RIP Dan Simmons (1948 - 2026)

Sad and to me, completely unexpected news: Dan Simmons, author of some of the most popular, award-winning, thought-provoking, mind-expanding, and iconic horror and science fiction of the last 40 years, has died at age 77. 

I first read him around 1990 or so, after hearing so much about his 1985 debut horror novel, Song of Kali. Boy, did that one do a number on me! In quick succession I read a bunch of his short stories (first in The Skin Trade, and later in Prayers to Broken Stones), then soon after that dove into Hyperion, thanks to my boss and a coworker, both big SF guys. Boy, did that one do a number on me! I'd never really read any true SF before, maybe a little of Bradbury's science fantasy, so being introduced to many of its subgenres and styles in one novel blew my brain out. It hit particularly hard because I had just read, or read sections of, The Canterbury Tales in my World Lit class at community college, so I grokked the narrative device immediately. 

Today I pulled down my Simmons mass markets, and I realized for all his prolific output, I kind of lost track of his work after the mid-1990s. But I have to say many if not most of his paperbacks have some of the greatest cover art of the entire Paperbacks from Hell era, and the books themselves are treasured personal physical mementos of those days long gone. Dig:

Sacrament by Clive Barker (1996): You Get Me Closer to God

With his seventh novel, published in hardcover in 1996, Eighties horror icon Clive Barker outdoes even himself. Sacrament (1997 Harper Books mass market, cover by Phil Heffernan) in this story of Will Rabjohns, a gay British wildlife photographer. After a wild animal attack puts him in a coma, he dreams/remembers/revisits a strange couple he knew as a boy. Once he is well again, Will travels back to England, to confront the mystery of his past, his estranged father, and his boyhood friends. What we have here is a metaphysical mystery tale, as a man confronts the past and the present, his art and the world, and the strange powers that seem to drive them all.

As with much of Barker's fiction, it is this confrontation that drives his characters. What transformation awaits at the heart of this mystery? Who are Jacob and Rosa Steep? They live fictions, through decades. There is a dark, violent power that lies in their fingers, in their seductive charms. In Will's photography of the world's wildlife, they see a "conduit"—he brings to Jacob an unwelcome vision of a 19th century artist named Thomas Simeon. (It's my guess that Simeon is a stand-in for William Blake; it's no secret that Barker has long considered the English poet one of his literary icons, and with good reason). There is a lineage from Simeon's art and writings to Will's photography: life is hidden and waiting for apocalypse in Simeon's work; its aftermath and extinction in Will's.

This is a novel about a longing for transcendence, for transformation, to confront the mystery, to find out, "Why have I lived?" Barker writes that perhaps, at the end, "There'd be understanding, there'd be revelation, there'd be an end to the ache in him." The final scenes in the living heart of the world—the Mundus Domini—are terrific; Barker's prose is masterful, pure, poised. Here is his Thomas Simeon, in one of the book's most wonderful passages:

"It seems to me, we must invent religion every moment, as the world invents itself, for the only constant is inconsistency.... It seems to me the purpose of religion is to say: All things are so. An invented thing and a thing we call true; a living thing and a thing we call dead; a visible thing and a thing that is yet to be: All Are So."

How about that? Barker is simply an excellent, lyrical writer, whose works reflect upon the spiritual mysteries of our lives. Sacrament is, in a word, magnificent. I'm appalled upon learning of some readers' distaste for its erotic homosexual depictions—they have no business reading Clive Barker. I found this aspect to be incredibly well-done and insightful, these scenes with Will and his lover. Will has an ache for transcendence (as do so many of Barker's men and women: see Gentle and Jude in Imajica, Cal Mooney in Weaveworld, or Fletcher and the Jaff in The Great and Secret Show), as does Jacob Steep. One man who creates to get closer to God, one man who destroys.

That sometimes spirituality is a dark and violent—and sexy!—thing in no way diminishes its importance in Clive Barker's art; in fact, this quality powers its engine. Sacrament may not have the "horror cachet" of the author's more famous, more graphic stories and novels and movies, but I think it is an essential work for those who appreciate his sui generis approach to horror fiction.


