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Post by dem on Oct 20, 2010 13:00:49 GMT
David A. Sutton (ed.) - New Writings In Horror & The Supernatural; Volume 2 (Sphere, 1972)  Acorn Litho Feltham Middlesex
David Riley - A Bottle Of Spirits
W. T. Webb - Television Wife
Robert P. Holdstock - The Darkness
James Wade - Grooley
Bryn Fortey - Shrewhampton North East
David A. Sutton - Demoniacal
Roger Parkes - Infra-Man
Rosemary Timperley - The Ghosts In The Garden
Elizabeth Fancett - Marianne's Boy
Ramsey Campbell - The Other HouseBlurb: A collection of eleven original stories of the macabre. The aim of this series is to present the work of the new masters of the horrific and supernatural, weird tales that have never before been published Here are stories of ghosts, of satanic possession, of horror, specially selected by David Sutton, editor of the occult
journal Shadow.i can't believe we could have overlooked this one but it doesn't seem to be on here. The second in David Sutton's three volume series and the last for Sphere, (third book, The Satyr's Head & Other Tales Of Terror was published by Corgi in 1975) David Riley - A Bottle Of Spirits: As revealed to aspiring medium Phyllis Harker. After watching a performance at the Grand Theatre, Clayborn, Rob is so fascinated by the uncanny ability of mind reader Sebastian Preskett that he murders his elderly assistant to create a job vacancy. Rob just HAS to know how the guy gets it right every time so he can steal his act and make loads of cash. Having studying him at close hand, Rob is convinced the key to Preskett's powers must lie in the fairground organ and outsize phosphorescent bottle he uses as props. Increasingly worried that Preskett has known all along who murdered his friend, Rob decides it's time to leave him. But first, he's going to remove the stopper from that weirdly glowing blue bottle if it kills him .... W. T. Webb - Television Wife: When Doris Masely turns her back for a moment, henpecked husband Martin disappears from his armchair and is next seen on TV, shooting his guns and gallivanting in saloons, having somehow transported himself inside the box to play bit parts in his favourite Westerns. When Winifred, her meddlesome sister-in-law, leads a policeman and a mob of mean-looking women to her door, clearly convinced that she's a murderess, Doris realises her only hope is to follow Martin's example and will herself into the TV. Unfortunately for her, she wind ups stranded for eternity in somewhere that most certainly is not the Wild West. James Wade - Grooley: Grooley is Timmy's imaginary friend. Headless, orange, "funny looking and all wet", he lives at the bottom of the toilet. Recently Grooley has become very demanding, and Timmy is compelled to nick his parents jewellery to feed him. Dad Roger, furious at having his favourite tie-pin flushed down the bog, puts a lock on the bathroom door and Timmy is only allowed access under strict supervision. Grooley gets angry. Grooley gets very hungry indeed ... Bryn Fortey - Shrewhampton North-East: The boy narrator and his mother find themselves marooned at Shrewhampton amongst a small group of strangers, none of whom can remember why they set out for this place they'd never heard of. When it becomes apparent there's no way out of the station, it's decided to pool their food supplies which don't amount to much. Then the first of the party dies. Reminiscent of Dr. Terror's House Of Horrors minus the flashbacks and Dr. Schreck. see also New Writings In Horror & The Supernatural
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Post by dem on Oct 21, 2010 6:12:29 GMT
David A. Sutton - Demoniacal: Birmingham Prog-rock band Fried Spiders have quoted from a genuine demon-raising invocation on their new album, Ocean Of Minds. Alan Bart, trendy hippie, mentions the track to wealthy pal Ray Nuttall in The Swan and is surprised when he's invited over to play the album on Ray's state of the art stereo, Nuttall, a cynic in most everything, not being a great one for "gimmick groups". But his host has a hidden agenda. Among Nuttall's possessions, an ancient Grimoire which reproduces the invocation in full. They drop acid and trip to the groovy music. When the track Demoniacal reaches the "controversial" bit, Ray Nuttall takes up the chant. A shadow detaches itself from the wall ... David Sutton's first professionally published story, though i'm sure it would have happened sooner if he'd not been concentrating his time and effort on Shadow. Hippies, black magic, counter culture references aplenty and an imaginary rock band! What more could you ask from a nine page horror story? i'm incredulous that i'd no recollection of Demoniacal as i know i read all three of the 'New Writings' anthologies through. This seems as good a place as any to remind you that, as i type, Riley Books still have a few copies in stock of David Sutton's booklet, On The Fringes For Thirty Years: A History Of Horror In The British Small Press at a very reasonable £3.50. And Charles has dedicated &th Black Book Of Horror to him!
