|
Post by dem bones on Nov 1, 2008 11:58:12 GMT
Peter Haining - Beyond The Curtain Of The Dark (Four Square, October, 1966: Nel, 1972) Foreword - Judith Merril Introduction - Peter Haining
Robert Bloch - Lizzie Borden Took An Axe Patricia Highsmith - The Snail Watcher Ambrose Bierce - Chickamauga Harry Harrison - At Last, The True Story Of Frankenstein Guy De Maupassant - The Horla Ray Bradbury - Fever Dream Theodore Sturgeon - The Other Celia Edgar Allan Poe - The Oval Portrait W. C. Morrow - The Monster Maker Frederic Brown - Come And Go Mad H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth - The Survivor H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth - The Ancestor Mary Shelley - The Mortal Immortal Nathaniel Hawthorne - Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment Henry Kuttner - By These Presents Henry Slesar - Whosits Disease Edgar Allan Poe - King Pest Harold Lawlor - Mayaya’s Little Green Men F. Marion Crawford - For The Blood Is The Life Edogawa Rampo - The Human Chair J. S. Le Fanu - The Fortunes Of Sir Robert Ardagh Robert Bloch - Return To The Sabbath Clive Pemberton - The Will Of Luke Carlowe Isaac Asimov - Eyes Do More Than SeeI think the Haining legend really starts picking up momentum with this collection. Other early ones like the same years Where Nightmares Are and The Hell Of Mirrors relied too much upon those classics we all have a billion times over, but this looks like the work of a man who loves, and is widely read in the genre. This is where I first read Bierce's decidedly non-escapist Chickamauga, a detached account of a war crime and one of the most horrible stories ever written. Maupassant's The Horla is a coming race story of, literally, insane genius and Edogawa Rampo (say it fast) is kinky-cute in the extreme. Of the Frankenstein variations, W. C. Morrow's ghastly The Monster Maker just shades it from Harrison's short 'n nasty effort. Warning: will undoubtedly contain spoilers. Robert Bloch - “Lizzie Borden Took An Axe …”: Black Sorcery expert Gideon Godfrey is dead, his skull split in two by a blow with an axe. Godfrey was the legal guardian of young Anita Loomis and filled her head with so much mumbo jumbo that she believes herself to be the prey of an incubus. Boyfriend Jim is skeptical, but slowly he comes to the conclusion that Anita has been possessed by the same demon that drove Lizzie Borden to slay her parents …. Patricia Highsmith - The Snail-Watcher: Peter Knoppert learns the hard way that a man can have too many snails. Beginning with just a handful of specimens, he allows them to reproduce unchecked until they’ve taken over the study and sets himself up for a slimy doom. Highsmith in gross out mood. Ambrose Bierce - Chickamauga: A six-year-old deaf mute is lost overnight in a forest. The following day he chances upon some funny men in uniform with red stuff all over them crawling toward the lake. He joins in the fun, even climbing on one of their backs until the man - who seems to have quite a bit of his face missing - angrily pushes him away. On reaching their destination, some of the party who stick their heads in the water don't lift them out again. The child sees a fire in the distance and, as his new pals seem to have all fallen asleep, heads out to investigate. It takes him a while to figure just whose house it is that's ablaze and whose family the Yankee soldiers have massacred, but he gets there in the end. Apparently, Bierce was stationed at Chickamauga for a time during the Civil War .... Harry Harrison - At Last, The True Story Of Frankenstein: Panama City, Florida. After witnessing the extraordinary performance of a 'monster' seemingly entirely oblivious to pain, reporter Dan Bream interviews its master, monocled Carney showman, Victor Frankenstein V. Frankenstein confides that the creature is wearing out and he'll need replacing very shortly ... Edogawa Rampo - The Human Chair: Oshiko, popular authoress, is used to receiving manuscripts from her admirers and struggling authors who wish to emulate her success, but this one is different and survives the bin. The author is clearly deranged. He wishes to confide his "dreadful crime" and beg her forgiveness. Despite herself, she can't help but read on ... and on ... until, with mounting horror, she realises just what it is she's sitting on .... Clive Pemberton - The Will Of Luke Carlowe: The Professor will leave his entire estate to detested nephew Cyril on condition that he will agree to enter his burial vault a month to the night following his death. Only then will the Carlowe - in spirit form - present him with the document of entitlement, confounding his critics who take him for a credulous old fool into the bargain. Henry Kuttner - By These Presents: James Fenwick flatters himself that he can outwit the Devil by trading his soul for immortality. After much hard bargaining, the Devil agrees on condition that he remove from James "a useless memory". Being a reasonable fellow, the evil fellow permits Fenwick to retain the ability to kill himself should eternal life become too boring. James Fenwick duly goes on to become the world's wickedest man, but soon tires of his thrill-a-minute existence. Something is missing. Perhaps the Devil has stolen his soul prematurely? Enraged at this imagined deception, he threatens to repent of all his sins. Reluctantly, the Devil returns the "useless memory" he took from him - his superego. Now cursed with a conscience again, Fenwick despises himself for what he's done, takes up a razor and slashes his throat! Robert Bloch - Return To The Sabbath: The brief rise and gruesome fall of Austrian horror actor and black magician Karl Jorla. His first film, Return To The Sabbath, made as a favour to a director friend, was never meant to be released but somehow finds its way to LA where its shown in a burlesque fleapit. Jorla’s stunning turn as a reanimated corpse decides aspiring producer Les Kincaid to sign him up for a Hollywood remake and Jorla jumps at the chance to get out of Austria. His fellow diabolists are furious as ... Sabbath's’s big resurrection ceremony exposes secrets of their craft. The director is ritualistically murdered in a Paris hotel and now several shadowy figures show up on set. Jorla see’s the filming through way beyond the call of duty Josh Kirby Thanks to Nightreader for providing the scan for the Four Square edition
