastes. Perhaps others could say whether they, too, feel the same. keepitbrutal.wordpress.com/I would add the author does say that this is just a sample and there is more story to it than shown here, but I personally find this much too graphic for me. I'm well on the way to finishing a crime novel which involves two torture scenes, neither of which are anything as graphic as this. Or am I being unduly squeamish? David
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Post by dem bones on Apr 17, 2008 11:14:33 GMT
I read somewhere that Steve Jones picks most of these stories from Post Script Magazine - is that true? If not, does anybody know which other mags he gets them from, please? He picks them from all over the place, Ed. Other anthologies, single author collections, mainstream and small press magazines, SF-orientated publications like Interzone and MF&SF .... it's a labour of love, that's for sure. David, I've not read the Snuff extract (maybe later) but - from my limited experience - some going-too-far fiction can be very entertaining. The Michael Slade novels ( Headhunter, Ghoul, Ripper, etc) have quite an enthusiastic fan club on here as have 'James Darke's Witches series. I've recently had plenty of fun revisiting the splatterpunk-heavy anthologies Book Of The Dead and Silver Scream. They really don't seem that shocking now and they've certainly got something in terms of decent plotting and thrilling pace. Of course, the 'Shudder Pulps' were considered the last word in torture-porn in their day and some people feel that way about Charles Birkin. I love just about all the above named, but on other days only the Jamesian delights of Ghosts & Scholars or, say, the trad horrors and ghosts of A. M. Burrage or L. P. Hartley will do it for me. I think if this board reveals anything it's that our tastes are all over the map, and long may that continue.
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Post by franklinmarsh on Apr 17, 2008 11:30:10 GMT
No, I don't think you're being unduly squeamish. Guy N Smith's most horrifying novel is probably Bamboo Guerillas, an exploitational splurge through Japanese WWII atrocities which is pretty disgusting unless you can switch off after a while. Robert Harris' Fatherland contains a short sharp description of a violent beating that is far more emotionally affecting than wading through pages of bloodshed. Anyway, what's more scarey - knowing something's behind the door but not knowing what it is, or knowing that it's a slime beast, ghost or chainsaw-wielding lunatic? The Quiet/Brainy Horror surge must have been a backlash against the nasties, the splatter punks and Richard Laymon. These things come in waves. Every generation rebels against the previous one, blah, blah etc, etc. Enough cliches! The only other website I can claim to frequent is dedicated to British Horror Films. Every year they have a top 100 poll, and every year The Wicker Man (1973) (zzzzzzzzzzz) wins. Last year some wag had the brilliant idea of taking the highest ranking 64 films and running 'The British Horror Cup.' The 64 films were paired up at random, and you had to argue the case for your fave film - whether this was simply typing the name of the film, or writing a huge screed about why you loved a particular picture. The winning film went through to the next round - just like the FA Cup. (Apparently the idea was nicked from a fansite for popular beat combo The Fall - where Fall albums compete against one another. Early rounds produced some interesting arguments, especially where a 'horror' film of cinematic repute came up against a less respected one eg Don't Look Now vs Twins Of Evil. The cineastes and cinephiles (in the seats) could get quite heated in their defence of art against the beer-swilling neanderthals hurling toilet rolls and surging down the terraces singing 'There's only one Gustav Weil' and 'Knees Up Mother Brown.' It's those little personal preferences that make the 'What Is Horror' debate so interesting - as long as no-one adopts the 'I'm Right And You're Wrong' stance. Vive Le Difference!
