Read Horror: The 100 Best Books Online

Authors: Stephen Jones,Kim Newman

Tags: #Collection.Anthology, #Literary Criticism, #Non-Fiction, #Essays & Letters, #Reference

Horror: The 100 Best Books

BOOK: Horror: The 100 Best Books
10.62Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

HORROR: THE 100 BEST BOOKS edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman

flyleaf:

INTERNATIONALLY ACCLAIMED HORROR: THE 100 BEST BOOKS

WINNER OF THE HORROR WRITERS ASSOCIATION BRAM STOKER AWARD

SELECTED BY THE AMERICAN LIBRARY ASSOCIATION AS THE EDITOR'S CHOICE OF ONE OF THE OUTSTANDING BOOKS OF THE YEAR

SELECTED FOR THE
LOCUS
RECOMMENDED READING LIST OF THE YEAR

"The format is simple: 100 well-known horror and fantasy writers have each selected a favourite horror story and written a short essay about it. All the classics are cited --
Dracula
,
Frankenstein
and
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
, of course -- but the flexibility of the genre is reflected in the choice of stories by Herman Melville, William Golding and Kingsley Amis . . . This is an excellent guide to the classics of genre fiction from 1592 until today, and a spur to make readers want to read the stories described." --
The Times

"This collection intrigues on two levels. First off, you can be drawn to it because of the books, but you can also be drawn to it because of the writers.
Horror: 100 Best Books
also includes a list of recommended reading stretching back to 458 B.C. and a succinct foreword by Ramsey Campbell. And no, you can't borrow mine." --
Fangoria

"An inspired concept well realized . . . One hundred best classic and contemporary horror novels, ranging from Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
to Stephen King's
The Shining
, have been chosen and discussed by leading writers of the genre. An excellent overview of both the gruesome and the subtle." --
ALA Booklist

"A brimming encyclopedia of horror with short essays on everything from Marlowe's
Faust
to the moderns . . . This is a marvellous book, doubling as a handy reference work for anyone who wants to feast on the shockers of yesterday and today." --
South Wales Echo

"This is a book which offers insights on its contributors as well as causing the reader to desperately scribble down lists of fascinating titles to read and re-read . . . Even the most jaded and/or knowledgeable horror fan will find new material or insights here. Essential." --
Vector

"With contributions from virtually everybody who's anybody in horror fiction, the book is by turns enlightening, exasperating, funny and useful as a reference tool." --
The Dark Side

"Quite simply, the best book of its type ever published . . . enough to keep even the most voracious horror devotee busy for a decade or so." --
Castle Rock

"This is one of those rare reference works that is also an entertaining read in itself." --
Science Fiction Chronicle

"Quite simply this book is a delight and offers many hours of browsing pleasure." --
Samhain

"Unique . . . No true fan should be without this book." --
Minneapolis Star Tribune

"A marvellous gathering . . . Highly recommended." --
Locus

"Fascinating and a delight to look through." --
Starburst

"Editors Jones and Newman should take a bow." --
Time Out

"Genuinely provocative." --
Washington Post Book World

HORROR: The 100 Best Books

edited by Stephen Jones & Kim Newman

with a foreword by Ramsey Campbell

CARROLL & GRAF PUBLISHERS, INC. NEW YORK

This revised and updated edition copyright (c) 1988, 1992 and 1998 by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman. Acknowledgment pages constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved.

First Carroll & Graf hardcover edition 1988 First Carroll & Graf paperback edition 1990 Second Carroll & Graf paperback edition 1998

Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc. 19 West 21st Street New York, NY 10010-6805

