Year: 2021

Week 203 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Mackenzie, Wollheim, Waggoner, and Tyson

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Welcome to Week 203 of my weekly horror short fiction review project! This marks the end of Donald Tyson’s excellent collection The Skinless Face, which I have enjoyed thoroughly and highly recommend it. Tyson is an author who doesn’t get nearly enough credit or recognition. Next week I’ll start reviewing the stories in Stephen King’s collection Just After Sunset instead. Some really good stories this week, making it hard to pick a favorite, so I will award a tie for best stories of the week to the classic “Mimic” by Donald A. Wollheim (which was adapted into a so-so movie that doesn’t bear much resemblance to the story) and Donald Tyson’s “Forbidden Passage,” which is a Cthulhu Mythos survival horror tale set aboard a passenger liner. Both really excellent and deserving of your time.

Young Mutants, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles Waugh (HarperCollins, 1984)

“I Can’t Help Saying Goodbye” by Ann Mackenzie

Karen is a nine year old girl who comes to live with her brother Max and his girlfriend Libby after their parents die. It immediately becomes apparent that Karen can perceive when someone is going to die in the near future and then, because she is a sweet little girl, she solemnly wishes that person goodbye, which becomes super creepy to all around her after that person then dies. Libby comes to blame Karen for the deaths—it’s clear that she’s not responsible for them—and then becomes abusive. Karen then threatens Libby, which causes Libby to plan to kill Karen, presumably by drowning when she takes her to the beach. Very sad and poignant. Told in a semi-stream of consciousness style that is oddly extremely effective.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“Mimic” by Donald A. Wollheim

Great story. A strange man who never speaks and who always wears a long black cloak has lived on the narrator’s street for many years. Eventually, the man dies in his apartment and the neighbors discover that “he” was actually a large, female insect of a species that has learned to disguise itself as a human and live in urban areas among them. It has also just given birth to a brood of newborn insects just like itself. They take off out the window to disperse across the city, and the narrator notices that a part of what he has believed was a nearby rooftop takes to the air in pursuit of the swarm of insects. How many of these mimic creatures of various species live among us in human cities anyway? I love the whole idea of an ecosystem like this.

Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign, edited by James Chambers (Hippocampus Press, 2021)

“The Exchange” by Tim Waggoner

Amina believes herself to be a failed artist and goes to one of the government’s Lethal Chambers, legal euthanasia stations. There, she is offered an unusual deal that is not known to the public: she can trade away some of her most painful memories in exchange for someone else’s memories (which may not pain her in the same way they did the other person). She accepts this offer, and is inspired to create an array of new art inspired by her inherited memories. She happens to gain access to a man’s memories of reading part of the infamous play “The King in Yellow.” Eventually though, that well goes dry and she returns to the Lethal Chamber for more borrowed memories. But even more memories of reading “The King in Yellow” isn’t good for anyone. Interesting take here.

The Skinless Face, by Donald Tyson (Weird House Press, 2020)

“Forbidden Passage”

A nice long novella that ends the collection. Alice West is placed by her guardian on a tramp ship bound for London. She encounters an interesting array of passengers and crew aboard the ship, as well as a menagerie of animals that are being transported in the ship’s hold. Some of the crewmen begin to worship a strange idol that is also being transported on the ship, making sacrifices of people and animals to it each night. Eventually it becomes apparent that this thing also becomes animate at night, invading everyone’s dreams and lulling them into oblivion while it hunts them. Alice and the ship’s captain are the only ones aboard the ship who seem immune to the being’s mental invasions; Alice had suffered a traumatic brain injury and has a steel plate in her skull, while the captain is an opium addict. Neither is especially well-prepared to fight off a horrific monstrosity and a shipful of murderous cultists. A desperate fight for survival. Really good story.


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Book Review: Of One Pure Will by Farah Rose Smith

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Of One Pure Will

Farah Rose Smith

Trepidatio Publishing (September 10, 2021)

Reviewed by Andrew Byers

Farah Rose Smith’s weird fiction collection Of One Pure Will has just been re-released by Trepidatio and I’m happy that it will now reach many more readers.

