Reasonable if you like horror; amazing if you like pretentious drivel...
|
Volume 18 of the annual "Best New Horror" anthologies edited by Stephen Jones was the only volume of the series that I was able to get hold of, which annoyed me as there were others that looked considerably better than this.
Even so, there are a few good stories here. And I do mean A FEW. I counted five stories that I really enjoyed, out of 24. They were:
- DIGGING DEEP by Ramsey Campbell. It's a horror situation, all right, but dealt with in a fun, black comedy sort of way. I particularly liked the twist ending.
- THE NIGHT WATCH by John Gordon. Not a terribly original story, as it plays on the well-worn themes of The Creepy Museum That Used To Be A Dungeon kind of story, but it's well executed and enjoyable all the same.
- SENTINELS by Mark Samuels. A story about the unnatural creatures that live in abandoned Tube stations. One of the straightest, "pure", horror stories in the collection.
- WHAT NATURE ABHORS by Mark Morris. Unlike the previous reviewer, I really enjoyed this story and found it to be the most frightening in the book. I think what makes it scary is the fact that we really don't know why the events it recounts are happening. They just are. This ambiguity and confusion adds to the fear, in my opinion.
- SOB IN THE SILENCE by Gene Wolfe. This is your classic haunted house story. I liked it because of its familiarity and the fact that it is purely a horror story and little else.
Aside from this, one other story may be worth recommending: MAKING CABINETS by Richard Christian Matheson. This is undoubtedly a horror story...but it's only two pages long. You might as well read it, but don't expect it to be a really worthwhile addition to the collection.
Aside from all this, there were a few stories which were good ideas but which were executed poorly, largely through dull, overly verbose writing. Sticking out in this category were HOUSES UNDER THE SEA by Caitlin R. Kiernan and THEY by David Morrell.
And then we have the stinkers, the pretentious drivel from the title of this review. David J. Schow once again takes a good idea and makes it unreadable in OBSEQUY. I had no idea what THROWN by Don Tumasonis was supposed to be about. Kim Newman's THE MAN WHO GOT OFF THE GHOST TRAIN is the author's usual "tongue-in-cheek" nonsense that shouldn't be in a horror anthology. And THE AMERICAN DEAD by Jay Lake and Joel Lane's MINE are simply not horror stories at all. I have no idea what the point of them is.
Overall, like I said, I did find five or six stories that I enjoyed here. I have given this collection three stars for them. But I really wish I'd been able to get hold of some of the earlier collections, particularly volume 17. I think I would have enjoyed them a lot more.
|
|
Quiet menace and cross-genre rule
|
I was one of only 30 people lucky enough to buy this book a month before it's offical launch at the 31st Fantasycon in Nottingham where the editor Stephen Jones told me in the bar that whereas he could have easily produced two volumes of last year's anthology, this time around he felt there was not a great deal of good stories of a distinctly `horror' nature produced in 2006.
BEST NEW HORROR 18 is an immensely good read, and although its `horrors' may be more subdued than last year's selections, in that respect it strikes a nice counterbalance to volume 17.
(Like everyone I have a `to read' pile, only it isn't. It's a mountain. Despite this I made a point of shunting BEST NEW HORROR 18 to the top of the list; after all, what's the point of having the privilege of getting your hands on an advance copy 5 weeks in advance... and then not reading it until after its official release date!)
But what is horror?
Well, I can't answer that. After all, I'm not an S.T. Joshi or a John Clute and, further, not nearly as well read in the genre as I'd like to be (remember that `to read' mountain? Even when funds are tight, buying the books is the easy part - it's getting the time to read them. Sigh.)
But let's take a stab at it anyway, if only from the ill informed view point of a humble reader.
Even as a teenager during the '80's horror boom, when I first discovered the delights of the dark fantastic, I had little to no interest in movies or TV relating to the horror field. It was always the midlist writers to whom I gravitated: Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Charles L. Grant, Thomas Ligotti, Thomas Tessier and others. Many more, of course, most of whom, although they were all active in the '80's, I didn't personally get around to reading until recently.
The whole bad joke of the Splatterpunk movement was, mercifully, short lived and rightly derided. However, to me, that's all media horror is: sure, I can get as much of a visceral thrill out of, say, Saw or The Descent as anyone, but they leave little impression. As sad looking and `of the moment' as a Greggs bakery Halloween cake seen on the 1st of November.
Old horror was easy, right? It was monsters, surely. Werewolves and vampires and cheap thrills and shocks as celebrated in Creepshow's homage to EC Comics.
But is new horror, then, simply the monsters within us? Absolutely... but as many genre writers emerging from the '80's boom began to realise this, and to write it, they soon became aware - as did their publishers - that what they were now producing were mainstream thrillers. And thus they became marketed as such.
So where does that leave horror as a genre? Last year Clive Barker called for the death of genre distinctions and, indeed, as regards to the horror field at least, this may already have occurred, its `horrific' elements being subsumed into fantasy and the modern day thriller.
Reading BEST NEW HORROR 18 I can see tales which are clearly `horror' stories... others merely `horror' situations.
Horror, for me, are those tales which embody the feel and delicious flavour of that wonderfully archaic word `foreboding'.
A sense of unease while you're reading it. For me that is the distinction. While you're reading it.
Those are the stories.
Sadly, most of BEST NEW HORROR 18 consists of stories which, frankly, read like ordinary mainstream fiction, their `horror' element grafted on during the final few pages. Until then there was no sense beforehand of foreboding or unease.
These are the situations.
True horror stories are as much about the journey as they are about the destination (sometimes it is all about the journey).
This year, I feel, in Stephen Jones's quest to find actual horror genre stories he has succeed, whilst inadvertently choosing stories whose horror is explicit. Physical horror. Indisputable horror.
Horror situations. But not horror stories.
Happily, though, not all...
So, then, "Summer" by Al Sarrantonio is a horror story. No monsters, no sociopaths but a simple scenario (what if the best summer ever never ended?) and imbued with an absolutely delicious sense of unease and foreboding throughout.
When it comes to embodying these principles Ramsey Campbell has justly earned his reputation as the most revered living horror writer since M.R. James. No other writer has so consistently written about the mundane and yet left his readers feeling utterly uncomfortable. (That said, I found The Darkest Part of the Woods (2003) to be all atmosphere and too little substance and certainly didn't share the opinion that it was his best novel in recent years. Ramsey is a master at merely suggesting a horror unseen, The Overnight (2004) being a great case in point to the extend that the `horror' may not even exist outwith the mass hysteria and paranoia of its characters. Woods had none of Overnight's memorable characterisation.)
His "Digging Deep", though, is an enjoy bit of black comedy and no more. It is not representative of his best.
John Gordon's "The Night Watch" is a good story... if submitted by a novice to a writer's group. But the `best' of 2006? Hardly. A clear example of a mainstream story with it's horror only coming at the end.
"The Luxury of Harm" by Christopher Fowler is reminiscent of Joe Hill's "Best New Horror." A little too much so, but still fine for all that.
I felt the same way about Mark Samuel's "Sentinels" as I did about John Gordon's "The Night Watch". This surprised me deeply as his collection The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (2003) is an incredibly strong and worthy addition to the weird tale. "Sentinels" on the other hand reads like a writing assignment.
I like Elizabeth Hand and "The Saffron Gatherers" is a wonderful story, a pleasure to read (it has now been included in three `Best of' anthologies this year). That said, I fail to see how it belongs in BEST NEW HORROR. Yes, in the world of post 9/11 it is a disquieting tale but in this regard very much less so that Stephen King's "The Things They Left Behind" (2005).
I've followed Mark Morris's career from the beginning and although he's not a great writer he is a damned good one. However "What Nature Abhors" is abysmal. Yes, I can see why the editor chose it and not because it's a horror `situation' - indeed is has all the hallmarks of being a great horror story. The problem? The execution. I can only surmise that Mark was trying to affect a certain style of writing here, but the quality of said writing is atrocious: awkward, clunky. Some truly awful syntax. It has been a long time since Mark graced the pages of BEST NEW HORROR, but this is not an auspicious return.
Lyndia E. Rucker's "The Last Reel" had the potential to instill in the reader that sense of foreboding whilst reading it and, parodocially, fails only because the story was so much fun to read! One of those tales that leaves you with a wry grin at the end of it.
Jay Lake's "The American Dead" is both a horror situation and a horror story. Whatever the title may conjure up it's not. It's so much more. A relatively short tale but one which is a delight to discover.
I found nothing scary or truly unsettling in Peter Atkins's "Between the Cold Moon and the Earth" but what I did find was a story which was fascinating to read and to think about afterwards, one in which even to give a hint of it's storyline would spoil it (as you no doubt will not have failed to notice I give no plot summaries here, finding them both boring to read and more so to write: I prefer just to lay down my gut impressions).
Gene Wolfe is a fine and subtle writer and as good and enjoyable as "Sob in the Silence" is it is also his most straightforward story, and as such has no layers to dwell on later. It's horror by numbers. It's a situation. Obviously, though, I'm in the minority: is has been anthologised four times this year.
Nicholas Royle has always been hit or miss for me (his whole fallow '90's slipstream period was a total dud for me) so I entered warily into "Continuity Error" and to my delight found myself reading the anthology's best story since Al Sarrantonio's "Summer". Now, I couldn't actually pin point what exactly it was about this deceptively straightforward tale that pressed my buttons more than some of the others, but as with Lyndia E. Rucker's "The Last Reel" this was a delight to read, the shear pleasure of it negating any sense of unease the writer might have thought he was instilling.