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Post by David A. Riley on Oct 21, 2010 7:11:34 GMT
Dave Sutton is a very underrated writer. His collection, Clinically Dead from Screaming Dreams is well worth getting. www.screamingdreams.com/clinicallydead.htmlI miss Dave's anthologies. He made an important impact for a number of us in the early seventies, especially weaning us away from the Pan Horrors into something a bit more supernatural and strange. |
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Post by andydecker on Oct 21, 2010 16:20:17 GMT
I knew I knew the name. Here is the german abridged (?) version of NEW WRITINGS IN HORROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL Vampir Horror Paperback 40, 1976, german title: Solo for a cannibal They squeezed nine stories on the 145 pages. The content is: Robin Smyth: The Inglorious Rise of the catsmeat man
David Campton: Goat
E.C.Tubb: The Winner
Ken Bulmer: Under the Tombstone
David A. Riley: The Farmhouse
W.T.Webb: Phantasmagoria
Bryn Fortey:Prison
Julia Birley: The People down below
Michael G. Coney: The Hollow WhereI have no recollection if I ever read this or just bought it to forget it. Just know that I thought the german title silly. Still, the first story sounds intriguing ... |
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Post by dem on Oct 21, 2010 17:21:42 GMT
Thanks for posting, andy. It's someone's 'best of' selection from the first two books, and a good one at that. Very fetching cover artwork (and retitle!). Mr. Sutton clearly liked his prog-rock. just reread his Those of Rhenea: the doomed heroine, Elizabeth, is a Hawkwind fan. Dave Sutton is a very underrated writer. His collection, Clinically Dead from Screaming Dreams is well worth getting. www.screamingdreams.com/clinicallydead.htmlI miss Dave's anthologies. He made an important impact for a number of us in the early seventies, especially weaning us away from the Pan Horrors into something a bit more supernatural and strange. i probably wanted to hang him for that at one point! From his introduction to New Writings #2 i gather he was inspired by the SF new wave authors and wanted to attempt something similar with horror & the supernatural: update it, dispense with the Gothic trappings, blend in fantasy & SF elements, tackle contemporary themes, etc. A major influence on Beyond? don't own a copy, but will give Clinically Dead a thread to itself. from the three stories i'm aware of (including La Serenissima from Beyond #3) it deserves one. meanwhile Rosemary Timperley - The Ghosts In The Garden: An aging authoress, lonely to the point of suicide after the deaths of her husband and lover over a short interval, witnesses an Arab Market taking place in the garden of her Surrey flat. Over the following days, the ghostly, silent bazaar draws nearer until it's spilled over into her flat. She finds this all so distracting that she's unable to write and, with the rent due and her money gone, takes an overdose of barbiturates. When next she awakens, she's in the thick of the noisy crowd looking back through the window at the spectre of her typewriter in the spectre of her flat. Possibly autobiographical, i guess. The first one from the collection i didn't much get on with, if i'm honest, and that down to the ending (which i've not given away). |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Oct 21, 2010 20:19:33 GMT
Very good writer.
