Dennis Etchison - The Dark Country

[andydecker]

Dennis Etchison – The Dark Country (Scream/Press, 1982, hc, 207 pages; this edition Futura, 1988, paperback, 193 pages)

Content:

Ramsey Campbell - Introduction
It Only Comes Out at Night (1976)
Sitting in the Corner, Whimpering Quietly (1976)
The Walking Man (1976)
We Have All Been Here Before (1979)
Daughter of the Golden West (1979)- Variant of A Feast for Cathy (1973)
The Pitch (1978)
You Can Go Now (1980)
Today's Special (1972)
The Machine Demands a Sacrifice (1972)
Calling All Monsters (1973)
The Dead Line (1979)
The Late Shift (1980)
The Nighthawk (1978)
It Will Be Here Soon (1979)
Deathtracks (1982)
The Dark Country (1981)


This is the first collection of American writer Dennis Etchison. It was originally published by Scream/Press, a Small Press publisher specialising in the collectors market. Actually this was the first book they published. Later in the short horror boom it was picked up by Berkley Books in the US and Futura in England. The title story won both the World Fantasy Award and the British Fantasy Award.

Etchison is billed as one of those "more cerebral" horror writers of that decade, celebrated by his peers, especially as a master of the short story. He also did a lot of work under the radar of the book audience, like writing a rejected screenplay for Halloween 4 or scripts for radio shows.

I never could really get into him, but he left quite a body of work.

[enoch]

I'm afraid that Etchison is one of those writers I could never get into.  I've never read a story of his that I even understood, much less liked.  He's one of those authors I just "don't get" at all.

[pbsplatter]

Jan 26, 2023 14:00:35 GMT enoch said:

I'm afraid that Etchison is one of those writers I could never get into.  I've never read a story of his that I even understood, much less liked.  He's one of those authors I just "don't get" at all.

I really want to like Etchison and have tried a couple times. Conceptually I like his ideas, and there are some stories that work for me (“Sitting in the Corner, Whimpering Quietly”) but I’ve read a collection and a half of his work and I don’t remember more than bits and pieces of any of the stories. It just doesn’t stick. And I thought “Talking in the Dark” had one of the weirdest and most risible endings of any “acclaimed” horror stories


For what it’s worth, his novelizations he did in the early 80s as Jack Martin are pretty good.