Book Review: 'Nightmares' edited by Charles L. Grant

3 / 5 Stars

 

'Nightmares' (256 pp.) was released by Playboy Books in September 1979; the cover artwork is by Alfred Pisano.

According to editor Grant, about half of the entries were written specifically for this anthology. The remainder are tales that were first printed in various 'slick' and digest magazines throughout the 70s.

Charles L. Grant (1942 - 2006) was of course one of the leading practitioners of 'Quiet Horror' in the interval from the late 70s to the late 90s. I always was underwhelmed by Grant's stories, and those of the other Quiet Horror authors that he routinely selected for his anthologies (the 'Shadows' series comes quickly to mind). 

[For an expanded take on Charles Grant's anthologies, readers are directed to the Too Much Horror Fiction blog.]

It goes without saying that Splatterpunks were not tolerated by Grant, and those purveyors of that genre during the 70s (James Herbert comes readily to mind) are absent from this volume.

'Nightmares' is actually a passable anthology. While certainly none of the stories would qualify as hardcore grue n' gore, most of the contributors avoid the Psychological Horror treadmill in favor of more imaginative takes on the horror genre. Whether this is because of Grant's editorial insistence, or happy chance, is unclear.

There are a number of short-short stories. 'Peekaboo' by Bill Pronzini, 'Unknown Drives' by Richard Christian Matheson, 'I Can't Help Saying Goodbye' by Anne Mackenzie, 'Mass Without Voices' by Arthur L. Samuels, 'The Anchoress' by Beverly Evans, and 'He Kilt It With A Stick' by William F. Nolan, all are competent exercises in surprise / shock endings.

Avram Davidson's 'Naples' is, as are all his stories, consciously 'literary', but its atmospheric setting and subdued, but effective, ending, makes it one of the best entries in the collection.

Steven King's contributions to horror anthologies in the 70s and 80s could be hit-or-miss. 'Suffer the Little Children', first printed in 1972, is one of his superior entries. It's an able depiction of unpleasant schoolkids.

Dennis Etchison, a dedicated practitioner of Quiet Horror, provides 'Daughter of the Golden West'. Dealing with high school boys looking into the fate of a missing comrade, 'Daughter' labors under Etchison's opaque prose style. But the tale's final page avoids the ambiguous, deliberately vague endings too common to Etchison stories. This also is one of the better entries in this anthology.

'The Duppy Tree', by Steven McDonald, is a novel take on Jamaica, and its folk mythology. 

'Camps', by Jack Dann, involves a sickly man who has disturbing dreams about a concentration camp. It's an overly contrived effort to construct a psychological horror story around the theme of the Holocaust.

'The Night of the Piasa' by G. W.Proctor and J. C. Green, and 'Snakes and Snails' by J. C. Haldeman II, have a retro, Weird Tales - style pulp sensibility. The former story, in particular, suffers from amateurish prose.

Barry Malzburg's 'Transfer' is an overly wordy examination of the mind of serial killer. 

'Fisherman's Log' by Peter D. Pautz, and 'The Ghouls' by R. Chetwynd - Hayes, take satirical looks at encounters with aquatic, and zombie, monster manifestations, respectively.

'Seat Partner' by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro is not even a horror tale, but rather, an opening chapter from one of her Count St. Germain novels. The inclusion of this fragment in the anthology is a mystery; it could have been that Yarbro was caught at deadline time with nothing ready for editor Grant (there was no such thing as email in 1979, so manuscripts had to be snail-mailed).

'The Runaway Lovers', a old (1967) tale from Ray Russell, is less horror, than a sardonic look at human foibles.

Inevitably for a 70s horror anthology, Ramsey Campbell is present and accounted for. 'Midnight Hobo' starts off well despite Campbell's clotted prose, and, somewhat surprisingly, maintains sufficient momentum to its last sentence to serve as a reasonably decent horror story. 

Treasure it; rewarding Campbell pieces such as 'Hobo', are very few and far between.

Summing up, 'Nightmares' is a decent enough late-70s anthology of horror tales. There are some worthy entries here, that making trudging trough the subpar material worthwhile.

The Horror of G' Zalth by Brocal Remohi

'The Horror of G' Zalth' by Brocal Remohi
from Heavy Metal magazine, September, 1978

Outstanding artwork, and a fun conclusion, define this barbarian / sword and sorcery tale by Spanish artist Jaime Brocal Remohi, who also produced some fine work for Warren's Creepy and Eerie magazines in the early 70s.

 

 

Heavy Metal magazine October 1982

'Heavy Metal' magazine October 1982

The October 1982 issue of Heavy Metal is designed to be a 'horror' - themed issue. While it certainly features a striking front cover by Jim Burns, and a back cover by Alan Lynch, the interior contents are very run-of-the-mill.The truth is, as a 'horror special' the October issue is a disappointment, nothing at all like the memorable  'Lovecraft' special issue of three years previously.

