Avon Books Horror Paperback Cover Art by Hector Garrido

I do dearly love this series of Avon horror paperbacks from 1968 and '69 - such vintage-y and creepy goodness! The only one I own is the Matheson; I'd seen a couple here and there over the years and dug 'em, but it wasn't till today that I actually looked at the Stir of Echoes copyright page to find out the artist: Hector Garrido. He was quite prolific too. Great stuff, sir, and thank you. I hope you guys find the off-kilter red-and-black design as horrifically delightful as I do!

As for new horror fiction reviews, I'm halfway through a pretty good '70s novel right now and plan to have my post up later this week...

Richard Matheson: Shock! The Paperback Covers

X-- This day when it had light mother called me a retch. You retch she said. I saw in her eyes the anger. I wonder what it is a retch.

With those opening lines to his first published short story "Born of Man and Woman" in 1950, Richard Matheson was let loose upon the world. Many of his short stories became famous "Twilight Zone" episodes or appeared in Playboy, the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and various mystery/crime magazines. Just the other night I read for the first time "Prey," his 1969 short that became the legendary episode "Amelia" in Dan Curtis's Trilogy of Terror TV movie (1975). The story was splendid: perfectly conceived and then executed with stark believability and conviction. I can't imagine there's a horror fan out there without at least some passing knowledge of that horrific Zuni fetish doll!

These four different Shock collections gather those tales, and though long out-of-print they seem to be fairly widely available online in various editions: the original Dell publications from the early and mid-1960s, as well as the Berkley reprints from the late 1970s (cover art by Murray Tinkelman).

The I Am Legend Book Archive

Richard Matheson's 1954 I Am Legend is probably the most influential horror novel of the 20th century. Over the years I've owned various paperback editions of it, having first read it during summer break in high school. I had this Omega Man tie-in version from the early '70s.

So I started thinking about other editions of it, and while looking I came across The I Am Legend Book Archive. I love finding other horror obsessives who catalog their mania in minute detail, but I don't think I've ever seen a blog that focuses solely on one book. Pretty cool. Check it out.

 

 

Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley (1980): Faces of a Million Hells

I don't think I'm overstating when I say that Dark Forces was the most important anthology of short horror fiction of its day. Editor Kirby McCauley went far afield with familiar horror/fantasy/SF names like Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Ramsey Campbell, and Robert Bloch, to contemporary literary writers Isaac Bashevis Singer and Joyce Carol Oates, to then-new folks like T.E.D. Klein, Dennis Etchison,and Lisa Tuttle. This tasteful bit of editing revealed a breadth and depth to horror fiction that hadn't really been seen before; stylistically the tales are pleasingly all over the place and therefore still a must for the horror fiction fan. Somehow I missed out on it during my days of reading nothing but horror. It's now out of print but widely and cheaply available in a not-too-fancy hardcover and several paperback editions.

This was when horror started to try to gain respectability as a literary force; Kirby McCauley was King's editor and ambitious novels by folks like Peter Straub were bestsellers at the time. Certainly including Oates and Singer, two highly-lauded writers of mainstream literary fiction, didn't hurt. While Oates's contribution, "The Bingo Master," is well-written and has odd moments, Singer's "The Enemy" operates in that dreamtime of myth and fable, like an old Jewish legend that speaks of the timeless evil nature of man. Bloch's "The Night Before Christmas" is a snappy tale of vengeance complete with the type of pleasantly groan-inducing pun he's known for. Gene Wolfe, Davis Grubb, Robert Aickman, and Manly Wade Wellman contribute oblique, darkly fantastical tales that are powerfully imagined, original, and genre-broadening. Two of my favorites were Lisa Tuttle's "Where the Stones Grow" and Karl Edward Wagner's "Where the Summer Ends." I could go on and on about these stories, and still have a handful left to read.

UK paperback

The cornerstone here is, of course, Stephen King's novella "The Mist," which appeared, slightly changed in the final sentences (which do nothing to the plot), in his Skeleton Crew (1985). The morning after a violent thunderstorm, a glowing wall of white mist creeps across and envelopes a rural Maine town. There are things in the mist. Things from a madman's prehistoric nightmare. Like a classic Twilight Zone episode it forces common people to bond against an uncommon enemy. As the lead story, its famously ambiguous ending seems to affect the rest of the stories in Dark Forces, as if tendrils of that mist drifted throughout them.

