The Ballantine 'Chamber Of Horror' series

[dem]

The Ballantine 'Chamber Of Horror' series.

And you will know them by their wild Richard Powers cover art.

The Ballantine 'Chamber Of Horror' series comprised anthologies, novels and single-author collections by authors as diverse as H. R. Wakefield, Sarban, John Keir Cross and Zacherley. I'm not sure if, and how many, novels featured in the series. Theodore Sturgeon's Some Of Your Blood is a likely candidate, likewise the Ballantine edition of Sarban's The Sound Of His Horn and The Doll Maker (both 1960), although neither boast that all-important Powers artwork.

Anthologies

Groff Conklin (ed) - The Graveyard Reader (Ballantine, 1958)
Basil Davenport (ed) - Deals With The Devil (Ballantine, 1959)
Basil Davenport (ed) - Invisible Men (Ballantine, 1960)
Basil Davenport (ed.) - Tales To Be Told In The Dark (Ballantine, 1960)
Zacherley (ed) - Midnight Snacks (Ballantine, March 1960)
Zacherley (ed.) - Vulture Stew (Ballantine, Aug, 1960: Feb, 1962)
Whit & Hallie Burnett (eds.) - Things With Claws (Ballantine, 1961)
Michael & Don Congdon (eds.) - Alone By Night (Ballantine, 1961)
Don Congdon (ed.) - Tales Of Love And Horror (Ballantine, 1961)
Charles Beaumont (ed.) - The Fiend In You (Ballantine, 1962)
Calvin Beck (ed.) - The Frankenstein Reader (Ballantine, 1962)

Single Author Collections

August Derleth - Not Long For This World (Ballantine undated, originally Arkham House, 1948)
H. P. Lovecraft & August Derleth - The Survivor & Others (Ballantine undated, originally Arkham House, 1957)
Joseph Payne Brennan - Nine Horrors And A Dream (Ballantine undated, originally 1958)
Gerald Kersh - On An Odd Note (Ballantine, originally 1958)
John Keir Cross - Stories From The Other Passenger (Ballantine, 1961, originally 1946)
H. R. Wakefield - The Clock Strikes Twelve (Ballantine, 1961)
Fritz Leiber - Nights Black Agents (Ballantine, June 1961)
Ray Russell - Sardonicus & Other Stories (Ballantine, 1961)
Fritz Leiber - Shadows With Eyes (Ballantine, 1962)

Thanks to Steve for providing the Gerald Kersh title: if you know of any more, please let us know!

[fullbreakfast]

I tell you what, if they published a book of Richard Powers' cover art I'd be all over it.

Remember a lot of these from the second hand bookshops of my youth, every one superb. Especially Nine Horrors and a Dream - found on the bookshelf of a holiday cottage we rented when I must have been 11 or 12 and eagerly devoured - WHY DIDN'T I NICK IT??? Hard to find now and worth a fair bit I believe.

EDIT: When I read your post properly I saw that you'd answered the question I asked about The Sound of His Horn.

[fullbreakfast]

...so of course it turns out they did publish a book, The Art of Richard Powers by Jane Frank (Paper Tiger, 2001). A copy of which will shortly be on its way to me from Cold Tonnage

A nice Powers web site is at: home.earthlink.net/~cjk5/

[dem]

Thanks for that link, Mr. Breakfast! So, we've some dates for him now (1921-1996) and a potted biog.

Actually, for all I know, the Sarban covers may be Powers' work (though I doubt it), but as they're not in keeping with the other designs, they don't look as though they belong to the series. Hopefully, your book will shed some light on just how many 'Chamber Of Horrors' titles there were!

For the record:

Sarban - The Doll Maker (Ballantine, Oct. 1960: originally published by Peter Davies Ltd, 1953)

A story of a young girl, caught in the dreadful fascination of willing slavery, the agony of a conscious victim who cannot escape the mordant mastery of an egomaniac practicing unknown horrors.

Sarban - The Sound Of His Horn (Ballantine, April 1960

Blurb:

From the introduction by Kingsley Amis, author of New Maps Of Hell

"If the Nazi's had, in fact, won their war, we could have expected to see - those of us who were still around - a systematic development of the master-race concept into a kind of feudal structure, with a small oligarchy of immensely powerful and capricious overlords, a middle stratum of fiendishly conscientious Party administrators, and a huge slave-proletariat absolutely subject to the whim of their masters, even to lengths of providing them, as here, with human game for the chase ...."


Calenture gave us an ace review of The Sound Of His Horn on Vault Mk. I - if you see this, Rog, perhaps you'd care to copy it across if you've not done so already! - and gave it the hard-sell later with the following reminder:

" ... And I suppose everyone - especially Sev' as a leading Globeswatcher - knows all about Sarban's The Sound of His Horn, with its packs of naked Nazi women kitted out with metal claws and used instead of dog packs to hunt hunt prisoners through the woods ...."

