Dark Horizons

[dem]

It's the 'seventies Dark Horizons do it for me, and not merely because I've sampled few issues published post #20. These early numbers are sheer, basic, no frills fanzine and, to my way of thinking, much the better for it. Ro Pardoe, Adrian Cole, Trevor Hughes, Stephen Jones, David A. Sutton, Darroll Pardoe, Geoffrey Noel Hughes, Jim Heron, Mike Chinn & John Merritt - from 1971 through to the end of the decade DH went through editors like Barnet F.C. go through managers, bringing an unlooked for soap element to proceedings. I've seen ten issues from this period (Stephen Holland lists the contents of #1-#29 in BFS special booklet, Fantasy Fanzine Index:Vol 1, 1987). Production standards are erratic, some numbers are all but bereft of illustration, but each has something to recommend it. Much of the original fiction is macabre (too much, according to the more SF & fantasy-orientated fans), and the non-fiction often outstanding. Mike Ashley's - alas, too few - contributions, checklists and all, could be transplanted into Paperback Fanatic without seeming the least out of place. Another bonus: DH sporadically resurrected articles from David A. Sutton's legendary Shadow which many of us would otherwise have been denied.

Adrian Cole & David A. Sutton (eds.) - Dark Horizons #7 (BFS, Dec. 1973)

Jim Pitts, Ghoul

David A. Sutton - Editorial: So It Goes

Fiction
Glen Symonds - The Spell Of Lankya
David Lloyd - Do Not Disturb

Article
Ramsey Campbell - Derleth As I Knew Him (Part 1)

Reviews

Film
Adrian Cole, Theatre of Blood

Literature
Thelma Collins, Paul Kocher's Master Of Middle Earth: The Achievements of J. R. R. Tolkein
Brian Mooney, James Dickie [ed.] The Undead
Ian Covell, Andrew J. Offut's Ardor On Aros
Adrian Cole, Thomas Burnett Swann, Wolfwinter
David A. Sutton, Michel Parry [ed.] Strange Ecstasies

Music
David A. Sutton, Pink Floyd's The Dark Side Of The Moon

Ramsey Campbell - Layouts (Comics Column)

Retrospectators (Letters column conducted by Adrian Cole): Ramsey Campbell, Rosemary Pardoe, Mike Chinn, Ian Covell, Chris Bursey, Gordon Larkin, Tim Edwards, Thomas Hosty, Andy Northern, Brian Mooney.

Artists this issue. Jim Pitts, Stephen Jones (back cover)

David A. Sutton - Editorial: The latest new editor explains that he's only keeping the seat warm for the real new editor who will be along next issue.

Ramsey Campbell - Derleth As I Knew Him: Part 1: Choice highlight's from Derleth's correspondence with fifteen year old fan and aspiring author J. Ramsey Campbell (Ghostly Tales, The Tomb-Herd & Co.). Curmudgeonly, warm, hilarious, and slightly alarming at turns, (" ... orgasm during this period is touchy. I've not had an orgasm for about a week and brother! I've got hot rocks, as we say over here in America ..."), Mr. Derleth offers his opinion on ... well, everything, ever, including fans, conventions and fanzines (all of them pretty much a waste of time), people who smoke and drink, his prostate, the beauty of spring, and New Maps Of Hell (27. 7. 1962. Yes, I know about Kingsley Amis. He is strictly an amateur, though, acting like a pro. SF is not really his field: I should think it a carry-over or hold-over from childhood, and the effort to deal seriously with sf as a literary form I find only sadly amusing. It belongs to the area of pure entertainment exactly as do our other fantasy forms, love romances, western stories and detective fiction, and any other assertion can only be greeted with amusement."). Judiciously edited with sparkly commentary from Mr. Campbell.

Glen Symonds - The Spell Of Lankya: Calimin the rat-raced, rubbish Sorcerer, prostrates himself before his foul-tongued, very up-himself master to request a spell that will cause his most despised enemy to wither and die.

David Lloyd - Do Not Disturb: Greek scholar Henry, on the receiving end of a tirade from wife Hilda. From ataraxia to asphyxia in two short pages. Reads like a Les Dawson - Maurice Level collaboration.

Retrospectators: Some Comments, Views and Observations on DARK HORIZONS #6: Conducted by Adrian Cole: The truth of it is, a clearly traumatised readership devote equal time to bemoaning DH#5 (not seen) which, the consensus has it, was ... not all it might have been. All seem agreed that DH #6 was a return to form but then, as Ro Pardoe puts it, "anything would be good in comparison to DH5 ..."

