What are you reading?

[Newt Cox]

That's awesome, Newt! The non-fiction titles I threw in among the fiction I'm reading lately have been more of a polemical nature (so not acceptable to discuss), but I have more than a shelf's worth I've acquired over the years that I really need to dive into, like THE WEIRD WORLD OF EERIE PUBLICATIONS, THE HORROR! THE HORROR!, and FOUR COLOR FEAR.

That EErie book is great. Started reading 42nd Street Pete's bio last night. Pretty decent so far.

[Lorne Marshall]

That's awesome, Newt! The non-fiction titles I threw in among the fiction I'm reading lately have been more of a polemical nature (so not acceptable to discuss), but I have more than a shelf's worth I've acquired over the years that I really need to dive into, like THE WEIRD WORLD OF EERIE PUBLICATIONS, THE HORROR! THE HORROR!, and FOUR COLOR FEAR.

[Newt Cox]

Got it in this weekend as a surprise gift.

[Paul L]

Not had a lot of time ready, so a reread of John Wyndham's THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS took me almost a month(!)

Now, I'm settling into Laclos' LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES.


Scandalous! Those aristocrats! Tsch!

[Lorne Marshall]

I made it through the pair of Charles L. Grant novels from my "to read" shelf. SYMPHONY is the first in his "Millennium Quartet," which concerns the arrival of the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," in the instance of this edition, Death. There were likely a lot of such horror/fantasy/sci-fi hybrids back in the late 90's as Y2K approached. Not much to say about this one except that it wasn't terribly original or exciting; it seemed to me like an imagining of Armageddon as a listless battle on a lazy summer afternoon. I won't be looking to obtain the others in this set.

The generically-titled FOR FEAR OF THE NIGHT started out more promising. It was about a young woman who dies by fire when an amusement park horror house burns down, seemingly leading to her haunting people she knew in life. But then Grant dropped acid or something before he composed the final 50 pages, taking this thing in an exceedingly silly direction. Since this was published in the 80's, I'm speculating he was trying to mimic to some extent Peter Straub's GHOST STORY, but I'm not sure. (One minor peculiarity I'll mention is that he alternately refers to characters by either their first or last names, randomly and with no clear basis for doing so.)

As someone who hasn't read a lot of his novels, I picked up on a trend by Grant that perhaps doesn't exist beyond this pair of novels, but in both of them, he has two non-consecutive chapters in which the third person narrative switches from one person's thoughts to another's in succeeding paragraphs. It was even more drastic than what I experienced with LITTLE BROTHERS, because not only did it involve more people per chapter, once the perspective changed to a different person, he or she moves on and interacts with another character whose thoughts we eventually "hear," and so on. It's as if some mental baton was being passed between each of them. Don't know why he did this, but maybe it's some signature of his that his fans would know more about?

I may not have enjoyed these books very much, yet they were at least absent of a recurring trope in Grant short stories, which features a deceased person haunting a member of his or her family or seeking revenge on that person due to some perceived wrong, oftentimes only a minor offense that wouldn't seem to warrant the vindictiveness. The motivation of the dead character in FOR FEAR OF THE NIGHT that I alluded to, Julie, appeared to be going in that direction, but then that whole track veered off into...somewhere else.

[Lorne Marshall]

Finished a couple more of the YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES. The offerings in #9 I liked were Stephen King's "The Monkey" (a story I've read numerous times in various anthologies), Neil Olonoff's Poe-inspired "The Cats of Pere Lachaise," William Relling Jr.'s "The King," Harlan Ellison's "Footsteps" (even the author's own intro to his tale was intriguing), and Peter Valentine Timlett's simple but effective "Without Rhyme or Reason." A mediocre addition to the series, with a couple of novellas/novelettes that were an especial chore to get through.

