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Post by Dr Terror on Mar 14, 2008 23:16:23 GMT
The 23rd Pan Book Of Horror Stories ed. Herbert Van Thal (1982)
Angus Gellatly - The Sleeping Prince
Paul Theroux - Dengué Fever
Ruth Rendell - You Can’t Be Too Careful
Elizabeth Naden-Borland - A Rhyme
Harry E Turner - Fat Old Women Who Wear Fur Coats
Heather Vineham - Daughter of the House
Jane Louie - Dr. Dichter and the Terminal Cosmetic
Gregory Alexander - Foster Parents
Rosemary Timperley - A Backwards Shadow
W. S. Rearden - Chances Governs All
Alex White - The Dogs
Norman P. Kaufman - Rightfully Mine
Alan Temperley - Kowlongo Plaything
I think Temperley possibly outdoes Love on the Farm with Kowlongo Plaything.
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Post by dem on Mar 15, 2008 9:06:56 GMT
Didn't really go into much detail about #23 before, so perhaps we can do it justice this time. I don't think I've ever read Kowlongo Plaything but with an endorsement like that it won't take long to put that right. I Remember thinking that the usually reliable Harry E. Turner's contribution was all title and little story though the goddess-like genius of Alex White is again in evidence with The Dogs.
Cribbed together crap from Vault MK. 1
Elizabeth Naden-Borland - A Rhyme: Just that and easily maintains the standard of previous Pan 'poetry', though others who actually enjoy verse may disagree.
Jane Louie - Dr. Dichter and the Terminal Cosmetic: Celebrated plastic surgeon Dr Dichter moulds a nondescript transient into the most beautiful woman in LA . Unfortunately for her, he tires of her incessant talking and decides on drastic measures to resolve the issue.
Harry E Turner - Fat Old Women Who Wear Fur Coats: 3 pages of obvious filler concerning an old guy shovelling cream cakes down his gargantuan wife's gob so he can get his hands on her life insurance.
Alex White - The Dogs: Thankfully, the ever-dependable Alex White relieves the tedium with yet another sadistic shocker: Martha blags herself a job as housekeeper to reclusive sixty year old author Ian. One of his five Alsatians is giving her grief, so she poisons it with weedkiller. Let's hope this doesn't bring on one of Ian's murderous fits when he finds out, eh?
Another couple of worthwhile inclusions.
Heather Vineham - Daughter of the House: The old story of a child being locked away in a room for their own good. It also gets a bonus point for referring to an article in Man, Myth & Magic magazine.
Norman Kauffman - Rightfully Mine: An escaped Nazi war criminal has been flown to England for a heart transplant. The authorities don't know of his Concentration Camp Commandant past, but the organ donor's ghost has taken an instant dislike.
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Post by dem on May 4, 2008 7:51:51 GMT
I think Temperley possibly outdoes Love on the Farm with Kowlongo Plaything. I don't have #24, but Love On The Farm would have to be extremely vile to out-gross the unbearable Kowlongo Plaything. I've not read anything that horrible in ages. Treat yourselves if you've not already had the dubious pleasure! Angus Gellatly - The Sleeping Prince: Gwyneth is a young nurse in a ward reserved for coma victims. She's convinced herself that she's in love with hunky young Philip Charles, dreadfully injured in a car accident, who, despite the doctors' grim prognosis, fights his way back from the brink. Gwyneth devotes every spare moment to him at the expense of the "dummies" and is rewarded when, having made a full recovery, Philip invites her on a date. Only when she learns from randy colleague Sally-Anne that he's tried it on with all the other girls first does she realise that her "vegetables" ain't as deaf, dumb and blind as they like to make out and they will all have to be punished for "spying" on her. Paul Theroux - Dengué Fever: "That tree is the most malignant thing I've ever seen.": Splendid jungle yarn. "That tree is the most malignant thing I've ever seen.": Ayer Hitam, Malaysia. Viet vet Ladysmith has fallen victim of the dreaded lurgi and endures horrific hallucinations peopled by gummy Orientals and phantoms on bicycles fleeing a bloody massacre of civilians by the Japanese. The narrator thinks it has much to do with 'The Midnight Horror', an ugly tree, indigenous to the region, which smells of rotting flesh, but smug stand-in physician Alec Stewart disagrees and attempts to cure the patient the native way. Tree bark over aspirin? "It will do him the world of good, ask any witch doctor". Nasty final revelation. Gregory Alexander - Foster Parents: Ned and