On the surface, this is simply a collection of twenty-three stories. But these aren’t the kind of stories you might be used to. Jeffrey Thomas provided an excellent introduction to the collection in which he compares Smith’s work to that of Joe Pulver and Wilum Pugmire as well as Smith’s husband Michael Cisco, which I think is a very fair (and complimentary) comparison. Smith doesn’t write about the Cthulhu Mythos or Chambers’ King in Yellow the way that Pugmire and Pulver did, but in terms of Smith’s orientation as a writer who focuses on tone and atmosphere and storycrafting, rather than straightforward narrative and plot, for the most part, I think this observation is spot-on. Thomas describes fiction as mostly being oriented toward seeking to achieve “event or effect.” This is a comparison between a plot-driven narrative—mostly not what Smith is trying to achieve here—and an effect that the author (Smith) is trying to evoke within the reader. I found Thomas’ discussion to be very helpful here; it’s certainly not to say that plot-driven narratives can’t achieve emotional effects on the reader too, of course. But I found Smith’s storytelling to be unconventional. She truly has a unique prose voice.

Smith’s voice, atmosphere, and major themes are worth discussing at some length because they contribute so strongly to Of One Pure Will. If I had to choose one word to describe the stories as a whole, it would be “dreamlike.” Not “nightmarish” though—these are not about protagonists encountering literal monsters (for the most part), or surrealist nightmare-scapes in which they’re fleeing unspeakable terrors—but they have the quality of unsettling dreams that leave you with a vaguely bad feeling that follows you through the day. Matthew M. Bartlett used the term “oneiric” to describe this collection, and I’d concur. These are not conventional horror stories, but dark or weird fiction in the truest sense, i.e., stories that evoke unease or nameless dread. These are not the kinds of tales in which monstrous entities lurk and threaten to tear their victims asunder, or even appear on the page as concrete if psychological threats. Smith’s protagonists are often dislocated, or cast adrift in realms where reality seems to differ from the more familiar; these could be dream realms or something else. Many experience discomfort, or are discomfited by the strange circumstances in which they find themselves. Loss seems to be a common theme, as does mourning and grief. Depression, stagnation, obsession, and stasis (in a negative sense) also seem common.

There’s a lot I could say about the various stories in the collection, but I’d like to focus on three stories in the collection that had the strongest effect on me.

In “sorcerer machine,” Conrad (Connie) Dubrovsky is a linguist working on translating a series of enigmatic letters that will reveal some secret knowledge that, perhaps, is connected with a mysterious black cabinet in his family’s possession. Connie visits his sister Gina’s remote farm after the death of her husband and encounters…something in the fields that ties everything together. This one was unusual in the collection because of its somewhat more overt cosmicism, but I found it even more effective because of that.

There’s a note that Smith’s “a delirium of mothers” is based on a true story; that is sad news indeed since the story drips with grief, mourning, and sorrow. A married couple moves into an old farmhouse after the death of their daughter, who died just before she could be born. They find an old grave of a girl who killed herself at the home decades previously. This is not a happy home or household, to say the least; it is the story about PTSD and unresolved trauma, grief, mourning, and loss that seems almost inconsolable. Powerful.

I found Smith’s “the irrational dress society” to be almost whimsical, though it oddly reminded me of Ligotti’s work, or what he might write were he more interested in whimsy and absurdism. Set in pre-Revolutionary Russia, this is the story of a group dedicated to the wearing of ridiculous garments. Smith’s writing isn’t always about slow, creeping dread and the loss of self and others—she’s more than capable of crafting engaging stories about even stranger subjects. If you’re interested in atmospheric, unsettling weird fiction in a unique voice, I would urge you to check out Farah Rose Smith’s Of One Pure Will.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.

Week 202 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Nourse, Carrington, Van Patten, and Tyson

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Welcome to Week 202 of my horror short fiction review project! All good stories this week, though I’m going to pick two as my co-favorites this week, because both contain some truly grotesque elements that I especially enjoyed: “White Rabbits” by Leonora Carrington and Donald Tyson’s “The Organ of Chaos.” Neither is a gross-out story, but you need a bit of a strong stomach for these two.