The Dossier section leads off with reviews of new New wave / Punk records; bands such as The Cure, Bauhaus, and New Order are of course recognizable, but when Rok Critic Lou Stathis includes the group 'You've Got Footus On My Breath' as his 'current favorite' band, you know he's trying much too hard to be hip....but then, what else was new.....

The Dossier moves on to discuss awful and obscure horror films - some of these I've never heard of before, and I subscribe to Shock Cinema (!). The 'Spook Shelf' section reviews some horror novels that also seem obscure - perhaps they will show up (or have already been reviewed) at Too Much Horror Fiction.

The Dossier continues with an interview with David Lynch, riding high on the success of the film The Elephant Man, and prepping for the film Dune. The latter, or course, was to be Lynch's Waterloo, but at this moment in time, his future as a director looked limitless.

The Dossier closes with some Science Notes, and some brief reviews of the current crop of video games.

As far as the comic content of this issue of HM, we have new installments of Wrightson's 'Freak Show', Corben's 'Den II', 'The Ape' by Pisu and Manera, 'Yragael' by Druillet, and 'Zora' by Fernandez. There is an essay on modern horror and phobias by Jeff Goldberg, and the third installment in 'The Third Sexual Revolution' series of essays by David Black.

Caza comes through with a colorful strip titled 'The Blind Flock'; I've posted it below.

Book Review: 'Heritage of the Star' by Sylvia Engdahl

3 / 5 Stars

‘Heritage of the Star’ (January 1976, Puffin, 250 pp., cover artist uncredited) was originally published in 1972 in the US under the title ‘This Star Shall Abide’.

‘Heritage’ is one of three volumes in the ‘Children of the Stars’ series, the others being ‘Beyond the Tomorrow Mountains’, and ‘The Doors of the Universe’, all originally published in the early 70s, and all intended for the Young Adult readership.

The trilogy has just this year been re-released in a 600+ page omnibus edition, titled, appropriately enough, ‘Children of the Stars’.

‘Heritage’ is set on an unnamed desert planet that is marginally superior, as a dwelling-place, to Tatooine. The people live hard-working, somewhat threadbare lives centered on an agrarian society operating at a medieval level of technology. The exception to this state of affairs is the walled City, where more advanced technology is centered, and where live members of the Technicians and Scholars castes.

The Technicians travel via landspeeders to the surrounding countryside to apply fertilizer to crops, render drinking water potable, and attend to the ill and injured, among other sundry duties. The Technicians do not share their technological bounty with the populace; metal is scarce, machines rare, and things like books are rarely seen outside the City walls.

The Scholars are remote and mysterious, more like priests than academics. They never venture beyond the courtyard of the front gates of the City, but spend their time inculcating the populace in a belief system revolving around a holy Prophecy, which foretells the advent of a wondrous new era of technological advances and bountiful living, when the ‘Mother Star’ appears in the sky – this at some undetermined point in the future.

Noren is a thoughtful young man living in a village in the hinterland. As the novel opens, his coming of age ceremony is underway, but Noren is dissatisfied with the prospect of marrying his school sweetheart, begetting children, and living out his days as a farmer.

Noren is troubled, even resentful, of the way that the Technicians and Scholars enjoy advanced technology, flitting about the landscape in their speeders even as the Lumpen Proletariat sweatily toil in the fields. Why should the Technicians be allowed the use of machines, when such things better could be used to abolish the drudgery of life in the villages ? Why should books – and by extension Knowledge - be kept within the City, and not distributed to the People ?

Noren even entertains heretical notions: he questions the validity of the Prophecy, and the creed of the Mother Star. Expressing such thoughts aloud can get one killed. But as Noren’s resentment of his lot in life grows, he decides to confront the ruling castes.

By so doing, Noren embarks on a fateful journey that will render him a prisoner of the Scholars, and a witness to the underlying truth of the society that governs life on his planet. The revelations will be cruel and unrelenting – but Noren is adamant that he will not turn back…..

‘Heritage’ belongs to the sub-genre of sf in which a young person risks life and limb to question the inflexible orthodoxy of his or her society – only to find their presuppositions replaced, in a wrenching fashion, by a carefully hidden reality.

Leigh Brackett’s classic novel ‘The Long Tomorrow’ comes most readily to mind as an example of this sub-genre. However, while Leigh Brackett was willing and able to use episodes of overt violence and confrontation to propel her narrative, in ‘Heritage’, author Engdahl takes too deliberate and restrained a tone, and her novel suffers in comparison.

Thus, while the opening chapters of ‘Heritage’ are certainly engaging, the middle portion of the novel tends to lose momentum, as author Engdahl belabors the philosophical exchanges between a defiant Noren and his captors. The climax of the novel – an episode of self-abnegation – is underwhelming, and leaves little room for anything other than a predictable conclusion.