Reviews: Brian Mooney devotes three pages to the most diligent appraisal of James Dickie's The Undead, Dave Sutton likewise to both Michel Parry's anthology-on-drugs, Strange Ecstasies, and a track-by-track analysis of Pink Floyd's most commercial album to date which he sees as a side-step by the band rather than a progression on previous cosmic efforts.

[dem]

Darroll Pardoe (ed.) - Dark Horizons #8 (BFS, 1974)

Diettwelin : Architecture, 1598

Fiction
Gordon Larkin - Belendon's Chair

Articles
Ramsey Campbell - Derleth As I Knew Him (Part 2)
David A Sutton - The Cosmic In Fiction

Reviews
Film
David A. Sutton - The Golden Voyage Of Sinbad
Literature
Philip Payne, Richard Davis [ed.], The Years Best Horror Stories #3, Robert E. Howard, Conan The Wanderer
Music
Gordon Larkin - Magma Mëkanïk Dëstruktïẁ Kömmandöh

Ramsey Campbell - Layouts (Comics Column)

Austerity rules. No editorial, interior illustration, or letters column.

Gordon Larkin - Belendon's Chair: Those who've sat in it vanished, with only a pile of bleached bones to mark their passing. A young vagrant, determined to learn the secret of this most magical seat, dares defy the curse. An avid crowd gather to witness his certain doom.

David A Sutton - The Cosmic In Fiction: "In searching for meaningful values in Fantasy I would define "cosmic" as the essence of the artist's search for something special in Mankind's existence. This something is a grasping for the universe, the gulfs of time and space that seem a mighty power, a longing for the god-like region that will be his." Cites stories and novels by HPL, CAS, Leiber, Aldiss, Bradbury, Hodgson, Derleth and Richard Cowper to make his case. Bonus point - make that ten bonus points - for "The Clangers, Oliver Postgate's delightful stop-motion animated SF is better and more basically stimulating than the often wishy-washy Star Trek."

Ramsey Campbell - Derleth As I Knew Him: Part 2: Weird. I felt entirely comfortable reading the first instalment, not so this second ("this wasn't written for my eyes.") August's observations on fans/ overnight 'experts', self-deluded authors, womankind, the joys of the great outdoors and (non-magic) mushroom-picking, etc. Wary that young John may fall prey to sycophants, hangers on and - the lowest of the low - paperback publishers, Derleth offers the following cautionary tale.

21.4.66. "I went to one sf convention - in Chicago in 1952, and though I was but 43 then, I thought it too infantile for words. I have never had any good argument to change my mind. Evidently authors go for adulation from the fans, and the fans go to make themselves seen and known if possible. I found the 1952 convention teeming with queers of all kinds ... as for the closing party, it was too much of a drunken brawl to interest me, so I slipped away and went to a good movie. Let those who enjoy that sort of thing enjoy it, but I feel that my time is just too valuable to waste in this manner. Insularity is the keynote, yes. And fandom over here is so full of homosexuals that the ratio might be as high as 50/50 - and the most obnoxious kind, too. I prefer quiet types, on the whole, and not raving fruits and shouting queens, eager to advertise themselves as for sale."

Coincidentally, I came to #8 directly off the back of Robert Bloch's Some Of My Best Fans Are Friends (Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Sept. 1956) where-in the-man-who-wrote-Psycho celebrates the conventions,'zines and fandom as "friendship, based on mutual interests. No one could ask for more."

'Layouts' is Ramsey on the horror comics, specifically the recent EC reprints, but branches out to include contemporary efforts Tomb Of Dracula, Vampirella & Co. On Crypt of Terror #1: "Overall, what's most significant is the restraint of the whole thing. Considering the revulsion these comics caused, one searches in vain for the details of sadism." Reviews. Magma! French prog-rock hippies from outer space/ the future! Somebody page pulphack! God knows I'm in no position to call anyone else's work rank, so will draw a discreet veil over Philip Payne's take on Years Best Horror 3 ...

[ropardoe]

May 3, 2018 9:41:43 GMT dem said:

Darroll Pardoe (ed.) - Dark Horizons #8 (BFS, 1974)


Ramsey Campbell - Derleth As I Knew Him: Part 2: Weird. I felt entirely comfortable reading the first instalment, not so this second ("this wasn't written for my eyes.") August's observations on fans/ overnight 'experts', self-deluded authors, womankind, the joys of the great outdoors and (non-magic) mushroom-picking, etc. Wary that young John may fall prey to sycophants, hangers on and - the lowest of the low - paperback publishers, Derleth offers the following cautionary tale.