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Post by marksamuels on Apr 17, 2008 16:34:14 GMT
I like to think of myself as a horror writer, and that's what I am, although I accept that there are authors out there who feel that the "label" horror now leads the average reader to think of the real-life counterparts of Garth Marenghi. I'm not bothered by gore per se, nor any other form of extreme subject-matter in horror fiction. But I am bothered by crappy authors who are practically illiterate and haven't even mastered the basics of good writing, such as grammar. A love of horror for its own sake is important if you're going to write the stuff too. My impression of some of the authors from the horror boom of the 70s and 80s, and some recent authors in their mould, is that they're only in it for the money and to be author-celebrities. When they boast about reading only their own horror books, and nothing else in the field, my alarm bells go off. Charles Birkin's stuff may have been "nasty", but his style was very fine. Book of the Dead by Skipp and Spector is "nasty", but 90% of the stories therein are, again, finely written. Still, I'll stick with the field, if it'll have me. I'm a horror writer Mark S.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 25, 2008 16:40:09 GMT
Maybe I had some kind of aural hallucination or something because, for a horror book with no horror stories, this one seems to contain an awful lot of horror, including quite the most traditional terror tale I've ever read of Ramsey Campbell's this side of Heading Home and another David J. Schow zombie extravaganza (although this time they've matters other than brain eating on their worryingly agile minds)!
Ramsey Campbell - Digging Deep: It's your father. That's right, I'm alive. You've buried me alive ..." Mercy Hill cemetery. Alan Coe is trapped inside his coffin with just a mobile phone between him and slow suffocation. His son and daughter are unavailable, presumed gallivanting, and it doesn't help that it's Halloween and the police have had quite enough prank calls for one evening. Can he convince them that this is for real?
"Sometimes the old ideas are best, eh? But I hope I've brought it up to date" comments Ramsey in the introduction.
Lynda E. Rucker - The Last Reel: Black Magic. Sophie and her movie geek partner Kevin are off to view her deceased Aunt Rose's gloomy, dilapidated house in the woods which the weird old recluse has surprisingly willed to her. Sophie's mother detested her sister for some undisclosed abominable act and urges Sophie to forget the place, the old bat was a witch and an evil one at that. To pass the time as they explore the increasingly sinister interior, they hold their usual film quiz. "Three movies featuring a head-in-a-box. Name them?"
David J. Schow - Obsequy: Necrophilia in reverse as the dead of Triple Pines revive and set about rekindling old relationships and/ or settling scores. Transient Doug Walcott is one of the guys who've been working on the legally dubious mass excavation - the cemetery is being relocated on the other side of the valley to accommodate the new reservoir. When he reaches the grave of Michelle Farrier, the only woman he ever loved, he has to quit the job, but it makes no difference. Soon they're enjoying the passionate sex that was denied them when she was alive though, as ever, there's a huge price to pay.
damn! I'm almost disappointed that this ain't turning out to be the festival of self-indulgence I'd lead myself to believe, though, admittedly, there's plenty of time for that to change and I couldn't make head or tail of the Joel Lane story on first reading.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Apr 25, 2008 16:47:33 GMT
The Ramsey Campbell is a good one - one of the best from the 'Phobic' anthology from which it was selected. I first heard it when he read it aloud at the last FantasyCon to be held in Walsall
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Post by eddempster on Apr 25, 2008 18:00:29 GMT
Bugger. Sorry I missed the replies to this thread - you could do with a 'new posts' or 'new replies to your posts' button instead of the 30 recent post thing. It's kinda hard to keep track of what's gone on.
Not much time to post now, but I'll try to pop back later. I'm gradually working my way through the stories, and my overall impression, so far, is that they're nicely written, but lack the wow factor that I like to get from a story. The Ramsay Campbell one is spoilt a little by the intro, which gives away the fact that they guy has been buried with a phone. Plus this is one of those stories that you see quite often on horror sites - I think we've all written one at some point. It's a solid story, nevertheless.
I'll comment more on those I've read next time I stop in.
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Post by benedictjjones on Apr 28, 2008 12:31:41 GMT
got to say that personally i didn't like the ramsey campbell story that much, adding a mobile phone just didn't add enough to a done to death idea for me. there were some pretty good stories in this one though. i always find the Mammoth books have stuff i like and stuff i don't, as long as the stuff i like out weighs the stuff i don't then i'm happy!!