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request

ISBN: 0-7867-0552-3

DEDICATION

For Mum and Dad, for all their love and continued support -- Steve

For Meg, much love -- Kim

Foreword
by Ramsey Campbell

Horror fiction is the branch of literature most often concerned with going too far. It is the least escapist form of fantasy. It shows us sights we would ordinarily look away from or reminds us of insights we might prefer not to admit we have. It makes us intimate with people we would cross the street to avoid. It shows us the monstrous and perhaps reveals that we are looking in a mirror. It tells us we are right to be afraid, or that we aren't afraid enough. It also frequently embraces, or at least is conterminous with, the ghost story. It flourishes here and there in the fields of science fiction and crime fiction, and not infrequently it bobs up in the mainstream, whatever that is. Despite its name, it is often most concerned to produce awe and terror in its audience, but it is not unusual for a horror story to encompass a wider emotional range. Some of what I've said so far (even when it is understood as seeking to define good horror fiction) will doubtless prove controversial. For instance, not only ignorant critics but some horror writers (generally bad ones) will dismiss the notion that this field has anything to do with literature. However, there are remarkably few mainstream writers (especially of short fiction) who have not attempted the horror story. A good many mainstream writers are best known, or remembered only, for their horror fiction, and some of these examples are among the classics of the field. The present book will go some way toward displaying the scope of the field and the diversity of its creators. Diversity breeds conflict, in this field as in any other. Both M. R. James and Montague Summers deplored the
Not at Night
series, as Robert Aickman did the later
Pan Books of Horror Stories
. Algernon Blackwood found Lovecraft's work "lacking in spirituality", Russell Kirk convicted Blackwood's of a lack of Christianity. H. Russell Wakefield, nearly at the end of his career, was disappointed enough to foresee no future at all for the ghost story (a knell frequently tolled during this century). Skirmishes most often flare between practitioners of the graphically gruesome and the subtle, as if they were mutually exclusive or even mutually destructive but, oddly enough, until recently almost all the public statements came from the second camp. Not long ago a writer of gruesomely violent horror fiction was dismissed by someone subtler as having nothing to do with horror. This nonsensical suggestion provoked a defence, whose voicing I take to be a healthy sign. I cannot see that a field, often blamed for causing what it has the courage to examine, can call itself honest if it rushes to make scapegoats of its own less respectable writers. Let them be allowed to make themselves clear and be seen for what they are. For these and other reasons, I welcome the range of subjects and contributors which the list of contents promises. May it broaden the reading of whoever uses it.

Introduction

It seemed like a simple idea
at the time . . .

