Horror Masterworks Series...

[Fried Egg]

They've done a Fantasy, SF and Crime masterworks series, should they also do Horror?

I know there are some titles in the fantasy/SF masterworks that are, perhaps, also in the horror category (such as "Something Wicked This Way Comes", "Song of Kali", "I am Legend", etc.) but doesn't it deserve it's own list?

If so, what titles should be in it?

 

[Nesacat]

It's a good idea this ... perhaps it might even come to pass. I'd like to see:

Fevre Dream by George RR Martin
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
Lovecraft's Tales
Poe's Tales
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

 

[iansales]

I've not read any horror for decades. And those that I did reread recently - The Spear and The Survivor by James Herbert - were a lot worse than I remembered.

 

[Fried Egg]

It's a good idea this ... perhaps it might even come to pass. I'd like to see:

Fevre Dream by George RR Martin
Carrion Comfort by Dan Simmons
Lovecraft's Tales
Poe's Tales
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

I suppose you would have to collect Lovecraft's best tales in two volumes perhaps?

"Fevre Dream" is already in the Fantasy masterworks series, I would exclude titles already in one of the other series just to avoid overlap.

And what about "I have always lived in the castle" by Shirley Jackson?

I'm suprised you haven't suggested any Barker or is he too recent do you think?

Oh, and surely a collection by Algernon Blackwood should feature, especially as he didn't get into the Fantasy Masterworks series...

 

[Fried Egg]

I've not read any horror for decades. And those that I did reread recently - The Spear and The Survivor by James Herbert - were a lot worse than I remembered.

My problem is I haven't read enough horror to be able to contribute to such a list. I guess I want someone else to so that I can use it as a guide on what to look for...

 

[j d worthington]

Frankly, I think the bulk of what came out during the "Horror Boom" of the 1970s-late 1980s/early 1990s, can be forgotten without a twinge. Most of it was potboilers, at best. There is, however, a small portion which holds up quite well, and yes, I think such a series would be a good idea. (And no, I don't think Herbert is one of those which fits, either.)

As for HPL's "best" stories... no, you could probably fit all that in one good-sized volume... about what they did with the CAS Emperor of Dreams in the Fantasy Masterworks should suffice... though there will be numerous debates over the contents in such a case, as everyone has his favorites and pet detestations....

Though it was not a huge bestseller, I'd like to see T. E. D. Klein's The Ceremonies as part of such a list, as it is certainly among the finest horror novels of the later twentieth century. Blackwood, of course, should be included, as should some of Machen's work. But even if one keeps to the major classics, there's a substantial list there if one looks; and if they choose to go with a few things which were influential but not necessarily well-known today, that broadens things considerably.

Incidentally, I'd also like to see E. H. Visiak's Medusa as part of one of these, though I'm uncertain whether it should be horror or fantasy....

 

[iansales]

Disch wrote a couple that were pretty good - The Businesman was one, IIRC.

 

[AE35Unit]

Yes lets see that collection!
I can only go by what I've read so I would add an Edgar Alan Poe collection, although I wouldnt know which would be best, The Murders in the Rue Morgue: And Other Stories (1841) or maybe Tales of Mystery and Imagination (1908)

A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens

The Collected Ghost Stories of M R James (1931)

Moving forward, how about The Fog (1975) by James Herbert

I'd also add Misery (1987) by Stephen King but not sure if its horror-more thriller perhaps? Or how about his The Dark Half (1989)

 

[dask]

Go grab an anthology of WEIRD TALES stories and have at it.

 

[AE35Unit]

Go grab an anthology of WEIRD TALES stories and have at it.

Hmm,and where might I find this esteemed magazine?

 

[dask]

Hmm,and where might I find this esteemed magazine?

I've read about attempts to revive it but as fas as I know it's been defunct for quite some time.There are hardback and paperback anthologies floating around. I found a nice hb at a library book sale a few years back. BOOK HUNT, BOOK HUNT, BOOK HUNT!

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

Weird Tales is alive and well, and has been for a while now: Weird Tales: The original magazine of the unique, fantastic & bizarre

 

[GOLLUM]

Darn...my $%$## PC crashed just as I was about to post about this, so Knivesout has pipped me at the post.

To add a little more however.... The original Weird Tales ran from 1923 to 1954 featuring contributors of the ilk of H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith and Robert E Howard. Since then, it's been running on and off but from 1988 on it's been going along at a solid rate. In fact the magazine won its first Hugo at least year's WorldCon.

Over the lifetime of this latest incarnation it has boasted contributors including Tanith Lee, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Ligotti, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Cherrie Priest, Jay Lake and Jeff Vandermeer.

Ann Vandermeer is the magazine's current fiction editor, which can only mean good things to come.

I've read some of their back issues and they're actually quite good. Not quite on the same level IMO as the original Weird Tales but still worth a look if your local stockist has a copy.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

The interesting thing is that a lot of the 'masterworks' of classic horror have never really been out of print. Frankenstein, Jeckyll & Hyde, Dracula, the ghost stories of MR James and Le Fanu have always been available fairly easily. While Machen's works can often be hard to find outside of small press reprints, the works of Poe, Bierce and Blackwood can also be found in editions from mainstream publishers. Wordsworth is currently re-issuing a lot of older material and if you do choose to inspect the small press scene, the options increase: there are things like Hippocampus' 'Lovecraft's Library' series, or publishing houses like Valancourt and Bison that specialise in re-issuing older, more obscure works of, respectively, gothic fiction and horror/sf/fantasy. Works by latter-day horror luminaries like Barker, Straub, Campbell and, for our sins, King are hardly hard-to-get either.

