Karl Wagner: The Year's Best Horror Stories 11

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

There’s a point of view that writers are born, not made, and it’s one that has its pros and cons. If you ask around, however, you’ll perhaps be surprised to learn just how many published writers had that “burning urge to write” at about the time they first learned to push a pencil across a ruled page. Case in point: Richard Laymon, who confesses: “I have always, for as far back as I can recall, wanted to be a fiction writer. When I was a kid, I used to fool around writing a novel after school, when I was supposed to be doing my homework. I submitted my first story to a magazine at age 12. The magazine, Bluebook for Men. didn’t see its merit.” Well, Bluebook was always a tough market to crash, as the older pulp writers will tell you, and Laymon did manage to sell his first story seven years later—to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine (no easy mark, at that). More stories followed.

Born in Chicago in 1947, Laymon moved to California in 1963, and is now a resident of Los Angeles. He was an English major at Williamette University in Salem (Oregon) and took an M.A. in English literature from Loyola University of Los Angeles, after which he taught ninth grade for one dismal year before turning to librarianship. Proceeds from his first novel, The Cellar , rescued Laymon in 1980 and allowed him to write full time. Warner Books also published Laymon’s second adult horror novel, The Woods Are Dark , in 1981, and this year has published Out Are the Lights. In Britain, New English Library is bringing out two other horror novels, Beware! and Night Show. For young horror addicts, Scholastic Books has published Your Secret Admirer (as by “Carl Laymon”), and Dell has just brought out Nightmare Lake. Perhaps these will inspire other young readers to ignore their homework.