King's humble, near-utilitarian prose, vividly-drawn characters, and first-person narration bring a flat believability to the events. While King has described it as little more than '50s-style low budget monster movie, the futility of virtually every action the characters take casts a pall of hopelessness and despair over the proceedings. It was probably 1986 when I first read "The Mist" and it has never ever left me; I can recall sitting in boring high-school classes, staring out the window and trying to will that mist across the streets of my hometown. Horrible, I know, but man, "The Mist" got in there early and it got in there deep.

As for the paperback cover at the top (Bantam Dec 1981), I assume that the mesmerized woman is gazing off into that mist, although if she is expecting any sort of transcendence or transformation, she is going to be sorely disappointed. Snipped in half or burnt by acid or eaten alive, too. So, you know, look out, lady.

25th anniversary limited edition from Lonely Road Books

Dark Dreamers, edited by Stanley Wiater (1990): First You Dream, Then You Die

Although this is the first nonfiction book I've written about here, it's absolutely appropriate: Dark Dreamers: Conversations with the Masters of Horror collects journalist Stanley Wiater's interviews with the very best horror writers of its day - and many of all time: Bloch, Matheson, King, Barker, Straub, Campbell, as well as (at the time) up-and-comers like Lansdale, Skipp & Spector, and Robert McCammon. While some of the writers covered do nothing for me (yes, there are a few), any behind-the-scenes info on the writing of horror and its attendant difficulties and rewards is fascinating.

Clive Barker lays out his ambition to write horror fiction that confronts and confounds; Richard Matheson realizes you can never escape the horror label; Richard Laymon admits he tempers his fondness for gore to get mainstream publications; Charles L. Grant reveals his wish to make a Val Lewton-type movie; Gary Brandner intimates the real horror hell is Hollywood; James Herbert lets it be known he was a horror writer from birth; Les Daniels speaks of the dream which gave him his idea for his historical vampire novels; Steve King and Peter Straub team up to talk of the perception of horror fiction in the mainstream literary world; and of course Whitley Strieber gotta talk about those damn aliens.

All that and more, Dark Dreamers is a wonderful exploration of the men (alas all, save for one Ms. Rice) who imagine the darkest, the bleakest, the blackest of worlds, so that we might see better in this one.

Perchance to Dream: The Short Fiction of Charles Beaumont

Another writer sadly lost to time, Charles Beaumont (1929-1967) helped cement one of the most distinctive pop-culture totems of the 20th century, TV's The Twilight Zone, bringing speculative fiction, whether horror, fantasy, or science fiction, to the mainstream. He wrote around two dozen of that show's episodes, third only to Richard Matheson and creator Rod Serling himself. He also wrote screenplays for Roger Corman, The Masque of the Red Death and The Haunted Palace, Poe and Lovecraft adaptations, respectively.

Beaumont's one of those "writer's writers" who are so fondly recalled as a major influence by the likes of Matheson, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Dan Simmons, Dean Koontz, John Shirley, et. al., but little-read among genre fans today. He died tragically young and there are no widely-available, mass-produced editions of any of his works readily available.

I found these editions of Night Ride (1960) and The Hunger (1959) on eBay recently, and was fortunate enough to get them cheap, maybe $5 apiece and in very good shape for paperbacks five decades old. Haven't read nearly all the stories contained as there are three dozen between the two collections; many were originally published in Playboy or Esquire and some Beaumont adapted himself for Twilight Zone episodes, classics like "Perchance to Dream," "Shadow Play," and "The Howling Man." The last story is one of his most famous; the Tor collection The Howling Man from 1992 is very highly sought after these days... would that I had picked it up when I used to see it on used bookstore shelves in the mid 1990s.

His technical skill and humanity, conciseness and clever imagination shine forth in the handful I have read, reminding me a bit of Bradbury's works from the same era. But Beaumont has a cool sophistication too; not for nothing did many of his tales appear in Playboy - particularly the stunning story of love and jazz "The Black Country," as well as "The Crooked Man," a positive depiction of homosexuality - in the '50s. Beaumont's influence on the horror genre is undeniable; although the tales might not quite be the "violent entertainments" that The Hunger promises - a charming conceit back then, now rather tame today - and they might not really appeal to many modern horror fiction readers, their concerns and conflicts, and of course twist climaxes, are still effective and surprising. Charles Beaumont is simply a must-read writer for the true horror fiction fan.

Richard Matheson's Other Classics: 3 Hits from Hell

"The occult" was what publishers called horror before Stephen King. Ursula Andress will massage your temples if you're feeling psychic. And black widow spiders aren't fuzzy.

That is all.