The Year's Best Horror Stories 11

INTRODUCTION One from the Vault

While in the process of preparing my notes for The Year’s Best Horror stories: Series XI, I read my way through all 29 issues of the classic E.C. horror comic book, The Vault of Horror. No, not the originals, some of which are literally worth their weight in gold, but the awesome five-volume hardcover boxed set published this past year by Russ Cochran. Cochran’s production values are mind-boggling: the facsimile edition is larger than the original comic pages, reprinted (from the original art, I gather) in black and white on heavy stock (the boxed set weighs some seven pounds) with all covers reproduced in full color, and pertinent commentary accompanying each issue. Truly a labor of love, and intended to last for centuries. Further, this is but one such boxed set out of a continuing project to reprint all the E.C. New Trend and New Direction comic books in this permanent format.

Why all this attention lavished upon a comic book? For any of several good reasons. The E.C. magazines were special. Just as the (at the time equally denigrated) pulp magazine, Weird Tales, was state-of-the-art horror during the 1930s, so were the E.C. horror comics in the early 1950s. Plots as a rule followed the formula of poetic justice through supernatural retribution, often served up with a dose of black humor and inevitably with lots of grue and gore. By 1955 pressure from outraged citizens’ groups, who had positively linked such comic books to juvenile delinquency, moral decay and communism, brought an end to the E.C. horror comics and their less sophisticated but equally gruesome imitators. Fortunately, not before the young minds of many of today’s horror writers (your editor included) had been hopelessly warped.

Where, I hear you ask, might one discover state-of-the-art horror of the 1980s? As the Vault-Keeper would have said: “Heh, heh! Well, kiddies! Welcome to the terror-dripping pages of the latest fright-filled issues of The Year’s Best Horror Stories!”

Three decades later, horror is still alive and creeping—if anything, enjoying a period of unparalleled popularity. Horror novels regularly make the best-seller lists. Horror films, whether big budget or bargain basement, rake in the bucks. Interestingly, one of this past year’s top-grossing films was Creepshow, George Romero and Stephen King’s homage to the old E.C. horror comics. In short fiction, despite the continuing absence of a regular major market, the horror genre continues to prosper and develop, as older writers perfect their art and new writers come along to lead the genre in new directions.

Horror stories have a way of springing up everywhere—not just in science fiction/fantasy magazines and anthologies, but in amateur publications and in any sort of periodical that might publish fiction: from The New Yorker to Easy Rider, High Times to Running Times, Rocky Mountain Magazine to Gallery, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine to Harper’s, Ms. to Hustler. Trying to read all the horror stories published during each year and then select the best of them is no easy task. You are holding the result of a year’s reading and selecting. Here is state-of-the-art horror fiction from 1982: The Year’s Best Horror Stones: Series XI.

The big news of 1982 for horror/fantasy fans was that Twilight Zone Magazine treated us to twelve consecutive monthly issues. Starting on a monthly schedule in April of the previous year, Twilight Zone Magazine’s accomplishment at a time when most new science fiction/fantasy magazines rarely last half a dozen issues cannot be overpraised. Much of its success is due to the excellent work of editor T.E.D. Klein (himself one of the leading writers in the field), who manages to cram a surprising number of fine stories into each issue, along with articles and reviews, color photographs and commentary on new films, as well as stills and transcripts of the famous Twilight Zone television series. The bad news is that Twilight Zone Magazine went bi-monthly at the beginning of 1983, thus providing fans only half as many issues to enjoy. A major new subscription campaign should help the magazine prosper, however, as newsstand distribution has always been a problem. Discover Twilight Zone Magazine for yourself—and subscribe. You won’t regret it.

There was more good news at the magazine racks. The venerable Amazing, published continuously since 1926 and just about dead by the 1980s, was sold to a new publisher in 1982 and is now receiving major backing and new life from editor George Scithers, who has made a success both of Amra (a long-running fanzine devoted to heroic fantasy) and of Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. Plans for Amazing are to maintain a bimonthly schedule (it had lapsed to quarterly) and to increase fantasy content. Isaac Asimov’s new editor, Shawna McCarthy, also plans to include more fantasy stories in that magazine. Meanwhile, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, itself new on the stands when E.C.’s New Trend comic books came on the scene, continues its monthly publication schedule into its fourth decade.

It’s just as well that the picture looked brighter for the magazines, since 1982 was rather a slim year for original horror anthologies. There were no behemoth-size original collections on the lines of Dark Forces or New Terrors; however, the ones that were published were quite good. From Playboy Press came Death, edited by Stuart David Schiff, and Terrors, edited by Charles L. Grant; both contained a mixture of original and reprint material. Grant struck again with Shadows 5, the latest in this continuing series of original anthologies from Doubleday. From England, there was The 23rd Pan Book of Horror Stories—more than just an ocean removed from Grant’s Shadows 5. There were a number of notable fantasy anthologies published as well, but their horror content was minimal.