Volume #10 (one I did not buy in this year's spree, as I already owned it) had even less items to my liking: an atypical contribution by three writers (Gardner Dozois, Jack Dann, and Michael Swanwick) called "Touring" (almost seemed like a prequel to King's "You Know They Got a Hell of a Band"), David Campton's "Firstborn," David Clayton Carrad's "Competition" (maybe only worth honorable mention; an example of a tale chosen from an unusual source - a running magazine! - which is something editor Wagner was wont to do), and Harlan Ellison's spectacularly deviant "Broken Glass." The book also contained what for me is the worst story in the series thus far, M. John Harrison's "Egnaro." Maybe I missed the joke, starting with the point of that title.

I wonder if the recent death of John Lennon played on some of the writers' minds, as a trio of tales involved the spirits of dead rock stars: "The King," "Touring," and (also in #10) Jeff Hecht's "On 202." But I prefer those to the moldy old ghost stories in some of these editions. It's probably uncultured to say, but I have to be in a certain mood to read M. R. James.

[Andrew Monroe]

I'm almost halfway through Stephen King's new one - Billy Summers. It took a bit longer than usual for King to get me hooked but I am solidly on the line now. It's about a former Marine sniper who is now a hitman with a catch, he only kills "bad people". He's ready to retire but takes one last job with a big payoff. The only bad thing is he has to spend several months in the smallish city where his target is due to arrive at some point. Against his better judgment, he starts to make friends and spend time with the neighbors' kids. Naturally, when the hit goes down it all goes sideways...No supernatural elements at all in this one (at least so far, and I believe it will play out that way). The first third or so is an excellent depiction of small town life. Might sound dull but it's far from it - in some ways this recalls 11/22/63. I really enjoy King when he's writing straight thrillers or crime stories ala Mr. Mercedes.

[Gary Banks]

I'm about a third of the way into Lost Echoes by Joe Lansdale.

[Lorne Marshall]

I finished YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES #7, and it was a big letdown from #6. Even the usually dependable David Drake disappointed. About half of the book is fantasy, which seems unnecessary since Daw already had THE YEAR'S BEST FANTASY STORIES series running concurrently. Anyway, the only ones I liked were Ramsey Campbell's "Heading Home" (yep, rescued by RC!), Lisa Tuttle's "In the Arcade," and Michael Bishop's "Collaborating" (although that one ended too abruptly). The cover art was cool; I swear I've seen it before on on a Warren Publishing edition.

YBHS #8 was quite an improvement. Editor Gerald Page having departed, Karl Edward Wagner takes over here. I liked Dennis Etchison's "The Dead Line," both Harlan Ellison's "In the Fourth Year of the War" and "All the Birds Come Home to Roost," Hugh B. Cave's "From the Lower Deep," Davis Grubb's "The Baby-Sitter," Eddy C. Bertin's "My Beautiful Darkling," Russell Kirk's "Lex Talionis," and Richard A. Moore's "The Devil Behind You." That last one starts off a bit like Stephen King's "Man in the Black Suit" (published 15 years later) but ends up in an entirely different place. It's probably the most grim story I've read in the series so far.

(Full disclosure, these two volumes were ones I had already owned and read. I had not remembered how bad #7 was or how good #8 was.)

The novel I finished from the "to read" shelf was another one given to me by a friend years ago, Rick Hautala's LITTLE BROTHERS. I believe it has a minor following. The horror element was fairly mundane; the dramatic parts were more absorbing, but not enough to save the work. Also, I know this isn't the only time I've encountered a writer's third person narration switching from one character to another between paragraphs, but it occurred so often here (including among three people in one chapter!), it became hard to follow who was thinking what. Plus I wonder how Hautala came up with the term untcigahunk for the creatures; it definitely does not roll off the tongue. He could have at least provided a pronunciation key for it in the introduction.

I only have three more left from that friend on the "to read" shelf, two of them novels by Charles L. Grant. I think I'll go through those next and save what I hope will be the best for last, a novel by F. Paul Wilson. I don't believe I've ever read anything bad by him.

And finally, I'm still plodding through YEAR'S BEST FANTASY & HORROR #17 from the "to complete" shelf. Someday I'll get through all of it (I wish I had Gary's gift of speed-reading).

