Michel Parry - Strange Ecstasies

[redbrain]

Contents:

The Plutonian Drug - Clark Ashton Smith
The Dream Pills - F H Davis
The White Powder - Arthur Machen
The New Accelerator - H G Wells
The Big Fix - Richard Wilson
The Secret Songs - Fritz Leiber
The Hounds of Tindalos - Frank Belknap Long
Subjectivity - Norman Spinrad
What to Do Until the Analyst Comes - Frederik Pohl
Pipe Dream - Chris Miller

Several classics there, which we're sure to have elsewhere. But the reason I started this thread is the star story - "Subjectivity" by Norman Spinrad. It's haunted me since I first read it in 1973. It's the only thing by Spinrad I've read and thought was brilliant. Worth seeking out the anthology for just that story, I'd say.

[weirdmonger]

Together with the other drugs horror anthology that Michel edited at that time (Dream Trips), I recall these were his very first anthologies and I was very impressed with them at the time.

I vaguely recall 'The Iron Dream' novel by Norman Spinrad. Teeming with monsters and written by Hitler!
des

[redbrain]

I read "The Iron Dream" - interesting, but not a patch on the story in Strange Ecstasies.

[jamesdoig]

Not sure if the cover image for Strange Ecstasies is anywhere, but here it is. It should also be on the Panther List.



This must be somewhere here, but worth repeating. It's not how I imagined Carnacki...and why is he chained to a vampiric pig?

[dem]

Blurb
Ten of the weirdest trips ever ...

`Drug' has become the most explosively loaded four-letter word in the English language. It conjures up visions of horror, ecstasy or outright weirdness. All these qualities are present in this superb anthology, a genuinely different kind of fantasy collection. Here are amazing stories of drugs unearthly and yet to come by ten masters of far-out storytelling.

High times, freak-outs, horror shows and laughing jags – they're all here ...

Fair tore through Strange Ecstasies within days of receiving it, enjoying the experience far more than anticipated. The basic premise of these stories is man takes experimental drug. If said man is a greasy long haired pot-smoking hippie, he will eventually discover that his dealer is an extraterrestrial. If he's a mad scientist, he will insists on test driving his latest lethal miracle elixir, no matter that it will dissolve him into a puddle of slime or open a portal to admit malevolent entities to our dimension - all this to learn that the future ain't bright, it's worse than anything the human mind could ever conceive. And if he's a square - well, squares don't concern us here as they're only permitted to poison their bodies with the government-approved safe drugs alcohol, nicotine, prozac ...

Clark Ashton Smith - The Plutonium Drug: Thirty years after landing his first rocket on the moon in 1975, man has conquered space travel and Dr. Manners is struggling over a monograph on extra-terrestrial drugs. To help him out, Balcoth agrees to drop a few grains of a psychedelic which enables the user to move a short distance backward and forward in time. But Balcoth only travels a little into the future before he finds himself on the brink of a black void. Manners wonders at this: by his estimation, Balcoth saw five or six hours into his past but less than one into the future, and no previous subject has come up against a wall of darkness before.

Frank Belknap Long - The Hounds of Tindalos: "I want to strip from my eyes the veils of illusion that time has thrown over them, and see the beginning and the end." So proclaims our next brave pioneer, the New York occult writer Halpin Chalmers, and a hefty dose of the powerful Chinese drug Laio will enable him to do so. All he asks of Frank is that he take down notes on everything he reports back from the fourth dimension. Frank wonders for his friend's sanity, but Chalmers is adamant, so best let him get on with it, sit back and await the inevitable Dr. Jekyll & Sister Hyde moment when it all goes tits up. Chalmers doesn't disappoint, mentally opening the portal that allows the flesh-rending Hounds of Tindalos loose in our dimension!

All is not lost. Chalmers miraculously calculates that the hounds' shape is such that they can't handle corners, so once the drug has worn off he goes into a DIY frenzy with plaster and trowel to obliterate every angle from his room. At last he can relax. It would take some kind of freak seismic shift to let them through now ....

i'd forgotten just how effective is Frank Belknap Long's brand of Cthulhu-pulp. Christine Campbell Thomson should have included this in the Not At Night's.

In Frederik Pohl's What to Do Until the Analyst Comes, the entire population of Earth are perpetually stoned out of their minds on Cheery gum, a harmless non-addictive legal high, all save one man. Charley McGory took too big a hit when Dr. Cloud's wonder-gum was in its development stage and suffered an allergic reaction. With the world going to ruin - planes crash, trains collide, people are too happy to be arsed about anything - McGory considers his options, realises there's only one way out.

