Groovy & Wild Films from Around the World

Sunday, March 11, 2018

50 Pages a Night – Vol. 4

The introduction to Jessica Amanda Salmonson's “Tales of Moonlight II”, published in 1989 by TOR Horror paperbacks, show us an underworld that existed in the late eighties and early nineties of horror fiction... The genre-writers' horror 'zines, or, the “Shoestring and Small Press Horror Magazines”. This was a viable outlet in the 80s and early-to-mid 90s where talented amateur horror authors could get their start by having their short stories published and circulated through a lot of magazine outlets and retailers, or even by mail-subscription. Huge talents came out of this launching pad, including Stephen King (in the 70s), Richard Matheson (earlier than that), Thomas Ligotti, Charles L. Grant, Spider Robison, Stephen Gresham, and the editor of “Tales by Moonlight” herself. In the sequel to her first paperback anthology hit, here in Part II Jessica Salmonson once again complies, curates, and edits a collection of stories and authors who made a huge creative impact on some of the best and most creative Horror Magazines that existed in 1989. Her resulting book is a little more intense than the usual horror-lit anthology, a little deeper, a little more hallucinogenic, experimental, and nightmarish – and all the better for it. The stories on Salmonson's book are best devoured two or three at a time; no one is more memorable than any other, they all stand out in their own personality. It's easy to see why some of these authors went on to enjoy popular careers as horror writer in the 90s.

The final pages of Salmonson's book are two appendixes, which will serve to showcase the world of horror-lit at the end of the 80s; with a high spirit of independence and creativity – Appendix I: How to Start Your Own Shoestring Horror Magazine, and this detailed advisory runs three pages. The following four pages, Appendix II: Current Small Press Horror Magazines, where up-and-coming and starting-out horror authors could legitimately send their work to be critiqued and hopefully published, is nothing more than a publishing obituary now.

The underworld wonderful and sometimes awe-inspiring (as it was to Jessica Amanda Salmonson) was undone by newer, faster, independent publishing abilities with the introduction of the World Wide Web – and the incomprehensible amount of BLOG outlets. [blog(a truncation of the expression "weblog"] For a hardcopy press Horror Magazine to exist as a viable business within this world, even at $5 per issue for their mail-out subscriptions, was impossible. Yet the facilities of the publishing and the curating of genre-lit anthologies still maintain a sort of importance, a go-to for a snapshot of literary horror from a particular era.

And no book (or series of books, if you count it as three) accomplishes this more importantly that David G. Hartwell's epic horror anthology, “Dark Decent”. Hartwell's anthology (also published by TOR) is probably one of the longest-running reprinted horror anthology ever published, and boasts one of the most thought-out, respectful, impressive and important literal recollections of the Horror-lit world from the late-seventies to late-eighties. It's also an an anthology that was so big, that its three “parts” were actually published as three separate collections in the mid-nineties under the “Dark Descent” moniker. (Since then you can find it all put back together again, in one omnibus, as it was originally meant to be). This collection is also important as it represent horror fiction prior to the “splatterpunk” movement of the late-eighties to late-nineties, with some of the “splatterpunk” authors crossing over.

Funnily, I came across a copy of each of these two books very recently, and completely randomly (meaning that I was not actually book shopping, or even in a bookstore, at the time I found these titles), which led me to believe that there was something important and interesting to relay here. I admit that the reason my eyes went to these titles (and the reason for their subsequent purchases) was that I had been, for over two decades, on the lookout for a particular Charles L. Grant short story that I'd read about, but had never had the opportunity to actually read. And I find myself, at present, still on the lookout for this elusive short horror tale... 

--V.

  

No comments: