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Post by dem bones on Jan 10, 2011 18:28:16 GMT
David Sutton (ed.) - Voices from Shadow: Celebrating the 20th Anniversary of Shadow: Fantasy Literary Review 1968-1974. (Shadow Publishing, Sept 1994) Jim Pitts - Stephen Jones - Introduction: Shadows of the Past
- Martin Ricketts - Enigma Macabre: An Evaluation of the Short Stories of Robert Aickman (Shadow Fantasy Literature Review #18, Nov 1972)
- Brian J. Frost - Famous Fantasy Illustrators: Virgil Finlay (Shadow Fantasy Literature Review #16, March 1972)
- Eddy C. Bertin - The Dark Lands of C. L. Moore - (Shadow Fantasy Literature Review #17, June 1972)
- Mike Ashley - Fighters of Fear: A Survey of the Psychic Investigator in Fiction (Shadow Fantasy Literature Review #21, August 1974)
- Ramsey Campbell - Lovecraft in Retrospect in Retrospect (Shadow Fantasy Literature Review #7 Sept. 1969)
- David A. Riley - William Morris (Shadow Fantasy Literature Review #11, July 1970)
- David Sutton - Editorial: Voice of our Shadow
illustrators: Jim Pitts, Stephen Jones, Alan Hunter, Virgil Finlay, Brian J. Frost, Dave Carson.Last night i began my long threatened rematch with 'James Montague's sumptuous Worms. One chapter under my belt was all it took for me to shake my fist at the heavens, loudly proclaim "the book has yet to be written that will tear me from this!" And then bloody Voices From Shadow turned up in the post. i ordered Voices from Shadow purely on the promise of a Mike Ashley history of the Psychic Detective in horror fiction, having no inkling of any other material it might include, so to say the contents list came as a nice surprise is a scandalous understatement. Much of the material is revised, rewritten and/ or updated from its earlier incarnation and over the coming days, i'll try and write up some notes on each individual item. Some first impressions (i've yet to read the E. C. Bertin, Frost, Ricketts or Riley essays); Mr. Ashey's Fighters Of Fear accounts for 21 of the 64 pages. Several of our old lags will recall his exhaustive article on Peter Haining's 'sixties and 'seventies anthologies from Paperback Fanatic #6 and here he does the same wonderful job of tracing the psychic sleuth in horror from Poe's C. Auguste Dupin right through to R. Chetwynd-Hayes's Francis St. Clare and (slightly) beyond. The Jones and Sutton editorials bookmarking the selection are at turns funny, touching and refreshingly honest, both in terms of what Shadow meant to them and, in David Sutton's case, how the earliest issues fell far short of what he hoped they'd be. Ramsey Campbell, confronted by an earlier self's article on Lovecraft's failings as an author - as evinced in The Haunter Of The Dark and "the ludicrous melodrama of the distastefully sensationalist revision The Loved Dead" - begins his 1994 retrospective on his 1969 retrospective with the immortal "What a prat I was!" There's a rather poignant sign off in the form of a brief advertisement. "It's coming. First issue, March 1995 Beyond .... As far as i'm aware, David Sutton still has a few copies available for £6.50 including postage and packing. You can email him at. david.sutton986 ATbtinternet.com replace AT with @ (Vault hi-tek anti-spam measure)
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Post by dem bones on Jan 11, 2011 12:32:59 GMT
Martin Ricketts - Enigma Macabre: An Evaluation of the Short Stories of Robert Aickman: The few substantial criticisms i've read of Aickman's strange stories were published after his death, so a welcome change to find one written for the most part in 1972. Returning to his original in 1994, Ricketts admits to being slightly baffled by some of what he wrote though the bulk still holds true for him, and Enigma Macabre certainly makes for an interesting, very readable and - for dullards like self who often struggle with Aickman and want some pointers to his more commercial offerings - useful and enlightening essay. The main stories to come in for consideration are Ringing The Changes, Ravissante, The Unsettled Dust, The Same Dog, The Clock Watcher and The Fetch. Mike Ashley - Fighters of Fear: A Survey of the Psychic Investigator in Fiction: To do this any kind of justice i'd have to quote huge swathes of text, but as mentioned, it was Fighters Of Fear that determined me to land a copy of Voices From Shadow and I am