[Lorne Marshall]

My history with Ramsey Campbell is that I picked up a few of his novels back when I was a Lovecraft-mad teenager, and... never got very far with them, for very much the reasons you describe, Lorne. I also read some of his early Cthulhu Mythos stories in anthologies etc, and they seemed like pretty poor HPL pastiches, so -- subsequently didn't bother with him for a long, long time.

I've always enjoyed various non-fiction stuff and articles he's written however, and have likewise been curious about the reverence in which a lot of horror fans hold his writing, so a couple of years back, I picked up a copy of the anthology 'Cold Print', collecting some of his earliest published work. I soon realised however that, whilst the stories in the first half of the book are indeed primitive/ridiculous Lovecraft imitations, they need to be viewed in light of the fact that - checking the copyright dates - they were mostly published by August Derleth at Arkham House before Campbell was even eighteen years old (something he addresses with suitable wit/humility in his introduction).

Skipping through those and moving onto the more 'mature' tales in the second half of the book, his writing clearly took a huge leap forward during his 20s, and there is a run of stories - 'Cold Print', 'The Tugging', 'The Faces at Pine-Dunes', 'Blacked Out' - which absolutely floored me. In fact I'd go so far as to say they're probably the best / most powerful Lovecraft-inspired stories I've ever read from a "modern" (ie, post-1940s) writer, capturing the mystery and derangement of HPL's fiction brilliantly without actually falling back on imitating his style or aesthetic, and combining that with a sense of '70s British working class identity and (in some cases) an insight into flawed/dysfunctional family relationships which makes them feel really unique.

Anything else he wrote in that vein, I would absolutely love to read, but unfortunately the last (and latest, chronologically speaking) story in the book, 'The Voice of the Beach', seems to have already moved on toward the style I remember from his later novels - a densely written and entirely subjective/ambiguous pile of paranoid, mental breakdown stuff which, though skillfully done, was a chore to get through and generally not a whole lot of fun.

Nonetheless, those 'mid-period' stories impressed me so much that I've subsequently picked up a few of his early novels, which I'm looking forward to getting stuck into as soon as the weather turns cold again (as I suspect they're not exactly summer reading).

Thanks for providing your thoughts on Campbell, BW. Yeah, "The Voice of the Beach" was a tale I read in ALONE WITH THE HORRORS, and it ranks high among the 80 I consumed over the months as one of the more ambiguous concerning the fates of its characters (and humanity in general?). As I recall, it could almost be classified as surreal sci-fi.

To add one observation about the writer, or rather about his enthusiastic promoters, I don't think I would be nearly as irritated by the praise for him if instead of his being touted as the greatest living horror writer, he was regarded as the most unique living horror writer. And while I do recognize the absurdity of anything being "most unique," I just think it's more fitting to describe him in that way than with the more generic phrase, since his style truly is like no other in the genre.

I look forward to your reviews after you've finished the novels sometime in the future...

[Newt Cox]

Well actually read and finished 2 books in the last week.

Way of the Blade 100 of the greatest Bloody matches in Wrestling History-Buddy I have known thru the online wrestling fandom since the late 90s wrote this neat collection. I had seen maybe 40 of the matches before reading the book. Got a list of 30 from the book I need to track down. But each match he goes thru the history of the people in the match. Then talks about the match. Pretty decent read if you are into wrestling.

Bleeding was only half the Job the unofficial rise and fall of XPW-Since about 2005 been seeing author Jon Barber talk about how he was writing a history of Xtreme Pro Wrestling. Then earlier this summer Jon died at 37.Had he been telling everybody he had the book finished and it would come out in 2024,the 25th anniversary of the first XPW event. Pretty decent history of the only wrestling company owned and ran by a major porn director,Rob Black was in charge of XPW. The book could have used more pictures,there is only 2 right at the end. And it shows that this was made to be published online,cause you can tell some of the text was hyperlinks. But glad the book finally came out.

