Blue World by Robert R. McCammon (1990): This Isn't Really Anything I Think I Like

When it comes to the work of Robert R. McCammon, I think I'm in the minority of fans of 1980s horror fiction: I have never had my interest piqued by one of his books. He's got plenty of rabid fans who swear by Swan Song (1987) or Wolf's Hour (1989) or A Boy's Life (1992), still, even though he went on a 10-year hiatus and only recently began writing and publishing again. Despite his widespread popularity in the late '80s, he always seemed to me bland and middle-of-the-road, a writer for teenagers or hausfraus. I read a few of the stories in his only short-story collection Blue World (Pocket Books, April 1990, cover art by Jim Warren) when it came out, and remember absolutely nothing about them. But I really wanted to give him another try for this blog. Fair enough, right? Well...

UK paperback, Grafton 1990

The writing is simplistically homespun, the metaphoric descriptions amateurish, the psychological insights jejune, the storylines passable but unremarkable for the most part. His prose is so mild that I was never hooked, never captivated. The best story is probably "Nightcrawlers," about a maddened Vietnam vet whose nightmares come to life (wow, really) in an out-of-the-way diner. But the "magical Negro" and one-dimensional sentimentality of "Yellachile's Cage" seems not a patch on King's "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption." The venomous insects of "Yellowjacket Summer" are pretty nasty, and this story works in a straightforward manner. Post-apocalypticism features in "Doom City" (written for Charlie Grant's 1987 anthology Greystone Bay II) and "Something Passed By." Both of these are decent reads, and the mixed-up town of the latter is filled with places like Straub Street, King's Lane, Ellison Field, Barker Promenade, and McDowell Hill. Is that supposed to be funny, or clever, or...?

More: "He'll Come Knocking at Your Door" mines the territory of Joan Samson's The Auctioneer, in which a creepy dude demands payment for the townspeople's good fortune. The solitary madman of "Pin" and his murderous fantasies, and self-mutilation, are somewhat disturbing. "Makeup," "The Red House" and "I Scream Man!" are some of the tritest horror stories I've ever read. They don't suck, mind you, they're just kinda there. Never could get into "Night Calls the Green Falcon," way back when it was Schow's Silver Scream anthology. And I tried, tried to read the titular story, a 150+ page novella about a priest who falls for a porn star, but if there's one thing in this world I care about less than the tortured conscience of a priest who suddenly discovers sex is real and people like it, I don't know what it is.

"One-dimensional" is really the best way to describe these stories. I know some of them date from the early days of his career, a period he's said did not showcase his best work. But many were written for and published in this collection, after he'd become a successful writer of paperback originals for Pocket Books. And I can tell he wants you to like his stories; maybe it's that kind of eagerness, earnestness, that puts me off. As I said, McCammon's work has never appealed to me; I went into this read of Blue World hoping my impressions were wrong but found that, no, my old impressions were right: he's simply not a very interesting or inventive writer, at least not in these stories.

I need more from my horror fiction! This stuff's not trashy, it's not particularly well-written, it's not graphic, it's not haunting, it's not dangerous enough. But McCammon does have an inoffensive readability; perhaps if I'd read this when I was a young, inexperienced horror fan, say about age 13 or 14, I would have enjoyed it. But that's an impossibility no matter what since Blue World came out in 1990 when I was already 20 and well into the genre. It's sadly ironic that one of the most prolific writers of '80s paperback horror novels is one I find least essential.

Robert R. McCammon: The Early Paperback Covers

I read recently that bestselling '80s horror-fiction scribe Robert R. McCammon refuses to allow his first four novels to be republished today as he feels they're lacking in quality. That may be; I've never read them. It's true! Despite his overwhelming popularity in the late 1980s, I was never much interested in his work, for whatever reason. Every time I mentioned that I liked horror fiction back then, someone would invariably bring him up (or Koontz or John Saul, two other writers I had very little to no time for). I think I read the first few pages of his oft-acclaimed epic Stand-like novel Swan Song (1987) but remained unmoved; then perhaps a short story or two from Blue World (1990) or Book of the Dead (1989). Ah well.

These first four novels, Avon paperback originals all, are varying in terms of cover art quality; I think we can agree that Night Boat (1980), above, is the coolest of the lot. I've heard it's a pretty decent Nazi-zombie read.

They Thirst (1981) Pretty pedestrian but there's at least a kindertrauma associated with it.

Bethany's Sin (1980) Ladies and wild stallions. 'Nuff said.

Baal (1978) Wow, did they give the design job to the night janitor, or the new artist on their first day? Terrible.

McCammon's next two novels, Usher's Passing (1983) and Mystery Walk (1984), were published in hardcover by Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, while the first paperback editions were from Ballantine. The pumpkin house-mouth is kinda interesting.

These older paperback covers aren't nearly as well-known as the Pocket Books reprints of later years, after Swan Song became a NYT bestseller in '87. They all followed the template that book set with the creepy same font, half circle moon, and vanishing point perspective, thanks to artist Rowena Morrill. All out of print today, these later editions were staples of many a horror fiction bookshelf. Just not mine, however.

Book of the Dead, edited by John Skipp & Craig Spector (1989): How Far Can Too Far Go?

Everybody knows something about the world of the walking dead.

