alansjf
Devils Coach Horse
Posts: 107
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Post by alansjf on Jun 3, 2008 11:49:07 GMT
Best New Horror 17 (Robinson, 2006) (cover: Les Edwards) Stephen Jones - Introduction - Horror in 2005 Ramsey Campbell - The Decorations David Herter - Black and Green and Gold Carol Emshwiller - I Live With You and You Don’t Know It Peter Atkins - The Cubist’s Attorney Liz Williams - All Fish and Dracula China Mieville, Emma Bircham & Max Schaffer - The Ball Room Tim Pratt - Gulls Elizabeth Massie - Pinkie Mark Samuels - Glyphotech Holly Phillips - One of the Hungry Ones Brian Hodge - If I Should Wake Before I Die Rpberta Lannes - The Other Family Gahan Wilson - The Outermost Borough Glen Hirshberg - American Morons Adam L. G. Nevill - Where Angels Come In Terry Lamsley - Sickhouse Hospitality Joe Hill - Best New Horror Caitlin R. Kiernan - La Peau Verte David Morrell - Time Was Clive Barker - Haeckel’s Tale Brian Lumley - The Taint Ramsey Campbell - The Winner Stephen Jones & Kim Newman - Necrology - 2005
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Post by benedictjjones on Jun 3, 2008 12:07:37 GMT
i really liked brian lumleys tale 'the taint' in this one, brought the deep ones right up to date.
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Post by dem bones on Jun 3, 2008 15:29:19 GMT
Ha! Your finger on the pulse demonik obtained a copy of YBNH #17 this very morning, along with an assortment of other Mammoth monstrosities .... which were instantly put in the shade by ade's ghastly gift - a gloriously battered copy of Pierce Nace's notorious NEL nasty, Eat Them Alive!. Seldom has having too much to read been such a delicious "problem"!
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Post by killercrab on Jun 3, 2008 15:45:08 GMT
a gloriously battered copy of Pierce Nace's notorious NEL nasty, Eat Them Alive!. >> Ha ha ! I did clean off a dirty black sticker mark with lighter fuel - so watch out it doesn't burst into flames! I'm looking forward to the eventual Eat Them Alive! thread - will my brain explode if I read my copy is the question. Also was Pierce Nace actually Scott Gronmark , aka Nick Sharman? I'd say *enjoy* Dem ... but that might be pushing it. Ade
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Post by jkdunham on Jun 3, 2008 23:27:52 GMT
Also was Pierce Nace actually Scott Gronmark , aka Nick Sharman? Well, he denies it of course. It certainly doesn't scream "Nick Sharman" to me, I must say. In fact, it's often hard to believe anyone really wrote it...
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Post by bushwick on Jun 9, 2008 18:17:42 GMT
I think "Eat Them Alive" might have been written by GG Allin. What an incredible book. I must read it again (got a PRISTINE copy off Amazon for 1p!). Do you reckon it sold many at the time?