Also:

Sarban - Ringstones (Ballantine, 1961)

The following year, Ballantine also published a stripped-down version of Sarban's Ringstones & Other Curious Tales (originally Peter Davies Ltd, 1951), which, or so it appears to me, dispensed with the "Other Curious Tales" altogether to leave a stand-alone novel. This, Leiber's Night's Black Agents and The Other Passenger are advertised on the back of Wakefield's The Clock Strikes 12 under the reminder " ... And don't miss these other volumes in Ballantine's horror series, so we'll have to consider it as a contender.

[fullbreakfast]

Oct 29, 2008 8:29:30 GMT dem said:

Hopefully, your book will shed some light on just how many 'Chamber Of Horrors' titles there were!

When I've had a chance to read it I'll post any snippets of interest here. Given how prolific he apparently was I'm not sure how much coverage of 'Chamber of Horrors' there is likely to be - but at least some I hope!

[fullbreakfast]

The book is rather good, though it is mainly devoted to science fiction work, with only a few repros of his horror covers

It does have a checklist of Powers covers though, and there are masses of them...from this I've culled the following list of Ballantine and non-Ballantine horror titles. In many cases where I know nowt about the books in question I've had to make a guess on whether they're horror titles or SF; I've tried to err on the side of inclusiveness but the fact that some people e.g. Henry Kuttner and Fritz Leiber wrote both isn't exactly helpful!

Ballantine (probable) horror titles:

David Duncan, Dark Dominion (1953)
Gerald Kersh, The Secret Masters (1953)
John Wyndham, Tales of Gooseflesh and Laughter (1956) [reissued 1966]
Groff Conklin, The Graveyard Reader (1958)
Edmund Cooper, Deadly Image (1958)
Gerald Kersh, On an Odd Note (1958)
Basil Davenport, Deals with the Devil (1959) [reissued 1966]
Basil Davenport, Invisible Men (1960) [reissued 1966]
Basil Davenport, Tales to be Told in the Dark (1960) [reissued 1966]
Zacherly, Zacherly's Midnight Snacks (1960) [reissued 1961]
Zacherly, Zacherly's Vulture Stew (1960) [reissued 1961]
Whit & Hallie Burnett, Things with Claws (1961) [reissued 1966]
Michael & Don Congdon, Alone By Night (1961) [reissued 1967]
Don Congdon, Tales of Love and Horror (1961)
John Keir Cross, The Other Passenger (1961)
Fritz Leiber, Night's Black Agents (1961)
Fritz Leiber, Shadows With Eyes (1961)
Ray Russell, Sardonicus (1961)
H.R. Wakefield, Stories from the Clock Strikes 12 (1961) [reissued same year]
Charles Beaumont, The Fiend in You (1962)
Calvin Beck, The Frankenstein Reader (1962)
James Blish, Night Shapes (1962)
Joseph Payne Brennan, Nine Horrors and a Dream (1962)
H.P. Lovecraft, The Survivor and Others (1962)
Ray Bradbury, The October Country (1964)
Lester Del Ray, Mortals and Monsters (1965)

Non-Ballantine (probable) horror titles:

H.P. Lovecraft, Cry Horror! (1958)
Richard Matheson, A Stir of Echoes (1959)
Theodore Sturgeon, A Touch of Strange (1959)
Murray Leinster, Creatures of the Abyss (1961)
Richard Matheson, Shock! (1961)
Stewart Beach, This Week's Stories of Mystery and Suspense (1962)
Hal Cantor, Ghosts and Things (1962)
Shirley Jackson, The Sundial (1962)
Gerald Kersh, Men Without Bones (1962)
Fritz Leiber, Gather Darkness (1962)
Murray Leinster, Operation Terror (1962)
Dorothy L. Sayers, Stories of the Supernatural (1963) [reissued 1965]
M.P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud (1963)
Peter Saxon, The Torturer (1970)
Fritz Leiber, Our Lady of Darkness (1978)

It's said in the main text of the book that Conklin's Graveyard Reader was the first in the Chamber of Horrors series.

I notice that Theodore Sturgeon's Some of Your Blood, which forms part of the montage at the top of the thread and so presumably is a Chamber of Horrors title, isn't included in the checklist. So either the list has omissions (very possible) or maybe Powers didn't handle the entire series...?

[dem]

Thanks for taking the time and effort with this, FB. So, if we put the Blish and Cooper books in quarantine until we can have a proper look at them, I think it's reasonable to conclude that everything else from The Graveyard Reader to The Survivor and Others is a Chamber Of Horror, and any Ballantine horror title from 1958-1962 featuring cover art by someone other than Powers - Some Of Your Blood, The Sound Of His Horn, etc. - is an impostor!

Of the non-Ballantines, Michel Parry chose Cry Horror! as his selection for Jones & Newman's Horror's 100 Best Books and the painting for Saxon's delightful The Torturer is a beauty. I'm thinking the artwork for Leo Margulies's The Unexpected might be one of his as well?

