Talking of Poe, I did suggest, last year, to Steve Jones he bring out a MAMMOTH BOOK OF POE (along the lines of THE MAN WHO CALLED HIMSELF POE) but he said Robinson plan over a year ahead and the 2009 bicentennial was now beyond reach of their schedule. Hell, I wish I'd thought of collating such a thing myself!
Mark S.
well here's a stab at one!
Illustration by Tony Masero. From the one-off
Ghoul magazine, New English Library, 1976. Found it on the lovely
The Cobwebbed Room blogspot.
A kind of tribute to, and outrageous rip off of, Sam Moskowitz's
A Man Called Poe: Stories in The Vein Of Edgar Allan Poe(Sphere 1972). i know Ellen Datlow recently edited
Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark fantasy, and Horror, but after my traumatic experience with
A Whisper Of Blood (known in these parts as "that godawful compilation of pretentious lit. wank masquerading as a vampire anthology"), i couldn't bring myself to face the thing though i'm sure it's very nice.
Elsie Lee - The Masque Of The Red Death: Spirited novelisation of Corman's striking horror flick.
M. P. Shiel - The Primate Of The Rose: Smyth lures Crooks to
Cask of Amontillado-inspired doom under the pretext of introducing him to The Friends Of The Rose, a London-based secret society of Black Magicians. Crooks is a thinly disguised H. G. Wells according to some critics.
Robert Bloch - The Man Who Collected Poe: No word on whether he landed the signed, slip-cased, strictly limited, bound in gorilla skin edition of
The Murders In The Rue Morgue (Bebo, 2011), but we expect he did.
Ray Bradbury - Usher II: Poe fan builds his synthetic desolate house by the tarn on Mars.
Manly Wade Wellman - When it Was Moonlight: Poe, investigating a reported case of premature burial in Philadelphia, encounters the woman who survived the ordeal, Elva Gauber - vampire! His efforts to get to the truth about the incident almost costs him his life, but it does give him the germ of the idea for
The Black Cat.
Michael Avallone - The Man who Thought He Was Poe: Poe obsessive Roderick Legrande's posturing eventually drives wife Agatha to murder.
John Jakes - The Opener Of The Crypt: The last of Prospero's line removes the bricks ...
Andrew Benedict (Robert Arthur) - The Wall-To-Wall Grave:
The Cask Of Amontillado re-enacted in a modern high rise apartment.
Angela Carter - The Cabinet of Edgar Allan Poe: Cheating here as I've not read it but it sounds terrif. Love this "reviewing" lark, me.
Brian Lumley - The Man Who Photographed Beardsley: Our man stages a dramatic reconstruction of Aubrey B.'s most famous work. Even as he's dragged off to a padded cell, he's already making plans for his next project .....
David Langford – The Facts In The Case Of Micky Valdon: A skeptic disputes the preposterous claim that barmaid-bothering Mickey returned from his watery grave, and argues that his entire instant decomposition number is ripped off from Poe's nastiest story.
R. Patrick Gates - Heavy Metal: Written in the style of
The Tell-Tale Heart. The protagonist is driven crazy by some kid with a ghetto blaster playing AC/DC at full blast beneath his window. Mad bloke takes inspiration from the
Roadrunner cartoons to put an end to it.
Stephen King - A Very Tight Place:
The Premature Burial relocated to a portable toilet.
