SFFWorld Countdown to Hallowe'en 2013

[Randy M.]

THE RITUAL by Adam Nevill (St. Martin’s Press, 2012)

And on the second day things did not get better. The rain fell hard and cold, the white sun never broke through the low grey cloud, and they were lost. But it was the dead thing they found hanging from a tree that changed the trip beyond recognition. All four of them saw it at the same time​

—from the Prologue​

Four college friends, Englishmen still young but approaching middle age, reunite annually and for their latest reunion hike though the wilderness in Sweden near the border of Norway. But the trip goes awry early when Dom severely twists a knee and Phil’s ankles give him trouble scrabbling over the stony terrain spiked with roots and stumps. Neither of them is physically capable of the hike so Hutch, unofficial leader who organizes all their trips, decides they should take a shortcut through the deeper forest to the river. But what looks passable on a map is old growth forest with no discernible trails, and overgrown with brambles and bracken and nettles so thick a machete and hours of work would be needed to make headway in a straight line. As the group goes deeper into the forest, constantly moving off course to find a path, they grow concerned about rations and water. And then there is the body in the trees, butchered and flayed, and a growing sense of entering a region beyond their experience, maybe beyond the reality they have known.

The Ritual is split into two books. In Book 1 the four wander through the forest, discovering the remnants of a small, long abandoned settlement where they spend the night in a ramshackle house. Luke, the least accomplished in civilization and the most trusting of his instincts, takes an immediate dislike to the house, and his dream that night of a horned thing in the attic brings him violently awake only to see the other sleeping bags around him empty. The others dreamed, too, and their dreams terrified them, prompting them to sleepwalk in and around the house. The following day, as they try to leave, they become convinced something that lives in the forest and isn’t human, something that left the body in the tree, is aware of them. And with this realization unease becomes dread, and the erosion of civilized behavior.

In Book 2, separated from the others, Luke learns the forest guards more than one secret. Found by three young people who want to return to the old ways, Luke finds they mean to worship the old gods of the ancient settlers, the thing in the forest. And Luke must decide, will he make sacrifices or become one?

Plot summary for The Ritual runs the risk of sounding hokey: Oh, yeah, the thing in the woods. Didn’t I see that on Supernatural? Well, yes, and pretty well done a couple of times. But Nevill has the time and space to fully imagine being lost in the forest, running short of supplies, being watched and maybe stalked. Further, he merges the frustration and exhaustion of city men not used to the rigors of hiking and camping with the emotional baggage of long friendships that weren’t always cordial. Each character has distinctive traits and the pressures from their lives that they carry with them into the forest combined with the emotional toll in the forest to become volatile.

Nevill writes all this with conviction and some flair, so while occasionally grueling in its close depiction of the trials and defeats of these men The Ritual also has fluidity and a certain gravity. In the acknowledgements Nevill lists Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen as well as Cormac MacCarthy and James Dickey; he is aware of the literature of men going into the wild areas of the earth and meeting challenges, physical and emotional, that they may not overcome, and building on that literature uses the supernatural to pry open his characters and display how they act in extremis, away from the confines, strictures and safety of civilization, in a forest that holds some of the brooding otherness that marks Algernon Blackwood’s Danube marshes and Arthur Machen’s Welch forests.


COMPANION WORKS:
College experience:
The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison

Old gods:
“Smoke Ghost” and Our Lady of Darkness by Fritz Leiber;
“The Great God Pan” by Arthur Machen;
“Nadelman’s God” by T. E. D. Klein

Wild places:
Blood Meridan by Cormac McCarthy
“The Willows” & “The Wendigo” by Algernon Blackwood;
Twilight by William Gay
The Blair Witch Project (movie)


Next: TALES OF HORROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL by Arthur Machen

 

[Randy M.]

Thanks Randy!

I have a lot of ground to cover. Most of my reading in the past has been SF. Just started to get really interested in horror and weird fiction. Also have started a small horror movie collection that I'm working my way through.

Best,
WPS

I think it's worth covering at least some of that ground. From what I've read and from what I've read of appreciations of his work, there's a strong case to be made that Campbell has been for the last 30-40 years the best and most consistent writer of quality horror stories in the English language. In the sense that a writer like Raymond Chandler found a niche in mysteries/detective stories that seemed to bring out the best he could write, Campbell seems to have found that niche with the horror/ghost story.

Randy M.

 

[Randy M.]

TALES OF HORROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL by Arthur Machen (Alfred A. Knopf, 1948; Pinnacle Books, 1973, in 2 vols.)

”Look about you, Clarke. You see the mountains, and hill following after hill, as wave on wave, you see the woods and orchards, the fields of ripe corn, and the meadows reaching to the reed beds by the river. You see me standing here beside you, and hear my voice; but I tell you that all these things – yes, from that star that has just shone out in the sky to the solid ground beneath our feet – I say that all these are but dreams and shadows: the shadows that hide the real world from our eyes. There is a real world, but it is beyond this glamour and this vision, beyond these ‘chases in Arras, dreams in a career,’ beyond them all as beyond a veil. I do not know whether any human being has ever lifted that veil; but I do know, Clarke, that you and I shall see it lifted this very night from before another’s eyes. You may think all this strange nonsense; it may be strange, but it is true, and the ancients knew what lifting the veil means. They called it seeing the god Pan.”​

-- from “The Great God Pan”​

A landmark for weird fiction as well as for horror and fantasy, this volume collects the best stories from Arthur Machen’s long career. Machen wrote more than fantasy and horror, including translations of Casanova and a three-volume autobiography, but his lasting influence looks to be on supernatural fiction; H. P. Lovecraft, for one, hailed him as a master and used his work as a model for his own stories.