Young Mutants, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles Waugh (HarperCollins, 1984)

“Second Sight” by Alan E. Nourse

Amy is a powerful psychic girl in the care of a team of her doctor Lambertson and other medical professionals (it’s unclear if they are private or if they work for the government). Her abilities are also unclear, but seem to involve telepathy to a very high degree and perhaps telekinesis. Amy is convinced to use her abilities to awaken the psychic abilities of a latent psychic girl (eventually they want her to do this with many others). Conflict is provided by the unscrupulous Aarons, who is also involved in Amy’s care, and then inevitably Amy and Lambertson fall in love with each other and plan to run away together. There’s a very nice Twilight Zone-esque twist that I won’t spoil here.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

[previously reviewed] “Far Below” by Robert Barbour Johnson

[previously reviewed] “Smoke Ghost” by Fritz Leiber

“White Rabbits” by Leonora Carrington

Short and horrible—I loved it. A woman sitting on her balcony communicates with a neighbor across the street, who asks her for some old, rotten meat, presumably for a crow that the neighbor is feeding. Desperate for some company, the narrator brings some rotted meat over a few days later and the neighbor says that its actually for the 100 ravenous white rabbits she and her blind husband keep in their apartment. They try to get the narrator to live with them, promising her that her skin will soon turn pale and be covered in sparkles, like theirs, and that she will soon contract the holy disease of leprosy, also like them. Wonderful.

Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign, edited by James Chambers (Hippocampus Press, 2021)

“Suanee” by Steven Van Patten

What was supposed to be an independent all-black state of Suanee within the United States (mentioned briefly in Robert W. Chambers’ alternate history of America “The Repairer of Reputations”) has become a dystopian nightmare. White supremacists who worship the otherworldly King in Yellow have moved in and created a de facto institution of slavery. This is a world of ubiquitous surveillance, and Clyde has inadvertently gotten his friend Rick executed. This triggers Clyde to try to free himself and Rick’s family from tyranny to escape from Suanee and the cultists who run the place. A good story, though the sheer bleakness of the oppression here is tough to read.

The Skinless Face, by Donald Tyson (Weird House Press, 2020)

“The Organ of Chaos”

Lowe and Millar are soldiers who visit the town of Purgatory eighty-three years after The Craze, an unknown event that drove 99% of the world’s population insane. Three days after The Craze, a major nuclear war killed most of the survivors. Now, the few sane people remaining are attempting to survey and rebuild human civilization. They have sent Lowe and Millar on one such mission. Most of the survivors are insane (mildly to moderately) and some are mutated. They stumble upon a cult run by the Rev. Judas, who captures the pair and really hideously tortures them; his plan is to use them to open the way for some Great Old Ones-like entities to enter our world. Really heart-wrenching and brutal, but very good.


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Book Review: Malignant by Michaelbrent Collings

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Malignant

Michaelbrent Collings

Written Insomnia Press (October 25, 2021)

Reviewed by Andrew Byers

Michaelbrent Colings is a reliably fun crafter of horror thrillers; some rely on supernatural elements and others are content to showcase man’s inhumanity to man without any supernatural elements at all. Collings’ new book Malignant falls into the latter category. Malignant is potentially a controversial book because of its subject matter: a group of criminals take the students and faculty of an elite private school hostage, and it doesn’t end well for almost anyone. While there’s not a ton of gruesomeness described in excruciating detail, it is abundantly clear what happens to the victims. But this is ultimately a morality play, like a lot of Collings’ fiction, with shades of grey abounding. The hostage standoff is no simple criminal matter, nor is it the work of politically-minded terrorists. This is a tale of revenge, or perhaps justice, depending on one’s perspective, though I would descend too far into spoiler territory if I said much more about the reason why the criminals have taken over the school.

Malignant has a slightly unusual structure: it is framed as a true crime work of non-fiction—pretty true to that genre of writing, I think—that has been penned by Connie Kendall, a journalist who becomes involves in the action and then after all is said and done, and the law enforcement and legal actions have come to a close, has written what we have before us.