Long, long before this current mania for everything zombie-related, but well after George Romero had made his mark on the modern horror film (that is, practically invented the modern horror film) a bunch of upstart horror writers decided that a world in which the zombies won would be a great setting for horror
short stories. Imagine all of these in one place, an anthology of apocalypse, a collection of cannibalism, a grimoire of gore, even; stories so intensely graphic, relentless, and artistically uncompromising that the tepid, comforting bestselling "horror" novels of Koontz and Saul and Andrews would collectively melt off the shelves next to it. Zombie stories would show us the way, by facing our ugliest fears head-on, to a braver new world. Or so they wished in 1989. Me too.

Editors Skipp & Spector

That's how splatterpunk editors/authors John Skipp and Craig Spector envisioned Book of the Dead, according to their chummy, if self-serving, introduction, "On Going Too Far, or, Flesh-Eating Fiction: New Hope for the Future." They link Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the Kennedy assassination and the Manson murders and Vietnam TV carnage with the emergence of Night of the Living Dead, and they might not be wrong. They're right when they say turning a blind eye to such horrors can never prevent them. I can appreciate their lofty goals and certainly think genre fiction can address important and everyday issues; I also think - as does every other horror fan - that this genre gets no respect. But too many of the stories here go too far in the most adolescent way, in the most obvious and tritest manner possible. Still, others make a solid, lasting impression.

Mark V. Ziesing hardcover 1989

Skipp and Spector wanted social relevance comparable to Dawn of the Dead, but most of the authors went with, What's the grossest thing I can think of? Well, you know how Fulci movies all have eye trauma? Book of the Dead revels in penis trauma. "A Sad Last Love at the Diner of the Damned," by Ed Bryant (otherwise a decent piece), "Home Delivery" by Stephen King (has its moments), "Mess Hall," by Richard Laymon (ugh), and opener short "Blossom" by Chan McConnell (pseudonym of David J. Schow), all feature this charming conceit. Probably more, but those were the handful I just reread after about two decades.

The dead deputy reached down and grasped Bertie's penis, fingers wrapping around the thick base and the scrotum. With one powerful yank, he pulled back and up, the flesh giving way, tearing like rotten fabric. The zombie's arm came up and Bertie's abdomen and stomach opened like someone had jerked the seam on a full Ziploc bag of lasagna.

David J. Schow and Joe R. Lansdale (pictured in 2008): two splatterpunk stalwarts who loom large, and whose tales here use apocalyptic religious imagery to make the (now cliched) believers-as-zombies analogy. Schow goes grosser-than-thou in the inventively, outrageously gross and ironic - a fat kid who eats zombies! - "Jerry's Kids Meet Wormboy." His experience as a writer of men's military adventure tales comes in handy in this undead survivalist setting.  Lansdale's overlong but energetic "On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert with Dead Folk" (yeesh!) has not just zombies but bounty hunters and cowboys and killer nuns. Yep, Lansdale's beloved hand-to-hand combat is in full effect. Neither story is scary but each goes for broke. These guys were the cult punk-kings of mid-to-late '80s horror, definitely two of my fave-rave writers from the day.

Horror critic, biographer, and editor Douglas E. Winter's contributes "Less Than Zombie," which is of course a parody of Bret Easton Ellis's seminal work of disaffected-to-the-point-of-sociopathy '80s youth, Less Than Zero. Here he gets Ellis's tone just right but with a nice twist. Listen:

Summer. There is nothing much to remember about last summer. Nights at clubs like Darklands, Sleepless, Cloud Zero, The End. Waking up at noon and watching MTV. A white Lamborghini parked in front of Tower Records. A prostitute with a broken arm, waving me over on Santa Monica and asking me if I'd like to have a good time. Lunch with my mother at the Beverly Wilshire. Jane's abortion. Hearing the Legendary Pink Dots on AM radio. And, oh yeah, the thing with the zombies.

Ramsey Campbell deports himself well with a thankfully short and simple tale of door-to-door zombivangelists, "It Helps If You Sing." "Eat Me," Robert McCammon's solid contribution that ends the anthology, wonders sadly how zombies love - and went on to win the 1989 Bram Stoker Award for best short story. The lesser-known writers also deliver the ghoulie goods: Les Daniels ("The Good Parts" indeed!), Philip Nutman, Steve Rasnic Tem, Glen Vasey, Steven R. Boyett. Buy Book of the Dead if you find it cheap but don't pay those collectors' prices for it. Despite any faults, this is an essential '80s/'90s horror anthology.

In a way, Book of the Dead - and its superior 1992 sequel, Still Dead - paved the way for the current appreciation of zombie fiction and movies and all kinds of pop-cultural references. Watching both Zombieland and Land of the Dead and the like got me thinking, Jeez, I've seen this approach before, in the Skipp & Spector collections. But in a way they didn't; I doubt few if any of the folks buying Max Brooks's World War Z or Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and/or the DVDs of said films, not to mention comics and video games, have any inkling these books even ever existed. They've been out of print since practically the day were published. The '90s? As Bart Simpson said, I never heard of 'em. But zombies? They're scratching at your windows and doors even now. But it's just the neighbor kids on a zombie walk. Oh well, whatever, never mind.

And all I've got to say about the cover is, oh, look, a big ol' typo: George R. Romero.