On the other hand, 1982 was a superior year for single-author collections of horror stories, some of which included original material. Nightmare Seasons (Doubleday) contained four new novellas by the versatile Charles L. Grant. Dark Companions (Macmillan) by Ramsey Campbell, part reprint and part original, is Campbell’s finest collection of short stories to date. The Dark Country (Scream/Press) is the long-awaited collection of Dennis Etchison’s best stories. Lonely Vigils (Carcosa) by Manly Wade Wellman was an omnibus collection of his Judge Pursuivant, Professor Enderby, and John Thunstone stories—three occult investigators from the pulp era. Another specialty press collection was Harlan Ellison’s Stalking the Nightmare (Phantasia Press). From England came Joan Aiken’s A Whisper in the Night (Gollancz)—marketed for younger readers, but don’t you believe it. Charles Beaumont, who died in 1967, was honored by Bantam Books with the collection The Best of Beaumont. Add all these to your horror library, and you’ll be patting yourself on the back for many years to come.

This was also a good year for the amateur press. The major happening was the reappearance of Stuart David Schiff s Whispers after a hiatus of a couple of years. Schiff came back with a vengeance, publishing two double-size issues in 1982, and demonstrating conclusively that Whispers is by far the best small press magazine in the field. Two of the patriarchs of the amateur magazine field, Amra and Weirdbook, were still going strong (Weirdbook with a new companion, Eerie Country), while a pair of newcomers, Sorcerer’s Apprentice and Fantasy Book, offered as polished productions as any newsstand periodical. Another old reliable, Gordon Linzner’s Space & Time, has gone to a semiannual double-size format with two of its best issues last year. Crispin Burnham brought out another fine issue of Eldritch Tales, always a treat for fans of H.P. Lovecraft. Also in its eighth issue was Michael Ambrose’s The Argonaut. A number of amateur magazines had impressive first issues in 1982, among them Threshold of Fantasy, Oracle, Grimoire, and Celestial Visions. From Canada, Lari Davidson’s Potboiler continued to show promise with its fourth and fifth issues.

The fan press did well overseas also, despite hard times for major publishers there. Fantasy Tales, from Stephen Jones and David Sutton, came out with three attractive issues, and plans are to go quarterly this year. The two will have little time for sleep, since Sutton also edits Dark Horizons, the literary journal of the British Fantasy Society, while Jones and Jo Fletcher have taken over The B.F.S. Bulletin from retiring editor Carl Hiles. Rosemary Pardoe’s Haunted Library has again scored high marks with a fourth issue of Ghosts & Scholars and with 99 Bridge Street—the latter a booklet of two previously unpublished novelettes by William Fairlie Clarke (1875-1950), an English vicar who wrote ghost stories as a hobby. Fantasy Macabre, a trans-Atlantic effort from Dave Reeder and Richard Fawcett, was much improved with its third issue. Interzone, a newsstand slick published collectively by several British fans as an answer to the disappearance of British science fiction/fantasy magazines, made an impressive debut and has reached its third issue. New Wave Rules OK. And from Italy, Francesco Cova’s English-language magazine, Kadath, came out with a beautifully produced issue devoted to occult detectives.

Keeping touch with all that’s happening in the horror field is tough enough. Trying to obtain a particular book or magazine after you’ve found out about it isn’t any easier. There is a solution to both problems, fortunately. For news of the entire fantasy field, subscribe to the monthly Fantasy Newsletter—$18.00 a year from Fantasy Newsletter, 500 NW 20th Street, Boca Raton, FL 33431. To obtain the books and other publications you want, send for Robert Weinberg’s monthly catalogs—available from Robert Weinberg, 15145 Oxford Drive, Oak Forest, IL 60452.

It was a bit of a surprise to realize that Series XI marks my fourth year as editor of The Year’s Best Horror Stories for DAW Books. Curiously, my two predecessors here, Richard Davis and Gerald W. Page, each edited just four volumes before moving on. (If you’re wondering about my arithmetic, DAW’s Series II was a selection combining Sphere Books’ No. 2 and No. 3.) Maybe reading this stuff all the time does get to you after a few years…

No matter. If I can survive reading all 29 issues of The Vault of Horror back-to-back, I’m ready to harvest another year’s crop of new horrors from 1983. See you in Series XII.

But now, sink your fangs into The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XI. Or vice versa.

Heh, heh!

—Karl Edward Wagner