not disappointed with my first purchase of the decade! A quick pat on the back to Ripper and those who fleshed out his original Psychic Detective listing on Vault Mk I - between you, you didn't miss much! One of Mike's several interesting theories I'd not read anywhere else concerns the two William Hope Hodgson stories - The Find and The Hog which seemingly appeared out of nowhere to find their way into the Derleth-compiled edition of Carnacki The Ghost Finder (Mycroft & Moran, 1947). Could it be, as with "J. S. Le Fanu"'s oh-so mysterious The Churchyard Yew, that Derleth wrote them himself? Otherwise it's just great fun to sit back and enjoy a master bibliographer's take on the likes of Aylmer Vance, Judge Pursuivant, Jules De Grandin, the unnamed doctor from Samuel Warren's Passages From The Diary Of A Late Physician, Miss Penelope Pettiweather, Luna Bartendale, Simon Ark .... Ramsey Campbell - Lovecraft in Retrospect in Retrospect: "The most sinister spectre to haunt anyone may be their own youthful self" writes Ramsey having come face to face with one of his own demons for the first time in a quarter of a century. Ironically, the previous year, the supremely withering Jennie Gray had raised similar criticisms of Lovecraft's work in The Goth #12 (The Body-snatchers special, June, 1993), and who should leap to the defence but Mr. Campbell! Although shorter than the other pieces, this is no less fascinating, particularly the self-deprecating 1994 confessional which succeeds in being both affecting and deadly funny.
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Post by cw67q on Jan 11, 2011 14:28:43 GMT
Hi Dem, The Hodgson/Deleth controvery has been rasied a few times. I *think* (I haven't followed it all that closely and I have fogotten the exact reasoning/conclusions) that there was a burying of the doubts over Hodgson's authorship. IIRC papers or manuscripts/letters from his Widow came to light which supported Hodgson's authorship. Amybe someone else can remember some of the details (whcih might be more helpful than my hand waving . I've always found the Hog a terrible drag to read. I've read it at least twice and found it greatly outstayed its welcome. Hodgson/Carnaki starts to move veeery slowly when he gets bogged down in all the silly details of obviously maky-uppy occult pseudo-science and the Hog is the worst culprit for this. The odd powerful descriptive passage gets burried under the accumulated layers of hockum. I don't recall anything about the other story although I'm sure I must have read it. I like/recall other tales in the Carnaki series much bettre than these two outings. - chris
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Post by dem bones on Jan 11, 2011 17:46:56 GMT
Thanks Chris. I should stress Mr. Ashley does no more than suggest it as a possibility and actually states his belief that The Hog is Hodgson's work though it might have been cleaned up by Derleth. He's not quite so confident about The Find, "a weak story that reads more like one of Derleth's Solar Pons [adventures]." David A. Riley - William Morris: Short but informative biography of a gifted and prolific artist who somehow managed to keep up to a dozen creative careers on the go and still find time to accidentally father the heroic fantasy sub-genre. You're right; i know next to nothing about him outside of this article! Eddy C. Bertin - The Dark Lands of C. L. Moore: Bertin's tribute to the authoress includes enough biographical detail to get by but mostly takes the form of a blow by blow account of the Northwest Smith and Jirel of Joiry stories in chronological order. I thought my days of reading about blood-lusting martian Medusa's were behind me, but damned if i'm not tempted to revisit Shambleau! Consul 1961 edition of Shambleau featuring Black God's Kiss, Shambleau, Black God's Shadow, Black Thirst, The Tree Of Life, Scarlet Dream Had Northwest Smith been able to forsee the future, he would not have shielded the frightened, scarlet clad girl from the wild mob pursuing her through the streets of Lakkdarol, Earth's latest colony on Mars. "Shambleau! Shambleau!" the crowd cried with loathing and disgust, but Smith drove them off and took the exhausted girl to his quarters. There was no hair upon her face - neither brows nor lashes, but what lay hidden beneath the tight scarlet turban bound around her head?
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Post by Deleted on Jan 11, 2011 19:47:18 GMT
Interesting - I didn't know there was any question around the place of The Hog and The Find within the pantheon of Carnacki stories. I always liked the former, although the latter is fairly inconsequential and not particularly interesting.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jan 11, 2011 21:09:36 GMT
David A. Riley - William Morris: Short but informative biography of a gifted and prolific artist who somehow managed to keep up to a dozen creative careers on the go and still find time to accidentally father the heroic fantasy sub-genre. You're right; i know next to nothing about him outside of this article! [/i][/quote] I might have helped a few years ago with Morris. I've read the following when I actively sought out fantasy works. The Hollow Land (1856) The Defence of Guenevere, and other Poems (1858) The Story of Sigurd the Volsung and the Fall of the Niblungs The Story of the Glittering Plain (1891) The Wood Beyond the World (1894) The Well at the World's End (1896) The Water of the Wondrous Isles (1897) The Sundering Flood (1897) He's an interesting character being a socialist in a genre generally associated with Kings, princesses and talking dragons. The last one I went through was 'The Sundering Flood' which basically has a huge river dividing a land, possibly an analogy of class and divide. It's a tale of getting rid of the nasty lord and replacing him with a community project or something similar. If you like fantasy at all I'd thoroughly recommend the ones with 'W' in the title. Superlatively written in a laconic style and very much like Lord Dunsany. That is, nothing much happens except moments where belief is suspended. I may well have put a few people off here
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Post by David A. Riley on Jan 11, 2011 22:34:46 GMT
Oddly enough, I would be hard pressed to find the enthusiasm today to write about William Morris, certainly as a fantasist. I haven't read anything of his in years and feel no temptation to do so. Tastes change - and mine certainly have.
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Jan 11, 2011 23:49:57 GMT
Oddly enough, I would be hard pressed to find the enthusiasm today to write about William Morris, certainly as a fantasist. I haven't read anything of his in years and feel no temptation to do so. Tastes change - and mine certainly have. Me too David. there are a few stalwarts I would reread but seeing Morris just made me think of past enjoyment.
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Post by dem bones on Jan 12, 2011 22:12:14 GMT
Brian J. Frost - Famous Fantasy Illustrators: Virgil Finlay: Virgil Finlay I'm a huge admirer of Brian J. Frost's outstanding introductory essay to Book Of The Werewolf and its companion piece, the annotated vampire bibliography, The Monster With A Thousand Faces, so opening Voices From Shadow to find his name on the contributors list was yet another unexpected bonus. His enthusiastic biography of the impossibly gifted pulp illustrator Virgil Finlay runs to nine pages, following his career from the very early days working for Farnsworth-Wright at Weird Tales through a spell under the editorship of Abraham Merrit at The American Weekly and out the other side of WWII providing striking interior illustrations for Famous Fantastic Mysteries and sundry Astrological publications until his death in 1971. Up until now I've loved Finlay's illustrations well enough without ever fully appreciating the phenomenal amount of work he put into each illustration to achieve his effects - the man must have had the patience of a Saint. Back in 1985, Stan Nicholls edited a 20th Anniversary special edition of the legendary 'sixties horror film 'zine Gothique as a BFS booklet. I've never seen an original issue of Gothique and the booklet is a decent enough read but I didn't come away from it feeling like i'd missed out that badly. On finishing Voice From Shadow all i can say is, I sure hope David Sutton is already hard at work on a double issue to commemorate the 40th anniversary in 2014.
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Post by helrunar on Jan 28, 2020 21:13:45 GMT
What a fascinating thread! Plus a radically exquisite Virgil Finlay drawing that is new to me. LOVE.
Thanks, Kev!
cheers, Steve
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Post by helrunar on Jan 28, 2020 21:20:43 GMT
Re C. L. Moore and "Shambleau," I was fascinated last year reading through some of Lovecraft's letters from the period to learn that the Spectre of Providence was highly impressed by both the story and its author (who he met a few times). He wrote to at least one correspondent that "Miss Moore" was the BEST author of modern fantasy... BAR NONE.
H.
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