Something I've commented on previously is the degree to which both horror and fantasy went underground from the 1950s through the 1960s. To really figure out what was happening, the best place to go is the now-obscure anthologies I conceived this feature for. After kicking things off with the Helen Hoke YA horror anthologies, the natural next step was the series regularly cannibalized in those books, the infamous Pan Book of Horror Stories, which Ramsey Campbell famously commended as "illiterate, disgusting and meritless".
For my experiences, I became aware of this series gradually. I started paying attention when I looked into a story called "The Ski Lift", very suspiciously similar to Frozen. Another line of inquiry that went in that direction was research on Gef the Mongoose, during which I learned of a potentially related story called "The Tunisian Talking Ferret" by Harry Turner (see the Gef blog). It was the latter that finally convinced me to buy one of the damn things, with great reservations. It turned out what I was looking for was in volume 16 of the series, which was warning enough especially since that still was barely halfway through the total run. I then ordered it online for a mid-range price typical for the series, not so high that only a collector would pay but not so low that one can simply build up a collection for casual reading. What quickly became clear was that I had had good reason to be cautious.
In my little volume, the central exhibit is certainly the entry from Turner, a moderately noteworthy author who published much of his output in this series. It's about a traveler who witnesses a talking animal on the streets of a North African city, and decides to try to find out the secret. It's hackwork, but the kind that works, with some nicely understated grue and a colonialist vibe that's on the deconstructed side of such things. It all leads to a mad doctor who would make Megavolt and the villain from Wild, Wild Planet politely change seats. The one real surprise is that it ends in a stock last-minute rescue rather than what would already have been an equally formulaic "dark" ending. As an extra foot note, this and a number of other Pan contributions were included in a now-expensive 1978 collection of Turner's work with the mindboggling title The Man Who Could Hear Fishes Scream (honest!). I managed to find and read the title story, and have respectfully declined to cover any more of his fiction.
Returning to the collection, I'm honestly not sure how much more of this thing I even read. What's by far the most interesting thing about the collection is the mix of genres, including a number of entries that are science fictional at face value. It's further apparent that many trends in the US did not extend to Britain or Europe, including the separation of horror from "respectable" science fiction and fantasy. For the individual stories, the ones that interested me enough to make an impression were "The Eve of the Wedding", one of several contributions to the series by Maureen O'Hara, and "Revolt of the Ant People" by one Lavan E. Coberley. The former is a giallo-style crime/ psychological horror piece that relies on mental illness and amnesia for its posited twists. The latter is obviously a science fiction piece, actually just about more or less normal-sized ants on a rampage on the vein of Phase IV. It's all kinds of not good, yet entertaining and unconceited. The rest I'm sure I read before I started this post will not be dignified with comment, though I will be getting to one more.
Returning to the bigger picture, the series went on for a total of 30 volumes, from 1959 to 1989, with the vast majority edited by Herbert Van Thal. The first few volumes were mainly reprints of "literary" horror and fantasy, including both Victorian/ gothic writers like Bram Stoker and H.G. Wells and modern talent like Jack Finney, Nigel Kneale and Muriel Spark. Later volumes shifted to original fiction and "new" writers, including some genuine rising stars like Joan Aiken and many more who may or may not have ever published again. Some volumes were republished in the US, along with certain individual stories that were reprinted in anthologies. By all accounts, quality declined over time, though fans seem to argue how soon and fast it happened. My guess is that past the initial wave of reprints, the quality probably didn't change that much. What it did surely provide was an outlet for new material, especially in the 1960s. The writing on the wall would have been when Stephen King and certain other authors started taking horror back into classy venues. Once the real talent had other places to go, Pan would have been in the same position as much of its fiction, halfway between old and new.
Meanwhile, I recently managed to find a couple more of these collections in downloadable form, which in turn gave me a better sense of the real tone of the series. These were the 8th and 10th volumes, which contained certain stories I had previously taken an interest in. Here's an overview of the more interesting stories.
"The Growth" by Bruce Lowery (8th volume)- This was another thread that led me to this series, a story with a similar plot to The Manitou. It's by an author who published mainly in French and evidently for the "YA" market, now best known for the 1960 novel La Cicatrice. It's laid out as a science fiction piece, complete with a postulated future history that includes a "Canado-American War". Otherwise, this is straight-up body horror, recounting the ordeal of the narrator's mother as she is afflicted by a mysterious mass that seems to take on a life of its own as it grows and finally absorbs her. Naturally, she proves to be the first casualty of an epidemic. There's a good sense of clinical detail as the top men of science and medicine examine the inexplicable malady. However, as with many entries in these books, it's surprisingly tame even for the time. My favorite line cements its status as self-dated relic: "It all began in the dreadful year 2021..."
"The Ski Lift" by Diane Buttenshaw (10th volume)- I already covered this one in my Frozen review (as I headlined, not the Disney movie), so I won't go into it further. I will, however, include an excerpt I previously posted only in a usenet discussion, where one of the characters actually tries the clothes-as-rope escape: "Klaus felt his way down, the material stretching and awkward in his grasp. He could feel the knot beginning to give way. He would have to jump now; to let go as he reached the end of his rope before it broke. The ground couldn't be all that far. He let go, falling, falling, far farther than he had expected. The rocks hit him in a blinding, smashing, flaming sheet of pain..."
"The Ringing Tone" by John Christopher (10th volume)- This could be the most interesting and impressive entry I've read, by another author otherwise best known for YA fiction, this time the classic Tripods trilogy. It's a short, uncomfortable tale of an outwardly respectable, not-quite-elderly veteran who makes obscene phone calls to fill his time. Things get stranger and more awkward than they already were when he calls up a woman with her own secrets to share. It's not "really" horror, just a tableau of the dysfunctionality of urban life, but then, you could say the same thing about Duel.
"The Morning Echo" by Giles Gordon (16th volume)- This was a pleasant surprise while I was looking through my hard-copy volume, a polished borderline SF/ fantasy story about tomorrow's newspaper, by an evidently prolific genre author. It would have been at home (and rather routine) in the pages of Unknown. The only real twist is that there is no twist, but like Christopher's contribution, it rises to the level of pointed satire, complete with a prescient glimpse of the overinformed yet oblivious media consumer.
And while I'm at it, here's the covers of the other two volumes, somehow exactly what you'd expect British 1960s horror to be...
What, can't a guy have pets?
With that, I'm wrapping this up. For me, this whole misadventure was all a snapshot of a period people are already forgetting. That's why I have always loved anthologies. They gather stories from the past and the present, and then they endure in their own right, old, self-dated, yet occasionally with enough punch to incite a book burning if anyone was paying attention. It may be going out of fashion in the age of the internet, but there will always be a place on my shelves for a pokey old story collection. That's all for now, more to come!
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