21.4.66. "I went to one sf convention - in Chicago in 1952, and though I was but 43 then, I thought it too infantile for words. I have never had any good argument to change my mind. Evidently authors go for adulation from the fans, and the fans go to make themselves seen and known if possible. I found the 1952 convention teeming with queers of all kinds ... as for the closing party, it was too much of a drunken brawl to interest me, so I slipped away and went to a good movie. Let those who enjoy that sort of thing enjoy it, but I feel that my time is just too valuable to waste in this manner. Insularity is the keynote, yes. And fandom over here is so full of homosexuals that the ratio might be as high as 50/50 - and the most obnoxious kind, too. I prefer quiet types, on the whole, and not raving fruits and shouting queens, eager to advertise themselves as for sale."

That's absolutely vile, isn't it?  Insulting to just about every sort of person that I hold dear.

[Jojo Lapin X]

May 3, 2018 9:45:40 GMT ropardoe said:

That's absolutely vile, isn't it?  Insulting to just about every sort of person that I hold dear.

To get some perspective on this, bear in mind that he was himself a self-confessed player of the pink oboe.

[dem]

May 3, 2018 9:45:40 GMT ropardoe said:

That's absolutely vile, isn't it?  Insulting to just about every sort of person that I hold dear.

Either nobody picked up on it at the time, they were too mortified to write, or their comments were overlooked when the letters column returned with the next issue.

[Jojo Lapin X]

I have seen reprinted a letter to the young Ramsey Campbell in which he describes a woodwind performance of this nature.

[helrunar]

Dark Horizons looks quite cool. I'd never heard that Derleth was (presumably) bisexual. I think we have a copy of the Derleth/Campbell letters book somewhere in the stacks here, but whether I have the time and patience to read through all that is another question.

I keep trying to explain to people that all the really vile, blathering homophobes are closet queens. People refuse to believe it and then every five or ten or whatever years, you get one of those "studies show" things... I'm tapped out on the subject, at this late date.  Regular, adjusted heteros DON'T CARE. It's only closet queens that find the need to point the finger and shout about how awful it all is from the rooftops. Inevitably they're found with trousers round legs under an airport loo stall petition... it was ever thus. (Descending from soapbox now.)

Ironic that Auggie despised paperback publishers since the whole Lovecraft/Weird Tales Circle renaissance was completely the work of inexpensive, and often beautifully produced, paperback reprints in the 1960s.

Also ironic that Augs loathed fandom given, again, lather, rinse, repeat.

I still have some issues of Tomb of Dracula from circa '73-'74. They must have gone into one of the few (really very few) boxes or containers I was able to salvage before my parents sold the childhood home. I thought they were really nice mags--owing more to Sixties Hammer horror, from what I recall, than EC or the deathless pages of Chamber of Chills.

cheers, H.

[ropardoe]

May 3, 2018 14:59:37 GMT helrunar said:

Dark Horizons looks quite cool. I'd never heard that Derleth was (presumably) bisexual. I think we have a copy of the Derleth/Campbell letters book somewhere in the stacks here, but whether I have the time and patience to read through all that is another question.

I keep trying to explain to people that all the really vile, blathering homophobes are closet queens. People refuse to believe it and then every five or ten or whatever years, you get one of those "studies show" things... I'm tapped out on the subject, at this late date.  Regular, adjusted heteros DON'T CARE. It's only closet queens that find the need to point the finger and shout about how awful it all is from the rooftops. Inevitably they're found with trousers round legs under an airport loo stall petition... it was ever thus. (Descending from soapbox now.)

Ironic that Auggie despised paperback publishers since the whole Lovecraft/Weird Tales Circle renaissance was completely the work of inexpensive, and often beautifully produced, paperback reprints in the 1960s.

Also ironic that Augs loathed fandom given, again, lather, rinse, repeat.

I still have some issues of Tomb of Dracula from circa '73-'74. They must have gone into one of the few (really very few) boxes or containers I was able to salvage before my parents sold the childhood home. I thought they were really nice mags--owing more to Sixties Hammer horror, from what I recall, than EC or the deathless pages of Chamber of Chills.

cheers, H.

At the risk getting too off topic, I would say that I don't think it's just a matter of them all being closet queens - there are also people who feel deeply under threat from and deeply challenged by anyone whose lifestyle choices are different to theirs.  I find such folk very depressing.  As for Derleth's attitude to fandom, Nigel Kneale shared it, sadly.  I'm very defensive about fandom as I've been in it, in one shape or form, for fifty years, and am proud to have G&S called a fanzine (some people seem to think it's an insult!).  David Sutton's excellent introduction to my forthcoming The Black Pilgrimage book is titled "A Fanzine Life"!

