Mammoth Book Of Body Horror

[dem bones]

Paul Kane & Marie O'Regan (ed's) - The Mammoth Book Of Body Horror (Robinson, 2012)

Carlos Castro

Stuart Gordon - Introduction

Mary Shelley - Transformation
Edgar Allan Poe - The Tell-Tale Heart
H. P. Lovecraft - Herbert West: Re-Animator
John W. Campbell - Who Goes There?
George Langelaan - The Fly
Richard Matheson - 'Tis The Season To Be Jelly
Stephen King - Survivor Type
Clive Barker - The Body Politic
Robert Bloch - The Chaney Legacy
Ramsey Campbell - The Other Side
Brian Lumley - Fruiting Bodies
Nancy A. Collins - Freaktent
Richard Christian Matheson - Regions Of The Flesh
Michael Marshall Smith - Walking Wounded
Neil Gaiman - Changes
James Herbert - Others
Christopher Fowler - The Look
Alice Henderson - Residue
Graham Masterton - Dog Days
Gemma Files - Black Box
Simon Clark - The Soaring Dead
Barbie Wilde - Polyp
David Moody - Almost Forever
Axelle Carolyn - Butterfly
Conrad Williams - Sticky Eye

Back cover blurb:
25 horrific tales of TRANSFORMATION, MUTATION and CONTAGION

This truly disturbing collection of 'body horror' ranges from Mary Shelley's revelatory 'Transformation' to H. P. Lovecraft's 'Herbert West: Re-Animator', brought to a new audience by the success of Stuart Gordon's film 'Re-Animator', to George Langelaan's 'The Fly', filmed most recently by David Cronenberg, and a chilling story by Lovecraft's disciple, Robert Bloch, best known as the author of Psycho.

The term 'body horror' has long been used to describe films such as The Thing, based on John W. Campbell's 'Who Goes There?', which is reprinted here, and most recently District 9, but the sub-genre did not begin with film.

Here you will find profoundly unsettling stories spanning the entire history of the sub-genre by the very best writers of horror ....

in what passes for 'news' around here (this was published in March), a quick heads up re the latest horror release from those lovely people at Robinson. Several of the stories will be familiar to regulars, but am looking forward to getting properly stuck in once current 500 books-on-the-go are dispensed with.

[Johnlprobert]

It's a goodie Mr D! I reviewed it for This Is Horror a little while ago:
www.thisishorror.co.uk/read-horror/book-reviews/the-mammoth-book-of-body-horror-edited-by-paul-kane-and-marie-oregan/

[dem bones]

am familiar with ten of the first eleven stories so if the rest or anything like of the same calibre than i'm sure we'll be in agreement. dead glad i double-checked the editor's credit because if i'd only had the table of contents to go on, would have embarrassed myself by loudly exclaiming "Ha! I know a Stephen Jones line-up when I see one!" My one slight disappointment is that there's nothing from either yourself or the late, very great Karl E. Wagner in there.

[Johnlprobert]

Apr 27, 2012 18:37:47 GMT dem bones said:

My one slight disappointment is that there's nothing from either yourself or the late, very great Karl E. Wagner in there.

You're too kind!

[dem bones]

Finally made a start on this. Of those i've not previously read, most enjoyable to date is John W. Campbell's novella Who Goes There? (provided he doesn't foul up in the final ten pages). Graham Masterton's Dog Days is like some throwback to 'Bassett Morgan's splendid man-gorilla brain transplant epics.

Christopher Fowler - The Look: If you dream of being a catwalk queen, you have to make sacrifice after sacrifice after sacrifice ... And if you want to model Kit Marlowe's latest creations then prepare to suffer the agonies of Hell. Drab, overweight Ann-Marie is this year's it girl, and we hear her story from the perspective of an envious teenage friend. It's not unlikely that Mr. Fowler was in an angry mood when he wrote it.