The early stories in the collection, among the earliest he published, are the most intense:

Told by a witness to events – a nanny and cohort in research – to an interested acquaintance several years after the events, "The Novel of the Black Seal" relates the story of a Professor and antiquarian tracing the origins of a peculiar black seal that had come into his possession. Exploring the area in which the object was found, he disappears, leaving behind only a few items from his pockets. The framing of this story as a reminiscence, a tale told, is so prevalent in supernatural fiction from the late 19th and early 20th century that I think current writers avoid it unless looking to capture a certain flavor. This is a good example of the form, lending the story the appearance of objectivity while the nanny’s memories humanize the Professor. The first story in the volume it introduces Machen’s focus on the past, in particular those who populated pre-historic England.

In line of publication "The Novel of the White Powder" came between publication of Poe's "The Case of Monsieur Valdemar" and Lovecraft's "Cool Air," is possibly influenced by the former and probably an influence on the latter, and conveys a cautionary tale of drinking wine of a certain vintage injudiciously. Despite that somewhat flippant summary, the story still packs some power in the telling, not just because of the effects on the drinker, but also in the portrayal of the effects on those around the drinker: You do not glimpse the mysteries of life, even at a remove, without a price being exacted.

I haven't reread "The White People" since I first read it when in my teens, and while the sense of otherness, of a strange, distant foreign land comes through, the story is told in the form of extracts from a young girl's diary and Machen, probably not intentionally, makes her rather long-winded. That aside, this is a core story for understanding Machen’s work: There are worlds we don’t see, realms beyond our senses that we cannot access without something altering our senses or without some guide into the other realm (a mentor, say, or a book, both of which guide the young girl in this story). And such knowledge is invariably knowledge of evil.

"The Inmost Light" and "The Shining Pyramid" take the form of detective stories, each featuring an epicure of the occult, Dyson, trying to fathom a mystery set before him. Again we see aspects of a world Machen posits as hidden from us, a world that is sinister and dangerous. Maybe not as powerful as the earlier stories, these are still enjoyable reading and good introductions to this kind of dark fantasy/horror.

By far the strongest of the stories in the book and arguably the greatest of weird tales, “The Great God Pan” unfolds by hinting through the observations of various viewpoint characters at the nature of an evil loose in the world. An experimental surgery opens a young woman’s senses to the existence of a reality veiled from out normal senses, but once she is aware of that reality that reality is also aware of her. She dies, insane.

Over the course of the story several epicures of the outré come across clues to the nature of something wicked that causes death and destruction where ever it goes, but only after many years do a few of them exchange enough information to determine what it is. And only one of them has the nerve to face the evil, an evil with its source in that young woman’s death.

I cannot adequately describe “The Great God Pan” without giving too much away – although, honestly much of the mystery will be easily guessed by contemporary readers. I also can’t do justice to its place in the history of weird fiction. This story, along with Algernon Blackwood’s “The Willows” and “The Wendigo” were key texts in the development of weird fantasy and horror fiction in the early 20th century, enough so for a contemporary reviewer/critic like Michael Dirda to refer to the Blackwood/Machen strain of fantasy in English literature. “The Great God Pan” is not only a horror story, it springs from mythology and expands on that mythology, placing the licentiousness and fear that adhere to the figure of Pan into a then modern world.

Starting with “The Bowmen,” written during World War I, the stories in this collection become somewhat mellower. Not that Machen lost his ability to create literary chills – “The Happy Children,” “The Children of the Pool” for instance – but in the telling Machen seems more interested in creating the weird moment, and sometimes offers a wry humor absent from or muted in the earlier stories as when, in “The Terror,” a corporal says to his men, “’The captain says to me,’ muttered the corporal, ’Don’t hesitate to shoot if there’s any trouble.’ ‘Shoot what, sir,’ I says. ‘The trouble,’ says he, and that’s all I could get out of him.”

“The Terror,” a short novel, concludes the collection and should be acknowledged: As with the other stories, Machen carefully builds piece by piece the background behind terrible events – in the countryside around Meirion people are found dead after falling into abandoned quarries and off cliff sides by the sea; rumors from a nearby town indicate people have been attacked by a swarm of bees; a family is found dead outside their house, horribly beaten and lying in the road shortly after travelers along the road saw them. Using a journalist as his viewpoint character, perhaps working from his own experience in journalism, Machen brings the bits of information to a conclusion. S. T. Joshi cites the story as a precursor of stories like Daphne Du Maurier’s “The Birds” but I think in it’s very British calm, level-headed telling it also prefigures what came to be called the cozy catastrophe, which includes novels like John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids.