What I think would be worth a re-issue from a mainstream press are pulp-era horror tales by writers outside of the big 3 of HPL, CAS and REH, but many of these would be obscure re-discoveries rather than generally accounted masterworks. Again, some good work from the 60s through to recent times is hard to find in mass market editions - TED Klein's novellas, Russell Kirk's ghost stories, much of Ligotti and so forth.

 

[GOLLUM]

What I think would be worth a re-issue from a mainstream press are pulp-era horror tales by writers outside of the big 3 of HPL, CAS and REH, but many of these would be obscure re-discoveries rather than generally accounted masterworks. Again, some good work from the 60s through to recent times is hard to find in mass market editions - TED Klein's novellas, Russell Kirk's ghost stories, much of Ligotti and so forth.

Actually a case in point is the HB end. of Weird Tales 32 Unearthed Terrors *Intro by Robert Bloch published back in 1988 that features a different author from each year of the magazines publication (1923 - 1954). Granted that's not a mainstream publication per se but it does feature quite a number of more obscure authors and not just the better known "big 3". Needless to say, its one of my prized possessions.

EDIT: May have spoken to soon. Just noticed, my rarer publication released by Bonanza Press was also released by Random House, so definitely mainstream.

Still a good point you make there. There would definitely be a market for what you are suggesting I think.

 

[j d worthington]

Not quite on the same level IMO as the original Weird Tales but still worth a look if your local stockist has a copy.

Um, as someone who has had (and read) something over 50 issues of the original incarnation (said issues scattered from 1926 to 1953), I'd be careful about saying something like that. There was a lot of crap published in that magazine. A lot.... However, at its best, it certainly earned its reputation as "The Unique Magazine", and did more to promote modern horror and dark fantasy (and fantasy in general) than 95% of the other magazines which dipped into those realms until the latter quarter of the twentieth century.

Nonetheless, I would be reluctant to see an anthology of tales garnered from the old red-covered standby, as it has had numerous anthologies either cull from its pages, or take their entire contents from its run. Everything from the Selwyn & Blount "Not at Night" series edited by Christine Campbell Thompson as far back as HPL's heyday, to Weinberg's Far Below and Other Horrors published in 2003 (as well as Marvin Kaye's The Best of Weird Takes: 1923, published in 1997). In the process, the majority of the best things have been anthologized and re-anthologized, so that any new collection -- unless it chose to include a fair amount of mid-range to awful tales, sort of defeting the "Masterworks" idea -- is bound to have a considerable amount of repetition with other, already existing anthologies, most of which are not that difficult to find or that expensive.

As for the newer incarnation: they have also published Moorcock and Pugmire, as well as a host of other notable contemporary writers in the field....

 

[GOLLUM]

Um, as someone who has had (and read) something over 50 issues of the original incarnation (said issues scattered from 1926 to 1953), I'd be careful about saying something like that. There was a lot of crap published in that magazine. A lot.... However, at its best, it certainly earned its reputation as "The Unique Magazine", and did more to promote modern horror and dark fantasy (and fantasy in general) than 95% of the other magazines which dipped into those realms until the latter quarter of the twentieth century.

Yes, I should have made myself clearer as we've had this discussion before. I was really thinking more of the highpoints the original magazine reached compared to the highpoints I've witnessed in the more recent reincarnation with the bias I have towards Lovecraft, Ashton Smith and Howard. I was also thinking of it's overall standing or contribution to the pantheon of similar magazines of that period. Thinking a little more objectively by way of a measured analysis of the overall content of the original magazine as compared to its current format, I would say, of what I have read to date, that the more recent publication is in fact more consistently good than its original.

You are of course correct too regarding the original Weird Tales magazine. There certainly was a lot of crap as you put it and from what I've read from facsimile edns, I would say in the majority rather than the minority.

Sorry for the misleading statement. I may have suffered from a momentary lapse of nostalgic overload...

 

[j d worthington]

Some of these writers either are or have been recently brought back into print by some of the smaller presses. John Pelan's Midnight House/Darkside Press, for instance, have done such things as volumes by Joseph Payne Brennan and G. G. Pendarves, as well as a set of books by Leiber and other items; Night Shade Books have been bringing out sets of works by Manley Wade Wellman and others, and so forth....

Midnight House Books

Night Shade Books: Search Results

Still, it would be nice to see a set of books representing the better pulp writers in the field and introducing their work to a new generation of readers. (But heaven forfend they should bring in any of Seabury Quinn's Jules de Grandin tales!)

 

[j d worthington]

Sorry for the misleading statement. I may have suffered from a momentary lapse of nostalgic overload...

*chuckle* It happens to the best of us (and, in my case, sometimes the not-so-best of us)... otherwise, why would I have a shelf's worth of such anthologies sitting in my place....?

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

JD, GOLLUM: how about compiling your lists of the first 15 titles you'd like to see released in a putative Horror Masterworks series? You can include famous and obscure titles, as long as you think they're among the very best.