[BW Haggar]

My history with Ramsey Campbell is that I picked up a few of his novels back when I was a Lovecraft-mad teenager, and... never got very far with them, for very much the reasons you describe, Lorne. I also read some of his early Cthulhu Mythos stories in anthologies etc, and they seemed like pretty poor HPL pastiches, so -- subsequently didn't bother with him for a long, long time.

I've always enjoyed various non-fiction stuff and articles he's written however, and have likewise been curious about the reverence in which a lot of horror fans hold his writing, so a couple of years back, I picked up a copy of the anthology 'Cold Print', collecting some of his earliest published work. I soon realised however that, whilst the stories in the first half of the book are indeed primitive/ridiculous Lovecraft imitations, they need to be viewed in light of the fact that - checking the copyright dates - they were mostly published by August Derleth at Arkham House before Campbell was even eighteen years old (something he addresses with suitable wit/humility in his introduction).

Skipping through those and moving onto the more 'mature' tales in the second half of the book, his writing clearly took a huge leap forward during his 20s, and there is a run of stories - 'Cold Print', 'The Tugging', 'The Faces at Pine-Dunes', 'Blacked Out' - which absolutely floored me. In fact I'd go so far as to say they're probably the best / most powerful Lovecraft-inspired stories I've ever read from a "modern" (ie, post-1940s) writer, capturing the mystery and derangement of HPL's fiction brilliantly without actually falling back on imitating his style or aesthetic, and combining that with a sense of '70s British working class identity and (in some cases) an insight into flawed/dysfunctional family relationships which makes them feel really unique.

Anything else he wrote in that vein, I would absolutely love to read, but unfortunately the last (and latest, chronologically speaking) story in the book, 'The Voice of the Beach', seems to have already moved on toward the style I remember from his later novels - a densely written and entirely subjective/ambiguous pile of paranoid, mental breakdown stuff which, though skillfully done, was a chore to get through and generally not a whole lot of fun.

Nonetheless, those 'mid-period' stories impressed me so much that I've subsequently picked up a few of his early novels, which I'm looking forward to getting stuck into as soon as the weather turns cold again (as I suspect they're not exactly summer reading).

[Lorne Marshall]

So, Ramsey Campbell.

As I began a mission months ago to acquire the entire YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES series and then read each volume, I felt the same dread I've always felt any time I've gotten an anthology that contains one or more of Campbell's stories. I've stated elsewhere in this thread that I'm more a fan of pulp horror than the "quiet," "dark fantasy" offerings from writers like Campbell (as well as Charles L. Grant and Dennis Etchison, whom I won't be discussing here at this time). Yet reading the praise heaped on him in the intros to his work plus the status he seems to have attained over the decades ("greatest living writer of horror fiction"), I thought it would only be fair to give him another shot. I decided to go through every anthology I had and the ones I was buying, pulling out stories by him for examination. I also reread DEMONS BY DAYLIGHT (an old collection of just his work that I already had), and I bought another book that exclusively features Campbell, ALONE WITH THE HORRORS. In total, I read around 80 of his short stories.

It might be a conservative estimate to state that at least 90% of his stories involve people seemingly losing their minds (possibly as a result of some psychotic or schizophrenic breakdown), suffering from unsettling hallucinations with one or more of their 5 senses. Characters - oftentimes drab civil servants with not particularly intriguing thoughts (no offense to civil servants) - will perceive something unnerving just outside the periphery of their senses, only to learn it's some mundane, common item. For instance, more than one story has a person being frightened by a pile of clothes or a garment draped over a chair in a bedroom that was initially thought to be a menacing presence, supernatural or otherwise.

To be frank, this gets exceedingly tedious after a while.

The story "Above the World" is a great example of a man who is possibly going crazy constantly questioning the nature of everything he observes. "Was that a stamp on its corner, or a patch of moss?" "Beyond that uproar, were there voices? Could he cry for help?" "Had a sheep followed him?" "Was it the shifting of grey trees beneath the lowering largely unseen sky?" "Was he hearing muffled voices up there?" "...did each patch of lichen seem to suggest a face?" "Were there many different faces, or many versions of a couple?"