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Aug 15, 2021 18:21:31 GMT
Lee Brown Coye Harold Lawlor - Mayaya's Little Green Men: ( Weird Tales, Nov. 1946). Things happen in rambling, reconverted farmhouses, things that make you wish you weren't twenty miles from the nearest neighbor. Meet the Chase family. Jay writes for a soap opera, Peggy is an illustrator, have son, aged three. One day a beautiful Trinidadian gal turns up on the doorstep. She heard they required a domestic. They do - desperately - but how can she have known? "The little green men told me." Within four hours Mayaya has the place spotless like it's never been, and the excitable kid - tell me you'd not be excitable if your parents named you fucking "Scooter" - is quietly sleeping. There is absolutely no way one person could have straightened the house unaided in so little time. Weird as the situation is, the Chase's are delighted with their too-perfect glam domestic. Then - tragedy. Scooter falls in a neighbour's swimming pool and doesn't drown. Who pulled him to safety and pumped out his lungs? Little green men. As he's leaving their home, said neighbour, Myles Slavitt insults Mayaya. An indignant Chase throws him out. Slavitt, a racist, is not one to forget a slight, and what began as a whimsical fantasy tale takes a jarring lurch into rape, murder and very bloody supernatural revenge. Clive Pemberton - The Will of Luke Carlowe: ( Sketchy Bits, 19 Feb., 1906. The Weird O' It, 1906). To get back at nephew Cyril for disparaging his belief in all manner of supernatural rot, the late Professor Luke Carlowe wills his entire fortune to Occult Society colleagues. However, the lawyer is instructed to advise Cyril of a second, more recent will, leaving everything to him. Should he wish to learn of it's whereabouts, Cyril must descend into the Carlowe vault at midnight where he will be informed by the dead man in person. Henry Slesar - Whosit's Disease: ( Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Oct. 1962). Glory-seeking Dr. Cravert is locked in dispute with an irascible patient with an interesting blue rash. Herman Klunkle demands that the unique disease bear his own name, not that of the medic who "discovered" it. There can be only one winner, etc.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Aug 16, 2021 4:43:49 GMT
Dillon Theodore Sturgeon - The Other Celia: ( Galaxy Science Fiction, March 1957). Something drastic should happen to all snoopers — but nothing as shocking and frightful as this! From a spyhole in the wardrobe of a room up top of a cheap lodging house, Slim Walsh, nosey parker, has a perfect view into the room beneath and the peculiar activities of Celia Sarton. Slim is currently on paid sick leave from work pending the settlement of a court action (he was clobbered with a wrench by a furious colleague). This gives him all day to indulge his passion for lovely prying into the lives of others, and Celia has captured his full attention. Every night she removes the cheap Gladstone from beneath her bed, retrieves something not dissimilar to a gossamer-thin sack from between a ream of blank sheets, and lays it beside her on the bed. A one-piece second skin. So it went for a week, three days of which Slim spent in shadowing her, every evening in watching her make her strange toilet. Every twenty-four hours , she changed bodies, carefully washing, drying, folding and putting away the one she was not using.I am not going to spoil the outrageous final reveal. If you love his heartbreaking Bright Segment, chances are The Other Celia will also appeal.
|
|
|
Post by samdawson on Aug 16, 2021 9:34:34 GMT
This is my current bath book, after being rescued from the attic and experiencing its first re-read since 1972. It's an extraordinarily good collection and once again leaves me wondering if, aged 11, I was spoiled by the high quality of anthologies available back then
|
|
|
Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Aug 16, 2021 14:50:22 GMT
This is my current bath book, after being rescued from the attic and experiencing its first re-read since 1972. It's an extraordinarily good collection and once again leaves me wondering if, aged 11, I was spoiled by the high quality of anthologies available back then
|
|
|
Post by Middoth on Aug 16, 2021 15:47:00 GMT
I don't understand how I could pass by "Mayaya's Little Green Men".
|
|
|
Post by 𝘗rincess 𝘵uvstarr on Aug 16, 2021 16:13:29 GMT
This is my current bath book, after being rescued from the attic and experiencing its first re-read since 1972. It's an extraordinarily good collection and once again leaves me wondering if, aged 11, I was spoiled by the high quality of anthologies available back then Dylan Thomas used to like to read detective fiction in the bath, and suck sweets.