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Post by dem bones on Sept 22, 2013 8:49:41 GMT
Years later ... As some of you may have noticed, Eat Them Alive soon received it's own thread, a quite lengthy one at that, but it's only recently i've dipped into this particular volume with Joe Hill's ' Best New Horror' and Liz Frazier's ' All Fish And Dracula', both of them excellent in their own way. So let's have another sift, see if we can dig up more treasure. Carol Emshwiller - I Live With You and You Don’t Know It: She has a genius for concealing herself in the homes of others, wearing their clothes, sleeping in their beds, using the toaster and what have you, but when she eventually decides to move on, your valuables will (mostly) be present and correct, and our intruder may even leave you a token of gratitude. Now she's been living in Nora's crawlspace for a time, she has almost come to like her - they have much in common, a complete absence of friends primary among them - and, it being Christmas, decides to play match-maker, fix Nora up with the impoverished, lonely old guy with the limp, name of Willard (a different one, not our old friend the Ratman). To say any more would be to spoil your enjoyment, but, trust me, it's a creepy classic. First published in Magazine Of Fantasy & SF (March, 2005) which qualifies I Live With You ... as a true 'Rivals of the women of Weird Tales contender. An entire community in collusion with an ancient sea deity makes this next a must for World's Worst Pub Landlords, and it's a proper horror story, too. Ramsey Campbell - The Winner: A storm having fixed it so lecturer Desmond 'Don't call me Des' Jessop won't be catching the ferry to Belfast any time tonight, he takes shelter in a dockside pub, The Seafarer, 'Theme Night's, Singalong's, Quiz Night's' and hostile local wits on tap. Establishing that Des is a Southerner, the Scousers treat him to their entire repertoire of oh-so 'playful' intimidation. The toilet's are a public health hazard, you'd be best advised to avoid the dish of the day, but it's what lurks beneath the cellar that Jessop should worry about, as he's been marked out as tonight's "winner". I'm sure several of our readers will have experienced their own personal Seafarers, so this story doesn't even require a supernatural edge to fulfil its horror quota, but Mr. C provides one gratis.
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Post by dem bones on Sept 28, 2013 7:45:28 GMT
Mark Samuels - Glyphotech: When O'Hara informs the staff of Mare Publishing of the forthcoming Glyphotech seminar, it's understood that non-participation in this voluntary exercise will be looked upon in an unfavourable light. Consequently. the work force demonstrate their loyalty by sacrificing their weekend - all save David Hogg, who has first hand experience of Glyphotech's methods , loudly refuses to cooperate. He is dismissed on the spot, man-handled from the Fytton Square office, his personal effects tossed after him into the street.
Despite misgivings, veteran employee Franklyn Crisk, is not one to rock the boat and duly skulks along to the Grantham Hall Hotel for the seminar, hosted by the charismatic, super-confident Mr. Hastane Ebbon. Within the first hour, the audience are putty in Ebbon's hand, stepping up one by one to tearfully confess such selfish transgressions as having a personal life, malingering, sometimes thinking ill of Mr. O'Hara, spending a second more than is necessary n the wash-room .... Even Crisk isn't prepared to tolerate this wholesale brainwashing and demands of the security goons that he be allowed to leave. As Hogg later informs him, he can resign from Mare Publishing but Glyphotech is everywhere .....
The title - and, arguably, finest - story from a collection which includes the audience-dividing 'Don't Go To The Horror Convention!' classic, Cannibal Kings Of Horror, Edmund Bertrand's posthumously published Destination Nihil and the hideous demise of a Lovecraft groupie in A Gentleman From Mexico.
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Post by dem bones on Oct 15, 2013 17:43:58 GMT
Ramsey Campbell - The Decorations: Mr. Campbell has written enough festive stories for a Have Yourself A Ramsey Little Christmas collection, and this is one of the creepiest. Dad ran off with another woman, leaving David and his mum Jane to spend Christmas with her elderly parents. Granny Dora is half-demented, constantly bellowing at somebody on the roof, and warning him against getting loose again. But it's her mind playing tricks, only thing up there is an inflatable Santa by way of decoration. Or so David thinks until it comes untethered late on Christmas Eve and floats down into the road to be run down by a car - but not before pausing at his bedroom window to fix the little boy with eyes "dead as pebbles." From the minute he arrives and Granny Dora insists on administering a bone-crushing hug it has been a nightmare Christmas for David, who spends most of the days laying low, trying to avoid the constant bickering. But there's no escaping Gran's cooking (she has something of Joyce Barnaby's culinary expertise about her). When Gran dies shortly into the New Year, it comes as a merciful release for her husband, daughter and grandson. David is urged to remember Dora as she was in happier days, not what she'd become toward the end. But then he receives a belated visitation from the Christmas fairy ...
