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OtherRealms Issue 22 Part 05
Electronic OtherRealms #22
Fall, 1988
Part 5
Copyright 1988
by Chuq Von Rospach
All Rights Reserved
OtherRealms may not be reproduced without written permission from Chuq
Von Rospach. The electronic edition may be distributed or reproduced
only in its entirety and only if all copyrights, author credits and
this notice, including the return addresses remain intact.
No article may be reprinted, reproduced or republished in any way
without the express permission of the author.
The Agony Column
Rick Kleffel
Copyright 1988 by Rick Kleffel
The Servants of Twilight
Dean Koontz
Illustrated by Phil Parks
Dark Harvest, $18.95, 0-91365-24-7
[*****]
Mirror
Graham Masterton
Tor, $18.95, 0-312-93077-1
[***]
Night Visions 5
Edited by Douglas E. Winter
Dark Harvest, $22.00, 0-913165-27-1
[****]
Silver Scream
Edited by David J. Schow
Illustrated by Kevin Davies
Dark Harvest, $22.00, 0-913165-27-1
[****+]
Prime Evil
Edited by Douglas E. Winter
New American Library, $18.95, 0-453-06572-1
[****]
The Blood Kiss
Dennis Etchison
Illustrated by J. K. Potter
Scream/Press, $22.50, 0-910-489-18-1
[*****]
A Rendezvous in Averoigne
Clark Ashton Smith
Illustrated by J. K. Potter
Arkham House, $22.95, 0-87054-156-0
[*****]
Faerie Tale
Raymond E. Feist
Doubleday Publishers, $17.95, 0-385-23623-9
[**-]
Scare Tactics
Jonathan Farris
Tor, $14.95, 0-312-93085-2
[***]
Toplin
Michael McDowell
Illustrated by Harry O. Morris
Scream/Press, $30.00 Signed, 0-910489-11-4
[****]
The Silence of the Lambs
Thomas Harris
Saint Martin's Press, $18.95, 0-312-02282-4
[*****]
Blood Farm: An Iowa Gothic
Sam Siciliano
Pageant Books, $3.95, 0-517-00660-X
[***]
Over the last few years, there's been a trend in the realm of retail
sales that has affected buyers and makers of both books and recorded
music -- the emergence of chain stores as the predominant place of
purchase. It used to be that the majority of bookstores and record
stores were locally owned and operated. This is no longer the case.
Accompanying this has been a decline in choice -- to find much beyond
the Top 40 records or the Bestselling/New Releases books, one has to
search out the so-called "specialty shops." And on the manufacturing
side, those who are not constant members of that Top 10/40 group are
finding it more difficult to distribute their goods. This doesn't mean
that the small guys in the publishing world have faded away -- on the
contrary, they have simply resorted to a different tactics to keep
their share of the market. The only place one will find these books or
records is in the specialty shops.
Horror, in particular, has been well-served by the smaller presses. It
is not surprising that the horror field is treated so well, since one
of the oldest small publishers started out publishing horror writer H.P.
Lovecraft -- Arkham House. This is the grandfather of many smaller
houses today. Fifty years after starting up, they're still putting out
high-quality, pulp-oriented, artistic (not mainstream) horror and
science fiction. But there's always competition.
Scream/Press, brainchild of bad boy Jeff Conner, started off with a bang
when it published a limited, illustrated edition of Stephen King's Skeleton
Crew, and followed that up with a fabulous illustrated omnibus edition
of Clive Barker's Books of Blood, volumes 1 through 3. The illustrators,
Jeff Potter and Harry Morris, have set a standard for illustration.
Holding any Scream/Press edition in your hands is a truly pleasurable
experience -- these are some of highest-quality books being published
in the field. But that advantage is diminished by what can be optimistically
called elastic publishing schedules. Those who pay in advance for their
books may wait until after the paperbacks are available.
Dark Harvest Books specializes in collections of brand-new stories by
known authors, and -- timely publishing dates. Witness their ground
breaking Night Visions series, and the Silver Scream anthology reviewed
this month. The proofreading of some Dark Harvest books leaves a lot to
be desired and the typesetting occasionally shows the labors of an
inferior computer justification program. But even though the books just
don't have the artistic feel of Scream/Press releases, the names are
often more familiar and the books are (in general) more accessible than
Scream's rather eclectic selection.
Although one might distrust a work written by a major author under a
pseudonym, Servants of Twilight by Dean Koontz (originally as Leigh
Nichols) is every bit as good as Koontz's more recent work, even though
it sidesteps his usual SF/horror themes for straight ahead action,
mystery and suspense writing.
The idea behind the book is a large reason. Koontz doesn't come up with
startling new ideas, just startling reinventions of old ones. In
Servants of Twilight, Christine Scavello is a single mother raising her
eight year old son, Joey, in Orange County, California. She's part
owner of a fairly successful business, makes her house payments, and
goes shopping at a high-class mall. It is here that a disheveled old
woman named Grace Spivey first sees Joey and decides that he is the
AntiChrist. Unfortunately for Christine and Joey, Grace is the head of
a fairly large fundamentalist sect who believe that these are the last
days before Armageddon, and that, as the Servants of Twilight, their
sacred mission is to destroy the AntiChrist before he can begin a one
thousand year reign of terror. A large percentage of the congregation
consists of ex-cons who have taken up Grace's violent appeal to hope.
What Koontz has done is to create a very clever reversal of that
seemingly endless line of books and movies where the AntiChrist returns
and fearless believers must locate him, oppose his powers and overcome
the Ancient enemy.
Despite the lack of a supernatural premise, there are three types of
terror in this novel. The first is the fear of the uncaught killer,
which has, of late, become a popular theme in horror writing. However,
while many "splatterpunk" books rely on graphic violence, Koontz scares
us with his perception of the ease with which a relatively incompetent
murderer can go about his or her business in our society. Even if
Christine and Joey survive, will Joey be permanently scarred by this
experience? It's to Koontz's credit that he can create tension in this
fashion. It can only exist if we really care about the characters.
Koontz shows us the terror the killers themselves feel in their pursuit
of the AntiChrist; the monsters may be in their minds, but the fear is
real. The Servants' perception of the devil around them is more frightening
1than it would have been had the kid really been the AntiChrist.
The devil may be absent in Servants of Twilight but he's very much
present in Mirror, the latest horror novel by Graham Masterton. This
novel offers all the things that big commercial books are expected to
have: a fast moving plot, well-defined, easily remembered characters,
graphic horror, a slick foil-printed cover and easy-to-read prose.
But beneath the slick surface you'll find a sly, satiric look at how
"the Satan worshipers of Hollywood" have sold their souls for a maximum
profit. Ostensibly, this is the story of Martin, a hardworking
screenwriter who is grinding out rewrites of television shows like "The
A Team" and "Eight is Enough" while working on his own pet project, a
musical based on the life of a child movie star ('Boofuls') with whom
Martin is obsessed. Unfortunately, the name Boofuls closes doors around
Hollywood because of his untimely and unseemly death; he was chopped
into pieces by his Grandmother in front a mirror that Martin can't
resist buying from a run-down old woman living in a bad part of the Big
Town. In this mirror he eventually sees Boofuls, who lures a child
playing in Martin's apartment into the mirror world. Boofuls explains
to Martin that he just wants to finish up some work left undone in this
world. He doesn't explain that it's the devil's work, of course.
There aren't a lot of surprises here, but there are thrills
unstoppable. You know a rollercoaster is going to scare you but you
still scream, and that applies here as well. Underneath it all, the
author is disemboweling Hollywood, not just the priest who knows too
much. As hinted at by the title, Graham Masterton weaves a web of
Lewis Carroll, the Book of Revelations, Hollywood premieres -- the
whole nine yards of occult science. And if the book isn't deeply
disturbing, it is certainly entertaining.
Night Visions V and Silver Scream, each from Dark Harvest, showcase the
small press releases -- finely-crafted books, generously illustrated
and nicely printed. Night Visions V is likely to get the attention of
the vast reading public because of Stephen King's contributions, but it
will remain in their minds because of the contributions of the other
writers. Douglas Winters shows off his skills at writing the
non-apologetic introduction, the critical look at horror that the genre
really benefits from. It's a promising start.
Stephen King's stories are really a letdown. King's longest story,
"Dedication" is both shocking and memorable, but not all readers will
consider this a good thing. That's because this story showcases King in
a mode that will offend those sensitive to issues of racism and sexism.
And gross -- it might be suitable for a sort of KKK-meets- Hustler
magazine -- scary, and disturbing all right, but not at all in the same
that, say, The Stand is scary and disturbing.
