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Also finally finished the anthology SHIVERS II earlier this month, and I thought it was better than the first. There were about 3 times more stories that I liked, including ones by F. Paul Wilson, Geoff Cooper, Garrett Peck, Al Sarrantonio, David G. Barnett, Thomas and Elizabeth Monteleone, Bentley Little, and Graham Masterton. I'm not sure if there were any further books in this series, but I did enjoy these more than the same period's annual YEAR'S BEST FANTASY AND HORROR (yet not nearly as much as the similarly-named but unrelated YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES that lasted from the 70's through 90's).
The better comparison would be to SHADOWS or NIGHT VISIONS, since like the Richard Chizmar compilations, those were mostly original stories. I would say I'm fonder of those older anthologies, I guess because there was still some lingering pulp influence on fiction then, which has almost completely disappeared in this young century. (With that in mind, for me nothing beats the Berkley/Playboy Paperback releases from the 80's that had generic titles like HORROR, TERROR, FEARS, and NIGHTMARES, and which SHADOWS was initially a part of).
After that and the Laymon stuff, I felt nostalgic so grabbed a couple of old favorites off the shelf that I haven't read in decades: the novel DEAREST by Peter Loughran and the collection FREAK SHOW, which is one of those Peter Haining assemblages that contain a wide range of offerings, both very old and (at the time) relatively new (I recall the stories "Jizzle" and "The Gay Deceiver" in this particular volume being especially terrific). And, funny enough, as I was digging out my copies of those two, I saw that I do possess another Laymon book, NIGHT SHOW, from the mid-80's. Like THE CELLAR, I really have no recollection whatsoever of this one. It's a brisk 283 pages, so maybe I'll give Laymon one more go-round!
The better comparison would be to SHADOWS or NIGHT VISIONS, since like the Richard Chizmar compilations, those were mostly original stories. I would say I'm fonder of those older anthologies, I guess because there was still some lingering pulp influence on fiction then, which has almost completely disappeared in this young century. (With that in mind, for me nothing beats the Berkley/Playboy Paperback releases from the 80's that had generic titles like HORROR, TERROR, FEARS, and NIGHTMARES, and which SHADOWS was initially a part of).
After that and the Laymon stuff, I felt nostalgic so grabbed a couple of old favorites off the shelf that I haven't read in decades: the novel DEAREST by Peter Loughran and the collection FREAK SHOW, which is one of those Peter Haining assemblages that contain a wide range of offerings, both very old and (at the time) relatively new (I recall the stories "Jizzle" and "The Gay Deceiver" in this particular volume being especially terrific). And, funny enough, as I was digging out my copies of those two, I saw that I do possess another Laymon book, NIGHT SHOW, from the mid-80's. Like THE CELLAR, I really have no recollection whatsoever of this one. It's a brisk 283 pages, so maybe I'll give Laymon one more go-round!
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