The setting of Malignant is Reina High School, a private high school for the wealthy and powerful. As it turns out, many of the students have significant discipline problems and are involved with some pretty “adult” activities; their teachers and parents have come to find them almost ungovernable. Many of those same teachers, staff members, and parents are themselves involved in nefarious activities. There aren’t many innocents in Malignant. Reina is one of those kinds of places where senators’ children rub shoulders with the sons of Russian oligarchs. To be sure, not all of the teachers and staff are bad actors—some decent people do become embroiled in the chaos.

The cast of characters is a fascinating one, with most having secret lives and motives that take a while to uncover. Precipitating the crisis, we have the criminals, all concealing their true identities. Their leaders are Teacher and Lady, and their jumpsuited minions are distinguished only be their willingness to carry out Teacher’s ruthless orders and the colored armbands they wear. The individual students and faculty who are held hostage represent not just the usual assortment of archetypal figures we associate with high school, but individuals who are all far more than they seem at first glance. Lastly, we have a pair of detectives, Rick Montano and his partner Vincent Eberhardt, trying to bring the situation to a close while saving as many lives as they can. They are mostly Everymen who are just trying to do their jobs—good detectives and good men—who have to deal with law enforcement bureaucracy and the diabolical scheme of Teacher.

The plot proceeds with the inevitability of a Greek tragedy: doom is coming, but there are plenty of twists and turns along the way that present lots of surprises. Action is pretty fast and constant, even though we’re talking about a hostage standoff, which could, in the hands of a lesser writer, be too static. As always, Collings’ prose is smooth and flowing. Recommended, especially if you’re already familiar with Collings’ thrillers or in the mood for a novel about bad people doing terrible things to even worse people.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.

Week 201 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Hamilton, Schulz, Abbott, and Tyson

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Welcome to Week 201 of my horror short film review project! Some good stories this week, but my favorite is “He That Hath Wings” by Edmond Hamilton, which has one of those great melancholic endings that has you feeling bad after you finish.

Young Mutants, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles Waugh (HarperCollins, 1984)

“He That Hath Wings” by Edmond Hamilton

David Rand is an orphaned boy with an unusual physiology: his bones are birdlike and hollow and he grows vast wings that allow him to fly. He is raised on a remote island by his physicians and a couple servants, though eventually David pines for more company and tries to make his way in the world. David falls in love with Ruth, who promises to marry him if he will have his wings amputated and become fully civilized and domesticated, securing for him a position at her father’s firm. David foolishly agrees to do all this, enters the rat race, has a son with Ruth, etc. A really melancholic ending.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass” by Bruno Schulz

A man goes to visit his father at a strange, mostly uninhabited sanatorium where the patients are encouraged to sleep as much as possible. Though infirm and possibly demented, his father seems to have opened a popular, bustling shop in the town. The son is gradually driven mad through circumstances that were not entirely clear to me and becomes a train-riding hobo by the end of the story. There was some interesting surrealness and just plain general odd events in this one, but nothing much coherent. I did not especially enjoy this story.

Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign, edited by James Chambers (Hippocampus Press, 2021)

“The Order of Wilde” by Marc L. Abbott

This is the story of two men who helped Mr. Wilde repair reputations in “The Repairer of Reputations.” One suggests that they begin a new scheme involving assisted suicides in the public Lethal Chambers (euthanasia sites). The narrator seems to descend into madness and become the notorious Subway Pusher who is hunted by the authorities. Also ties in with HPL’s “The Horror at Red Hook,” which I appreciate. Pretty good—my terse description here does not do the story justice.

The Skinless Face, by Donald Tyson (Weird House Press, 2020)

“Womb of Evil”

Father Ranier has been sent by the Vatican to investigate some decidedly odd rumors of heresy and inbreeding between monks and the locals at a remote Peruvian monastery. Ranier is accompanied by the coarse Colonel Martinez and a band of thuggish soldiers. As it turns out, the rumors are true, but the monastery also guards an extra-dimensional gate through which strange, otherworldly “gifts” periodically emerge; these “gifts” are typically objects that appear innocuous at first but cause untold harm unless they are destroyed, which the monks do. While Ranier and Martinez are present, one such “gift” emerges, this time in the form of a silent young girl, who they prevent the monks from killing. This turns out to be a mistake, as the girl is clearly far more than she seems. She can command swarms of army ants that materialize from her mouth, which then horribly kill all the inhabitants of the monastery. The story would have been stronger if Ranier and Martinez had not been such odious caricatures (Ranier is a child molester and Martinez and his men are brutal rapists).