Daisy-Lou Sanderson, forty-something inbred hillbillies who live up on 'Old Bluey', wake to find a newborn baby wailing outside their shack. No-one comes to claim him and Daisy-Lou jealously raises him as her own. The little boy thrives on a diet of worms and beetles which he hunts himself. By nine months he's progressed to snakes and, after a year, wings burst out of his back! Now he can really hunt, the Sanderson's have good reason to bless him as a Godsend. Closer to (dare I say it) 'dark fantasy' than 'horror', but this is way more interesting than his The Singer Not The Throng in #22. Alan Temperley - Kowlongo Plaything: Brits Stephen and Mary Gresham make a dangerous enemy in General Elisha Ngwami, a sadistic, psychotic tyrant who Stephen dares confront after he's raped his sister. Ngwami feigns magnaminity and offers to fix Stephen up with a woman or man of his choice, but when the young man furiously refuses, the General sends him a rubber doll. In a moment of supreme drunken bravado, Stephen paints it black, shoves an aubergine up it and delivers it to the army barracks with a sign around it's neck advising everyone that this thing with the grotesquely exaggerated rubber lips is "Elisha Ngwami". Next morning, the troops arrive and the pair are escorted to a camp deep in the bush where the General and his goon squad await .... |
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Post by Johnlprobert on May 4, 2008 14:37:20 GMT
Don't know if it's an endorsement or not but Kowlongo Plaything was one of those stories that made me seriously consider giving up on the Pans as being just a bit too unremittingly vile, pointless, and with no redeeming features (like entertainment value)
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Post by dem on May 4, 2008 15:06:20 GMT
Don't know if it's an endorsement or not but Kowlongo Plaything was one of those stories that made me seriously consider giving up on the Pans as being just a bit too unremittingly vile, pointless, and with no redeeming features (like entertainment value) When I reached the point where it became glaringly obvious what was going to happen, I did seriously wonder what reading stuff like this might be doing to my mind. But, tellingly, I continued with it through to the bitter end. Those readers who reckon Birkin's A Lovely Bunch Of Coconuts is devoid of redeeming values ought to try Kowlongo Plaything. And why did I keep thinking of Orwell's 1984? You can see the sense of leaving it to last, as much of the rest of #23 seems anaemic in comparison. Ruth Rendell - You Can’t Be Too Careful: Fastitious office worker Delia Galway is obsessed with security, as is her landlady, Mrs. Swanson. Mrs. Swanson is also very aware that her tenant is getting her rooms on the cheap and, to meet the raise in rent, Delia is obliged to grudgingly take a flatmate. At first secretary Rosamund adapts well to her strict, lock-everything, indoors-by-midnight regime, but then she falls for Chris Maitland and, as anyone who loves their Amicus films will tell you, with that surname the poor bastard is doomed. After the old girl next door is bludgeoned during a burglary, Delia takes to sleeping with an evil carving knife under her pillow. One night, she hears a man's muffled voice coming from the kitchen .... W. S. Rearden - Chances Governs All: Shannon, 1953. Colonel Sir William O'Malley, recently retired war correspondent, recuperates in Ireland after a horrendous spell in Korea. A chance meeting with the ghost of rebel Sean O'Sullivan almost does for him as the phantom terrorist mistakes him for a despised Englishman. Rosemary Timperley - A Backwards Shadow: Recently widowed Mrs. Murray hears a child's footsteps in the room above during the day though her upstairs neighbours, the Lamberts, are yet to start a family. Fearing either that the house is haunted or she's losing her mind, Mrs. Murray finds alternative accommodation. Five years later and a tragic house-fire confirms that she wasn't imagining things after all. You know where you stand with Rosemary Timperley. Lonely women of all ages, tragic infants, and, like as not, ghosts. She's ideal for the Fontana books but was she ever really Pan Horror material? My picks from this volume would have to be Dengué Fever, The Dogs .... and Kowlongo Plaything. |
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Post by allthingshorror on Oct 3, 2008 16:24:35 GMT
I'd like to point out that after a phone call with Alan Temperley today - it's not going to be a big loss if I can get an interview with him for the book or not. He's a prick, pure and simple.