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Post by eddempster on Apr 28, 2008 21:32:54 GMT
I'm pretty sure I've actually seen that exact same story before, complete with mobile phone, written by an aspiring writer. I think if you're a pro and you're going to revisit such a tired old topic, you've really got to find something new to say, or forget it and write something else. I read it waiting for a clever twist - something that would shock me with the author's genius, but I have to confess I was left disappointed. Like I said above, it's a solid story, but it has certainly been done. It's a well worn plot.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on May 9, 2008 5:23:51 GMT
Very interesting discussion. For what it’s worth, here’s a forum newbie’s take on things. I buy the Jones Best New Horror every year (plus a whole bunch of other Year’s Bests, for that matter). As someone who loves horror fiction, in fact good short fiction in all its forms, this particular series hardly ever lets me down. Like everyone, I have my own set of standards when it comes to determining what makes a good piece of horror fiction, my own particular likes and dislikes, and Best New Horror invariably scores more hits than misses - at least for me. I’ve always found them to be nicely varied collections, with a fair sampling of tougher, more visceral material alongside the quieter, more psychological (or, y’know, ‘brainier’) tales. There’s usually a good mix of familiar and less familiar names (though I’ve often heard of most, if not all, of the contributors, even if I’ve not read any of their stuff yet) and it doesn’t hurt that a fair few of my favourite writers (Campbell, Newman, Kiernan, Hirshberg, Fowler, Lee…) crop up on a regular basis. But my cup of Tetley’s isn’t necessarily yours. What I wonder, though, is how much of this is generational? I was born in the mid 70s, and didn’t really discover horror until my mid-ish teens, long after the 60-70s Golden Age of the British Horror anthology had passed. So I only really discovered the Fontana Greats and the Pan Books via the writers (and editors) who grew up with and, I suppose, were inspired by them; from the start, horror, for me, was what that discovery, that inspiration, led to. As a result, my standards for what makes a good horror story developed from reading - amongst many others - Charles L Grant’s Shadows anthologies (plus his various non-Shadows titles), from Monteleone’s Borderlands series, from Ellen Datlow anthologies, and from Stephen Jones anthologies, Best New Horror included. And in a very real sense, it’s to Stephen Jones that I owe my discovery of all the great anthologies this site is dedicated to. I read David Case‘s ‘The Cell‘ in one of Jones‘ Mammoth volumes, which led me to the Pan Books of Horror and writers like Charles Birkin and R. Chetwynd-Hayes, John Burke and Rosemary Timperley and Dorothy K Haynes, and they in turn led me to the Fontana books, the Tandems, the Mayflowers…and, well, here I am.
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Post by eddempster on Jun 21, 2008 10:09:39 GMT
I've read maybe eight or ten of these stories so far, and I'm putting the book down for good now. I like to read in my lunch breaks, but over the past few days I've come to pick up the book and felt a sense of dread at the prospect of wasting my reading time on another dull story.
I know these things are intensely subjective, so I'm not saying Stephen Jones was wrong to pick these, but I'm not finding much new here, and I have read better horror stories than some of these in crit groups.
The story that most irked me was Elizabeth Hand's Saffron Gatherers - WTF was that about? Sure, it was beautifully written, but there isn't anything approaching horror in the story, IMO. I found it long, boring and ultimately pointless. It's a bland literary story that's completely lacking in dramatic tension, IMO.
The Night Watch by John Gordon was predictable at every step of the way. It's a very old and worn out plot.
Sentinels by Mark Samuels is the only one so far that I felt had a sense of suspense and true horror about it, as well as a proper three dimensional main character.
What Nature Abhors by Mark Morris is 'a horror situation' - little more than a milieu. We know nothing about the MC to begin with, so when he finds himself in a weird version of reality with a reduced population and he's being chased through the deserted streets by men with sacks over their heads I don't find myself caring what happens to him - why should I? Come the end of the tale there's something approaching a twist, but it's not adequately set up beforehand, which makes it feel contrived and slightly silly to me. The situation is ripe for exploration, but I don't feel as if the author made the most of it.
Summer by Al Sarrantonio (I nearly forgot to mention) had a real old fashioned Twilight Zone feel to it. A classic tale, and probably the best one I've read so far in this collection. Not particularly horrific, though - more along the lines of 'weird tales'.
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albie
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 134
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Post by albie on Oct 2, 2008 13:18:00 GMT
I'm pretty sure I've actually seen that exact same story before, complete with mobile phone, written by an aspiring writer. I said that when I read it. I'm certain I've read that story before, and not that long ago.
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