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Book Review: Six Dreams About the Train and Other Stories by Maria Haskins

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Six Dreams About the Train and Other Stories

Maria Haskins

JournalStone Publishing (August 13, 2021)

Reviewed by Andrew Byers

Single-author collections from authors who haven’t yet achieved the name recognition they deserve are sometimes hit-or-miss: they can be forgettable or they can be treasure troves of stories you haven’t yet encountered but wish you had long ago. I am pleased to say that Maria Haskins’ new collection Six Dreams About the Train and Other Stories falls into the latter category. It is a genuine treasure. While Haskins was an author who was new to me, based on the strength of this collection, she’s been added to the short list of authors whose work I must read as soon as it comes out.

This is a meaty collection of twenty-three stories that defy easy categorization; Haskins effortlessly writes tales of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and everything in between. Her prose is utterly beautiful and enchanting. I’m going to discuss some of the stories in this collection that I found particularly engaging. One of Haskins’ strengths will clearly emerge: the sheer breadth of the settings and themes that she explores through her writing. This is not a collection centered around modern characters with modern problems in settings that are familiar to the reader; on the contrary, Haskins effortlessly traverses time and space to present historical tales, tales set in fantastical or science fictional settings, and stories with protagonists that are either nonhuman or that possess truly alien perspectives. There aren’t many other writers publishing collections like this.

One of the longer stories in the collection, “Deepster Punks,” was also one of my favorites. This one is set in a futuristic deepsea research/energy extraction that is crewed by two old friends, Becca and Jacob. They have worked together off and on, for decades; now, Becca has been asked by their employer to keep an eye on Jacob because his last partner—their shared friend, lover, and colleague—died under very mysterious circumstances and Jacob could be to blame. They both find themselves imperiled in ways neither had imagined in a fascinating, isolated aquatic environment.

Several of Haskins’ stories are clearly influenced by folklore, as in the case of “Silver and Shadow, Spruce and Pine,” which features Marika’s search for her missing grandmother who may have entered a fairy tale, as well as “A Strange Heart, Set in Feldspar,” which contains some traditional Swedish folkloric elements mixed with unruly teenagers going missing in an abandoned mine and their mother’s doubts about continuing to be their mother. These blends of traditional myths in more modern settings work extremely well.

I want to make a small point that may be relevant only to me, but Maria Haskins is clearly a dog lover, and I very much appreciate how her love for dogs comes through in the three stories that have dog protagonists (dogs appear elsewhere in the collection but are protagonists in three of my favorites). Nonhuman protagonists are very hard to write successfully, but Haskins succeeds admirably here. I am not ashamed to admit that two of these stories—“Mothers, Watch Over Me” and “Down to Niflhel Deep”—each brought a tear to my eye as I read them. (Maria, you made a grown man sitting on a train cry. I hope you’re satisfied.) In “Mothers,” Maya has just given birth to a litter of puppies in a post-apocalyptic wasteland; Maya and her kin are no ordinary dogs, and Maya will do anything to save her puppies’ lives, including a trek into a forbidden zone to seek the aid of God. And in “Down to Niflhel Deep,” Roan (remember his name) is a dog whose girl has been murdered and taken into the afterlife. Roan follows her there, trading away all that he has to try to bring her back. I think I found these stories so affecting because dogs have always seemed like creatures of pure love when it comes to their families; Haskins makes great use of that dramatic potential in both tales.

“Seven Kinds of Baked Goods” is an example of Haskins’ authorial breadth: nominally this is the story of an exiled dwarven crafter living in a fantasy city, but the reader’s expectations are entirely inverted when we learn that she specializes not in crafting magical weapons or arms or other traditional treasures, but in baked goods. A baker in a fantasy city wouldn’t seem to naturally lend itself to a fascinating story, but that all changes when she finds herself allied with a poison-wielding assassin. Another excellent story with a fantastical setting is “Blackdog,” which concerns a little girl who has been abducted for foul purposes; in order to survive and escape, she must grapple with both human and supernatural evils. This is a wonderfully dark tale of vengeance and justice—and love, a theme that shines through in most of Haskins’ stories.