For all my enthusiasm about these stories, I should admit that to enjoy Machen the reader needs patience. Machen takes his time and he rarely states anything too directly. His prose is fluid and often evocative and though his leisurely descriptions of landscape may not be to contemporary tastes still they have a bearing on his stories. As Philip Van Doren Stern wrote in his introduction to this volume, “Machen was a pictorial writer whose works are filled with magnificently rendered landscapes, but in them there is always some sinister note that betrays their origins. Look closely at his forest scene, and you will see that the green shadows mask a lurking figure whose goatish hoofs deny his human semblance; examine the flaming sunset sky burning above the rooftops of a great city, and you will find that the swirling clouds are not merely smoke and mist; pay careful attention to the details of a wild mountain landscape where the ruins of a Roman villa appear to be the only sign that man has ever been there, and you will note that the lonely hills are not as deserted as they may at first have seemed.”

Machen was not just a writer of supernatural horror but an artist of the fantastic. In his stories set in and around London – “The Great God Pan”; “N” – Machen prepared the way for novels as disparate as Finishing Touches by Thomas Tessier, Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman, The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison, The Somnambulist by Julian Barnes and Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch.


Next: BEST GHOST STORIES by Algernon Blackwood

 

[Randy M.]

BEST GHOST STORIES OF ALGERNON BLACKWOOD by Algernon Blackwood (Dover Publications, Inc., 1997)

A considerable number of hunting parties were out that year without finding so much as a fresh trail; for the moose were uncommonly shy, and the various Nimrods returned to the bosoms of their respective families with the best excuses the facts or their imaginations could suggest. Dr. Cathcart, among others, came back without a trophy; but he brought instead the memory of an experience which he declares was worth all the bull-moose that had ever been shot. But then Cathcart, of Aberdeen, was interested in other things besides moose – amongst them the vagaries of the human mind. This particular story, however, found no mention in his book on Collective Hallucination for the simple reason (so he confided once to a fellow colleague) that he himself played too intimate a part in it to form a competent judgment of the affair as a whole … ​

—from “The Wendigo”​

This is another collection of stories that are at the core of the development of the 20th century weird tale and horror story, works that still inform (directly or indirectly) fiction being written today. Two stories, “Ancient Sorceries” and “Secret Worship,” are also in the Dover edition of The Complete John Silence Stories, but otherwise these are the best of Blackwood’s non-Silence stories; I’ll discuss those two Silence stories in my next entry. Like Machen, Blackwood creates suspense through the tactical placement of clues to the nature of the danger to the protagonist(s), and this approach has never been on better display than in “The Willows.”

Two men canoe along the Danube, and camp in a marsh dotted with tiny islands covered with willows. Soon after establishing camp they begin to feel a presence, a presence that seems confirmed at those times when the willows shake but there is no wind. Blackwood creates menace through his descriptions of the vast track of marsh, emphasizing the isolation of the men as they become increasingly aware of being observed and assessed. Still, they remain, unsure they can leave, their belongings tampered with as they sleep, the island shrinking with the movement of the water. Each of them understands there is danger, that something they cannot see or touch is inimical to them.

“The Willows” has been included in comprehensive anthologies like The Century’s Best Horror Fiction 1901-1950 (ed. John Pelan) The Weird (ed. Ann & Jeffrey Vandermeer) and The Dark Descent (ed. David Hartwell), and praised by H.P. Lovecraft among many other writers and critics, it has been a staple of the literature since it was published. It is also available through Project Gutenberg. I’ve read this story at least three times and even knowing what happens has not diminished its ability to draw me in and make me uneasy.

“The Wendigo” is very nearly the equal of “The Willows”; though the problem of over-explanation and repetition that affects some of the stories I’ve read by Blackwood (including most of the John Silence stories) threatens this one, the story’s power is not diminished. A group of men and their guides camp while hunting in the wilds of Canada, an area Blackwood knew well from his travels. As in “The Willows” a presence intrudes and they look for explanations in the legends they have heard, the guides offering information that fills in what they don’t know. And then they watch what they thought were legends materialize and how they contend with what happens next is suspenseful and compelling, and those moments when they watch one of their guides in the grip of the Wendigo are both weird and unnerving.

These are, for me, the collection’s most outstanding stories, and the two John Silence stories only a little less compelling. The rest of the stories were entertaining, and I especially enjoyed “The Glamour of the Snow” and “The Transfer.”

In “The Glamour of the Snow” Hibbert’s working holiday in the Alps includes participating in winter sports. One dark night he sneaks into the ice rink for solitary skating, only to meet an alluring woman who joins him on the ice. They meet again and again over the next days, but never when anyone else is around. She is a mystery and following that mystery into the mountains proves dangerous.

“The Transfer” posits a plot of ground on which nothing grows, a plot so repugnant the family on whose estate it is located avoids contact with it. But the plot of ground cannot be avoided forever, and its influence comes to the fore when energetic Uncle Frank arrives.


Coincidently, as I was rereading this collection early this year, in a forum on supernatural fiction Richard Gavin (author of Charnel Wine, among other books; quoted here by permission) posted, “I favour Blackwood's euphoric view of a spontaneous Nature to Machen's often cranky moralistic tales that warn of the deadly forces beneath. Blackwood's supernatural tales infer that Nature is teeming with ancient sentient forces that, under auspicious conditions or through simple quirks of fate, we human beings can experience. It may be frightening, but it is truly awesome.