(Note: I wrote this review in the unbelievable year of 1998, for a new bookselling website called Amazon)

Cold Front by Barry Hammond (1982): Frozen Warnings

Published only in Canada in 1982 by the Canadian wing of Signet/New American Library, Cold Front is one of the rarest horror paperbacks of that era. I'd bet there are only maybe dozens of copies in existence, if that. For years searchers after horror have had to contend with copies being sold online for hundreds of dollars. The handful of readers who did dole out the bucks fortunately, or perhaps frustratingly, announced that wow, the book is actually pretty good. (Never assume that a book's high secondhand market pricing has anything to do with its quality, however). This made people want the damn thing even more.

Now, independent publisher Fathom Press, taking a cue from Valancourt Books' Paperbacks from Hell line, is going after white whales like this one. And this one was captured! Fathom was able to secure reprint rights from Canadian author Barry Hammond, who even contributed an explanatory and insightful afterword about the origins of his sole horror novel. (While writing, Hammond says he was playing difficult-listening albums by Lou Reed and Nico to capture the right vibe he was imagining, truly fitting.)

In Cold Front, Hammond doesn't even pretend to try to get you to identify with his three male leads. These guys are dumb, grimy, pig-ignorant losers who speak like it; no Tarantino pulp-crime pop-culture witticisms, no self-referential jokes, no self-aware callbacks. You're in the company of some real ugly drunken dum-dums, and it ain't fun. Hammond has a way of setting up a scenario that's pure no-way-out hopelessness. The almost-sole locale of the disgusting cabin in the snowy wilderness also functions as a kind of freezing existential locus, stripped of all extraneousness, few provisions, howling storm outside, confronting sex and terror inside this desolate dwelling that seems to exist in some netherworld, a purgatory hungry for lives to send on to Hell.

Sure, there's gonna be things to be grossed out by in a trashy Eighties horror paperback novel like this: the crude jokey racial comments, the "childlike sexuality" of the bizarrely pale white girl the men find hiding in the cabin's basement, the threat of rape and worse. Silent and mysterious, yet able to kick ass and defend herself, the young woman both attracts and repels each trapped man. The blurb on the back cover gets it right: it's not the girl they need to be afraid of... 

Fathom Press reprint, Thanks for a copy! 
cover art by Stephen Andrade.

As I read, I got notes of Jim Thompson crime novels, and of Laymon/Ketchum in the simplicity of setup and prose style, grue and bloodshed. Our monster, hinted at throughout—and ably represented in the Signet cover art, by the great Tom Hallman—is underplayed till the end, which is quite the frigid whirlwind of death and mayhem. While I wouldn't say I "enjoyed" Cold Front, I absolutely appreciated its commitment to single-minded unease, disgust, and fatalistic despair. And thanks to Fathom Press, you can now "enjoy" it as I did as well!

With the sun full on them, they were the very centre of the horror before they realized what it was... Then the pieces of it hanging from the trees seared their eyes. They could see the silhouettes. Not understand them, but know who it was from the shreds of wool still attached to the raw, frozen meat. Not understand how such a thing was possible. Logic of human geometry had been thrown aside. That the human body could undergo such stretching, ravaging, seemed impossible. The image indelibly inked across their minds even when they closed their eyes. Hard to believe that such obscenity could exist in sunlight.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon by Mark McShane (1961): And She Ain't What You'd Call a Lady

A slim but successful suspense thriller, Seance on a Wet Afternoon isn't really a horror novel, but I read it solely for that wonderfully evocative, moody title alone (I've long known about the movie adaptation but have never seen it). Mark McShane (1929-2013) was an Australian author of crime fiction, which is what this novel basically is—but it is also quite a bit more in its own quiet, unassuming, indeed "kitchen sink realist" way.

The "preternatural" aspect is a psychic woman, a "medium" or a "sensitive," Myra Savage, who makes extra money by holding seances with neighborhood ladies. Myra concocts a plan of utmost practicality: kidnap a child from a well-to-do family for ransom, but then she will reveal through her powers the child's whereabouts, "find" the money, and then go from rags to riches thanks to the resulting fame such a good deed will engender. Dishonest? Sure, but it's for a good cause!

