The Anthology Anthology: 1980s/ '90s Horror Anthologies

 

It's the last week before Halloween, and I decided it was time to do another anthology post. This time, I have two horror anthologies, one from 1984 and one from 1992. Fittingly, one is from a well-regarded anthologist and scholar while the other is sketchy on who if anyone put it together. To kick things off, here's the newer, more prestigious and much fatter book.

This is an anthology called Foundations of Fear by the respectable David G. Hartwell, published in 1992 by TOR, with a total of 660 pages plus the introduction, table of contents and other odds and ends. It's everything you would expect from the kind of horror anthology that peaked around the 1980s: Spanning decades; full of works by famous new and old names; and so massive you could use it as bludgeon to fight off the undead. A little more unusually, this isn't just short stories, either. The contents includes the entirety of Lovecraft's "At The Mountains Of Madness", and with this book's format and print size, even that is only a little over 60 pages. While I'm at it, here's the back.

As for the contents, this book is as close as you can get to an anthology that's a classic in its own right. What impressed me since I first discovered it in the public library is that there is almost as much science fiction as there is supernatural horror. Besides Lovecraft, there is "Who Goes There?" by John Campbell, the basis for The Thing, "Sandkings" by George R. R. Martin, and stories by Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Silverberg, Frederik Pohl and Philip K. Dick (see my post on the PKD collected works). Then there are a fair number of less classifiable pieces, like "Duel" by Richard Matheson (see my review of the movie). Then there is plenty of "modern" horror, some good (see below) and some unpleasant.

As usual, what really makes this collection interesting is the obscure stuff, and Hartwell has done a good job covering his bases. Two of the most impressive come early and back to back, the Victorian tale "The Little Room" by Madeline Yale Wynne and "The Shadowy Street" by Jean Ray. Both read as much like urban fantasy as horror (the latter more so), with reality-bending themes and vibes that feel like what might have been if Philip K. Dick had gone into fantasy instead of science fiction. Another semi-obscure story is "Longtooth" by Edgar Pangborn, of all things a Bigfoot tale. It's a fine piece I'm not sure if I ever read more than once but vividly remember; unfortunately, its strangeness is a good indicator of why the polished and well-regarded author never managed to be more than a peripheral figure in 1950s/ '60s science fiction. Perhaps the best in the collection is "The Entrance" by Gerald Durrell, an author otherwise known for humorous science and travel writing, published in 1980. It's another tale close to what I would count as fantasy, about a mirror whose reflections don't quite match our world. It starts out like Alice And Wonderland and ramps up into cinematic horror, with a willfully villainous undead entity so gruesome I have honestly wondered if the author had been influenced by any of the 1970s zombie movies.

Now it's getting late and I need to get through the rest of this quickly. It's titled Chamber of Horrors and bears the publisher name Gallery Books and the year 1987. However, the copyright is 1984 from Octopus Books, an outfit I definitely have at least one other collection from. Based on this sample, their hallmarks were anonymous editors, dodgy copyright documentation and very mixed quality. Then there's the cover (virtually the same front and back), which has a certain charm. Here's a couple pics.

For the contents, the emphasis is on "classics" that would have been either in public domain or in the hands of an estate. The highlights of these are "The Red Lodge" by deconstructionist-Gothic master H.R. Wakefield, whom I first encountered of old in the alleged Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, and William Hope Hodgson's "The Derelict", which I had in mind reviewing Horror of the Zombies. Other big names include Ambrose Bierce, W. W. Jacobs, Guy De Maupassant and H.P. Lovecraft himself. Outliers include "The Bird" by Thomas Burke, originally part of his racially charged Limehouse Nights, and "A Woman Seldom Found" by William Sansom, a 1950s tale of love gone awry that has ended up on public domain sites. Of course, there is representation from the middle to low end of the modern era, including a science fictional but very horrific piece "Edifice Complex" by Robert Bloch (see also "No Way Home" by Bryan Lumley, briefly mentioned in my Death Bed review), Stephen King's unbooked early tale "Night of the Tiger", "Wood" by Robert Aickman, "Royal Jelly" by Roald Dahl, and "Back From The Grave", a buried-alive tale by Robert Silverberg. The high point on the modern end is "The Wall" by Robert Haining, apparently originating from the Pan Book of Horror Stories series, a Kafkaesque absurdist piece about a young man who finds himself bricked up in his own apartment. Dishonorable mention goes to "The Cradle Demon" by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, a truly vile, tasteless and misogynistic tale that I will admit is impressive in its own way.

With that, I'm wrapping this up. This has been perhaps brief and definitely more random than usual. But that's the appeal of anthologies. I can definitely say that both these books have impacted my tastes, my own writing and my life. That's enough to call it a night. That's all for now, more to come!

Futures Past: A return to Philip K. Dick

 It's the end of an off week, and I've been debating how to round things out. I decided it was time to follow up on a post from a while ago, on Philip K. Dick. Last time, I was looking at two particular Philip K. Dick anthologies, one of which I admitted ridiculously limited familiarity with. This time, I'm back for a rematch, with a marginally better grasp of what I'm talking about, and I'll be going through in more detail some of the best, most interesting and in some cases most frustrating stories from Philip K. Dick, starting with some from the first volume of his collected stories.

"Beyond Lies The Wub"- This one is best known as Dick's first publication, in the July 1952 issue of the notorious Planet Stories (the source for the image above). Last time, I allowed it as a "classic" with obvious reservations; now, I'm ready to admit I was still doing it a disservice. An expedition to Venus buys a creature called a Wub from the natives, which looks like local livestock. It proves to be an intelligent and very talkative creature that wanted to come along. Alas, the captain wants to kill the creature, not because it's a potentially dangerous organism that might have ulterior motives, but because he wants to eat it. It doesn't sound like much from a synopsis or even a casual reading; on closer examination, however, it's an early glimpse of Dick in top form and an unnerving tale to boot. This is true tragedy and horror, where the comic twists only add to the perversity of the proceedings.