"Dr. Prida's Dream-Plagued Patient" by Michael Bishop is a short and amusing piece of tomfoolery. Good, but short-short fiction tends to have too little substance to linger long for me.
"The Ones We Leave Behind" by Mark Chadbourn, together with Jay Lake's "The American Dead", has the best of both worlds, that of the horror situation and story. Although not as powerful as Lake's story its unease is palpable, the payoff memorable.
Joel Lane, mighty fine and respected author that he is, is too embellished with the old school principles of Andy Cox's The Third Alterative to appeal to my taste. "Mine" is short and fine, some may even find it offensive as the author claims in the intro, but it's taboo subject matter is only hinted at. For a better take on this theme seek out Babara Gowdy's "We So Seldom Look On Love" included in her 1992 collection of the same name.
More than any other writer (even more so than Joe R. Lansdale despite his Drive-In series) David J. Schow brings the best elements of media horror to the literary playing field and "Obesquy" is an unapologetic homage to good ol' horror. The last line is terrific.
Don Tumasonis's "Thrown" exemplifies the worst of horror `situation' fiction: an utterly dull mainstream story with a page of horror at the end.
Caitlin R. Kiernan's "Houses Under the Sea" wouldn't have looked out of place in an SF `Best of'. And that's where it should be. It was an okay story, but something about the writing was strangely uninvolving.
David Morrell. You know him, right? Sure you do - Sly Stallone's Rambo. Good, glad we got that out of the way because I wouldn't expect you to judge him on that any more than you would judge Robert Bloch on Hitchcock's Psycho.
I've never read any of Morrell's novels. I do, however, own his two superlative collections, Black Evening (1999) and Nightscape (2004). He's a superb short story writer and "They" shows him in fine form here. The closing lines are the best in the whole book.
F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre's "The Clockwork Horror" wasn't quite what I expected or hoped for, but for all that the writing captures brilliantly the style of the 1830s in which it is set and is a darn good yarn to boot.
I said earlier that short-shorts don't do it for me. The exception is Richard Christian Matheson, a master of this form, and "Making Cabinets" may be his finest yet. True, the intro helps to set it up, but this is a true horror and one that lingers.
Geoff Ryman can be a little too literary for his own good at times, and although multi-anthology appearances of a story (see Gene Wolfe's "Sob in the Silence") doesn't guarantee a great tale "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter (fantasy)" is deserving of its numerous reprints this year. Here Ryman has all his best attributes on display, whilst leaving his self-conscious literary excesses behind. Quite possibly one of the finest stories of the year.
Unlike Mark Samuels, Glen Hirshberg's "Devil's Smile" more than lives up to his much lauded 2003 collection The Two Sams. This new tale is taken from his latest collection American Morons and although I haven't gotten around to reading it yet I plan to do so soon: two other, different stories from it have already appeared in additional `Best of' anthologies. BEST NEW HORROR 18's best story by far.
It feels as if it's been too long since Kim Newman appeared in this series, but a quick scan of the table of contents of recent volumes shows this not to be true. However, those were short stories and Newman's early appearances were almost all novellas. Well, this time around Kim makes up for his `shorts' in spades with his longest novella appearance yet, a whopping 88 pages! In fine Newman tongue-planted-in-cheek form "The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train" may be short on horror but you'll love this fast-paced, rollicking ride all the same.
Despite Steve Jones's obvious support and admiration for Pete Crowther's magazine Postscripts - and even more so in light of his editorial in the bumper issue 10 - I was surprised to find no stories here representing that fine magazine.
Were there any horror stories worth including? Absolutely! I would have been quite happy to see the likes of Mark Morris's "What Nature Abhors" and Don Tumasonis's "Thrown" dropped and Conrad Williams's "The Veteran" (Postscripts six) Robert J. Jeschonek's "Fear of Rain" (Postscripts eight) and Mary SanGiovanni's "Kins" (Postscripts nine) included instead.
So has the best of horror been subsumed into its sister genre, fantasy? There's a good argument that it has: four of this year's best entries were earlier in the year already included in Night Shade Books inaugural volume of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year edited by Jonathan Strahan.
But that doesn't matter. Call it what you will; the best of modern genre fiction is - and has been for quite some time - that which skilfully crosses over into its neighbour. Mainstream publishers' horror imprints might be dead (Leisure a rare non-small press exception) but it's still out there. And if you don't find it, don't worry.
Stephen Jones will.
I grew up with Steve's anthologies and, despite some misgivings this year, will continue to follow wherever he leads.
|
|
|
United States | 
United Kingdom | 
Canada