Summing up, ‘Heritage’ is a well-written YA sf novel, and those who are content with a measured, contemplative tone will enjoy reading it.

But I strongly suspect that modern-era YA readers, accustomed to the strong, action-based content of novels such as those in the ‘Hunger Games’ series, will find ‘Heritage’ too sedate to be very rewarding.

'The Barnyard' by Judson Huss 
1986, oil on panel, 27 x 35 cm
from the book River of Mirrors: The Fantastic Art of Judson Huss
Morpheus International, 1996

 

'Punk Zone' by Mike Saenz and Denny Daley
from the October, 1981 issue of Epic Illustrated

A Trace of Memory

Book Review: 'A Trace of Memory' by Keith Laumer

3 / 5 Stars

‘A Trace of Memory’ was published by the Paperback Library in September 1972. The novel is an expansion of a story first serialized in Amazing magazine, over the Summer of 1962.

The provider of the distinctive cover art, which looks like a cross between Boris Artzybasheff and Salvadore Dali, is not identified.

The hero of the story is a man named Legion, and as the novel opens, Legion is down on his luck. In fact, he is contemplating breaking and entering a cigar store for the meager cash stored in its strongbox.

Formerly an Army Intelligence operative, deck hand, casino worker, and lifeguard, Legion now hasn’t a penny to his name, just the clothes on his back.

On the spur of the moment, Legion responds to an advertisement seeking a soldier of fortune. Foster, the man who placed the advertisement, is something of an enigma. While wealthy and well-educated, Foster suffers from amnesia, and he is convinced that alien entities – floating spheres of yellow fire – are out to take his life.

Dismissing Foster as a mental case, Legion is on the verge of returning to a life of vagrancy, when Foster’s house comes under attack by mysterious persons and/or forces unknown.

The two men flee to Miami, where they ponder the cryptic entries written in a diary in Foster’s possession, a diary that may hold the key to his identity.

Legion’s interpretation of the diary contents leads the men to England, to Salisbury plain, and  to the ruins of Stonehenge. There they stumble upon a secret buried in the earth….and a rendezvous with a spaceship dispatched from the other side of the galaxy.

That’s just the start of a journey that will take Legion to a distant planet, and a battle of wills with a race of alien aristocrats who hold the key to Foster’s past, and his future.

‘A Trace of Memory’ is a standard-issue sf novel from author Laumer, part and parcel of a commercially-oriented style of writing that he adhered to throughout his career.

Much like ‘A Plague of Demons’, the narrative is woven from an extended chase sequence that quickly and assuredly takes its protagonist from his oblivious, day-to-day existence on the streets of the city, to a shocked awareness of otherworldly agencies and individuals existing in secret on the planet Earth.

The narrative then moves into deep space, and an unfolding series of ‘cosmic’ revelations and confrontations.

Like most Laumer heroes, Legion handles both the marvels and terrors with a 60s soldier-of-fortune aplomb, never short on timely wisecracks, self-confidence, or brawling skills.

‘A Trace of Memory’ is a quick and easy read. And while I can’t call it outstanding sf literature, there is at least one sequence, involving a disturbing punishment visited upon Legion, that stands out as the highlight of the book.

It’s evidence that even when assembling the rather simplistic, conventional storylines that constituted the bulk of his professional output, Laumer could at times comes up with some memorable prose.

I can’t recommend to modern readers that they go out of their way to find ‘A Trace of Memory’, however, readers with a fondness for old-school sf adventures of the early 60s may want to keep an eye out for it.

'Lover' by John Lakey (writer) and Artifact (illustration)
from Vampirella #103, March, 1982

Its plot borrows more than a little bit from the movie Alien, but the distinctive artwork makes worthwhile this entry from the waning days of the Warren Vampirella franchise.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sabre issue 3

'Sabre' issue 3

Eclipse Comics, December 1982

The first issue of all-new content for 'Sabre' is a disappointment.

'An Exploitation of Everything Dear' opens with a hackneyed contrivance from writer Don McGregor: the phantasmagorical 'hallucinaton' sequence. This was over-used by McGregor when he wrote for Marvel's Killraven series. Here, it again seems like a contrivance, an excuse for a provocative cover: Sabre's girlfriend is trying to slice him up with a knife ? Wow....I need to purchase this comic book right away !

Paul Gulacy, who provided excellent artwork for the first two Sabre issues, is replaced by Bill Graham, whose artwork is mediocre, at best. Here's a three-page segment featuring the cowboy antics of Governor Slaughter....

 

The best part of issue three is not the Sabre component, but actually the 8-page 'backup' strip, featuring Sabre's sometime comrade-in-arms 'Blackstar Blood'. 

In this adventure, Blackstar winds up paying a gruesome price for being a lothario...the distorted artwork and cramped panel composition have a definite 'retro' feel to them, reminiscent of a comic book from the 40s......