Back cover of above, cover art by the great Harry Bennett, Jan 1965

Except of course that's not how things go, they never do, thanks to her husband Bill (poor sod). Together these two make quite the toxic couple. The results are top-notch suspense and a true banger of an ending. McShane really knows the landscape of London and surrounding working-class towns, which I always appreciate reading. His depiction of morally compromised characters who justify their selfish, deluded actions is razor-sharp. 

1963 Pan Books, UK

Again, not really horror, but very tense and unsettling in places; the second half is veritable screw-tightener of suspense. The downbeat "rainy afternoon" vibe will appeal to fans of Ramsey Campbell or Robert Aickman, I think, fellow British writers with a delicate, knowing pen and a penchant for ironic twists of fate.

He took one step back from the peephole. He closed his eyes tightly. He was overpowered by a feeling of horror; black dripping horror. His lips, mouth, his whole lower jaw began to tremble. The moan that escaped him tuned up to a squeak at the end. As though he'd been stung on it, he pulled his hand from the girl's face...

The Final Three Titles in the Paperbacks from Hell Reprint Series

Well, the time has come: after seven years and almost two dozen titles, Valancourt Books' series of horror fiction reprints, curated by me and Grady Hendrix and inspired by our 2017 nonfiction book Paperbacks from Hell, will come to an end. I know that's not news you wanna hear! We're proud of what we've accomplished and the books we chose. But more and more, alas, it was getting difficult to acquire the rights to various books we wanted to get back into print. The three upcoming titles will be: 

These are highly sought-after titles, very rare on the secondhand market. Publication will be 2026. I hope you guys are excited to get your hands on these guys; I know we are all thrilled to unleash these horror fiction classicks once again upon an unsuspecting public... 

RIP Chelsea Quinn Yarbro (1942 - 2025)

Prolific, long-time author Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has died at age 82. Known for her historical horror novels about the vampire Count Saint-Germain, Yarbro also wrote excellent short stories and horror movie novelizations. Here is my (unfortunately incomplete) collection of her mass market paperbacks.

Orphans by Ed Naha (1989): We're a Happy Family

Now this is some serious paperback horror cover art. Such detail. Such care. Such skulls. What's this family portrait telling us? Maybe that there are few things more frightening for a child than the idea that her parents are not who they seem? Or perhaps this novel will expose the hypocrisies of the adult world, its shallow middle-class ambitions, its forced conformity, its ability to cover up even the most hideous horrors?

But Orphans is about none of these things. Published in November 1989 by Dell, this slim little novel by Ed Naha is competently, if unimaginatively, written, occupying that weird little subgenre space of kinda-sorta medical/science fiction horror (meh) with undead-gone-amuck (yay!). Naha is mostly in young adult fiction gear, writing at the most basic, one-dimensional level, refusing in any way to engage in insight or metaphor. Every character seems to be smiling all the time; indeed I have never read a book in which the word "smile" is invoked so often and so lazily, often several times on a single page. 

Naha, a horror/mystery screenwriter/novelist, keeps the story moving, sure, his evil kids creeping out our main teacher character, but I never felt involved or intrigued. References to fog aren't enough to evoke true atmosphere, and characters who exchange banal jokes and tired flirtations just drift off the page. However, once we learn what is really going on with these creepy kids around town, things start to get juicy. Bloody. Gory. In fact, it gets almost to Re-Animator-levels of ridiculous B-movie violence. Unexpected, after such a PG-rated buildup.

Recommended lightly, and solely for the last third or so when shit gets gnarly. Otherwise, unless you're as obsessed with the cover as I am, you could probably skip it. And speaking of that cover, can anyone make out the artist's signature? "R.S. Br__"? Bottom right corner? I'd be ever so grateful if any of y'all could help ID this guy!

Postscript: the artist has been discovered: R.S. Brown

Moths by Rosalind Ashe (1976): She Loves Naked Sin

How do you tell a man, gently, that his wife is a homicidal nymphomaniac?