Chris Miller - Pipe Dream: Narrators kindly gesture toward a pair of flower children returning from a festival is repaid a hundredfold when Norman and his old lady Sunshine deal him ten keys of their dynamite shit for a bag of nickels. Nowhere near as outrageous as Miller's notorious The Magic Show - what is? - but still pretty outta siIght

thanks, nosferatu

[Shrink Proof]

I remember reading this in my teens. I also recall a second similar collection, called "Dream Trips", that was just as much fun, but can't recall any details.

[dem]

can't help with the cover - another psychedelic beauty - but do any of these ring any bells?

Michel Parry (ed.) - Dream Trips (Panther, 1974)

Introduction - Michel Parry

Norman Spinrad - No Direction Home
Robert Sheckley - Morning After
Ursula K. Le Guin - The Good Trip
Lord Dunsany - The Hashish Man
H. G. Wells - Under the Knife
A. W. Kapfer - The Phantom Drug
Joseph F. Pumilia - As Dreams Are Made On
Paul S. Powers - The Life Serum
Richard Marsh - The Adventure of the Pipe
Manly Wade Wellman - Dream-Dust from Mars

[noose]

Sept 22, 2011 18:15:41 GMT Shrink Proof said:

I remember reading this in my teens. I also recall a second similar collection, called "Dream Trips", that was just as much fun, but can't recall any details.

much like a few 'trips' I've had.....

[cw67q]

The Richard Marsh story is from his collection Curios. IIRC it reads like a lite cthuluhu mythos tale of the odd item linked to mysterious entity/visions type although the story itself actually predates Lovecraft. Curios is a nice collection of linked yarns/tall tales featuring two rival collectors and their attempts to outdo each other. The Valacourt pb, which is the edition I have, should still be in print as are many other Marsh reprints form the same publisher.

- Chris

[dem]

And to think I wasn't going to bother. Landed the final book of the trilogy at Spitalfields market this morning.

Michel Parry (ed.) - Spaced Out (Panther, 1977)

Brian Froud

With interior illustrations by Jim Pitts.

Michel Parry - Introduction :Spaced Out

Michael Moorcock - The Deep Fix
Fritz Leiber - All the Weed in the World
Fletcher Pratt - The Roger Bacon Formula
Carl Jacobi - Smoke of the Snake
Henry Slesar - Melodramine
Grania Davis - My Head's in a Different Place, Now
R. A. Lafferty - Sky
David Gerrold - All of Them Were Empty

Blurb:
FAR OUT OF THIS WORLD
Highs of horror, raptures and nightmares await you within the pages of this book. Travel beyond the limits of earthbound reality ... and discover worlds of fantasy and horror as bizarre and enthralling as those in Michel Parry's previous trailblazing anthologies STRANGE ECSTASIES and DREAM TRIPS. The fifth dimension awaits you within.
ENTER

[Dr Strange]

The only one of those that I know for sure I've read is Moorcock's The Deep Fix. I am not a Moorcock fan at all really (though I've hardly read anything by him), and it's a long time since I've read The Deep Fix, but it is one of my favourite short stories ever.

[pulphack]

The Deep Fix was originally written under the James Colvin name Moorcock used for reviewing in New Worlds, and was specifically designed as a homage to Bill Burroughs, which is probably why it bears little relation to his usual style. Weirdly to me, it reads like Burroughs writing the kind of juvenile stories Moorcock used to pen for Fleetway and other companies (there's one in the Boy's World 1965 annual from Odhams - 'Time Drop' - that could fit right in with just a small edit).

[Shrink Proof]

Didn't Mr Moorcock have a backing band for his live performances called The Deep Fix?

[pulphack]

Jun 2, 2016 19:58:23 GMT Shrink Proof said:

Didn't Mr Moorcock have a backing band for his live performances called The Deep Fix?

Indeed he did - patchy (for me) album New World's Fair on UA in '75, but the Flicknife single Dodgem Dude is a little gem. I can'r get into Moorcock's voice as for some idiot reason I expect him to sound like Bob Calvert when he sings, even though he's nothing like that when you hear him talk!

The Deep Fix was also the name of Jerry Cornelius' band with Shaky Mo Collier, scattered throughout the Cornelius books, sometimes in idealised Jerry world, and sometimes in down to earth Notting Hill (Jerry blows his big chance in The Condition Of Muzak by falling through a hole in the stage four bars into the first song. I know how he feels...).

[chico]

Here's the US edition cover.  Just picked it up yesterday: