Stephen Jones & David A. Sutton (eds) – Dark Voices 6: The Pan Book of Horror

Stephen Jones & David A. Sutton (eds) – Dark Voices 6: The Pan Book of Horror  (Pan, 1994)

 

 

Louis Rey

Mark Timlin – What Are They Doing in the Hyacinth House?
Nicholas Royle – The Trees
David Case – The Cannibal Feast
Kathe Koja & Barry N. Malzberg – Modern Romance
Tom Cullen – The Longest Kiss
Sherry Coldsmith – The Accomplice
John Brunner – Written Backwards
Hugh B. Cave – Just Another H.P.L. Horror Story
Peter Valentine Timlett – Flies
J. L. Comeau – Siren
Geoff Smith – The Punch-Line
Norman Partridge – Spyder
W. Elizabeth Turner – Golgotha
C. Bruce Hunter – The Travelling Salesman Scores Again
Daniel Fox – Where It Roots, How It Fruits
Nancy Holder – As Green as Hope Itself
Michael Marshall Smith – The Fracture
Lisa Morton – Sane Reaction
Kim Newman – Where the Bodies Are Buried II: Sequel Hook

Blurb:
THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD AND BRITISH FANTASY AWARD NOMINATED SERIES

THE PAN BOOK OF HORROR presents TODAY’s Masters Of Terror

For 35 years THE PAN BOOK OF HORROR has turned the blood in your veins to red ice. In this latest chilling collection, horror’s masters of menace and the talents of tomorrow gather together to bring you face-to-face with your worst nightmares …
MULTIPLE PERSONALTIES … MYTHIC TERRORS MEXICAN GHOSTS … MAN-EATING PLANTS…MEDICAL EXPERIMENTS … METAMORPHOSIS… MURDER…. MANIACS …. MAGGOTS and much more

In DARK VOICES 6 the reign of terror continues.

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell – Best New Horror 4

Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell (eds.) – Best New Horror 4 (Robinsons, Carroll & Graf, Nov. 1993)
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Stephen Jones & Ramsey Campbell – Introduction: Horror In 1992

Scott Edelman – The Suicide Artist
Roberta Lannes – Dancing On A Blade Of Dreams
Clive Barker – The Departed
Poppy Z. Brite – How To Get Ahead In New York
John Brunner – They Take
Lisa Tuttle – Replacements
Graham Joyce – Under The Pylon
Thomas Ligotti – The Glamour
John Gordon – Under The Ice
Joel Lane – And Some Are Missing
Les Daniels – The Little Green Ones
Steve Rasnic Tem – Mirror Man
Sarah Ash – Mothmusic
Karl Edward Wagner – Did They Get You To Trade?
Nicholas Royle – Night Shift Sister
Simon Ings & M. John Harrison – The Dead
Christopher Fowler – Norman Wisdom And The Angel Of Death
Kim Newman – Red Reign
Peter Atkins – Aviatrix
Ian R. MacLeod – Snodgrass
Kate Wilhelm – The Day Of The Sharks
M. John Harrison – Anima
Douglas E. Winter – Bright Lights, Big Zombie
Peter Straub – The Ghost Village

Stephen Jones & Kim Newman – Necrology

In their introduction, the editors refer to 1992 as the year of the vampire but, judged on this selection at least, there was also a trend for festooning your horror fiction with pop culture references. Rog has already tackled several of these on a Giant Book Of Terror thread, but no harm in having another go. As Nemo Skagg would say, “It’s all bollocks anyway”. So, to bollocks.

Douglas E Winter – Bright Lights, Big Zombie: “Miami is gone, carpet-bombed back into swampland … Food riots in Boston and Providence … A news team in Palm Springs got footage of what looks like a zombified Tom Cruise, his buttocks chewed away but otherwise intact ….”

Black Wednesday was the day the zombies rose from their graves to re-enact The Night Of The Living Dead for real, great news for horror fans until all zombie and cannibal films were banned outright by the state, leading to a flourishing underground trade in badly recorded pirate copies of Cannibal Holocaust, Eaten Alive, Trap Them And Kill Them, etc.

We follow the adventures of a horror magazine editor as he and his colleagues try and acquire more stock and keep their glossy going in the face of police harassment. When they’ve bought up everything available, the logical next step is to make their own flesh eating films. How timely that the living dead version of Miranda, the only woman our hero ever loved, should show up as they’re filming a live zombie massacre. Well, she always wanted to be in the movies.

This one references John Lydon, P.I.L.’s This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get, Billy Graham (still leading candlelight prayer vigils!), the Forbidden Planet chain and Oingo Boingo.

Christopher Fowler – Norman Wisdom And The Angel Of Death: “I would like to say that he died in order to make the world a safer, cleaner place, but the truth is that we went for a drink together and I killed him in a sudden fit of rage because he had not heard of Joyce Grenfell. How the Woman Who Won The Hearts Of The Nation in her thrice-reprised role as Ruby Gates in the celebrated St. Trinians films could have passed by him unnoticed is still a mystery to me.”

Stanley Morrison, a Hospital Visiting Friend in the employ of Haringey Council, readies his patients for death by instructing them on the history of radio shows and Brit films from the ‘fifties and ‘sixties and those who starred in them. If that doesn’t bore them into the next word, his tampering with their intravenous drips certainly does. Morrison’s dark secrets are exposed when he takes in the wheelchair-bound diabetic and nosey parker Saskia who, despite sharing his fondness for Norman Wisdom, Tony Hancock, Hattie Jacques, the divine Joyce & co., frowns on his mass murdering tendencies. Do you suppose Harold Shipman added names to his ‘to do’ list on the grounds they weren’t au fait with Carry On Again Doctor? And what did Haringey council ever do to our Chris to upset him so?