Haskins has a unique way of painting an evocative setting—as critical to each of her stories as the characters and plot—in only a few sentences. As I read this collection, I dreaded ending every story and yet couldn’t wait to begin the next. There are many other stories I could have highlighted here to demonstrate the strengths of the collection, from Haskins’ diverse post-apocalyptic visions in “And You Shall Sing Me a Deeper Song,” which depicts a war between humans (and their posthuman descendants) with machines, and “Cleaver, Meat, and Block,” which explores how civilization can recover from a “zombie” apocalypse on individual and social levels; to the total transformation of society in “Long As I Can See the Light,” which may be an alien invasion that leads to the creation of a utopia, or one man’s mental illness; to the personal story of two girls in “The Brightest Lights of Heaven,” who play a game that takes place across the decades of their lives and that leads to their individual transformations and perhaps their deaths. This is a wonderful collection of stories across a wide variety of themes and settings. Haskins is a true wordsmith who paints beautiful stories, characters, and settings with her words. Hers is a rare talent. Six Dreams About the Train and Other Stories was almost certainly the best collection of stories I’ve read all year, and I read a vast number of such collections. Highly recommended.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.

Week 200 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Byram, Walpole, Keisling, and Tyson

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Welcome to Week 200 (!) of my horror short fiction review project. Four good stories this week, all certainly worth your time. Choosing a favorite is hard, in part because they are such radically different kinds of stories. I guess I’d have to say that my favorite was “The Tarn” by Hugh Walpole because of its creepiness. As soon as you start the story, you know that one of the two main characters is going to meet a bad end at the hands of the other, but how that happens, and what comes next, is why this is such a good story.

Young Mutants, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles Waugh (HarperCollins, 1984)

“The Wonder Horse” by George Byram

A retired veterinarian and a former jockey take a big gamble at starting up their own horseracing stable and start with a foal who is a mutant. Red Eagle looks kind of funny (he has unusual musculature, gait, etc.) but he is the fastest racing horse that anyone has ever seen. Red Eagle ends up fundamentally upsetting the entire racing industry. The story manages to make horse racing seem interesting, which I view as no mean feat (since I have no inherent interest in the sport).

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“The Tarn” by Hugh Walpole

I really appreciated the subtle creepiness of this one. We have two writers, Fenwick and Foster. Foster is visiting Fenwick at his rural home, though Fenwick has always hated the kindly and much more successful Foster. During a hike in which Foster confesses that he is terrified of water and has never learned to swim, Fenwick pushes him into a nearby tarn full of still, black water. Foster drowns, and Fenwick has convinced himself that the tarn is his friend and willing accomplice. After returning home, Fenwick awakens in the middle of the night, convinced that the tarn has come to kill him. The next morning, the servants find Fenwick dead, with a glass of water spilled in the middle of his bedroom floor.

Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign, edited by James Chambers (Hippocampus Press, 2021)

“Y2K” by Todd Keisling

Told in the format of a transcript of an interrogation of a suspect (Elliott Crawford) by a law enforcement officer (Hayden Dyer). The suspect believes himself to be an agent of the Federal Preservation Agency rather than a paranoid and delusional FBI file clerk. He believes that he is on the trail of a plot to use the Y2K bug (remember that?), which will place a copy of “The King in Yellow” on every computer in the world, which will of course drive everyone mad. He seems crazy, but the ending suggests otherwise. Interesting enough. Not my favorite in the collection, but well done.

The Skinless Face, by Donald Tyson (Weird House Press, 2020)

“The Thing on the Island”

Four young people are searching for buried treasure on a Canadian island that they think is like the fabled Oak Island. Sure enough, they do unearth something that has been buried by famed Elizabethan occultist John Dee. Rather than treasure, this turns out to be the desiccated mummy of a vampiric Jersey Devil-like flying humanoid that doesn’t stay mummified for very long. The young people are, of course, hunted down mercilessly one by one. Would actually make a good movie.