This moody, erotically-charged cover art, by American romance illustrator H. Tom Hall, is perfectly fit for a sophisticated novel of doomed romance and obsession; I bought this paperback over a decade ago solely for its melodramatic atmosphere. I knew nothing of author Rosalind Ashe (1931-2006), and assumed the title, Moths, referred to the hapless male victims of a magnetic, alluring, possibly dangerous woman of incomparable beauty and passions. And... I was right.

back cover, 1977 Warner Books

The blurb comparison to Daphne du Maurier and her classic 1938 novel Rebecca is apt, though Moths doesn't reach the heights of suspense and emotional turmoil of that work. How could it? Yet this novel offers some good escapist fare, kind of what they're calling "romantasy" today, I think. The style, first person by an Oxford professor, is quite a bit plummy; I was constantly Googling his various allusions and references and poetic quotes to truly grasp and appreciate what was happening. Personally I find a lot of British culture, of whatever class, very interesting (piqued by decades-long obsession with the first wave of punk rock in the mid-Seventies), so this was fine and dandy for me. Other readers might take this as a warning, however, who don't have patience for an academic approach to such goings-on.

Author Ashe, undated

Me, I was quite taken from the first with the professor's tale, lush and literate and over-heated, with that kind of charming self-satisfaction an intellectually Oxford don can have. With dripping atmosphere to spare, Prof. Harry regales us with descriptions of deep-wooded Dower House and its flowering environs (clearly evoking Rebecca's Manderley), a rustic old estate for sale which he explores in the novel's opening. Once inhabited by a mysterious actress of the Regency era, Dower House draws our Prof. inexplicably in, even though as a confirmed bachelor he has no interest in purchasing it.

Penguin UK, 1977

There, also exploring the grounds, he meets the Boyces, a couple eager to make the place their own: James, another professor who is less committed to his work than to his mistresses; and his enchanting wife "Mo" (short for Mnemosyne, Greek for memory, and mother of the Muses, not too pretentious now!), who charms Prof. more than Dower House itself. Prof. Harry is able to befriend the two and thus finds himself invited into the home and their lives... and passions. James was her senior by ten years, a self-made academic... She was the last of a line of penniless aristocrats... In California, or on another social rung, she might have turned flower-child, perhaps Jesus-freak. As it was, she had an altogether unusual charm...

1990 reprint

Ashe weaves a luscious stew of supernatural hints and erotic trysts in a delightfully dated Seventies style, very Jolly Old England, very gender-normative, very femme fatale. But is the femme fatale a ghost, a possession, an imagination? Who is this madwoman who, as the title explicitly implies, draws hapless men into her fiery embrace? Bodies turn up, cops are on the case, a diary is read revealing murder... poor Harry, can't he catch a break? This woman, Mo, (also called Nemo, which is Latin for "no one"—not too pretentious now!) is alluring, even unto death. Mood swings, migraines, to put up with her idiosyncrasies requires utmost submission, because you know the sex gonna be goood. Never had she been more lovely, more violently alive. The Regency actress who inhabited her seemed positively recharged by another victim: the dead thriving on the dead.

Japanese edition, perfectly captures the setting

Moths will more appeal to readers who enjoy long-fuse occult/supernatural novels like Sweetheart, Sweetheart and Burnt Offerings. This was Ashe's first novel (and recently reprinted by Valancourt!), and the others she wrote all seem to have a similar Gothic vibe of windswept locales, mysterious romances, the vague and distant threat of madness and death, supplied in that overheated prose, which might turn off readers looking for real gruesome horror business. Yet I myself enjoyed its literate, allusive nature, as it moves slowly but inexorably to its conclusion—I am nothing more than that moth.

Interview with The Book Graveyard

Don't miss this recording of my live chat with The Book Graveyard! A great time was had by all. Below is a pic of all the horror paperbacks I mentioned. Lots of good stuff, especially for anyone new to this blog or Paperbacks from Hell—enjoy!

Live Chat with Me on Saturday, July 5th!

Hey all, here's something you might dig: this Saturday, July 5, at 7pm EST, I will be doing a live chat/interview with The Book Graveyard, a supercool book blog/YouTube page that features vintage paperbacks of various genres. You'll be able to ask questions as Nick and I talk about horror fiction, this blog, book collecting, and obviously Paperbacks from Hell, but also anything else that comes up. Please join us if you can!