“Machen says essentially the same thing, however he is often wagging his finger, warning readers of the dangers of such primal forces. There is a ‘meaning’ to Machen's supernaturalism in that his primal forces often (though not always) have a vested interest in ‘corrupting’ the soul of civilized man. This has always felt forced to me; an imposition from a writer with a moral axe to grind. With Blackwood, the ineffable is just that: it is beyond our reasoning. His forces may be primal, but they are neither wholly malefic nor truly benign. They simply are. If there is any ‘reality’ behind supernatural fiction, I suspect it is much closer to what Blackwood suggests.”

Gavin’s point is valid, and his comment on Machen to some degree expands on what I quoted from Phillip Van Doren Stern regarding Machen in my last entry: For all the beauty of nature, for all of Machen’s pleasure and delight in the scenes he describes, there is something lurking beneath or behind those scenes and it is almost invariably inimical and evil. Still I could not say I prefer any supernatural story, even “The Willows” to “The Great God Pan” – every time I read the latter I find one of the most powerful evocations of supernatural evil I’ve encountered.

So, which writer would you prefer, one for whom nature is a veil over evil, or one for whom nature is neutral but sometimes acts in a way mankind subjectively judges as evil?

For the purposes of this series of entries, the differences in strengths and weaknesses of the two writers suggests that I should strongly recommend reading both: While their preoccupations overlap, they found different ways to express them and those expressions continue to resonate, their imaginations and writings anticipating and feeding later writers like Thomas Tessier, Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King (see, for instance, Pet Sematary) and, more recently, Adam Nevill and Caitlin Kiernan. You may, like Gavin, find you prefer one to the other, but if you’re at all curious about the sources of modern fantasy, in particular the weird tale and supernatural fantasy set in times contemporary to the writing of the story, you won’t regret reading both.



EXTENDED READING IN THE WEIRD:
The Ghost Pirates and Others: The Best of William Hope Hodgson
The House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson[/u]


NEXT: THE COMPLETE JOHN SILENCE STORIES by Algernon Blackwood

 

[Randy M.]

THE COMPLETE JOHN SILENCE STORIES by Algernon Blackwood (Dover Publications, Inc., 1997)

…[T]here was another side to his personality and practice, and one with which we are now more directly concerned; for the cases that especially appealed to him were of no ordinary kind, but rather of that intangible, elusive, and difficult nature best described as psychical afflictions; and though he would have been the last person himself to approve of the title, it was beyond question that he was known more or less generally as the “Psychic Doctor.” ​

-- from “A Psychical Invasion”​

Even when Algernon Blackwood wrote there were precedents for the investigators of the supernatural, like Martin Hesselius from Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (“Green Tea”; “Carmilla”; etc.) , and Abraham Van Helsing (from Bram Stoker’s Dracula). Still Silence, who first appeared in the very early 1900s, was one of the first paranormal detectives, a forerunner of Anita and Buffy and much of current urban fantasy, his creation indebted to the enormous popularity of Sherlock Holmes.

At the time the short story was still the dominant form for the ghost/horror story, and so the collection of Silence stories, Blackwood’s first major best-seller, shows the series form as it originated. Blackwood, tied at times to occult groups like The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, had his own views on the supernatural and the power of Nature, which provides underpinning for his fiction, including some of these stories. The six stories in this collection deal with ghosts, hauntings, movement between worlds, elementals, a mummy, and so forth, and for the most part are entertaining. Two in particular, "Secret Worship" and "Ancient Sorceries" have been anthologized with fair frequency and are probably the most effective stories in the collection, in no small part because Silence is more witness than participant.

In “Secret Worship,” Harris the silk merchant while on business in Germany visits a place from his youth, the school he credits with making him the man he has become. But this is not the school he remembered, and the monks who run it, though apparently some are the same monks, are not as they were when he knew them. His interactions with the monks become increasingly strange and threatening. But once in the school, how to escape?

In “Ancient Sorceries” shy, even timid Arthur Vezin takes it in mind to disembark from a train at an early stop in order to sight-see a charming French town. Before the train departs, another passenger, who only speaks French so that Arthur doesn’t quite understand him, warns the Englishman to beware of the place. But Arthur’s mind is set and he walks to a nearby inn. Taken in and slowly, if provisionally, accepted, Arthur finds the town charming. And then there’s the young woman who befriends him. But after dark, the town changes, and Arthur must make a choice, one he’d never have dreamed of making.

In both stories locale is a major character, the “bad place,” the sense of an area with a history of evil or in which some different reality is in effect that the protagonist walks into unaware and learns about to his dismay. Blackwood lays down hints and clues as to the nature of the place, and in each the protagonist is too doubtful of his own senses to believe what he is learning until he has to act quickly. Beyond that, the two stories offer a contrast. Where “Secret Worship” is clearly a horror story, “Ancient Sorceries” leans more toward weird fantasy, a threat of sorts toward Vezin implied, but not as clearly a threat since he has the right to choose.