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 15, 2013 19:40:54 GMT
Ramsey Campbell - The Decorations: Mr. Campbell has written enough festive stories for a Have Yourself A Ramsey Little Christmas collection "The Chimney" is a favorite of mine. It has a semi-autobiographical tone to it but of course it could not really be. Nevertheless, one has to wonder what happened to Mr Campbell that he should have such a bleak view of Christmas.
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Post by ramseycampbell on Oct 16, 2013 11:04:17 GMT
Ramsey Campbell - The Decorations: Mr. Campbell has written enough festive stories for a Have Yourself A Ramsey Little Christmas collection "The Chimney" is a favorite of mine. It has a semi-autobiographical tone to it but of course it could not really be. Nevertheless, one has to wonder what happened to Mr Campbell that he should have such a bleak view of Christmas. My autobiography may explain...
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Oct 16, 2013 14:13:30 GMT
My autobiography may explain... I do not have it. I am sure it would make an excellent Christmas present!
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Post by ramseycampbell on Oct 19, 2013 14:17:04 GMT
My autobiography may explain... I do not have it. I am sure it would make an excellent Christmas present! I ought to say it's just a long essay (it appeared in Contemporary Authors 228). Pretty pricey if you can even find it, so let me patch in the relevant bit here: 'For nearly twenty years we [my father and I] didn’t meet face to face, although he continued to live in the house. I used to hear his footsteps on the stairs as I lay in bed, terrified that he might come into my room. Sometimes I heard arguments downstairs as my mother waylaid him when he came home, her voice shrill and clear, his blurred and incomprehensible, hardly a voice, which filled me with a terror I couldn’t define. (Being a spectator to arguments made me deeply nervous for decades, though since becoming a parent I’m much more likely to intervene or take sides.) If he was still in the kitchen when it was time for her to make my breakfast she would drive him out of the house; presumably it was unthinkable that I should share the table with him. Once I found I’d broken a lens of my glasses as I’d put them down by the bed the previous night, and was convinced by my mother that he had sneaked into the room to break it. Worst of all was Christmas, when my mother would send me to knock on his bedroom door and invite him down, as a mark of seasonal goodwill, for Christmas dinner. I would go upstairs in a panic, but there was never any response beyond a mutter of refusal.' And from my introduction to the Samhain Dark Companions: 'I find this as hard to believe as anybody would, but when I wrote “The Chimney” I didn’t know it was autobiographical. It was conceived on Christmas Day 1972, after Jenny and I had watched that splendid tale of television terror The Stone Tape. “Child afraid of Santa Claus – Perhaps from a very early age has associated horror with the large fireplace in his bedroom? His parents tell him of Santa Claus – But when they tell him the truth about SC, the horror comes flooding back – And something’s always moving in there towards Christmas – He sees it emerge each year: but this year he sees it in more detail…” I got as far as the charred apparition but not, at this stage, its real identity (which, as David Drake pointed out, it has in common with L. P. Hartley’s “Someone in the Lift”, a tale I’d read back in the early fifties). Often my ideas lie low for years, and I didn’t start “The Chimney” until 20 June 1975, finishing it on the 27th. Only when I read the tale aloud at Jack Sullivan’s apartment on the Upper West Side years later did I remember how terrified I’d been on most Christmas Days of my childhood – not by Santa Claus but by having to go upstairs and knock on a bedroom door to invite my unseen father down for dinner. That he stayed unseen, then and for nearly all my childhood and early adulthood, only added to my dread.'
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Post by dem bones on Oct 19, 2013 17:47:04 GMT
Thanks for taking the trouble to dig that one out for us, Ramsey. The Chimney is no joyride, but it almost comes as light relief in comparison to the reality. Does the essay incorporate At The Back Of My Mind: A Guided Tour from the MacDonald edition of The Face That Must Die? - dem (just getting ready to sneak out for a swift one in the local equivalent of The Seafarers)
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Post by ramseycampbell on Oct 19, 2013 20:53:16 GMT
It does, Dem, and expands it.
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