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Post by dem bones on Apr 16, 2008 20:01:13 GMT
Karl Edward Wagner (ed.) - The Year’s Best Horror # 16 (DAW, Oct. 1988)  J. K. Potter
Stephen King - Popsy
Greg Egan - Neighbourhood Watch
Jane Yolen - Wolf/Child
Charles L. Grant - Everything To Live For
David Campton - Repossession
Ramsey Campbell - Merry May
Wayne Allen Sallee - The Touch
R. Chetwynd-Hayes - Moving Day
Leslie Halliwell - La Nuit des Chiens
Sheila Hodgson - Echoes from the Abbey
Jack M. Dann - Visitors
A. F. Kidd - The Bellfounder’s Wife
Dennis Etchison - The Scar
t. Winter-Damon - Martyr Without Canon
Brian Lumley - The Thin People
Michael Shea - Fat FaceBeen ages since I read this, but I remember being blown away by the A. F. Kidd, Halliwell and Campbell stories in particular. includes: Stephen King - Popsy: Very EC. Child-abductor Sheridan gets more than he bargained for when he waylays a pale kid at "the Beautiful Cousintown Mall". The boy has long teeth, just like his doting father. And he's thirsty. Ramsey Campbell - Merry May: Ramsey Campbell's The Wicker Man .... sort of. Lonely, frustrated music teacher Kilbride has even fallen out of love with his own compositions which all seem meaningless and trite to him now. Is it the male menopause, he wonders? He answers an ad placed by Renewal Of Life in the local newspaper: Alone and Desperate? Call us now before you do anything else. When he dials the number, he's answered by a young woman whose ambiguous answers to his inquiries could be taken as loaded with sexual innuendo. Kilbride sure hopes so. He drives out into the Manchester countryside to keep his invitation to the May Day festivities that will lead to his (he hopes) renewal of life and, despite being called upon to trim the maypole, things couldn't get off to a better start. He's given free bed and board at the village pub, The Jack In The Green, gets to select the young girl who will be this year's May Queen - later, he's even called upon to deflower her in the church - and endures surly Bob Thomas and his equally miserable Morris Men doing their thing with little personal suffering thanks to some doped cakes. But Thomas and, indeed, all the men in this close-knit Pagan community make him uneasy, as does that ugly, derelict factory looming incongruously over the village ... Wayne Allen Sallee - The Touch: "That winter, at the AKA on Broadway, Downs had spilled his Seagrams down the back of a Mexican girl's dress ..." A strip-joint in Fallon Ridge, Chicago and among the not entirely appreciative audience, cerebral palsy sufferer Downs and a fat, drunken slob who, it transpires, is the Deputy Sheriff of Cook County. Doesn't matter who or how important you are: you'd be stupid to mess with the bouncers in this dive. Leslie Halliwell - La Nuit des Chiens: Monte Carlo. A party of English tourists come to grief when, ignoring the advice of their concierge, they book a table at a restaurant in the remote village of Malchateau .... on this of all nights. Much to their chagrin, when they arrive the restaurant is shut down for the evening, as indeed is the entire place save for Madame Bejard's La Maitresse des Chiens and that sure ain't featured in the Michelin guides. Perhaps they should consult a volume on true cannibals. Meanwhile outside, the streets are overrun by Cujo wannabes.
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Post by Johnlprobert on Apr 16, 2008 20:14:28 GMT
That's such a bloody weird cover.
I've never come across this series, but I'm familiar with some of the stories listed above. The Lumley is from Amy Myers' Third Book of After Midnight Stories and is about funny bendy men who can hide behind lampposts. The Campbell is a goody which I've got in Scared Stiff & the AF Kidd is included in her very readable Bell-Ringing Ghost Story collection Summoning Knells from Ash-Tree Press
And hey! is that R Chetwynd-Hayes I see in there too? I must have that one somewhere...
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Post by dem bones on Apr 16, 2008 20:39:57 GMT
The RCH story is also from 3rd After Midnight Stories, John, so you certainly have it. Good series this, pretty much a blueprint for what Steve Jones is doing with the Mammoth Years Best Horror's, in fact, except minus the lengthy introductory essay and Necrology. Wagner scoured the small presses for stories - Ghosts & Scholars came out of it very well - and his commentaries are magic. Again, some volumes did it for me in a big way, others were .... I struggled.  This one, for example, includes a prose poem by t. winter-damon that goes way over my head. The four noted above are excellent. |
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Post by weirdmonger on Apr 16, 2008 22:03:48 GMT
I've never come across this series, I was in five consecutive issues of this series. Boast Boast! ;D |
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Post by carolinec on Apr 17, 2008 12:59:50 GMT
That's such a bloody weird cover. That's odd. According to Ramsey Campbell's Alone With The Horrors, that JK Potter illustration on the front cover of YBH16 is actually his illustration for Campbell's short story Cold Print - which isn't the Campbell story in this volume. I wonder which story within YBH16 they thought it illustrated instead? |
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Post by dem bones on Apr 17, 2008 14:59:08 GMT
I don't think the covers were necessarily chosen to illustrate any particular stories, Caroline, more on the strength of whether Wagner (or his publisher) found them particularly striking. A few examples: the Les Edwards illustration for #19 had earlier appeared on the cover of Guy N. Smith's Mania and I'm pretty sure Guy never made a YBH selection. The American #2 features what I take to be a depiction of Jack the Ripper pic, as does #6, but neither contain Ripper stories if memory serves (which it probably doesn't).
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Post by ramseycampbell on Jan 28, 2011 14:57:43 GMT
That's such a bloody weird cover. That's odd. According to Ramsey Campbell's Alone With The Horrors, that JK Potter illustration on the front cover of YBH16 is actually his illustration for Campbell's short story Cold Print - which isn't the Campbell story in this volume. I wonder which story within YBH16 they thought it illustrated instead? No, it's actually the illustration that goes with my tale "The Other Side". J. K. showed it to me and suggested I write a tale to go with it for the programme book of the 1986 World Fantasy Convention, where we were both guests of honour. The organisers asked Charlie Grant (another GOH that year) to do so as well, and we both did. |
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This one, for example, includes a prose poem by t. winter-damon that goes way over my head. The four noted above are excellent.