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Book Review: Gory Days, edited by Staci Layne Wilson

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Gory Days (Rock & Roll Nightmares ‘80s Edition)

Edited by Staci Layne Wilson

Excessive Nuance (2021)

Reviewed by Andrew Byers

This is the third (and for now, final) volume in Staci Layne Wilson’s series that combines rock & roll with horror, with each volume focusing on one decade. I reviewed the first two volumes here and here. Gory Days is Wilson’s collection that covers the 1980s. As with the first two volumes, Wilson herself writes or co-writes about half the stories in this volume, with the rest by a variety of other authors. I can’t detail each of the stories here, but let me go into a few of my favorites.

As appropriate for the 1980s, the theme of new technologies under development that have truly dystopian potential is a common theme. We see that most clearly in a long novella by Wilson, “Should I Slay, or Should I Go?” which is a wild romp that begins with a company that makes sophisticated sex robots and ends with these fembots forming a band and literally trying to take over the world. We also see technology fusing with the ever-present nostalgia for the 1980s—I’ve been guilty of romanticizing the ‘80s myself—in the time travel tale “Hip To Be Scared” by Darren Gordon Smith and Staci Layne Wilson. In this one, a young couple obsessed with the ‘80s even though they were born long after that decade ended is sent back to live in 1980s Los Angeles for a long weekend—if they can survive. Some really iconic cameos appearing in this one.

Some other favorites from the collection include:

“Don’t Stand So Close to Meat” by Staci Layne Wilson: An excellent story about an insane crazy personal chef to a rock star who obsessively loves (and stalks) him. Some gruesome body horror here, which is always appreciated.

“Sharp-Dressed Manslaughter” by Sean McDonough: A great story about a disaffected teenager named Brett who drives across town to buy a new cassette tape by his favorite band, which is then promptly ruined by his car’s tape player. He’s then given a very special band t-shirt by a curio shop owner and, well, things go downhill from there. McDonough really manages to capture the feel of the ‘80s here.

“Dead Over Heels” by Mark Wheaton: Girl band The Roxies is on the verge of breaking up because one of its members is about to embark on a solo career that will likely eclipse the rest of the band. They play what might be their final show together at an amusement park when a zombie apocalypse breaks out. As with the first two books in this series, Gory Days was a fun collection. Some nicely varied horror here, none that takes itself too seriously, but all good stuff. Recommended.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.

Week 199 – Weekly Horror Short Story Reviews: Brunner, Sakutoro, Firetog, and Tyson

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Welcome to Week 199 of my horror short fiction review project! Some interesting ones this week: while I found John Brunner’s “What Friends Are For” immensely entertaining, my favorite was probably Donald Tyson’s “The Colonoids” to be my favorite. This one’s got a truly unusual and existential menace from a dimension where things work radically differently from anything that we can conceive. And it wants to visit us.

Young Mutants, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles Waugh (HarperCollins, 1984)

“What Friends Are For” by John Brunner

A slightly futuristic setting in which Earth has come into contact with a number of more advanced (but benign) alien species in a kind of galactic federation. Into this setting, we follow Tim, a young boy who has been genetically engineered in vitro at his parents’ request to be a perfect human (potential for strength, intelligence, etc.) The only problem is that Tim is an utter monster; he’s a violent little ungovernable sociopath. His parents are then forced to lease a Friend for Tim, which is an animatronic humanoid who will be Tim’s steadfast companion. This entity, Buddy, then gradually teaches Tim empathy, and enables Tim to be a functioning person in human society. Entertaining.

The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories, edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer (Tor, 2012)

“The Town of Cats” by Hagiwara Sakutoro

The narrator gets lost while out hiking and finds a remote town that at first seems perfect: life there seems in perfect harmony, in terms of atmosphere, but then the feeling grows that this harmonious atmosphere is right at the cusp of being shattered at any moment. Then a rat appears in the town and all the inhabitants transform into cats and rush at the rat, then return to their human selves a few moments later. As with a lot of Japanese weird tales, I don’t think that I personally have sufficient cultural context to fully appreciate what the author is trying to do. For example, I’m certain that the collective achievement of “harmony” across a geographic area is of great significance, but I don’t know what (would Westerners ever strive for or even value something like this?) Likewise, what is the cultural significance/role of cats in traditional Japanese society? I just don’t know enough to properly evaluate this one.

