Haunting Columns #2 : August 1998

A lot has been said recently about the current state of dark literature, or more precisely a specific part of it, horror fiction. The eighties horror boom probably did a lot more harm than good and now we're living in the residual shockwaves of its passing. That is not to say there wasn't any good horror fiction published in the eighties, there was a great deal of powerful fiction written, but unfortunately a result of its success was to throw a lot of poorly written fiction into the bestseller lists (not that bad fiction hadn't appeared in the bestseller lists before). The publishers rushed to publish books with nice luridly illustrated black covers and readers found themselves reading sub-standard books that were published merely because they could be given black luridly illustrated covers, they sold books. Or at least, they did. So now horror has gone underground, retreated to the shadows and cellars of our literary lives, diminished but not destroyed.

Some might claim the end is here, that the end has already passed, but horror fiction is in reality far from dead. It is merely more subtle, it exists in the edges between fantastical and literary fiction, continuing its subtle redefinition of reality. The labels it hides behind are now different ones, you still see "horror" stamped onto a book but now you see other phrases as well "supernatural thriller", "dark fantasy", etc. So now you may have to search harder, they may not all be neatly shelved in a horror section, but the books are still there, they are still being written and in some ways they are better. They have to be. The horror authors are still here, still writing, occasionally wearing different guises but essentially the same enticing creatures as ever. Consider Ramsey Campbell, a modern master whose work still manages to chill, whose edge if anything is sharper. His recent novel The House on Nazareth Hill was a wonderfully written ghost story, one that was original and unique, a brilliant work of urban chills. This novel, released as horror in the UK, managed to sneak out as a thriller in the US. Is this mislabeling important? Or is it just a label stuck on the back of a book at the behest of the publishing industry. Merely a label which is irrelevant because it is the book itself that matters.

There are others still carrying the torch for horror fiction, many others, and not just novels, the short fiction being produced at the moment is some of the most exciting work produced in a long time. Just take a look at some of Stephen Jones anthologies for instance, whether the Best New Horror series, or the UK anthologies Dark Terrors that he edits with David Sutton. As for longer work there is Phil Rickman, Poppy Z. Brite, Jonathan Carroll, Graham Masterton. As well as bestsellers like Stephen King and Dean Koontz. And that's only listing those in the mainstream, there are many published by the small press that can equal or even surpass these at times. Horror is still there, with different levels of visibility but one thing is ensured, it won't just dissipate and disappear. As long a people want to read it horror fiction will exist, and horror fiction has existed almost as long as language (perhaps longer even than that).

Anyway, onto this month's reading, I have just finished an anthology edited by David Garnett called Zenith 2. Garnett is an editor who has the excellent ability of getting the best from his writers, and in this case managed to put together an anthology of original stories without including any duds. This anthology centres on British Science Fiction authors, but a number of others sneak in through tenuous connections. What holds the stories together is their quality. It opens with an excellent story by Ian McDonald called Winning, about an islamic athlete who rises from poverty in some future time to be noticed by a one of the big corporations who hold athlethic championships. He is drawn into a world of genetic manipulation and extreme bodily changes in order to make him a more effective runner, and things come to a head when he is about to faces the one competitor he cannot seem to beat. The stories that follow are equally good and it concludes with the excellent Michael Moorcock tale The Cairene Purse which is about a man who goes to Egypt in search of his missing sister. The story ties in interestingly with a non-fiction book I have just finished reading (more on that later).

Another very recent Moorcock classic is the excellent satirical short story The Spencer Inheritance, a Jerry Cornelius story set in Britain during a complex civil war caused by Princess Diana's death. No doubt contraversial (in part of the story the family sells her body to a swiss company so they can sell Diana clones) it is nevertheless a brilliant piece of work. Like many Cornelius story each segment is taken from a clipping from the news matched to a headline from a different story, i.e. "We'll Win World Cup for Diana" is coupled with a typically xenophobic piece from a newspaper columnist stating how the royal family were just a bunch of Germans who hated Diana. Which makes the story, amongst other things, an excellent comment on contemporary society.

The New Apocrypha by John Sladek (a title suggested by Moorcock incidentally) is a wide ranging attempt at debunking the various modern myths that have arisen over the years, from UFO and alien abductions to astrology. An interesting read whether or not you believe in the subjects in question, as Sladek's susinct prose manages to cut right to the heart of the matter. Not really a book on dark literature, but an interesting read nevertheless and it does cover a lot of the same ground. It only weakness perhaps is its age, considering it was a book written in the 1970's, as though little has changed non-fiction books of this sort can age pretty quickly.

Anyway, that's enough for this month, a little later than I intended but it did make it out before the end of the month. No forthcoming releases have really caught my eye this month, but if you have any recent recommendations then please pass them on.