Robert Lory's Horrorscope Series (1974 - 1975)

Spent my Sunday morning with coffee while Googling forgotten horror fiction and discovered this astrology-based paperback series (ah, the '70s!) titled Horrorscope (Pinnacle Books). Author Robert Lory, known for his Dracula Horror Series, mined one of that decade's many pseudoscientific obsessions. Horrorscope apparently only lasted four titles (looks like a fifth was published in Germany only); don't know what happened to the other eight signs of the zodiac! One can only imagine the rest of the series...

I couldn't find cover artist info but I think it's a safe guess to posit John Holmes, a British artist whose bizarre illustrations adorned H.P. Lovecraft Ballantine paperbacks around the same time.

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Vols. I and II, ed. by August Derleth (1969): Just Another Dream of Death

Actually it's been some decades since I read these classic Lovecraft-inspired anthologies, Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, and over the years have sadly lost my copies. Weird, surrealistic images on these, bespeaking of the general madness, terror, and disorientation of a reality that should not be. The first volume includes Mythos tales by the mighty likes of HPL himself, Conan creator Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert Bloch, J. Vernon Shea, Frank Belknap Long, Henry Kuttner, and editor Derleth. The second has more Lovecraft and Bloch, Brian Lumley, Colin Wilson, and Ramsey Campbell. I daresay you cannot go wrong with either volume, although I remember the stories do vary in quality. However, in Derleth's intro, he states "It is undeniably evident that there exists in Lovecraft's concept a basic similarity to the Christian Mythos, specifically in regard to the expulsion of Satan from Eden and the power of evil." Yeahhhh... no.

These first two paperbacks, from Beagle Books, May and June 1971 respectively, are adorned by Victor Valla's insanity-inducing cover art. Below you see the Ballantine Books reprints from 1973, with covers whose art I've never totally understood or liked (neither does this fellow), from John Holmes. There was a Del Rey reprint of both volumes in one in 1998. But you can find these old editions used on eBay and Amazon and elsewhere, usually around $10 to $15. It's worth it, for these are the kinds of old paperbacks that exude that inimitable old-book smell, one of dust and mold, of dreaming death and deathlessness, where one dwells amidst the wonder and glory of the Old Ones forever...

original Arkham House hardcover, 1969

August Derleth 1909 - 1971

Slugs by Shaun Hutson (1982): It's Not Good Bad, It's Just Stupid

I can't imagine a blog devoted to horror fiction paperbacks not featuring the ludicrously gory and tasteless novels of Shaun Hutson, a notorious figure in British horror since the early 1980s. Slugs, his first, is still probably his most infamous "work," as it operates in the lowest common denominator hell of cheesy, grossout horror. Exploiting our revulsion at certain members of the animal kingdom - always a safe bet in the genre with a long and illustrious history (particularly in film) going back to Them!, Jaws, and even Alien. And once James Herbert published The Rats in 1974, we would never again be free from the horrors of nature, no matter how poorly written or conceived.

Leisure Books' 1987 edition cover art, by John "Not That John Holmes" Holmes, at top is gloriously idiotic: somehow this poor fella has been stripped of everything but his skeleton - skeletons again - even his central nervous system, even his brain by the looks of one slug creeping out his skull - and yet he's still grimacing in what looks like gut-wrenching pain. I guess I shouldn't be looking for CSI-level of accuracy on horror paperbacks; I mean, the last book I posted on had a skeleton driving a car, for God's sake. Skulls are one thing, I suppose, but any more than that risks absurdity. And it's from Leisure Books, surely the bottom of the barrel for horror fiction.

Honestly, Hutson's is the kind of low-rent horror writing that I've learned to avoid over the years. "Tell, don't show" is his maxim; anything that isn't 100% obvious to a remedial reader is jettisoned. Slugs "enjoy the taste of warm blood" over and over again. Sometimes Hutson writes "gastropod" instead of "slug." Dialogue between a husband and wife sounds like a coffee commercial. Characters are introduced, given a quick back-story, and then dispatched with martial efficiency and maximum grossness. The novel's last sentence is a rote twist that lacks imagination or care and can be guessed before you finish reading the books title. Oh, there is a teenage couple who get et listening to Iron Maiden, so that's something, at least.

Certainly people can mindlessly enjoy Hutson's energy and glee, understanding it's bad when they begin reading, approaching it like a big-bug movie from the 1950s or a SyFy one today except a whole lot grosser (I will give Hutson a couple pulp points for his boundless enthusiasm in coming up with unique scenarios of disgust), but this kind of horror is just not for me. That's why I'm only reading this now, over 20 years since I first started seeing copies of Slugs turn up in that used bookstore I worked at. I found it last week at a local bookstore and buying it made me recall those days when you had to buy porno mags in an actual shop. Ugh, the embarrassment! And it probably won't be the last time--I've still got a couple Hutsons on my shelf.