Blackwood’s prose is direct and sometimes nearly journalistic – he had experience in journalism – and Silence is certainly the sort of sleuth you would want at your side if caught between a mummy and a hard place, as in one of the stories. That said, in some of these stories there seems to be a straining for effect, the attempt to create atmosphere, except in the above stories, ham-handed. Entering the stories with the expectation of a fairly leisurely telling helps, and I was entertained by all of them. Still, if you haven’t experienced Blackwood’s fiction before, and because the best stories in this collection are in Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood, I’d suggest starting there.


FURTHER READING:
Carnaki, the Ghost-Finder by William Hope Hodgson



Next: MIDNIGHT RIOT by Ben Aaronovitch (a.k.a. The Rivers of London)

 

[Randy M.]

MIDNIGHT RIOT by Ben Aaronovitch (Ballantine Books, 2011)

It started at one thirty on a cold Tuesday morning in January when Martin Turner, street performer and, in his own words, apprentice gigolo, tripped over a body in front of the West Portico of St. Paul’s at Covent Garden. Martin, who was none too sober himself, at first thought the body was that of one of the many celebrants who had chosen the Piazza as a convenient outdoor toilet and dormitory. Being a seasoned Londoner, Martin gave the body the “London once-over” – a quick glance to determine whether this was a drunk, a crazy or a human being in distress. The fact that it was entirely possible for someone to be all three simultaneously is why good-Samaritanism in London is considered an extreme sport – like BASE jumping or crocodile wrestling. Martin, noting the good quality coat and shoes, had just pegged the body as a drunk when he noticed that it was in fact missing its head.​

—first paragraph​

Maybe, after all my palaver about things dark and dangerous, weird and ghostly, maybe, just maybe, some lighter fare would be appreciated? Something flavored with a horror trope or two but in dashes and pinches, not cups or barrelsful, something that doesn’t apply them too seriously, doesn’t agonize over them, doesn’t obsess over them?

Can do, though I think I’m a bit late to this party.

Here then, Ben Aaronovitch's Midnight Riot (a.k.a.: Rivers of London in the U.K.), an urban fantasy featuring Peter Grant, a young cop drafted as a sorcerer’s apprentice after interviewing a witness of the above murder, a witness he doesn’t realize until later has been dead going on two-hundred years. Over the course of the story, Grant gets involved with water elementals – the U.K. title is more exact and evocative of the core of the novel – vampires of a sort, and a famous figure from the stage, though discussing who would be telling too much.

One of the blurbs on the U.S. cover makes the inevitable Harry Potter comparison, but it’s not entirely unfair or off-topic, except this is a series aimed at older readers: While Grant isn’t a child, like Harry he’s finding reality rather different from his expectations, and like Harry he is a stranger-in-a-strange-land applying his intelligence and intuition to navigate diplomacies outside his experience. He’s aided in this by his mentor, Detective Chief Inspector Thomas Nightingale and his friend, Police Constable Leslie May, both distinct and well-realized characters, as are several others in the supporting cast, notably Detective Chief Inspector Alexander Seawoll, who is not comfortable with magic or Nightingale, and Mama Thames, chief goddess of the rivers of London, and her daughter, Beverly Brook, goddess of a lesser river, who takes a liking to Grant.

As a kid I cut my fiction-reading teeth on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers and Rex Stout, among others, so the way in which Grant quickly accepts and adapts to the oddness, and the light-heartedness of much of the telling of this fantasy murder-mystery were like comfort-reading. From my reading experience, the plot and premise of Midnight Riot draws inspiration from and expands on the type of stories published in John W. Campbell, Jr.'s Unknown Worlds, and I suppose the character of Peter Grant descends from William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki and Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence, but maybe more so from mystery characters like Lord Peter Wimsey (Dorothy L. Sayers) and Albert Campion (Margery Allingham), maybe with a dash of Phillip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler) or Archie Goodwin (Rex Stout; if you like books written in first-person wise-ass, this novel is for you). All of which is to say, there’s not much new here, but Aaronovitch is an entertainer who keeps the story bubbling, who provides characters interesting and likable enough to root for, and whose comments on the world he’s creating and the behavior of people in general are often insightful and funny. Further, his choice of villain is audacious and maybe more disturbing for seeming a bit ridiculous.

Series tapping into the tropes and features of horror have a few directions they can go: Accentuate hunting for the monsters or being hunted by the monsters (H. P. Lovecraft at the more contemplative end of the spectrum, and David Wellington’s vampires at the action/adventure end); accentuate the odd things a seeker of the weird comes across (Algernon Blackwood; William Hope Hodgson; Lovecraft’s Randolph Carter stories, too); make the setting the center of the series (Stephen King’s Maine; Lovecraft’s New England); or focus on the character of the protagonist as Aaronovitch does. That last also has some latitude – Manly Wade Wellman’s Silver John stories teeter between horror and fantasy, and Sarah Monette’s stories of Kyle Murcheson Booth balance character and the macabre in The Bone Key – and so may use horror elements as spicing rather than focus. While a few scenes in Midnight Riot create the threat and tension of a horror story (one scene dealing with vampires, and a couple of sequences near the end), other scenes are concerned with exploring the world in which such things be, for example, Grant’s dealings with the water spirits, among the most involving and evocative scenes in the book, are not horrific but essentially political, thus moving away from the usual concerns of horror fiction toward the concerns of a certain type of fantasy. I enjoyed that aspect of the novel and expect to read more by Aaronovitch, and any reader who appreciates the materials of horror but not the grimness should enjoy this one.


