Driven to Madness With Fright: Further Notes on Horror Fiction [N.F. - Essays, Literature, Horror] by Joshi S. T

Author:Joshi, S. T. [Joshi, S. T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Literature, Horror, Fantasy
ISBN: 9781540770806
Google: -egSMQAACAAJ
Amazon: 154077080X
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2016-12-01T00:00:00+00:00

A Smorgasbord of Weird

It is often forgotten how radically the anthology has evolved in our field. A look at Mike Ashley’s monumental Supernatural Index (1995) reveals that, from the time the first “horror” or “weird” anthology appeared in the early nineteenth century until about 1980, the overwhelming majority of such volumes consisted of reprints of previously published material—whether it be Christine Campbell Thomson’s cullings from pulp magazines like Weird Tales or the diligent scouring of obscure works and authors by Peter Haining, Hugh Lamb, Michel Parry, and others.

The original anthology—the anthology that contained previously unpublished material—was virtually unheard of: aside from the pioneering Ghost Book anthologies of Cynthia Asquith (1927–55), such books were largely unknown before Kirby McCauley edited his landmark Dark Forces in 1980. That volume, coming in the midst of the horror boom, contained superb original material by such leading writers as T. E. D. Klein, Robert Aickman, and Stephen King. Charles L. Grant’s Shadows anthologies (1978–91) established a notable reputation for featuring “quiet” horror.

Still more rare, before 1980, was the theme anthology—the volume that contained stories devoted to a single theme or motif. Once again, what volumes there were of this sort consisted largely of reprints—and, moreover, were of such relatively broad scope (consider Haining’s The Satanists [1969], consisting of tales of black magic) that the likelihood of monotony or repetition were markedly reduced.

For the last several decades, however, we have been inundated with a plethora of ever more esoteric original theme anthologies, some of which are so arcane and narrow that it would seem difficult for the hapless authors commissioned to write for them to produce anything radically different from the work of their compatriots. In part this development is the result of the relative demise of the horror magazine, so that the original anthology has, in effect, become one of the few venues where original fiction can appear with anything like regularity. Whether this is a good state of affairs for the field in general is a question I cannot presume to address here.

I don’t imagine that Lois H. Gresh—who has contributed to her share of original themed anthologies—is making a deliberate protest against such volumes and in favour of more open-ended books, but Dark Fusions (PS Publishing, 2013) certainly throws down a kind of gauntlet to overly schematic theme anthologies. In her brief introduction she declares her unwavering devotion to weird fiction, which she declares “lies on the boundaries of horror, fantasy, and science fiction.” She goes on to say that the stories in the book “fuse all the elements of dark fiction. Some are pure horror, some are science fiction, others are weird tales, and yet others are fantasies.” This is about as adequate a description of Dark Fusions as anyone could want, and the breadth of theme, mood, and approach is one of its most refreshing aspects.

Dark Fusions contains eighteen stories—a good many of them excellent, others quite good but with a few drawbracks, and a (very) few that to my mind are inferior and probably should not have been included.

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