Especially when compared to Dan Simmons, who blew away the world a
couple of years ago with Song of Kali. His three contributions to this
book could all be serious contenders for Best Story the next time the
"Bram Stoker" awards are distributed. "Metastasis" is a terrifying look
at the world of terminally-ill cancer patients, while "Vanno Fucci is
Alive and Living in Hell" is a hilarious look at the dark side of
evangelism. And "Iverson's Pits" is a Nathaniel Hawthorne-like horror
story set around the Civil War.
Finally, George R. R. Martin cooks up an entertaining and imaginative
rethinking of the Werewolf legend in "The Skin Game." It's probably too
late to catch the hardback of Night Visions V -- things with King's
name sell like lightning -- but not too late to sign up in advance for
the next in the series, and certainly a good time too keep an eye out
for the paperback.
Reviewed last issue was David Schow's The Kill Riff, and he's back this
time at the helm of an anthology called The Silver Scream, which is an
anthology of cinematic horror fiction. Is that horror about the cinema
or about the cinema? The answer is -- delightfully -- both.
There's an introduction by Tobe Hooper, in the form of a script -- and
it's priceless, especially for those of us who have admired his
movies. Schow restricts himself to a thoroughly entertaining
"Endsticks," where he gets down, dirty and funny in quotes, episodes
and arguments with the contributors.
Between these two, you'll find some inventive and entertaining
fiction. The illustrations, by Kevin Anderson, are sometimes
disappointing, especially for "Son of Celluloid," which was so
evocatively illustrated by Potter in Scream/Press' Books of Blood.
In the selection of new stories, there are some brilliant contributions --
my favorites were Joe Landsdale's "Night They Missed The Horror Show,"
a hilarious update of the Flannery O'Connor school of horror, and Mark
Arnolds's "Pilgrims to the Cathedral," a spectacular crazy quilt of humor,
horror, and action that "explodes on the big screen" of the reader's
mind. Stephen Boyett contributes "The Answer Tree," an inventive story
that speculates on the artistic output of a Luis Bunuel-type talent who
happens to work for Nazi Germany, and not to be missed is Douglas
Winter's "Splatter: A Cautionary Tale," which shows that the editor can
terrify the reader with the best of them in a subtle and surprising
way. This book is one worth pestering your local store about.
Then there's Douglas E. Winter's Prime Evil. It's got the big names --
King, Straub, Barker, Streiber. Doug Winter's introduction is
wonderful, but once we get to the fiction, King's work, "The Night
Flier," is definitely inferior -- in fact, it almost seems incomplete.
It's well written, but somehow lacking.
Clive Barker just reaffirms his mastery of prose and fiction with
"Coming to Grief," a gentle, sentimental horror story that would
delight and chill the readers of Redbook as well as Grue. Peter
Straub's story is rather similar to his "Blue Rose," another terrifying
tale of child abuse that is not recommended for sensitive parents.
Whitley Streiber's contribution is yet another puzzling addition to
what appears to be a creeping psychosis. Like "Pain" in Cutting Edge,
this is not much of a story, but a rambling, not-very-well-written
recollection. In other stories, the spectre of Arthur Machen rears its
head in a way that duplicates one of Machen's titles -- "The Great God
Pan." For those who might have doubted that David "Rambo" Morrel is a
good horror writer, there's "Orange is for Anguish, Blue is for
Insanity," a fabulously well-written story of something hidden deep
inside the paintings of a tortured artist. Ramsey Campbell makes the
usual excellent contribution and there are notable appearances by
Thomas Tessier and Paul Hazel.
There's never been much doubt that Dennis Etchison is one of the major
figures writing horror today and The Blood Kiss reaffirms it. Joining
forces with illustrator J. K. Potter and designer/publisher Jeff
Conner, he has produced perhaps the best work of "cinematic fiction" of
the 1980's. Paging through this collection of short stories is like
immersing yourself in a terrifying, surreal, minimalist movie. You
begin to suspect that razor blades are hidden between the bindings,
ready to slice the fingers of the unwary reader. The prose is sparse,
the design is simple, elegant and the illustrations are disturbing. As
a total published book package, this is the best buy of the year.
