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Post by dem bones on Apr 23, 2008 13:54:43 GMT
Robert Bloch - Dragons And Nightmares (Belmont/ Tower, 1972) The Eager Dragon Weird Tales, Jan. 1943 A Good Knights Work Unknown Worlds, Oct. 1941 Nursemaid To Nightmares Weird Tales, Nov 1942 (incorporates Black Barter, Weird Tales, Sept. 1943)
Author's Afterword.Humor is a product of its times, and the times were innocent. We had no real problems to confront in those days - merely a heritage of stock market crash, ten years of the Great Depression, and a minor disturbance called World War II, which currently afforded a modicum of irritation. The great problems, the great issues - things like love-ins, psychedelic art, happenings, the music of Sonny & Cher - had not yet arisen. We were totally lacking in insight and perspective. In our touching naivete, we looked upon Bonnie and Clyde as no better than criminals. All our pornography was softcore, and our idea of Black Comedy was limited to Amos ' Andy on the radio. From Robert Bloch's Afterword As you maybe guessed, Dragons And Nightmares finds Bloch at his most whimsical , so this collection isn't really my thing. His readily acknowledged inspirations for these stories - Damon Runyan and Thorne 'Topper' Smith - were big comedy noises at the time and, as he adds in his afterword, he was fed up with writing horror and fancied a new challenge. The Nurses To Nightmare combo is a good indication of what's on offer here. "Many men collect books, some collect paintings or antique furniture. I collect mythological entities." So explains millionaire Julius Marcus to his new houseman. Margate's collection includes Simpkins the toothless vampire, Jory the werewolf who "wears dark glasses so he won't see the full moon", Gerymanx the centaur, Myrtyle the hamadryad or tree nymph, and Trina the mermaid. All is well until Captain Hollis - who is employed by Margate to roam the world seeking out further specimens to add to the ghoulish company - returns from his travels with a snake-haired gorgon who promptly turns everyone bar the hero houseman to stone. Enter witch Terioso who conjures forth a demon to restore the slabs to life, but there's a hilarious mix up and each is returned to the wrong body! This is particularly rough on the hero's girlfriend Trina as she winds up in side a red-headed window dummy. The hero is forced to date the witch to persuade her to raise the demon again, but when she takes the form of a beautiful woman the mannequin gets jealous, a brawl ensues and the entire entourage are arrested. It all comes to a head in the court of Judge Numbottom ... Almost a hundred pages in length and the easiest read imaginable, but I kept thinking "the American R. Chetwynd-Hayes" and I can't see me attempting the opening stories this side of eternity. Afterword is good fun, mind. Intruder2kDem wrote: >Almost a hundred pages in length and the easiest >read imaginable, but I kept thinking "the American R. >Chetwynd-Hayes" and I can't see me attempting the >opening stories this side of eternity. No way man! Coincidentally I'm reading CHAMBER OF HORRORS at the mo and it's great stuff. But Bloch as the USA equivalent of R. Chetwynd-Hayes? Surely he isn't THAT bad - at least his whimsical works are well-written, unlike some of RCH's. Yes, I admit to having a soft spot for A GOOD KNIGHT'S WORK (which I found in Haining's WIZARDS OF ODD anthology). For hands-down straightforward pulp horror yarns, you can't beat Bloch's stories from the 1930s. I prefer some of his Cthulhu stories to Lovecraft's, if you can believe that! Cheers Graham demonik I think I could maybe have expressed that better. The RCH jibe was directed at Nursemaid To Nightmares in particular, and you'll note from his Afterword that he's wise to his humour being "of its time". Having said that, maybe I'm not entirely off the mark. I think both Bloch and RCH were capable of great work - however it comes across on here, I really rate both of them - but they do share an unfortunate predilection for sabotaging a story, either for the sake of a dreadful pun (Bloch) or a self consciously zany, never-ending interlude (RCH). Have you ever read any of Bloch's 'Lefty Feep' yarns, BTW? I think there were maybe twenty, written around the same time as the Dragons & Nightmares originals. Haining's resurrected a few of them. One was called The Case Of The Creeping Underwear or some-such. I'm not really Cthulthu buff enough to comment on the relative merits of the HPL/ Bloch contributions to the mythos.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Apr 23, 2008 17:16:32 GMT
And guess what? RCH wrote his own sojourn into fairytale dragon land entitled 'World of the Impossible' (Robert Hale 1998).
By that time RCH was well and truly 'a writer of his time' and this novel is anything but contemporary with the usual bunch of RCH-upper crust-type characters travelling to a world filled with magical cats and fairies, arming themselves with rifles and bren guns before they go. Sounds fun but only me and Dem would get a kick out of it
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Post by dem bones on Apr 23, 2008 21:28:41 GMT
Not so sure about that, John. This sounds very much the kind of RCH I would approach with extreme caution for fear of it giving me one of my turns. I hate ****ing dragons and 'magical cats', me.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Apr 23, 2008 21:41:44 GMT
Yeah - sorry Kev. On second thoughts you'd hate it
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Apr 24, 2008 6:07:29 GMT
Its chatty dragons. Well, generally dragons that get me.
One person made a cat seem inoffensive in a fantasy work was Micheal Moorcock. Jerry Cornelius's little cat doesn't offend me at all.
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Post by dem bones on Apr 24, 2008 6:49:42 GMT
Yeah - sorry Kev. On second thoughts you'd hate it That's more like it John. I have my "reputation" to consider .... Couldn't agree with you more on talking dragons, Craig. Talking cats are equally not to be encouraged though I'll offer diplomatic immunity to Theodore Sturgeon's murderous Fluffy who is, after all, thoroughly rotten. Cats, of the non-speaking variety, are usually OK in horror fiction but only when they're (a) being devoured by demon flowers, (b) eating people (c) being swung by the tail against a wall or, best of all, (d) smothering infants.
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Post by andydecker on Jan 23, 2020 11:15:09 GMT
This is from 1973. Publisher Heyne had 7 Bloch titles in programm at the time, both collections and novels. Heyne 1973; 141 pages Published in a time when the freedom to do anything on the cover - if it was in line with the content or not - was embraced and not shunned.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 23, 2020 20:12:29 GMT
Thanks so much for posting, Andy. If you want my honest, that cover is far lovelier than the book deserves, though those of whimsical turn may disagree.
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Post by jimrnemeth on Jan 20, 2024 6:36:13 GMT
Just finished this. I'm not really a fan of Bloch's forays into humor and farce, so this won't be a book I return to, as I do often with Bob's other works.
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