"The Skull"- Possibly the first Dick tale to deal with religion, and already showing his uneasy relationship with Christianity. A convict is offered a pardon in return for killing the founder of a cult, centuries in the past. The best that can be said is that this probably didn't seem as obvious in 1952.

"The Defenders"- And this gives us an even more definitive Philip K. Dick "twist", except that the big reveal is that things are a lot better than they seem. Humans in underground bunkers rely on robots to continue fighting a war that has wiped out the surface world, but the machines are reluctant to let them back in the loop. It's an interesting take on artificial intelligence, but it just doesn't feel quite right for Dick.

"The Piper In The Woods"-  A psychologist is sent to investigate why the staff of an outpost on another planet keep deserting. It's subversion even more harmless than "The Defenders"; next...

"Meddler"- And another time travel tale. A top secret project has been looking into the future, but when the future keeps looking worse, they must send someone to the future to learn the fate of humanity. What starts as a fascinating and forward-thinking take on history, fate and the observer effect ends as a routine monster yarn. The only surprise is that Dick couldn't do better.

"To Serve The Master"- Now I'm into The Philip K. Dick Reader with one I mentioned last time. Centuries after an apocalyptic war that most have forgotten a young man discovers a damaged robot during his errands for his impoverished colony. The bot tells him of a time when machines did the work and let humans live in luxury, until killjoys decided to do away with robots. Finally, the boy helps repair the bot, only to discover that his elders have been keeping back the other side of the story. I have rated this one highly because its exceptional brutality and an especially sympathetic protagonist, but it's another tale that feels just a little off. To me, it feels like a rare occasion where Dick let his antiauthoritarian leanings overcome the natural directions of a story. As usual, there is one side that is clearly lying and one side that could still be wrong. The problem is that there is no logical reason for the side that won to be silent until it is possibly too late, beyond the fact that it provides a dilemma for the hero.  What's disappointing is that in a Dick story, the police, politicians and other authority figures are normally sincere and rational even if they are in the wrong. Worse the outward plot convenience undermines the very themes that set it in his body of work. The point of propaganda is that you don't just keep your side from hearing an opposing view; you tell your version first and loudly and often thereafter. Dick of all people knows this better than anyone. Without that anchoring reality, it's little if anything more than a poignantly beautiful misfire.

"Exhibit Piece"- A nice one I don't believe I had read until after my original post. A man living the Eisenhower suburban dream starts to see signs that his world isn't what it appears to be, and he just might know more about it than he admits to himself. This is a satirical tale that feels all the more savage in light of the surge of 1950s nostalgia around the time of Dick's posthumous renaissance, now fading into more distant memory. It also offers an apt window on the overlapping worlds of collectors, model builders, and history enthusiasts, always in uproar over minutiae at the expense of deeper truth.

"War Veteran"- A visitor from the future arrives amid tensions between Earth and colonies on other planets, telling a tale of a war that will end in disaster for Terra. This is another Dick tale with a happy ending that is poorer for it. Given his known clashes with at least one editor, that might well be the case. Even allowing for that, I suspect that this is one that the author didn't know what to do with. On top of that, it's definitely longer than it needed to be.

"Shell Game"- Now this is what counts as a good and fun Dick story. The shipwrecked descendants of a starship crew are ever vigilant against attacks from Earthmen sent to bring them home, even though they never seem to find conclusive prove that the invaders were real at all. Meanwhile, a search of the wreck reveals that its original destination was a colony dedicated to treating the insane. It's an absurd yet intriguing premise, engaging characters, and dialogue that "works" even if it's not particularly good, in short, everything Dick was about.

"Explorers We"- Moving on from the stories in the collections I discussed last time, this just might be the most completely despairing of all the author's stories. The first expedition to Mars returns to Earth, but nobody is happy to see them. At face value, it's almost routine for Dick, yet very effective and even more vicious than "To Serve The Master". The imitation humans believe they are human, the humans won't believe they are anything but a threat, and everything that we see is certain to happen again.

"Holy Quarrel"- Just one more, and one of my personal favorites. The nuclear arsenal of the United States is under the control of a computer whose judgment is unquestioned, until it directs an attack on our own soil. The only apparent explanation is, it doesn't like gumball machines. What's truly amazing is that this 1966 story was written relatively late in Philip Dick's career and arguably at the very end of his term as a regular contributor to science fiction magazines.  Just when he was winning highbrow respect with his novels, he took the time to write a tale as completely silly as this. Hey, you gotta be you.

That just leaves the question, where does all this fit in whatever I've hoped to do with this particularly misbegotten feature? To me, there is a "myth" of Philip K. Dick that I cannot find in his actual work. Pop culture has wanted to make Dick an intellectual, a prophet and a visionary, which he was by all means, but not a fallible writer who could be wrong, dated or just goofing off. I tie this especially to the fact that his fame has rested on his novels rather than his stories. Make no mistake, his short fiction is absolutely great, yet it is unquestionably a product of the 1950s-'60s pulp market. That, in turn, should never have been a bad thing, and probably wasn't except to the brand of self-conscious, self-doubting sophisticates who wanted science fiction to be in but not of mainstream pop culture. I hope my lineup will provide just a little more perspective. (While I'm at it, here's a couple links for others' reviews, on "To Serve The Master" and "Holy Quarrel" respectively.) That's all for now, more to come!

Image credit American Literature.