If you're looking to stock your shelf with the best there's no better
place to start than with Arkham House's newest release, A Rendezvous in
Averoigne by Clark Ashton Smith. This volume collects all of the best
writing by this contemporary of H. P. Lovecraft into one omnibus bargain
illustrated by the incomparable J. K. Potter. There aren't many writers
who can survive over time, but this book proves that Clark Ashton Smith
is one of them. This is because his "lapidary prose" is applied to a
humorous brand of horror-fantasy that just can't be duplicated.
In "The Colossus of Ylourgne" a local sorcerer begins to raise the
dead, creating an army of ghouls. But this is not his ultimate goal --
he intends to fuse the flesh of these dead creatures to create a huge,
unstoppable being with which to conquer the kingdoms. Smith infuses his
fantasy with an element of horror that keeps his ornate writing and
fantastic kingdoms from becoming cloying and precious. There's a
knowing, tongue-in-cheek feeling to many of the stories, an element of
self-satire that again keeps this writing from falling victim to the
pitfalls of predictability that turn today's fantasy into literary
bonbons. For those who have never encountered this unique writer's work
this is the key to a thousand worlds, lost in unremembered dreams.
Arkham House has put together a package that will be back-listed for
years to come.
Those who think of horror as a sub-genre of fantasy will doubtless be
pleased with the big-press publication of Faerie Tale by Raymond E. Feist.
In his first horror novel, Feist relocates the Little People from Ireland
to up-scale, upstate New York. One suspects that a horror novel by a
fantasist would be strong on fantastic invention and weak in tension.
Curiously enough, the thriller and tension elements in this novel are
well handled, but the fantasy seems like pallid retreads from the Brothers
Grimm and Arthur Machen. But if your beach reading must be hardback.....
Meet the Hastings, the typical American family -- as pictured in glitzy
TV shows. Phil is a rich writer who's made his million writing some
sort of "Star Wars"-like saga for the movies. He's relocated his family
to this huge, rambling rural house, complete with gargoyles, buried
gold, trap-doors and secret compartments. His twin sons, Sean (the
strong one who becomes sensitive) and Patrick (the sensitive one who
becomes strong) rapidly meet the areas "other" residents. As one "Bad
Thing" after another appears, Barney Doyle, the local Irish drunk and
legend keeper, and Mark Blackman, the local supernatural lore expert,
help Phil and the boys save their souls from a fate worse than death.
Secret societies and shining fairies -- no problem! Broken bargains
with supernatural forces and post- hypnotic suggestion that helps the
characters forget anything that happened -- no problem! But a filthy
rich, happy family that ends up richer and happier -- well, at some
point the reader begins to balk at all that happiness, fairy tale or
no. Unfortunately, after all that relentless page turning, the reader
will probably forget what happened without the aid of post-hypnotic
suggestion. One would hope one's memories of the book would last longer
than the suntan one gets while reading it.
Scare Tactics, another new hardback release from Tor, is the latest
effort by John Farris, who may be recognizable to some readers as the
author of "The Fury," which was made into a better-than-average horror
movie by Brian DePalma. This book serves forth a short story, a
novelette and a short novel, all rather different from one another, and
all gripping reading. "The Odor of Violets" is a short story that
successfully mixes humor and horror, while the novelette "Horrorshow"
pits a rambling psychic against a rural psycho, in a plot-heavy story
that leaps off the pages. In "The Guardians," we have a full-blown
mysterious thriller, set in the deep South, a fast-paced, stripped-down
"All the King's Men." Led by Jack Practice, the governor's aide, we are
plunged into a past of political arm twisting, unreported accidents,
drunken blackouts, illegitimate children, jazz bands, drug dealers,
sequestered slum sculptors and halfway house habitues. It's an expertly
handled, atmospheric thriller, even though the reader does guess fairly
early on who's responsible for the savage violence.
Novels of "obsession" usually feature characters of extremes, and in
the horror genre, characters of extreme violence. With the emergence of
"splatterpunk," there has been a surfeit of high-profile, violent
novels about maniacal killers on blood-soaked sprees. Toplin, by
Michael McDowell is a curious exception to this trend -- not
surprisingly, since it was first released in 1985. In it, collaborators
McDowell and Morris, with the help of Scream publisher Jeff Conner,
have created an unsettling, but low-key and largely non-violent
character whose surreal perceptions will disturb most readers more than
the buckets-of-blood approach that is now so popular.