Karl E. Wagner – Did They Get You To Change?: Nemo Skagg, former lead singer with hugely influential punk band Needle (Excessive Bodily Fluids, The Coppery Taste Of Blood, etc.), is now a grimy down and out alcoholic, cadging cigs and 10p’s with the best of us. Ryan Chase, a good natured American portrait artist, generously funds their pub crawl from Bloomsbury through to Kensington Market in return from Skagg’s story of “where it all went wrong”. Finally, in the squat-cum-vault that Skagg has made his “home”, Ryan learns that the fallen idol is one star who never forgot his loyal fans, particularly the dead ones.

Name-checks include Sid Vicious & Nancy Spungeon, Betty Page, Brian Jones, Elvis, several dead rock and film stars and Tennant’s Super.

Nicholas Royle – Night Shift Sister: Record shop owner Carl finds a map in the street and is henceforth haunted by a teenage goth whose face is a perfect composite of his heroine, Siouxsie Sioux and his former partner, Christine. She lures him to his doom by means of a white label pressing of … a gasholder in action. Royle works plenty of Banshee lyrics and titles into his prose – “His stomach went into a slow dive. But it was love in a void …” etc – which some may find inspired. My eyes just shot to the ceiling. Intriguing supernatural mystery or smarmy horror with way too many ‘O’ levels? You decide …

See the Vault of Evil Best New Horror 4 thread

Chris Morgan – Dark Fantasies

Chris Morgan (ed.) – Dark Fantasies: New Tales Of Psychological And Supernatural Terror (Legend, 1989)

Introduction: No Slime, No Chainsaws – Chris Morgan

Brian Stableford – The Will
Gary Kilworth – Usurper
Stephen Gallagher – Life Line
A. L. Barker – Charley
R. M. Lamming – Candle Lies
Ian Watson – Tales From Weston Willow
David Langford – The Facts In The Case Of Micky Valdon
Freda Warrington – Shine For Me
Christopher Evans – Lifelines
John Brunner – Dropping Ghyll
Tanith Lee – Don’t Get Lost
Nicholas Royle – Archway
Ramsey Campbell – Being An Angel
Chris Morgan – Interesting Times
Lisa Tuttle – Skin Deep
Brian Aldiss – Three Degrees Over

Chances are, if you’re anything like me, when you read the title of Morgan’s introductory essay – No Slime, No Chainsaws – you’ll react with derisive sneers of “snob horror!” Don’t be deterred by the seemingly anti-splatterpunk stance, however, as this is an excellent Brit Horror anthology and, happily, far from free of bloody mayhem.

Brian Stableford – The Will: Helen returns to the sticks for her father’s funeral to be met with the inevitable barrage of veiled threats and abuse from her loathsome family. This turns to sheer hatred when the will is read and she is left “the remainder of my estate.” Why? All is revealed in a spectacularly unpleasant ending.

Gary Kilworth – Usurper: Franz Culper is upstaged by his shadow in everything it does. It is more efficient at his job, steals his friends, makes love to his wife and locks him out of his home. Driven to desperation, Franz decides on desperate measures to finally get one up on the usurper …

Stephen Gallagher – Life Line: Ryan is convinced he’s spoken to his dead fiance, Belinda, on a mysterious chat-line. His phone bill should be astronomical, but the calls haven’t been registered. He determines to discover the whereabouts of those who run the service and, of course, Belinda, a suicide whose “badly decomposed body washed up on a beach in Holland. The effects of the long immersion had been compounded by the attentions of various kinds of marine life and at least one encounter with a boat propeller.”
Scary and brilliant, and about as funny as a tale containing the lines “I’ve learned one thing. Everything you love, you lose. Everything” can be.

David Langford – The Facts In The Case Of Micky Valdon: Avowed skeptic disproves Valdon’s degeneration into “150 pounds of plump, artificially reared maggots”, as “two professional magicians can now duplicate this trick onstage.” Amongst his far from convincing evidence, he cites a former crony of the deceased’s “great merriment at a reminiscence of Valdon once dropping a wet fish down the front of an unpopular barmaid’s dress” to prove the man was nothing but a practical joker.

Ian Watson – Tales From Weston Willow: Three short stories narrated by Mrs. Prestige in “The Wheatsheaf Inn.” The first deals with cross-country runner, Charlie Fox, who sabotages the hunt and pays a heavy price for his sins. In the second story, Paul and Ruth won’t believe the former vicarage is the centre of the universe … until they’re given appalling proof. Finally, three villagers pretend to be deaf, dumb and/ or blind as they attempt to cheat their way to victory in the County inner-village quiz.

Nicholas Royle – Archway : From the day she moves into her North London flat, Bella is haunted by the scornful laughter of an old, grey faced tramp she’s see on the street. She is unfairly dismissed from her job, encounters the red-tape horrors of the DSS and faces eviction. Finally …

Tanith Lee – Don’t Get Lost: Sally and her boyfriend find it impossible to leave a council estate as the streets keep changing. They break into a house and the boyfriend discovers three headless corpses: it’s as if a giant spider has ensnared and then eaten its prey …

Chris Morgan – Interesting Times: Keith blows £95.50 when he answers an advertisement which promises to “let excitement into your life.” shortly afterward, he receives a note acknowledging receipt of his cheque and informing him he’s just been ripped off. He loses his job, wife, home (as do so many characters in Dark Fantasies) and is mugged, hospitalized, and framed for drug possession. There’s only one way to make it stop.