OFFICIAL SFFWORLD REVIEW


Further reading, old stuff:
Conjure Wife & The Sinful Ones by Fritz Leiber
Nightmares and Geezenstacks by Fredric Brown (included in
The Compleat Werewolf by Anthony Boucher

Further reading, not so old stuff, stand-alones:
Tamsin by Peter Beagle (this stretches the “urban” part of urban fantasy a bit)
The Mall of Cthulhu by Seamus Cooper
The Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein
Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow


Next for Halloween: More dark and dangerous. Even kinda funny.

 

[slindeman]

Yay! I've finally made it back to the thread. Thanks for all the reviews, Randy. That's a great service you provide every October.

She Walks in Darkness by Evangeline Walton

Written in the early 1960's, She Walks in Darkness is a gothic suspense novella set at a Tuscan villa. Combining business with pleasure, newlyweds Barbara and Richard Keyes set out to honeymoon at a remote Tuscan villa where Richard, an archeologist, will search for ancient Etruscan artifacts in the underground catacombs. Disaster strikes immediately upon arrival as mysterious circumstances leave Barbara with both an unconscious husband and a dead villa caretaker. When two dangerous men appear on the scene, Barbara is ensnared in a game of cat and mouse as she strives to keep her husband safe and figure out who the two men are and what they are up to. A generation-spanning conflict has resurfaced, a whirlwind of intrigue and suspense centered on the catacombs beneath the villa, and Barbara must solve the mystery before it's too late.

She Walks in Darkness is billed as a gothic fantasy, but there are no fantastical elements to be found. This is suspense with a smidgen of mystery and horror. Walton is a fine descriptive writer and creates a creepy gothic atmosphere in which to stage Barbara's narrative. It is not so much a puzzler, like Christie's Murder in Mesopotamia, as it is a thriller in which its protagonist is forced to delve into the mysteries of the past in order to preserve her own future. While I liked the story (3 out of 5 stars), what I enjoyed most was Walton's writing style. Her well regarded Mabinogion series is now on my to-read list.

 

[slindeman]

Some quick reviews:

Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Stevenson is such a great writer. Perhaps he doesn't have much "literary cred" because his stories--heaven forbid--have adventure, intrigue, and suspense. Jekyll and Hyde is psychological horror, and touches on the nature of man, indulgence, self-control, guilt, hypocrisy, and probably much more. It's easy to see why this is such a classic tale.

Great Horror Stories: Tales by Stoker, Poe, Lovecraft and Others (Dover Thrift Editions) by Various
A good amalgamation of short stories by famous horror writers. I bought this mainly to see which writers I should explore in more depth. Highlights for me were: "The Derelict" by Hodgson, "The Willows" by Blackwood, "The Lottery" by Jackson, "The Monkey's Paw" by Jacobs, and "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad" by James.

Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber
While the plot is tight, with twists and turns aplenty, the whole premise is a love it or hate it thing. Unfortunately, I didn't love it. Leiber's writing was enough to keep me reading to the end, but just barely. This is the second non-Lankhmar Leiber book I've tried and not liked.

The Vampyre by John Polidori
Short and sweet. While it's clear that Polidori didn't have much experience at writing a narrative (dialogue is almost completely absent), his Lord Ruthven, even if he is a thinly-veiled Lord Byron caricature, is a compelling villain. Here is a most vile and conniving vampire that is outwardly attractive and socially active. Here is a force of evil that is not above petty revenge, and his revenge is devastating.

I should finish Stoker's Dracula on the 31st. I'm about halfway through and loving it. Of course it's all very familiar, given how pervasive the story is in our culture, but still, I can see why this novel has had such a big impact.

I fear I won't make it to I am Legend or The Golden this October. I will save them for next year.

 

[Hobbit]

I should finish Stoker's Dracula on the 31st. I'm about halfway through and loving it. Of course it's all very familiar, given how pervasive the story is in our culture, but still, I can see why this novel has had such a big impact.-

Just watched Dracula (1931) on Blu Ray. The restoration on such an old film is quite stunning. It is odd for such an iconic character to be watched again. The film is quite different from the book. I am reminded again actually how little Lugosi is on screen, and how little his dialogue actually is. Yet there is still a presence there, for all the limitations of the mechanics of the film (talkies had only been around for a couple of years.) The ending does not have the gore or the impact these days of the more contemporary version.

Will probably watch the 1992 Coppola version tomorrow for comparison.

 

[Randy M.]

Slindeman: Thanks. I appreciate the kind words. And thanks for the reminder of the Walton. That's not exactly what I expected, but the premise still intrigues me. I have a fairly old pb of another novel of her's, originally published by Arkham House, I think, Witch House. Maybe their combined weight in the TBR pile will get me to read both.

I agree about the Stevenson and the Polidori -- haven't read that in years and should reread that and Dracula.

Sorry to hear you weren't that fond of Conjure Wife. I enjoyed it and Our Lady of Darkness, prefer them to a lot of other novels written by is contemporaries, but generally prefer the short stories of that generation of pulp writers.