The novel begins when the narrator is forced from his routine because a
grocery store is closed. As a result, he stumbles into the Baltyk Cafe
and comes into contact with "the most hideous human being I have ever
seen." He decides that he will do her the favor of killing her, and
thus this unsettling novel is set on its meandering way. This is a
novel of obsession, but not grand obsession. In Toplin, the little
rituals of cleaning one's body and one's environment are here examined
under a clear, unsparing magnifying glass. It may be a bit too low-key
and weird for the average horror readers. The disturbing, almost
grating normality is abetted by Harry O. Morris' photo collages and
Jeff Conner's hipper-than-thou design. But these are precisely the
elements that make this a required reading experience for the
aficionados of strange. Like The Blood Kiss, the design of the book is
nearly as important as the prose, and it's an enjoyable book to hold in
one's hands, a book that could not survive the translation into
paperback. The sparse prose by "Beetlejuice" co- writer McDowell is a
pleasure to read aloud. It's not for everyone, but then the limited
supply will ensure that it won't get to everyone. For those who like
the sounds of their own thoughts and their own body, however, this is a
book that will bear repeated listening.
In 1981, Thomas Harris unleashed Red Dragon, easily one of the most
terrifying books of this decade. Seven years later, he's produced a
sequel, The Silence of the Lambs, a book that equals or surpasses Red
Dragon as it evokes both terror of and sympathy for the disturbed
people it portrays.
The Silence of the Lambs brings back some of the best characters from
Red Dragon -- Dr. Hannibal Lecter, evil, insane, utterly brilliant;
Jack Crawford, the tired FBI Division Chief on the edge of retirement;
and Dr. Chilton, the head psychiatrist at the hospital/jail where
Lecter is interned, jealous of Lecter's brilliance, dangerously
incompetent in his lust for recognition. We're introduced to Clarice
Starling, an FBI trainee who is asked to interview Dr. Lecter to gain
his opinions on a series of murders now being committed by a man called
Buffalo Bill. Jack Crawford engineers the interviews, certain that
Lecter will not speak to him, hoping that he might, if presented with a
challenge, speak to Starling. When Buffalo Bill kidnaps another girl, a
fuse is lit on an already explosive situation. What follows is certain
to keep readers awake.
But what we have here is much, much more than another suspense
thriller. Harris, once a crime reporter, writes his book in a plain,
journalistic prose that is sparse, leaving the reader feeling that he
is experiencing an artful documentary. Each character comes alive and
becomes a three dimensional person, even the minor characters who
appear in one scene. Hannibal Lecter becomes, in The Silence of the
Lambs perhaps the most complex, fearful, and sympathetic character ever
to grace the pages of horror, suspense or crime fiction. And Clarice
Starling is a woman worthy of P.D. James: thoughtful, realistic, never
sensationalized. This is, in fact, the strength of this book. It never
stoops to sensationalism or forced artistry. The reader is shown, not
told, the characters' reasons for acting as they do -- we are able to
read between the lines of their dialogue. The occasional touches seem
that more forceful, interspersed as they are. It didn't seem likely
that anyone could improve on Red Dragon as a book to scare and disturb
the reader -- but Thomas Harris has done it himself.
It's been said a million times by people as diverse as H. P. Lovecraft
and Christopher Lee -- "you can't keep a good man down." Lovecraft had
little love for the vampire, but Christopher Lee certainly had enough
fun with it, and the discount racks of your local grocer will soon be
blooming with fresh blood. Pageant Books will present Blood Farm: An
Iowa Gothic by Sam Siciliano. Anyone can see why it'd make Lovecraft
frown and Lee smile... baring his fangs.
Blood Farm has an unpromising beginning, as a girl hitchhiking is
picked up by a dope-smoking ex-veteran driving a hearse on a dark and
snowy night. A series of jokes strike the characters as hilarious but
left me cold. Once it got past this rough spot, though, Blood Farm
plants its tongue firmly in its cheek and lives up to its subtitle,
that is, a "corn-fed gothic," complete with a heroine trapped in a dark
and dangerous place, torn t-shirts (no bodices in the 1970's, the
curious time setting of the novel), tainted priests and flawed
rescuers. Happily, the main character, although a veteran, is no
superman in disguise, and the implementation of the "vampire infection"
is clever and exciting. There's even a mystery woman who is, in fact,
mysterious. The book is easy and fun to read.
----
End of Part 5