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Post by erebus on Feb 8, 2009 21:34:37 GMT
Really..Why was he arrogant and rude ? Sod him then its his loss.
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Post by erebus on Feb 13, 2010 18:09:41 GMT
Not much going on this Saturday so I dug this one out to read as it had been years since a visit.
Apart from the last tale which has of course its reputation speaks for itself, this volume is rather a dissapointment. A RHYME and FAT OLD WOMEN WHO WEAR FUR COATS are pointless fillers and the combined pages they take up could have gone to a more suitable and lenghty tale.
I did enjoy A BACKWARDS SHADOW. Yes it is typical of her but is a good little yarn.
The final three tales in the book are probably my favorites. THE DOGS and RIGHTFULLY MINE are basic revenge/return stories. And of course KOWLONGO PLAYTHING is truely a mans worst nightmare.
Gonna adapt Saturdays or Sundays as my new pan read weekend. Think number 9 next.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 8, 2010 17:48:58 GMT
I'd like to point out that after a phone call with Alan Temperley today - it's not going to be a big loss if I can get an interview with him for the book or not. He's a prick, pure and simple. I understand Temperley is now a celebrated author of children's books. Perhaps he is not interested in being reminded of the past? Yes, I have now read "Kowlongo Plaything." When I realized where it was heading I expected worse than what I got, actually. It is still in somewhat poor taste, of course. |
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Post by ramseycampbell on Dec 9, 2010 11:03:28 GMT
I'd like to point out that after a phone call with Alan Temperley today - it's not going to be a big loss if I can get an interview with him for the book or not. He's a prick, pure and simple. Oh dear! How so? |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 9, 2010 15:22:52 GMT
Come to think of it, the other day somebody called me and wanted me to talk about some stories of mine that were published in the 70s, when I was a teenager. Naturally I had nothing interesting to say---I mean, I can just barely recall things that happened last week. Also, it is not clear to me that I should be held responsible for things I did in my youth. I think he ended up very annoyed with me.
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Post by ramseycampbell on Dec 10, 2010 10:45:42 GMT
Come to think of it, the other day somebody called me and wanted me to talk about some stories of mine that were published in the 70s, when I was a teenager. Naturally I had nothing interesting to say---I mean, I can just barely recall things that happened last week. Also, it is not clear to me that I should be held responsible for things I did in my youth. I think he ended up very annoyed with me. I certainly feel as if someone other than me wrote my old (or even relatively recent) stuff, but it was me all the time. Mind you, I've just been looking at (well, proofreading) my first published book, and I found it interesting to be objective in my afterword to the new edition. You won't mind my asking what name you wrote under? |
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Post by David A. Riley on Dec 10, 2010 10:53:32 GMT
I've still got your first collection, Ramsey. I don't recognise the guy in the photograph, though.  |
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Dec 10, 2010 11:52:01 GMT
You won't mind my asking what name you wrote under? I insist on my anonymity! Besides, it was crap and is of no interest whatsoever. |
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Post by ramseycampbell on Dec 10, 2010 12:09:38 GMT
You won't mind my asking what name you wrote under? I insist on my anonymity! Besides, it was crap and is of no interest whatsoever. Do you still publish fiction? |
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