Under Twin Suns: Alternate Histories of the Yellow Sign, edited by James Chambers (Hippocampus Press, 2021)

“European Theater” by Trevor Firetog

This story tries to do something interesting. Setting is an alternate World War II in which Hitler is a puppet of the King in Yellow and the swastika is actually the Yellow Sign. A unit of American soldiers are trapped in the Bastogne, surrounded by German forces. Then a German patrol emerges from the forest, blind and dazed, and are massacred by the Americans. It turns out that all German soldiers have been issued with the first half of “The King in Yellow,” and a few have been issued the second half (obviously reading both halves combined induces madness). An American translates the play in its entirety and then shares it with all of his comrades, which blinds and drives them all into madness. Both sides are merely actors on a metaphysical stage, puppets acting out a drama that has been engineered by the King in Yellow. Interesting, and compelling even at times, but just a little too incoherent.

The Skinless Face, by Donald Tyson (Weird House Press, 2020)

[previously reviewed] “The Wall of Asshur-Sin”

“The Colonoids”

Set on a remote island, this is the story of some Hollywood types—Moreau (film producer), Moreau’s daughter Cleo and her boyfriend, Jack Stainton (a screenwriter), and Angelu (Jack’s New Age-y wife—who encounter something that grows beyond their control and destroys them (and quite possibly the rest of the world). It begins with the unearthing of a prehistoric stone circle and grows weirder with a standing deer skeleton that crumbles into dust, a vast pit that comes into being over night, and two levitating stones. They discover that some extra-dimensional entity is attempting to enter our world, but this being has limited perceptions: it can only locate (and presumably act upon) people who are aware of it and thinking about it. Once they do, it can home in on them and, well, do terrible things. Really chilling, and a great example of existential cosmic horror with a gutpunch of an ending.


Buy the book on Amazon

Buy the book on Amazon

Buy the book on Amazon

Buy the book on Amazon

Book Review: Hell Fighters by Bil Richardson

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Hell Fighters

Bil Richardson

Mountain Media (September 20, 2021)

Reviewed by Andrew Byers

Much like chocolate and peanut butter, do you like your Lovecraftian horrors mixed with action-adventure thrillers? Hell Fighters is for fans of Lovecraft’s work who like their protagonists to be two-fisted men (and women) of action rather than shrinking violets who faint or descend into madness at the first sight of something monstrous or inhuman.

Max Heller is a new professor at Miskatonic University who moves to Arkham and quickly comes to realize that the locale is home to decades of mysterious disappearances, strange happenings, and sinister cults in league with…whatever inhabits the wilderness west of Arkham. Heller’s curiosity gets the better of him and he tries to investigate the matter on his own, nearly dying a couple times but just managing to get some acquaintances killed. He is soon contacted by a small secret society that is trying to stop a scheme that will ultimately spell doom not only for Arkham but the world as a whole.

The horrors themselves are intriguing and not merely copycats of Lovecraft’s monstrosities; some are truly grotesque examples of body horror and all have cosmic elements (or at least origins). Heller and his compatriots are outgunned and outclassed by the horrors they face, and face devastating losses as they continue their fight.

Hell Fighters is full of over-the-top action—in fact, the novel is a lot more action-oriented than I had originally anticipated. Richardson’s prose is well-crafted and action and pacing are smooth and fast. Characterization is just deep enough for a fun, pulpy novel that doesn’t take itself too seriously. I would describe Hell Fighters as a mix of cosmic horror—unspeakable monstrosities extruding themselves into our reality and having terrible effects on the hapless humans who blunder into their machinations—and the kind of slapstick horror comedy that you’d see in films like Evil Dead. Things sometimes get absurd in the final third of the novel as the tension (and stakes) ratchet up.

A fun novel with some genuinely interesting elements of cosmic peril and action. Recommended.

This review originally appeared in Hellnotes.