[fullbreakfast]

Nov 6, 2008 16:48:11 GMT dem said:

I'm thinking the artwork for Leo Margulies's The Unexpected might be one of his as well?

It certainly looks like one of his. I had another look at the checklist and it isn't mentioned, but interestingly three other Margulies titles from around that time are - 3x Infinity, Three From Out There and Get Out of My Sky (not listed above as they sounded like SF to me). Which makes me think the list is probably incomplete and The Unexpected should have been included.

To be fair to Jane Frank she does state that "RMP was so prolific that no checklist of his work can hope to be either complete or free from error", which is probably fair enough.

OT, Robert Bloch is to be congratulated on coming up with the magnificently named Dr. Nork! The story sounds suitably bonkers too.

[fullbreakfast]

I found this image of an alternative cover for The Unexpected while I was scratching about:



...and it also looks like a bit like something Powers might have painted.

[fullbreakfast]

Here's a bit more on Blish's Night Shapes, courtesy of a seller on Abebooks.



Blurb:
"The continent lay before them, vast ares of it unexplored, its forests, plains, jungle and mountains teeming with forms of life unknown to man. Here the witch-doctors reigned supreme, using their inexplicable and remarkable powers on men and beasts. The purpose of the safari was mysterious, its members an oddly assorted group of people unlikely to have any sane objective in common."

A bit ambiguous with those witch-doctors, but the cover picture and tag-line certainly suggest a Lost World variant that would be more on the SF side really.

I think we can rule out Deadly Image, too:



Lovely Powers cover but definitely SF.

[dem]

Great work that, FB and I'd have to agree these two are unlikely candidates for full Chamber Of Horrors status, though they look interesting in their own right. It's only a shame Ballantine didn't keep the series running for a few more years and surprise us with more selections from not always likely sources.

[jkdunham]

Nov 9, 2008 12:29:53 GMT fullbreakfast said:

A bit ambiguous with those witch-doctors, but the cover picture and tag-line certainly suggest a Lost World variant that would be more on the SF side really.

The Ballantine cover leaves little doubt - "An original Ballantine Science Fiction novel". Possibly a good thing that the blurb is so unequivocal as that abstract, almost aboriginal-looking, cover art really isn't giving much away.

[dem]

Haven't added to this for ages, so to add a splash of colour, here's the Ballantine edition of Theodore Sturgeon's magnificent human vampire novel Some Of Your Blood from 1961. As far as I know it's neither a Richard Powers cover or a proper Chamber Of Horrors title but am sure you'll agree it belongs here.

Franklin once mentioned that something he really liked about the Nel's was how they'd often use the back cover to advertise other titles from their catalogue, something Ballantine were often up for. Here's what we find on the flip of Some Of Your Blood;

[dem]

Calvin Beck (ed.) - The Frankenstein Reader (Ballantine, 1962)

Richard Powers

Ambrose Bierce - The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
Amelia B. Edwards - The Four-Fifteen Express
Robert W. Chambers - Passeur
Robert Louis Stevenson - The Isle of Voices by
H. G. Wells - The Ghost of Fear
Charles Dickens - The Trial for Murder
Ralph Adams Cram - The Dead Valley
E. F. Benson - The Thing in the Hall
Arthur Quiller-Couch - A Pair of Hands
Richard Middleton - The Ghost Ship
Katherine Fullerton Gerould - On the Staircase

Blurb:
Horror in the classic tradition. Tales of Werewolves, Gothic Ghosts, Savage Elementals, Spectral Revenge, Mysterious Voices, Deadly Regions and even a ghostly rattlesnake.

Tales to make you shiver, quiver.
Tales that will make you glance uneasily over your shoulder for many a long, dark night to come ....

And don't miss another nerve shattering, counter irritant from BALLANTINE'S CHAMBER OF HORRORS: Sardonicus by Ray Russell.

Presented by the brains behind the Gothic Castle Publishing Co.and their Castle of Frankenstein, not exactly the most inspired selection - everything bar the Katherine Fullerton Gerould story has been anthologised within an inch of its life - but useful for another snippet of info concerning the Chamber Of Horrors series. For some reason i got it into my head that it was only the paperbacks with the very distinctive Richard Powers cover artwork that comprised the series, but that is evidently not the case! Tucked away at the back we find:


FROM BALLANTINE'S CHAMBER OF HORRORS
Special: Three for a Dollar
Novels
THE SOUND OF HIS HORN - Sarban
THE DOLL MAKER - Sarban
THE VICTORIAN CHAISE LOUNGE - Marghanita Laski
SOME OF YOUR BLOOD - Theodore Sturgeon
RINGSTONES - Sarban
SARDONICUS - Ray Russell

.... and a list of the short story collections we've already mentioned above.

[Dr Strange]

The title that catches my eye there is "Sardonicus" - but only coz I saw the film version when I was a kid (I can't recall it ever being on TV again) and it left something of a lasting impression (no, not that sort of lasting impression). Very strange film (William Castle directed), and with the lottery back-story it could be quite topical for these days, but I've never come across the original short story.