Two extraordinary magazines in bound paperback format, both things of beauty, both arriving in same package. Where to start? Well,
Pulp Horror #2 is far the slimmer of the two, and me being a lazy sod ...
Blast Off!
We begin with a frenzied trolley-dash through ninety-plus years of sci-horror hybrids from H. G. Wells'
War Of The Worlds to Joe R. Lansdale's
The Drive-In. This being a House of Fanatic production, we are spared the dreaded "100 undisputed
BEST ever!" approach in favour of "this is what
I like," making for a typically eclectic selection with Mr. Fanatic firing off thumbnail reviews of same as though our very existence depended upon it! True, acknowledged classics by Matheson, Lovecraft, CAS , John W. Campbell and Arthur C. Clarke make the cut, but so too do John Lymington's
The Night Spiders and Guy N. Smith's adorable
The Slime Beast, while the reproduction of seven Badger Book covers among the illustrations tells its own story. Who needs Ray Bradbury when we've got Bron Fane?
The SF-Horror Crossover provides the ideal launch pad for the issue.
Have had a copy of William Hope Hodgsons
The House On The Borderland (Manor corncob edition) haunting the shelves of shame since circa the dawn of creation, but despite - or possibly, because of - a mate insisting it's the greatest novel ever, have never summoned sufficient enthusiasm to read the damn thing through to the end. Stupid really, as I like
The Ghost Pirates well enough, his short fiction is frequently marvellous (though the odd Carnacki adventure has been known to give me the irits) and the enticing prospect of astral attack by swine-people (to say nothing of 2the great Ass God") ought to be a clincher, and yet ..... Maybe I'm just cosmic terror-ed out but even Will's thoughtful review has done nothing to arouse me from zombie-like apathy toward this particular genre classic.
Frank Belnap Long is a different matter. I've an enduring fondness for his early macabre work - in particular the twenties-thirties
Weird Tales/
Not At Night horror pulp shorts certain critics are wont to dismiss as juvenile trash - but that said, have not gone all out to discover what else he got up to after the astonishing
The Horror From The Hills. Looks like that is about to change following exposure to
The Incredible Shrinking Men. As a rule, I prefer my giant insects to be born of this planet, the appalling by-product of nuclear testing/ mad boffins meddling in things better left alone, etc., but Frank's mega-intelligent alien wasps sound worthy of investigation.
The
Sf-Horror Anthologies spread only runs to two pages and three titles, but still room for a note of controversy! Chetwynd-Hayes'
Tales Of Terror From Outer Space is "an uninspired collection"? Oh no, not so! How could a selection featuring such magnificent entries as Claude Veillot's
The First Days Of Spring, Ray Nelson's
Eight O'Clock In The Morning, Bloch's
Girl From Mars, Birkin's admittedly minor SF excursion
No More For Mary, Sydney J. Bounds'
The Animators and the editors' own barking mad blob-of-slime trash classic,
Shipwreck (featuring a guest appearance from the aforementioned Syd) be anything other than essential? Granted it's patchy, but the stronger/ trashier selections make for a terrific reading experience.
More to follow ....