[helrunar]

Thanks for those thoughts, Ro, and I'm sure you're right that there's more to it than just being a closet queen. August Derleth sounds like a rather sad man, from that excerpt. It seems quite strange given how eccentric some of the people back in the 1920s and 1930s that were key figures in the Weird Tales scene were. I do remember homophobic comments from Lovecraft's letters, but only very occasionally. I know it does get too off topic to write in extenso on this matter so will leave it at that.

The Black Pilgrimage sounds as if it will be a great book. In the past decade or so, fanzines have become an object of serious academic inquiry here in the US. That's a double edged sword but among other things, it means that university libraries, especially special collections units, are making efforts to collect, catalogue and conserve zines. 

Best wishes,
Steve

[helrunar]

For anyone interested, there's more about Derleth's biography here. Apparently there's a kind of "me too" moment that involves old Auggie's compulsive stalking of various 18 year old women.

www.ligotti.net/showthread.php?t=2403&page=2

The Lurker at the Threshold?

H.

[andydecker]

May 3, 2018 14:59:37 GMT helrunar said:

I still have some issues of Tomb of Dracula from circa '73-'74. They must have gone into one of the few (really very few) boxes or containers I was able to salvage before my parents sold the childhood home. I thought they were really nice mags--owing more to Sixties Hammer horror, from what I recall, than EC or the deathless pages of Chamber of Chills.

cheers, H.

Tomb of Dracula is one of the few 70s Marvel books which are still great. Alone for the artwork. 70 issues of Colan/Palmer. Unsurpassed in their quality. You are right with the Hammer remark. Btw ToD is just being reprinted in nice HCs and also digital. ToD:The complete collection. Included are the b/w stories from the magazines like Dracula Lives.

H. - if you have problems finding Hand's Frankenstein novel, PM me.

[helrunar]

Thanks, Andy! I did see the Liz Hand Bride book on sale for around $20 on a popular internet retail site. Quite reasonably priced. I really appreciate your pointing me towards the book!

I didn't know Tomb of Dracula was still being published. I might still have an issue of Dracula Lives, as well. 

Best wishes, Steve

[andydecker]

May 3, 2018 22:00:09 GMT helrunar said:

Thanks, Andy! I did see the Liz Hand Bride book on sale for around $20 on a popular internet retail site. Quite reasonably priced. I really appreciate your pointing me towards the book!

I didn't know Tomb of Dracula was still being published. I might still have an issue of Dracula Lives, as well. 

Best wishes, Steve

Tomb of Dracula is just a reprint. Marvel already reprinted the whole series in their Essential b/w omnibus series some years ago. Currently they do a hardvover reprint in the original colour. Except the Magazine stuff of course, which was b/w to begin with..

Btw, you got a PM!

[dem]

Stephen Jones (ed.) - Dark Horizons #9 (British Fantasy Society, Summer, 1974)

Jim Pitts

Stephen Jones -Editorial

Fiction
Thomas Hosty - The Sorcerer's Book
John Martin - Hell! It's Late
Julian A. Le Saux -Splat!

Verse
Peter Wilcockson - Of Larger Things I Dream
David Weldrake - At the World's Edge
Gordon Larkin - Catch the Sun at Its Setting
Gordon Larkin - The Forgotten Rune

Articles
David A. Sutton - The Cosmic In Music
David A. Riley - The Artist In Fandom: Jim Pitts
Ramsey Campbell - Bergman and the Horror Film: Some Observations

Letters of Comment. Mike Chinn, Gordon Larkin, Dick Ellingsworth, Jim Pitts, Ramsey Campbell.

Artists this issue. Jim Pitts, David Lloyd, Stephen Jones, Stephen Skwarek, David Fletcher.

Stephen Jones takes over editorship and brings with him a raft of artists. Back come the editorial, mailbag and verse. Mr. Jones would remain at the helm through to DH #15 (Winter,1976), when he stepped down to launch Fantasy Tales[/i] with fellow DH regular David A. Sutton.

Thomas Hosty - The Sorcerer's Book: Misadventures of Krobar the Barbarian in Zombara, a hostile city on the edge of the desert. Sword & Sorcery, ancient grimoire's and the like. The multi-tendrilled, pus-oozing, blob with eyes in the dungeon is neat.

John Martin - Hell! It's Late: Barney Gibbons and the telephone call from Hades Incorporated.

