alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Sept 19, 2008 22:27:36 GMT
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.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Sept 19, 2008 10:00:34 GMT
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.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Sept 19, 2008 9:09:16 GMT
Hell, every single word that sees publication! Zero self-confidence... its a good job subbing stories can be done mostly by e-mail, I'd never convince myself anything was good enough for as long as it would take to print 'em and physically post 'em... Ah yes, I've been there ... While I'm writing something, I'm invincible - the trouble starts as soon as I go back and read what I've written. Then it's the complete opposite, and the delete button is suddenly my new best friend. When I do manage to resist that temptation and decide to persevere, I'll eventually reach a point where I feel ok enough to actually submit, but once it's gone I wonder what on earth I was thinking. No one's going to publish that! It's only a matter of time before the next rejection email/letter arrives ... I am always genuinely surprised when I get an acceptance, but I still hate rereading anything of mine that actually sees print. All I can see is everything that's wrong with it.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Sept 17, 2008 9:31:51 GMT
Hmmm ... I'm going to have to give this one some thought.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Sept 17, 2008 9:23:26 GMT
And thanks from me to - I dropped by last night, followed the link and registered over at Cafe Doom.
Now all I need to do is write the story. The blank screen is calling ...
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Aug 26, 2008 18:05:13 GMT
I don't know, it's tempting ...
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Aug 25, 2008 20:03:07 GMT
Well, the 70 years rules out Wakefield (1964, I think) and Burrage (sometime in the early 1950s?).
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Aug 25, 2008 19:43:57 GMT
I find some of the later YBHs very hit and miss, but the early Wagners are great - Campbell, Lumley, Charles L. Grant, Dennis Etchison, David J. Schow were all regular contributors, and as was pointed out upthread, small press regulars, who often received very little recognition elsewhere, were well represented.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Aug 25, 2008 19:38:09 GMT
They're a great place to start, especially as an affordable alternative to the wonderful, but often wonderfully expensive, Ash Tree Press collections. I'd really like to see a H. Russell Wakefield collection from Wordsworth, and some A.M. Burrage, but I assume there are copyright issues preventing that. Still, if you're looking to put together a core library of classic supernatural fiction, £2 or £3 a pop is hard to beat.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Aug 25, 2008 11:19:42 GMT
Yeah, I think these are pretty good selections. Nice mix of old and more recent material, and much of it unfamilar. I'd like to see Valentine put together some more of these anthologies.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Aug 24, 2008 20:41:14 GMT
Maybe I was just in the mood for having my expectations challenged when I read it.
I generally like Lockley & Lewis' work - I believe they have a collection due from Pendragon Press sometime next year. That's one to look out for.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Aug 24, 2008 20:07:55 GMT
I think my problem with 'Family Ties' was I clocked the outcome before the end of the second page. Competently written, and as you say not pushing any boundaries, but the fact that was revealed so early on meant the story as a whole was a bit of a letdown.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Aug 23, 2008 19:21:18 GMT
A fine interview. Lamb is one of the great modern anthologists, for all that it's over ten years since Gaslit Nightmares 2 ... a shame that.
I hope Dover end up reprinting all of them - I'm still missing copies of Cold Fear and The Man-Wolf...
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Aug 23, 2008 19:12:54 GMT
I finally got around to reading this a few weeks back, but what with one thing and another I haven't had the chance to drop by and post a few comments before now. Overall, a very strong anthology - there's only really a couple of the 'short-shorts' that didn't really work for me. 'The Scavenger' was a great opener (any chance of a collection from Rog Pile? I'd certainly like to see one ...), liked 'A Sense of Movement' and 'Widow's Weeds' too, though 'Family Ties' was a bit of a let down - Lockley and Lewis have produced better. My favourites were Mike Chinn's 'Like a Bird', Craig Herbertson's 'Synchronicity' - really great characterisation in this one, and a perfect closing sentence - Paul Finch's 'In the Thicket' and Franck Nicholas' 'In an Old Overcoat'. I'm not entirely certain I know what was going on in the Nicholas, but the ambiguity - whether actually there in the story or just something I brought to the experience as a reader - really worked. In a word, unnerving. But I like unnerving.
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alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Aug 23, 2008 18:49:58 GMT
Here you go:
THE WEREWOLF PACK:
Introduction - Mark Valentine The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains - Captain Frederick Marryat The White Wolf of Kostopchin - Sir Gilbert Campbell The Other Side - Count Stenbock The Terror in the Snow - B. Fletcher Robinson A Werewolf of the Campagna - Mrs Hugh Fraser The White Wolf - Andrew Lang The Boy and the Wolf, or The Broken Promise - Andrew Lang William and the Werewolf - F.J. Harvey Darton The Undying Thing - Barry Pain Gabriel-Ernest - Saki The She-Wolf - Saki The Thing in the Forest - Bernard Capes Among the Wolves - Vasile Voiculescu The Shadow of the Wolf - Ron Weighell The Clay Party - Steve Duffy The Tale Untold - Gail-Nina Anderson Loup-garou - R.B. Russell
THE BLACK VEIL:
Introduction - Mark Valentine The Warder of the Door - Robert Eustace & L.T. Meade The Story of Sevens Hall - E. & H. Heron The Gateway of the Monster - William Hope Hodgson The Red Hand - Arthur Machen The Haunted Woman - Allen Upward The Ghost with the Club-foot - Robert Barr The Curious Activities of Basil Thorpenden - Vernon Knowles The Necromancer - Donald Campbell Waste Manor - L. Adams Beck The House of Fenris - John Cooling The Prince of Barlocco - Mark Valentine The Legacy of the Viper - C.P. Langeveld The Sheelagh-na-gig - Mary Anne Allen The Black Veil - A.F. Kidd Like Clockwork - R.B. Russell Spirit Solutions - Rosalie Parker
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