Graham Masterton - Dog Days: Venice Beach. When Bob's beautiful Australian girlfriend runs off with his hunky, handsome best friend, Jack, he avenges himself by deliberately shunting their Cavenne into oncoming traffic. Kylie is hideously mangled in the ensuing wreck, and Jack's ability as a cosmetic surgeon is tested as never before. All of which is very bad news for Sheba, his Great Dane, who is called upon to make the ultimate sacrifice.

Axelle Carolyn - Butterfly: Burns victim Johnny Alder, 25, mummified and comatose in the emergency ward, his mother weeping over his ruined body. You get the impression that Mrs. Alder won't be attending any barbecues in the near future. For Johnny, the merciful release of death comes as a beautiful dream of transformation. Beautifully written if not really my thing.

[dem bones]

John W. Campbell - Who Goes There?: (Astounding Science Fiction, August 1938, as by 'Don A. Stuart'). Scientists at the Big Magnet research base in Antartica come under attack from a triple-eyed, tentacle-faced, 20 million year old alien. 'The Thing' can assume the shape and personality of any being it destroys and, after brief spells masquerading as Connant, the camp's cosmic ray specialist, and half of a huskie, slowly works its way through the remaining crew. Blair, the smug pathologist who loudly campaigned to thaw the Thing, immediately goes insane, and has to be restrained from killing his colleagues. Campbell ratchets up the paranoia level upon level as, having deliberately informed the outside world that all is hunky dory at Big Magnet to prevent any doomed attempt at rescue, the remaining crew must find a means of destroying the Thing before it can conquer the planet. And all the while each suspecting that their neighbour may already have been taken over ....

James Herbert - Others: Private Investigator Nicholas Dismas explores the secret laboratory beneath the 'Perfect Rest' home for the elderly, discovers several wretched inmates who look as though they've been got at by Otto Beneckendorff, the deranged vivisectionist from Seabury Quinn's notorious The House Where Time Stood Still.

Chapters 37 and 38 from the 1999 novel of the same name. I'm actually more inclined to read it now.

[dem bones]

Plague, exploding boils, stinking pus, a mad axeman - and that's just the one story. Elsewhere, an army of hands (plus two severed legs) on the rampage, an extreme case of terminal faceache, and nightmares on a squelchy mattress - Body Horror is working it's magic.

Clive Barker - The Body Politic: It's the Beast With Five Fingers apocalypse! After forty years loyal servitude, the hands of Charlie George have had enough and instigate an uprising. First they throttle wife Ellen as Charlie sleeps, then the dominant right, "the Messiah of this New Age", selflessly severs left with a meat cleaver to set it free on London. First stop, the Monmouth Street YMCA for a night of revolt, murder and mutilation on an industrial scale. Contains veiled reference to The Rats (in scene where Lillian the vegetarian is attacked on a lonely road) as added bonus.

Simon Clark - The Soaring Dead: Tom Baxter, ruthless land developer, will stave off bankruptcy if he can only sell the 15, 000 acre site at Hangthwaite Vale, whose entire population bar one were wiped out by plague in 1803. Leo Sneep, his snivelling, whiskey-sodden surveyor, assures Baxter that, although a pit was dug at the Saxon well, no corpses were interred there as they simply "floated away" - the solitary survivor wrote it all up in the Parish record. Baxter's equally ruthless fellow developer, Ken Farley, will need a whole lot more convincing before he parts with his money, so Baxter takes charge of the mechanical digger and sets to excavating ....

Robert Bloch: The Chaney Legacy: The-Man-Who-Wrote-Psycho in Amicus mood. Silent movie buff Dale buys 'The Chaney house', a cottage halfway up Nichols Canyon on the Hollywood Hills and chances upon his hero's mirror and make-up kit. The mirror holds an unholy fascination for Dale, which always reflects a face from Chaney's horror repertoire, never his own. When Dale reconciles with estranged girlfriend Debbie, the Phantom Of The Opera's hideous skull-face looks set to burst free. He somehow finds the strength to smash the glass and heads off to answer a knock at the front door .....

