Frights - Kirby McCauley

[jonathan122]

Frights - ed. Kirby McCauley (Gollancz 1976)

Introduction: Wonder and Terror - Fritz Leiber
There's a Long, Long Trail A-Winding - Russell Kirk
The Whisperer - Brian Lumley
Armaja Das - Joe Haldeman
The Kitten - Poul and Karen Anderson
Oh Tell Me Will It Freeze Tonight - R. A. Lafferty
Dead Call - William F. Nolan
The Idiots - Davis Grubb
The Companion - Ramsey Campbell
Firefight - David Drake
It Only Comes Out at Night - Dennis Etchison
Compulsory Games - Robert Aickman
Sums - John Jakes and Richard E. Peck
The Warm Farewell - Robert Bloch
End Game - Gahan Wilson
Afterword - Kirby McCauley

[dem bones]

Uncredited cover artwork for the Warner 1977 edition

Surprised this one has yet to attract any comments. Dark Forces tends to receive the lion's share of the attention, but Kirby McCauley's Fright and Night Chills are tidy anthologies by anyone's standards. According to Will Errickson at Too Much Horror Fiction, George Zeil was responsible for the gorgeous cover artwork.

Brian Lumley - The Whisperer: Mr. Benson takes an instant dislike to a foul-smelling, snickering hunchback in a shabby coat and floppy hat who stinks out the carriage on the morning commute. The winking horror sets about systematically destroying his new plaything, ruining Benson's marriage and turning everyone against him. Worst of it is, all who come into the hunchback's orbit forget his existence seconds after they've done his bidding. As his persecution continues, Benson unravels completely, steps in front of a car. And still his tormentor isn't done with him.

Robert Bloch - The Warm Farewell: Mr. Endicott and his family are forced to quit Freedom after he appoints a black journalist to his paper. Scotty is an "educated nigra" and the local Klansmen don't take kindly to his exposé of their dubious activities, Grandmaster Hood even making the journey from Atlanta to register his disapproval. The Brothers want to know where Scotty is hiding and as Hood has taken such a shine to Endicott's teenage daughter, Rena, why not have some fun and rape the truth out of her? If this were a Charles Birkin story you'd read it through your fingers, but Bloch isn't the kind of author to allow evil to triumph ... or is he?

William F. Nolan - Dead Call: Len Stiles phones his buddy Frank. Nothing too extraordinary about that, except Len was mangled to a pulp last year when his car collided with a concrete pillar on the Freeway. Is this some kind of sick joke? No, Len assures Frank. It's me, OK, calling from the other side, and death is so great you'd be mad not to join me.

[Shrink Proof]

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I thoroughly enjoyed this one; in fact, all three of Kirby McCauley's anthologies are worth investigating, especially as they can be picked up cheaply secondhand. My edition of "Frights" doesn't have the great 70s artwork posted above though, just plain black with a title.

David Drake's "Firefight" is set in the Vietnam War, based in part on Drake's own combat experiences there. You can read it online for free here - baencd.thefifthimperium.com/15-WhentheTideRisesCD/WhentheTideRisesCD/Balefires/1597800716__16.htm - together with an intro by Drake himself.

[dem bones]

Davis Grubb - The Idiots: Clarksburg, 1945. It's old-timer Gailey Flowers' unshakable belief that the world consists of no more than the eight counties of West Virginia and any person or map tries to tell you different is a fool, a liar, or both. So when his friend, Sol, tearfully informs him that his entire family has been gassed in Auschwitz, Gramps sets out to kill Hitler, figuring a bastard like that could only be a Webster Springs man.

Gahan Wilson - End Game: Afterlife adventures of the great traveller, Arthur Mannering, who stipulated that, on his death, his body be mummified, coated in plastic, and sent back gallivanting the globe. All is well until he and his guide reach Hong Kong and get caught up in a street riot. Mannering is abducted and when next we catch up with him he's performing amazing party pieces in a 42nd Street sideshow as 'Oscar, the Roumanian Robot.' Told over a game of chess. The reader soon suspects the identity of one of the participants.

Also enjoyed Kirby McCauley's Afterword - essentially a swipe at "irreverent" supernatural fiction - in particular the following:

" .... I am among those who believe that the magazine Unknown and magazines in that tradition failed because their predominant premise was too whimsical. Unknown did run a good many excellent stories, but also a good deal of 'cute, clever and amusing' material written by authors having a condescending, self-indulgent find of fun at the readers' expense .... Many of those attracted to the light and whimsical tradition have, I would suggest, weak credentials in the respect and reverence department: their true loves are elsewhere - and it shows."

I'm being very selective here in that Mr. McCauley's is a twin-pronged attack - his other target being sadistic horror - but it was the stuff that I considered smug, self-satisfied exercises in the author demonstrating how superior s/he is to we mere mortals killed my interest in the genre for a decade, and I still abandon a story (and it's author) should it give me that impression. Not saying I was or am right, or that any of this is of the least importance, but that's just how it is!