There are plenty of critical guides clogging the shelves, particularly in the science fiction and fantasy categories. Some are interesting, idiosyncratic selections, others are narcissist tomes. The problem is that the titles chosen and dissected can only reflect the author's own tastes, and even genre specialists cannot always embrace the entirety of a complex and varied field. Thus, a devotee of the Classic English Ghost Story will decline to include anything written after the First World War, while a disciple of the Cthulhu Mythos might omit any mention of the 18th-Century Gothic novel. Even worse, an editor might include works
not
to his personal taste simply in order to be "representative". How many times have you come across: "
The Castle of Otranto
is turgid and unreadable, but we wouldn't be here without it, so here's an in-depth analysis of how important it is . . . "? Our solution was to invite one hundred of the world's top horror, science fiction and fantasy authors and critics to contribute a brief essay on his or her favourite horror book. This, we thought, would make for a genuinely representative, though eclectic and controversial selection. Writers could acknowledge a debt of gratitude to those titles or authors that first inspired them to reach for the pen or switch on the word-processor. Or put forward a case for an unjustly neglected work, or even for an out-of-genre book that struck them as too horrific to escape our categorisation. We sent out rough guidelines, and they could pick any book from any date. It might have been long out-of-print or a recent best-seller. We expected people to suggest novels, anthologies or collections, we didn't mind plays or published screenplays, and we would have accepted poetry if anyone had lighted on Coleridge, Beaudelaire or Poe (no one did). We forgot to include the word "fiction" in our original letter, and so one cleverclogs (it was John M. Ford) tried to slip in Herman Kahn's
On Thermonuclear War
. We are pleased that our final representation includes Jacobean Revenge Tragedies, Gothic novels, literary classics, science fiction, detective stories, westerns, war novels, surrealist fantasies, pulp horror and major works of modern fiction. William Shakespeare, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, William Golding, John Brunner, C. S. Lewis and Peter Ackroyd may be surprised to find themselves in company with Edgar Allan Poe, Bram Stoker, Arthur Machen, Richard Matheson, Stephen King, Richard Laymon, and Clive Barker, but read the pieces and you'll see how they earned their places there. We started by approaching considerably more than the 100 contributors we needed, and got predictably mixed results. Many never replied. Others were too busy to contribute. Some wrote polite letters thanking us for the invitation, but declining on the basis that they knew nothing about horror (a number of those will find their own novels discussed in the text). A couple were just plain rude. If your favourite horror writer isn't here, we're sorry. But the majority of people did get back to us, and that's when the real problems began. It's surprising to learn just how many authors retain a lifelong affection for the stories of M. R. James or H. P. Lovecraft, or such books as
Dracula
and
The Haunting of Hill House
. We could easily have put out a volume containing ten different appreciations of each of these. Also, there were contributors who hinted -- often not too subtly -- that perhaps
their
books should have been included in our preliminary list of suggestions. One American writer was terribly enthusiastic about the project until he discovered we didn't want him to write about his
own
best book. Harlan Ellison re-read his childhood favourite novel (
The Edge of Running Water
by William Sloane) and now blames us for destroying his beautiful memory of a book that he now thinks is pretty rotten. Robert Holdstock kept re-reading books that influenced him and finding they weren't that horrific after all. We learned that being an editor also involves a working knowledge of diplomacy. Then, putting aside such mundane considerations as contracts, sub-clauses and deadlines, there was the problem of those classics of the genre that none of our 100 wanted to write about. As you might expect, the random method of asking people for their favourites meant that a number of books everyone would put in their Top Ten didn't quite make it. So major books like
Rosemary's Baby
,
The Vampire Tapestry
and
Fevre Dream
, and prominent authors like James Herbert, Thomas Tryon and Michael McDowell sadly don't get a look in. It's also why we've compiled a Recommended Reading list and fairly inclusive notes on the works of our contributors. Once you've finished reading all 100 of the books discussed in the main text, you should start working your way through our secondary list.
Then
you'll be an expert. You can be excused
The Castle of Otranto
if you've got a note from your mother. We hope this book is informative, and fun. It should offer a guide for the relative newcomer to the subject, but also some meat for the veteran afficionado. It was a logistical nightmare to compile, but we hope we've succeeded in giving a working overview of an often-maligned field of literature. Anyway, the
real
problem was updating and revising all the entries for this new, Tenth Anniversary edition . . .

--
Stephen Jones and Kim Newman

1-25
1: [c. 1592] CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE -
The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus

Dr. Faustus
is generally believed to have been written in the last year of Marlowe's life, well after his
Tamburlaine
(1587) and
The Jew of Malta
(1589?). Marlowe based his work on what was supposed to have happened to a German necromancer of the 16th century. It's a legend that has inspired many other works of art, most notably Goethe's play
Faust
(1808), the operas by Arrigo Boito (
Mefistofele
, 1868) and Charles Gounod (1860), and various pieces of music by Berlioz, Wagner, Liszt, Schumann and Louis Spohr. Marlowe's play, directed by Richard Burton and Neville Coghill, was filmed in 1967, with Burton as Faustus and Elizabeth Taylor as a silent Helen of Troy. Notable performances in the play in the 20th century, either as Faustus or Mephistophiles, have been given by D. A. Clarke-Smith, Noel Willman, Robert Harris, Hugh Griffith, Cedric Hardwicke, Paul Daneman, Michael Goodliffe, Orson Welles, Jack Carter and Ben Kingsley.

BOOK: Horror: The 100 Best Books
10.62Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Something More by Samanthya Wyatt
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
Learning to Soar by Bebe Balocca
Big Sky Rancher by Carolyn Davidson
The fire and the gold by Phyllis A. Whitney
Treespeaker by Stewart, Katie W.
B00CHVIVMY EBOK by Acuff, Jon
Dead Wrong by William X. Kienzle