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Post by David A. Riley on Oct 22, 2010 8:15:45 GMT
Dave Sutton is a very underrated writer. His collection, Clinically Dead from Screaming Dreams is well worth getting. www.screamingdreams.com/clinicallydead.htmlI miss Dave's anthologies. He made an important impact for a number of us in the early seventies, especially weaning us away from the Pan Horrors into something a bit more supernatural and strange. i probably wanted to hang him for that at one point! From his introduction to New Writings #2 i gather he was inspired by the SF new wave authors and wanted to attempt something similar with horror & the supernatural: update it, dispense with the Gothic trappings, blend in fantasy & SF elements, tackle contemporary themes, etc. A major influence on Beyond? I can't say that I noticed any of these things myself at the time. I just liked the fact that I could write supernatural horror stories. I had become disillusioned with Pan for two reasons: firstly, the lack of a supernatural element in most of the stories in the series now; and secondly, the increased use of London management authors, making it seem as if it was a closed shop. I little realised that this was just a scam on Van Thal's part to skim an agency fee out of those authors taken in by this and signing up for his agency when he accepted their stories for inclusion. I don't think Dave's anthologies had any influence on Beyond. That came about quite a few years later. If there was any influence it may have been Fantasy Tales, but to be honest, a lot of why there is so little horror in Beyond and more SF and fantasy is because at that time horror was not very popular. If anything, it was perhaps arguably more unpopular then than at any time before or since. If I was ever in a position to attempt something like that again - which is doubtful - I would probably aim more for horror than either of the other two genres. I rarely read fantasy at all these days and very little SF. The only genres I read now, besides horror, are crime and history, particularly Roman or Medieval. It's odd how our tastes change. In the early days I was probably more into SF than anything else, and read tons of stuff by people like Asimov, Clarke, Brunner, Heinlein, etc., including most of the socalled New Wave, right up until Niven. I've read few of the current big names in SF, though. |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Oct 22, 2010 9:59:54 GMT
It's odd how our tastes change. In the early days I was probably more into SF than anything else, and read tons of stuff by people like Asimov, Clarke, Brunner, Heinlein, etc., including most of the socalled New Wave, right up until Niven. I've read few of the current big names in SF, though.
David. A. Riley
I agree regarding Pan. My favourites are still the earlier volumes and they start running out after Lurkers in the Abyss, volume 11. I probably enjoyed a few more after that but they have been consigned to memory. I recall a vaguely a vaguely similar shift in my thinking too David. I started off reading Pan Horror and E.R Burroughs Lord of the Rings, E.R.Eddison and David Lindsay. The horror satisfied some internal craving that most of us recognise - the desire to be scared shitless, perhaps as some kind of test or catharsis. The others satisfied a desire to escape the mundane - I needed other worlds because the one I lived in was dull. I read stacks of Asimov, Moorcock, Carter and the like. I also moved far more in the direction of Fontana and their equivalents and was more interested in supernatural, occult, the Lovecraft, Howard and Hodgeson mythic worlds. I liked ghosts stories and probably then discovered M.R. James and his nemeses on the other side of the mirror.
I just read Sutton's La Serenissima in Beyond#3 (thanks again David) and I was struck by how good the story was.