Richard Christian Matheson - Regions Of The Flesh: Hard-up, downtrodden narrator buys bed on which insane women perpetrated Jack the Ripper-style mutilations on husband but three weeks earlier. Likelihood of sweet dreams is remote.

[dem bones]

Stephen King - Survivor Type: Richard Pine, surgeon and drug dealer, washed up on a tiny island with just his knives, first aid kit and 2 kilo's of pure heroin to see him through. And he's hungry. Desperate, starving hungry.

Richard Matheson - 'Tis The Season To Be Jelly: Luke finally plucks up the courage to propose to Annie Lou. They're neither of them much to look at, but in a post-nuclear holocaust world, prospective partners are few and far between.

Ramsey Campbell - The Other Side: (World Fantasy Convention Programme, 1986): Old 'Bow Wow' Bowring despises his pupils as an unruly mob of dole-queue fodder, and it's only the prospect of losing his pension keeps him from throttling the little bastards. Every evening since his mother died Bow Wow has taken out his binoculars, glared across the river at the decrepit tenements which spawned them, grateful that he no longer has to live among hooligans, though he's furious they've somehow discovered his private telephone number. But justice is at hand in the unlikely form of a fellow in clown make-up who has no qualms about dispensing the vicious retribution ringleaders Darren and Debbie deserve! To his credit, Bowring is appalled at the antics of the axe-wielding rapist and crosses the river to confront him, whereupon .... the story takes a turn for the very surreal and lost me for a few pages, though it ends on a convincingly grim note.

[dem bones]

Body Horror and the missing acknowledgements

Those who've purchased Body Horror may have wondered at the lack of acknowledgements almost as much as they've scratched their head over Stuart Gordon's claim in his chatty introduction that, after initial publication in Home Brew magazine back in 1922, the six short chapters which constitute Lovercraft's Herbert West - Re-animator, had to wait until 1983, "when a young theatre director in Chicago went looking for them [before they] again saw the light of day. How do I know this? Because I was that director."

The acknowledgements are now available as a downloadable pdf direct from the publisher at Constable-Robinson

Meanwhile, back with the action, the set opens with nineteen pages of moralistic Gothic melodrama.

Mary Shelley - Transformation: Guilo squanders his vast inheritance on a protracted European debauch, blowing his chances with childhood sweetheart, the fair Juliet, in the process. Torella, his saintly prospective father-in-law, offers to support the couple financially, but first the young man must mend his ways. Guilo, as idle as he is headstrong, won't be told, and opts instead for making away with Juliet by force. Caught in the act, he's only released from prison on Torella's bail. Disgracing himself yet again, Guilo is banished from Genoa a penniless tramp, and good riddance.

A shipwreck off the coast, many lives lost. Guilo watches incredulous as the solitary survivior, a hideously misshapen dwarf floats to safety on a wooden chest. It was the dwarf, a powerful Black Magician, who raised the storm and now, just as effortlessly, clears the skies. Guilo blubs out the sob story of his life and the evil dwarf proposes a deal to their mutual advantage. If Guilo will agree to an exchange of bodies for a mere three days, the dwarf will hand over entire contents of his treasure trove, and finally, Juliet will be his.

[dem bones]

Nancy A Collins - Freaktent: Another best-of-a-very-good-book contender, reads like a contemporary take on Maupassant's The Mother Of Monsters.

Kevin Malone, freelance cameraman, has a flair for photographing Carney freaks, his favourite being Rand 'The World's Ugliest Man' Holstrum whose advanced acromegaly is his fortune. So when Sideshow boss Fallon kicks freak-pedlar Harry Kabrini from his tent with an angry "Gawd damn fuckin' per-vert!" Malone is interested. Turns out Kabrini's brought along a snapshot of his latest merchandise and easy on the eye it is not. Naturally, Malone wants to photograph the walking abortion in question and follows the odious Kabrini to his mobile home .....

As an example of a Splatterpunk story it's commendably restrained (try Norman Kaufman's Lady On Display in 19th Pan Book Of Horror Stories for a gut-churning variation on the theme)