Hobbit: I hadn't heard about the restoration. I'll have to look into that. Dracula wasn't my favorite Universal horror movie because it was based on the stage play and comes across as very stagy. Still, Lugosi's presence is powerful. For the first time in years I recently watched Hammer Studios Horror of Dracula, their first Dracula movie and Christopher Lee's first time in the role. I haven't been a big Lee fan -- too often he strikes me as from the Roger-Moore-Manikin-in-motion school of acting -- but Dracula may be an exception. There's a ferocity there you don't get from Lugosi or most other Dracs. I may have to rethink my evaluation of Lee given this reminder and a few of his more recent roles.

And Coppola's Stoker's Dracula ... yeah ... Monica Bellucci as a vampiress ... were there other actors in that movie? Can't seem to remember ...


Randy M.

 

[Randy M.]

What to read … what to read …

What to read on Halloween?

Something scary? Well, maybe “Near Zennor” or “The Great God Pan” or “The Willows” …

Maybe something amusing? Maybe Midnight Riot …

How about something more aggressive, visceral? NOS4A2 or The Ritual would work.

But what if you want something amusing, scary, and in-your-face?

For that you need Joe R. Lansdale.


DEADMAN’S ROAD by Joe R. Lansdale (Tachyon, 2013; Subterranean Press, 2010)

Night. A narrow, tree-lined stage trail bends to the left around a clutch of dark pines. Moonlight, occasionally blocked by rolling clouds. A voice in the distance, gradually becomes audible.

“You goddamned, lily-livered, wind-breaking, long-eared excuses for mules. Git on, you contrary assholes.”​

-- first paragraphs, prologue to Dead in the West​

Honestly, if you are offended or put off by that quote, this series of stories is not the book for you.

And, yes, this is a Western. A horror western. Or a western horror.

Joe R. Lansdale's Deadman's Road, is a collection containing the short novel Dead in the West and four short stories, all featuring Reverend Jebidiah Mercer. In the introduction Lansdale says these were meant as his tribute to the kinds of stories offered by the original Weird Tales, which they live up to although they are better written than all but the best stories I’ve read from the early years of that magazine. In the course of the stories Lansdale trots out various mischief-making monsters but what makes each story hum is his approach to story-telling, which mixes tall-tale, dry humor, wry humor, slapstick humor, horror, the scatological and the raunchy. Sometimes all within a line or two of each other. The stories being written at different stages in Lansdale's career, the Reverend is not entirely consistent throughout the collection – the Reverend of the short novel feels different to me than the man riding through the other stories – and as Reverends go, he is not very reverent: His is the Old Testament God of Hellfire and Brimstone, and he is God’s troubleshooter scouring the west and shooting the trouble, fighting evil, or at any rate what God considers evil, not a profession Mercer chose but that God chose for him and which his past and his native caution keep him from renouncing, and damn the consequences, the consequences usually resulting in a body count. The Reverend suffers the occasional pang of conscience as a result.

Each story features a different monster – in that it’s rather like Steve Rasnic Tem’s Deadfall Hotel, although not a cohesive whole like that collection. While Lansdale's vampire, werewolves and zombies aren't really original, the setting, the characters and Lansdale's voice and humor make the stories entertaining.

Let me amend that statement: I’m not fond of zombie stories, but Dead in the West has become an exception (to a degree, so is another Lansdale story, “On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folks”). Mud Creek, a town with a secret and another of this October’s cursed spaces, is under attack, its inhabitants unaware until almost too late that the consequences of past actions have caught up to them. The Reverend, drawn to evil almost without knowing it, rides in just as a dead man’s revenge is about to be enacted. If the opening quote above seems brief almost to curtness, it’s in part because Lansdale’s inspirations beyond Weird Tales include Western comic books and old B-movie Westerns like Billy the Kid Meets Dracula and Curse of the Undead, which he discusses in his introduction. Originally he wrote a shorter version of Dead in the West, then used that as the basis for his first screenplay which changed the story somewhat, then wrote this longer version based on the screenplay; this gives the short novel the feel and texture of the B-movie that was never made, and most of the description is short and terse, which increases the story’s momentum. For a short novel, it packs in a lot of action while still giving a fair shake to characterization.

I don't often read a collection in less than a week, but the pages whizzed past. And maybe I should have expected that from the writer who gave us "Bubba Ho-Tep," probably the most original, funny and oddly touching mummy story I've had the pleasure to read. (And an entertaining movie, too.)




HISTORICAL (and a couple of Historic) HORRORS:
Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy
The Werewolf of Paris by Guy Endore
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
Southern Gods by John Horner Jacobs
The Bone Key by Sarah Monette

Happy Halloween!​

 

[Hobbit]

Happy Halloween!

And that goes from me too.

Once again, thank you to Randy for his stirling work here. Such items do take a lot of time (I know!) and, as usual, it's great to hear of something I haven't read or seen to add to my list.