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Post by andydecker on Oct 22, 2010 10:26:58 GMT
It's odd how our tastes change. In the early days I was probably more into SF than anything else, and read tons of stuff by people like Asimov, Clarke, Brunner, Heinlein, etc., including most of the socalled New Wave, right up until Niven. I've read few of the current big names in SF, though. Same here. When I began reading the genre in earnest, I read a lot sf and some of the classics. I had this Brian Aldiss phase, where I read almost everything published in translations - even if I still don´t know if stuff like Report on Probabilty A is serious literature or prententious wank - but after all these years I have a clearer memory of Robert Lory and Errol Lecale than John Brunner´s then important books. But when fantasy suddenly became the new black with writers like Moorcock or Stephen Donaldson, I really got into this. And today I think that Moorcocks early books have not aged well and have trouble recalling the plots, while I still can happily re-read Holdstocks Beserker series, thinking that his riff on all things Arthur is so much better than the countless bloated and relevant re-imaginings which followed him. Guess I will always remain a pulp-fiend at heart  |
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Oct 22, 2010 10:34:35 GMT
It's odd how our tastes change. In the early days I was probably more into SF than anything else, and read tons of stuff by people like Asimov, Clarke, Brunner, Heinlein, etc., including most of the socalled New Wave, right up until Niven. I've read few of the current big names in SF, though. Same here. When I began reading the genre in earnest, I read a lot sf and some of the classics. I had this Brian Aldiss phase, where I read almost everything published in translations - even if I still don´t know if stuff like Report on Probabilty A is serious literature or prententious wank - but after all these years I have a clearer memory of Robert Lory and Errol Lecale than John Brunner´s then important books. But when fantasy suddenly became the new black with writers like Moorcock or Stephen Donaldson, I really got into this. And today I think that Moorcocks early books have not aged well and have trouble recalling the plots, while I still can happily re-read Holdstocks Beserker series, thinking that his riff on all things Arthur is so much better than the countless bloated and relevant re-imaginings which followed him. Guess I will always remain a pulp-fiend at heart I think Moorcock's plots were almost certainly tarot card readings - he had to churn that stuff out quick. |
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Post by dem on Mar 26, 2013 12:19:43 GMT
Been attempting some kind of proper review of Horror! Under The Tombstones which should explain why it's taking me an eternity, so a good opportunity to polish the notes for Vol. 2.
Elizabeth Fancett - Marianne's Boy: Freedom-fighter Stefan Khan is locked up awaiting execution as a traitor to the rebel cause. He calls upon to Satan that he might exchange bodies with his ten-year-old stepson, Philip, who is just small enough to wriggle through the tiny skylight in his makeshift cell. Satan answers his prayer, Khan escapes, but he's trapped inside the body of a little boy who insists he's not Marianne Khan's son, but her husband. The psychiatrist, Dr. Paul Dumonde, establishes that a terrified madman, picked up wandering the streets and now incarcerated in the state mental hospital, is constantly raving that he is a boy named Philip. Dumonde brings the pair together to effect a reverse transformation, but his actions are not as selfless as he would have Stefan believe.
Robert P. Holdstock - The Darkness: Near-death experience of a half-drowned man as he wanders over marshland in pursuit of the shrouded figures who've abducted his dream girl. They want her as their latest broodmare. Think it would be fair to say this one has an element of 'dark fantasy' about it.
Ramsey Campbell - The Other House: Pretentious tosser Amos, hippy chic Joan, and their trendy student pals drop acid and hold a 'Lets All Make The House Come Alive' party in his studio flat on Milton Street, Lower Brichester. They succeed in summoning an incubus, who takes the form of Joan's ex-boyfriend, Gil, a chronically depressed artist who recently broke off all contact with their scene.
Roger Parkes - Infra-Man: A psychological ghost story (of sorts) set in 'space age' Portsmouth, this would be my pick of the four. When Lieutenant Jack Stevens disappears, presumed defected to the Reds with a microfilm of Britain's nuclear secrets, the local rag subject his wife, Audrey, to the most intense and invasive harassment. Audrey denies any knowledge of Jack's whereabouts - she doesn't even know if he's dead or alive - but that's not the story they're after. Matters come to a head when The Portsmouth Echo print a photograph, taken the previous evening and purporting to show the Lieutenant watching from the shadows as his wife makes her way home. The distinctive one-eye and ever present Duffle coat leave no doubt that it's Jack. Freelancer Nick Williams insists his photograph is genuine, that it was shot with an infra-red filter which will often reveal more than is visible to the human eye. Can Audrey trust him? Is she being stalked or haunted? As the ministry pursue their investigations, the pressure becomes intolerable, and Audrey resolves to try some night filming of her own.
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