Julian A. Le Saux -Splat!: His younger self runs down his older self while the refugee from the parallel world who is manipulating both, laughs so hard it triggers a fatal heart attack. Or something. Features a bench in Hoddeston High Street.

David A. Riley with Nick Caffrey - The Artist In Fandom: Jim Pitts: Interview and mini-gallery. "[There's a paperback collection to be published by Panther] I haven't quite finished all of the illustrations for it. It's for Mike Parry. Stories based on fantastic drugs .... I'm working on a picture for David Sutton - for the final SHADOW - based on a Jules de Grandin story called THE SILVER COUNTESS ..."

Also contains the wonderful exchange:

DR: You don't attempt realism at all.
JP: How could you make a pig-faced, bat-winged monster real?

Not to be confused with The Artist In Fandom: Jim Pitts interviewed by Nick Caffrey (BFS Bulletin, May-June 1981) as recently revived by Parallel Universe in the gorgeous The Fantastical Art Of Jim Pitts: Rolling Back The Years ....

David A. Sutton - The Cosmic In Music: Prog. rock heavies Pink Floyd, Hawkwind's A Space Ritual , plus select works of The Third Ear Band, Faust, Tangerine Dream, & Magma. A little narrow in focus, but there's only so much you can squeeze into three pages, and at least no mention of Gr**nsl*de, for which I'm truly thankful. It's in the ear of the beholder, anyhow. When first I heard Mick Ronson's guitar solo at close of Moonage Daydream as a 12/13 year old, I genuinely thought I was listening to (beautiful) music by space aliens. Maybe we could try a thread?

Ramsey Campbell - Bergman and the Horror Film: Some Observations: Along with the Jim Pitts portfolio, my pick of the issue. His comics column shunted to the BFS Bulletin, Ramsey turns his attention to the modern, (post-Psycho) horror movie. References include The Birds, The Sorcerers, Witchfinder General, Deathline, Hour Of The Wolf, Straw Dogs, Deliverance, Kingsley Amis' New Maps Of Hell, The Pan Book Of Horror Stories (not in a good way) and the Gothic nightmare cinema of Ingmar Bergman.

Poetry. No offence, but poetry and me only very seldom get on so can't comment.

Letters. God, but they're a moany lot. DH is too small. Where's the illos? I didn't like the way the letters' column was laid out. Dark Side Of The Moon doesn't have enough fantasy in it. At least they care. Mr. Campbell takes Mr P. Payne to task over his preposterous review of Best New Horror 3, and Mike Chinn reckons the Conan illo at back of DH#7 looks like Slade's Don Powell.

Stephen Jones (Dark Horizons #7)

[dem]

May 3, 2018 14:59:37 GMT helrunar said:

Ironic that Auggie despised paperback publishers since the whole Lovecraft/Weird Tales Circle renaissance was completely the work of inexpensive, and often beautifully produced, paperback reprints in the 1960s.

Steve, I may have inadvertently done Derleth an injustice with that flip remark re paperback publishers. It is more a case of him advising JRC to always secure hardcover publication before he sells the paperback rights or he'll not be taken seriously.

"It is folly to do original work in paperback: you not only lose status, but no hardcover publisher will then want to take you on. Certainly, if DEMONS came out in paperback first, before we [Arkham House] contracted for it, we'd not do the book; and it's life would then be about six months, which certainly does you no good. Ambitious agents, eager for a fast buck, often persuade authors to let them sell paperback rights before hardcover publication; the result is more than one v. promising author is without a publisher of status. I think of Mildred Clingerman particularly; she did some truly excellent tales, but her agent conned her into paperback, after which no hardcover publisher would take her work; and she is practically unknown today."

Don't know about "its life would then be about six months" - not with the likes of us lot around - but he makes his point well.

May 3, 2018 15:32:32 GMT ropardoe said:

;As for Derleth's attitude to fandom, Nigel Kneale shared it, sadly.  I'm very defensive about fandom as I've been in it, in one shape or form, for fifty years, and am proud to have G&S called a fanzine (some people seem to think it's an insult!).  David Sutton's excellent introduction to my forthcoming The Black Pilgrimage book is titled "A Life in Fanzines"!

Mr. 'A Life In Fanzines' introduces Lady 'A Life In Fanzines.' Am very much looking forward to The Black Pilgrimage and so pleased that Shadow now publish anthologies of articles as well as fiction (compiling both works a treat in the posthumous James Wade opus). I hope that at some stage David will consider a second volume of Voices From Shadow for those of us who weren't around to enjoy the 'zine first time around.