Perhaps no story carries the central theme of a character going insane to as far an extreme as "Concussion." The reader never quite knows if the main protagonist is experiencing frequent delusions in an epoch-oscillating reality, or if the whole thing is conjured from his imagination. It's certainly headache-inducing. Nevertheless, I will say in this tale's defense that it could be argued the author does hint at a possible physical origin for the weird occurrences, something he rarely does.

Another aspect of Campbell's writing that some might find annoying is his obsession with metaphor and simile. It doesn't bother me too much, but it sometimes can be really distracting when he inserts stuff that is supposed to add to the overall atmosphere in the middle of some kinetic scene, during which you don't really care what the state is of the surrounding fauna or flora. It tends to pull you right out of the action. Some might find the analogies themselves to be esoteric, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing. I mean, you could say one person's "esoteric" is another person's "creative."

Like a lot of writers, Campbell seems to favor certain words, as I saw them crop up a lot. A couple I quite often encountered were "slither" used to describe a person's motions, and "yawn" to describe what openings or gaps of any kind do (in one story called "The Fit," clothes draped over chairs even appear to be "yawning"!).

I truly believe Ramsey Campbell would have made a wonderful horror poet - likely the greatest one in history - if there were such a sub-genre. (Yes, I have heard of Edgar Allan Poe.) But as a constructor of narratives that feature enthralling events...not so much.

So when I hear or read praise for this author, I always think, "Is there something I'm missing? Is my taste in horror just not broad enough?" I'm not saying I'm like the skeptical kid in "The Emperor's New Clothes"; I just can't imagine anyone other than maybe his colleagues who are providing all the accolades reading one of his stories and then exclaiming to a fellow fan of the genre, "Man, you have got to read the latest Ramsey Campbell. It's amazing!"

Despite what I wrote in that last paragraph, all was not lost in my undertaking. Of the 80 or so I read, there were nearly a dozen tales that I actually did enjoy: "The Scar," "The Guy," "The Man in the Underpass" (which I didn't completely understand, but I just couldn't stop saying "Pop a cat a petal" for a day or two!), "Heading Home," "Baby," "Dead Letters," "Where the Heart Is," "Meeting the Author" (one plot element of this reminded me of THE BABADOOK), "See How They Run," "The Alternative," and "Passing through Peacehaven." Perhaps I like them because almost all are structured in a style so different from how Campbell normally writes (i.e., there's more emphasis on pulp than poesy), it wouldn't be difficult to mistake them as being composed by someone else (which is not a claim I am making, by the way).

(Note that when in the past I've listed faves from the YBHS volumes, I purposely left out some of Campbell's contributions, just because I knew I would eventually be making this separate post. For the record, "The Scar" and "The Man in the Underpass" were amongst those.)

Interestingly, I have seen a couple of movies based on his novels that I really love: THE NAMELESS and SECOND NAME (the latter adapted from Campbell's PACT OF THE FATHERS). In fact, some readers in online blogs have commented that his novels are superior to his short stories. Which makes me wonder if I should give some of those a go. Maybe I will. But not yet. I need time to recover.

Anyway, if you made it this far, thanks for reading my assessment of this writer. I would love to hear others' reactions to my perspective...regardless of whether you are in agreement with me or you're, like, "Hey Lorne, you really are a stupid moron/imbecile/idiot for not appreciating the superior writing prowess of the greatest living writer of horror fiction!"

[Lorne Marshall]

King has needed a good editor since about 1990.

I'm convinced that the most prolific authors may be addicted to writing. That combined with any person having only just so much creativity in him can lead to an author searching for things to write about, oftentimes seemingly plucking subjects out of thin air. "Hey, there's a set of the novelty toy known as chattery teeth. I think I'll write a story about it called...'Chattery Teeth'!" "Hey, there's a piece of exercise equipment known as a stationary bike. I think I'll write a story about it called...'Stationary Bike'!"

Which sort of brings me to my next posting...

[Mark Tolch]

I enjoyed that dog's dinner of a movie more than two of the three books in that series that I've read.

Ha, me as well.