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 16, 2021 18:29:09 GMT
You made me read "Bright Segment." One could also view it as a somewhat drawn-out sick joke. It strikes me now that many horror stories, the ones that are not gothic melodramas, are of this nature.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Aug 16, 2021 18:41:24 GMT
You made me read "Bright Segment." One could also view it as a somewhat drawn-out sick joke. It strikes me now that many horror stories, the ones that are not gothic melodramas, are of this nature. That's maybe much of the appeal? Can honestly say that reading Bright Segment struck a nerve with me.
|
|
|
Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 16, 2021 18:54:44 GMT
You made me read "Bright Segment." One could also view it as a somewhat drawn-out sick joke. It strikes me now that many horror stories, the ones that are not gothic melodramas, are of this nature. That's maybe much of the appeal? Can honestly say that reading Bright Segment struck a nerve with me. What I meant was that it made me laugh. Sturgeon carefully tells this sad, poignant story about society's rejects. But he is really just setting up the nasty punchline.
|
|
|
Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 16, 2021 19:45:28 GMT
Sturgeon carefully tells this sad, poignant story about society's rejects. But he is really just setting up the nasty punchline. I went through a big Sturgeon phase a few years back. He loves his sad, lonely rejects. Sometimes he takes pity on them, and sometimes he doesn't. Either way, the results are often striking.
|
|
|
Post by dem bones on Aug 17, 2021 6:08:08 GMT
That's maybe much of the appeal? Can honestly say that reading Bright Segment struck a nerve with me. What I meant was that it made me laugh. Sturgeon carefully tells this sad, poignant story about society's rejects. But he is really just setting up the nasty punchline. Which, from what I've seen of it, is how society tends to treat it's "failures" and "rejects." John Gordon's Never Grow Up, which deeply touched me on first acquaintance - still does, come to that - is another could be read as a sick joke. And that's before we even drag in the gleefully nasty Grand Guignol of Charles Birkin, 'Alex White,' Maurice Level, Dino Buzzati, everyone who ever wrote a horror story ...
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Aug 17, 2021 8:49:56 GMT
Recently I read BTCOFD for the first time. Well, at least the half of it which got translated. These shortened versions tend to acentuate the faults a bit.
On the whole I liked it. Or most of it. Absolutly hated the Frederic Brown story, while the Slesar was hot air. But it was kind of amusing hot air.
Haining managed to show the whole spectrum of the genre, from Poe to Pulp, and while a lot even 1966 must have been awfully tame, it made the whole horror thing look interesting. One of its advantages used to be its unpredictabily. Theoretically you never know what you will get. Who would have thought that Patricia Highsmith who later catered to the crime novel snobs wrote the blueprint for all Animals Attack in what must have been a throwaway story. While Lawlor put the ground elements for decades of risible American sitcoms on paper. Personally I think Mayaya's Little Green Men is all over the place, it begins as a satire (I hope) and ends with a lot of blood. But when reading it for the first time in Haining I kept hearing the laugh-track in my mind.
I can understand why Haining got to successful. He really had an eye for this.
|
|
|
Post by andydecker on Aug 17, 2021 8:58:30 GMT
Sturgeon carefully tells this sad, poignant story about society's rejects. But he is really just setting up the nasty punchline. I went through a big Sturgeon phase a few years back. He loves his sad, lonely rejects. Sometimes he takes pity on them, and sometimes he doesn't. Either way, the results are often striking. You are right. I never read much of Sturgeon, but I happened to read his story Thunder and Roses from 1947 recently. Absolutly depressing, timeless conflicts. And I couldn't believe that it was published first in Campbell's Astounding as it seemed to be the antithesis of Campbell's taste.
|
|
|
Post by cauldronbrewer on Aug 17, 2021 11:34:38 GMT
I never read much of Sturgeon, but I happened to read his story Thunder and Roses from 1947 recently. Absolutly depressing, timeless conflicts. And I couldn't believe that it was published first in Campbell's Astounding as it seemed to be the antithesis of Campbell's taste. When Sturgeon submitted "The World Well Lost" to an editor, the editor not only rejected it but contacted other editors and urged them to reject it too. But Sturgeon was ahead of his time--one of the most visionary and empathetic writers I've read. I think the latter quality is what makes some of his darker stories so crushing--for example, "The Other Celia." Celia's reaction at the end has stuck with me over the years.
|
|