Betty M. Owen (ed): Eleven Great Horror Stories As you both probably know I am a confirmed Haunter of the Dark secondhand bookshops, in which emporia I like to paw pore over mossy grimoires anthologies of science fiction, horror and ghost stories. I tend to pick these up when I am too busy elsewhere to invest time and energy in something more substantial (more on this below), and when I do, I am enchanted, once again, by the charm of a well-turned short story. The stand-out story in this example is The Dunwich Horror by H. P. Lovecraft, that master of cosmic schlock, whose fiction is, it has to be said, so bad that it’s good. As Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove wrote about Lovecraft in Trillion Year Spree, their history of SF, his work succeeds as psychological case history even if it fails as literature. Long after reading, and even when one has forgotten all the details, Lovecraft’s fiction leaves a kind of ectoplasmic stain on the mind. None of the other stories tend to stay as much in the memory as this, not even Poe’s The Oblong Box, and I’d say that most of the stories might be classified more as fantasy, even whimsy, than the kind of horror that gives one the heebie jeebies as one lies awake too afraid to see what’s making those strange snuffling sounds under the bed…
Which leads me to an apology. As the astute reader will have noted, this was the only book I read in November. That’s actually not true – to be precise, it’s the only book I completed in November. I am picking my way through an absolutely huge book, of which I am only reading a few pages at a time, and news of that will be fifthcoming forthcoming when I have finished it, whenever that may be.
One will also note that, apart from that, and if to add insult to injury, I’m posting this more than a month late. I offer as my only excuses that I have been in a state of bouleversement over what I shall euphemistically call World Events. That, and I have been busy completing my second album in G&T, my musical collaboration with guitarist Adrian Thomas.
Notwithstanding inasmuch as which I had a deadline weighing down on me — the delivery to the publishers of my thirdcoming forthcoming book. Reader, I succeeded in this task, and you can read more about it at the shiny new book website. The book should be out in 2024 and editions are already projected in Italian, Japanese, Korean and Romanian.
Hoping that you both have a Festive and Floofy winter break —