To add to the comments earlier: I recently watched the BluRay edition of the Hammer version of Dracula. (Can you tell I'm a recent Bluray convert?!) Unlike you it seems, Randy, I've always liked the Hammer version. Definitely gorier and messier and louder: not to mention unsubtle! but, as a Brit, the Hammer movies, from Quatermass to Dracula to Frankenstein have always been part of my genre heritage, even when they were very bad. They were a regular TV staple late on BBC2 on a Saturday night for much of my teenage years.


But the new restored edition on BluRay is great, and I would recommend it. It's actually a lot subtler (in some places) than I remembered.

There's a great Blu Ray set of the Universal movies that I'm working on, Randy, that I'd recommend if you haven't seen it already. The Universal Monster Blu Ray set is ridiculously cheap for what it is offering, and the quality of the films are brilliant. Amazon US have it for $60 at the moment, and Amazon UK for about £25/40. The set includes 8 films: Dracula, Frankenstein, Bride of Frankenstein, The Mummy, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man, The Phantom of the Opera (1942 version) and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, all restored to fantastic quality, and a lot of extras (including, for example, the Spanish version of Dracula which is often regarded as a technically better and racier version of the Bela Lugosi version. It was filmed on the same sets at night after Bela's gang went home...) Unbeatable.

...and one I didn't realise, though I knew he was an actor: in the 1942 (colour and sound version) of Claude Rains's Phantom, one of the parts (not a big one, mind) is played by none other than author Fritz Leiber. Was a lovely coincidence.

Right. Off to read stuff and watch a couple of movies.


Have a great Halloween, all.

M.

 

[N. E. White]

Happy Halloween, Everyone!

And, yes, thank you Randy for putting this fine and exhaustive list altogether.

By the way, I saw this link today (Geography of Horror Movies), and thought it would be a good compliment to your list. We can't add your books, but maybe next year we'll do something similar (I'll PM you).

 

[Randy M.]

​

And that goes from me too.

Once again, thank you to Randy for his stirling work here. Such items do take a lot of time (I know!) and, as usual, it's great to hear of something I haven't read or seen to add to my list.

Thanks, Mark.

To add to the comments earlier: I recently watched the BluRay edition of the Hammer version of Dracula. (Can you tell I'm a recent Bluray convert?!) Unlike you it seems, Randy, I've always liked the Hammer version. Definitely gorier and messier and louder: not to mention unsubtle! but, as a Brit, the Hammer movies, from Quatermass to Dracula to Frankenstein have always been part of my genre heritage, even when they were very bad. They were a regular TV staple late on BBC2 on a Saturday night for much of my teenage years.

I liked the Hammer version before this viewing but maybe more now, and I have always enjoyed Peter Cushing's work. But I never really warmed to Lee, except for his work in The Wicker Man. This viewing, though, is making me revise my estimations of his ability -- and that in spite of later catching Horror Mansion, an Italian movie I suspect he'd just as soon forget.

As for Hammer, after Universal and before movies like The Exorcist, they were the only source for decently produced, directed and acted horror/fantasy. Last year I got to see X, the Unknown, which I'd nearly forgotten from when I was a kid watching it on Monster Movie Matinee here in Central New York. Really enjoyable black & white movie. And my favorite Hammer may still be the last Quatermass movie, 50 Million Miles to Earth (a.k.a. Quatermass and the Pit). Did you ever get a chance to read the scripts for the Quatermass productions? Surprisingly effective.

But the new restored edition on BluRay is great, and I would recommend it. It's actually a lot subtler (in some places) than I remembered.

Thanks, Mark. I need to look into this. A few years ago -- I think when the Brendon Frasier Mummy movies were hot -- they packaged the monsters separately along with other similar movies. I only picked up The Wolfman collection -- besides that one, there was The Werewolf of London, Frankenstein vs. The Wolfman and a couple of lesser lights I still haven't gotten to, along with some extras. Great fun, going back to watch movies I hadn't seen since before cable.

(Yes, youngsters, there was a time before cable, before dish.)


Randy M.

 

[wps]

Thanks Randy for putting this together. I have enough to read to last me until next Halloween.


Best,
WPS

 

[Randy M.]

Thanks Randy for putting this together. I have enough to read to last me until next Halloween.


Best,
WPS

Great, since that was my target.

Thanks, WPS.


Randy M.

 

[Ubergeek]

This might be one for you, then, Scott!

M.

Please can anyone help? I recently bought the kindle version of The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories.

A review had mentioned the final chapter included the favourite stories of actors such as Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Bela Legosi and others. I was really excited by this yet dismayed when I scrolled to the chapter and found no reference to which story was favoured by which actor!

I'd be very grateful if anyone can give any information on this?

 

[Randy M.]

Please can anyone help? I recently bought the kindle version of The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories.

A review had mentioned the final chapter included the favourite stories of actors such as Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing, Bela Legosi and others. I was really excited by this yet dismayed when I scrolled to the chapter and found no reference to which story was favoured by which actor!

I'd be very grateful if anyone can give any information on this?

Hi, Uber.

I have it at home. If I get a chance, I'll check.


Randy M.

 

[Ubergeek]

Thanks Randy M.

 

[Randy M.]

Hi, Uber.

You may have to track that review down and check what the reviewer was referring to. He or she may have known something outside what the book says. I checked my copy and I doubt it's different from what you have. There was nothing about the favorites of those actors.


Randy M.