Well let's see. It all began as an eight page, two-part article, in the June and August 1983 issues of the now defunct fiction and non-fiction magazine Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone.
COVER ART BY ARTIFACT |
COVER ART BY JOE BURLESON |
- 1. 13 Supreme Masters of Weird Fiction (Hadji),
- 2. 13 All-Time Classics of Fantasy (Disch),
- 3. 13 Best Supernatural Horror Novels (Wagner),
- 4. 13 Best Non-Supernatural Horror Novels (Wagner),
- 5. 13 Worst Stinkers of the Weird (Hadji),
- 6. 13 Great Works of Fantasy from the Last 13 Years (Disch),
- 7. 13 Neglected Masterpieces of the Macabre (Hadji),
- 8. 13 Best Science Fiction Horror Novels (Wagner),
- 9. 13 Most Terrifying Horror Stories (Hadji),
- 10. 13 Most Terrifying Horror Stories (Klein).
I, like a lot of folks who were into the fantastics, tried to read every item on the list that was new to me. Nearly everything I got hold of was pretty entertaining, if not memorable, with only a few exceptions. FFFB seemed unique when it appeared as well as timely (the beginning of the 1980's horror boom), and it had a huge impact on me, and still does as I'm continually in the hunt for various titles. Without it, I might never have been exposed to Michael Fessier or Eleanor Scott or Walter S. Masterman or John Urban Nicolson, whose works I've come to respect and even love. That's how good these selections were, they've helped to solidify my belief that reading is truly one's most rewarding pastime (now if I could only remember half the stuff I've read!). But, like any list, there were titles and 'masters' that didn't make the grade and should have. And 'stinkers' too.
13 SUPREME MASTERS OF WEIRD FICTION, selected by R. S. Hadji:
Three of these "masters" I had never heard of before (Ewers, Ray and Seignolle). Five I knew of by name but had never read (Blackwood, De La Mare, Hoffmann, Kafka, Machen). Of the remaining five I had read either a single story (James, LeFanu) or significant portions of their oeuvre (Bradbury, Lovecraft, Poe). But by its intrigue, List Number One did what all list's are supposed to do; it seized my temporal lobe with a vise like grip.
1. Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951. English, born Algernon Henry Blackwood).
"Blackwood was a mystic, deeply versed in occult lore and oriental religion, which lends to his work the quiet conviction of a true believer. His pantheistic beliefs convey a distinct sense of the supernatural as an extension, rather that an invasion, of the natural order. He is unrivaled in depicting genii loci, whether good or evil." --- R. S. Hadji.
The FFFB was my introduction to Blackwood, who it turns out was featured prominently in an anthology I owned but had not yet read. That novella, The Willows, revealed itself to be one of the most powerful pieces of supernatural fiction I've ever encountered. Not surprisingly, it was also picked for List's 9 and 10. If I made my own list it would be number one in its category, and dislodgeable.
"Although considered a science fiction writer by many, Bradbury's weird tales have had an enormous influence on the genre in the last four decades. He chronicles the night-side of the American Dream. OUR TOWN distorted in a fun-house mirror. A poet in prose. Bradbury has uniquely captured the terror and wonder of childhood." --- R. S. Hadji.
"The master of the psychological ghost story, De La Mare's stories consist of shifting ambiguities expressed in exquisite prose, glimpses of what might be the supernatural, and then again, might only be a faulty perception, a delusion. His genius lies in the palpably menacing atmosphere that rises from these subtly calculated ambiguities, deceiving the reader as effectively as the characters. The ghosts may not be real, but the unease is there, all the same." --- R. S. Hadji.
In addition to his ghost stories and fantasy, De La Mare was also an excellent children's writer and a first-rank poet, and I would implore everyone to read his masterpiece of versification, The Listeners.
"Perhaps the first modern horror writer, Ewers set out to explore the physical nexus of sex and horror. His works are decadent in mode, yet expressionist in mood; his obsession with blood-lust and the ritual element in mass violence anticipates the terrors of our time." --- R. S. Hadji.
Ewers lofty reputation rests primarily on his devastating trilogy: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Alarune, and Vampyr, and also the powerful short story 'Die Spinne' aka The Spider (all three novels were picked for Lists 3, 4 and 7, respectively), but he was also an important editor and translator, and he helped usher in the German fantasy revival following the turn of the century.
Blood collects three of Ewer's most visceral horror stories: "Mamaloi," "The White Maiden," and "Tomato Sauce." This edition was published in hardcover by Heron Press in 1930. It would be another forty years, in 1977, before their unexpurgated versions would be reprinted. The pasted down cover art was produced by Edgar d'Aulaire, a Swiss immigrant who settled in Brooklyn with his Norwegian wife, Ingri, also an artist, and together they fashioned an award winning career writing and illustrating children's books. Ola, Children of the Northlights, East of the Sun and West of the Moon, and the 1940 Caldecott Medal winning Abraham Lincoln are but a few of their many, many successes.
"Hoffman was the first true master of weird fiction, transmuting the dross of the Gothic and Schaur romantik into brilliant fables, moving a memorable gallery of grotesques briskly through increasingly fantastic situations. His tales possess subtlety, wit, psychological insight and consummate literate skill, setting the standard for all his successors." --- R. S. Hadji.
Hoffmann also created this marvelous illustration as the frontispiece for an 1841 edition of his classic Tales of Hoffmann.
"James is the quintessential English ghost story writer, dry, understated, perhaps a trifle mechanical, yet lurking behind the bare bones of his diffident scholars and their antiquities is a living heart of pure nightmare. His ghosts haunt the memory long after the dust of the past settles comfortably back into place." --- R. S. Hadji.
One of James' best stories was picked for List 9 (and another for List 10). That story also became the name of a specialty press founded in 1994, an obvious homage to it and James' quintessentialness.
"Kafka was a quiet revolutionary, overthrowing the ordinary world by distortion, so that the unreal becomes commonplace, and madness the norm. Rarely has so overpowering a sense of alienation and despair been presented with such economy; his work has the terrifying lucidity of a nightmare in daylight." --- R. S. Hadji.
"The greatest Victorian ghost story writer, LeFanu rejected the accepted notion that the spiritual world mirrored the moral order of our own, being convinced that the supernatural was essentially chaotic and malefic, the antithesis of life. In traditional Gothic settings, his characters are hounded to death, innocent and guilty alike, by implacable revenants whose descendants long outlived their gentler contemporaries." --- R. S. Hadji.
"A true original, Lovecraft looked beyond the earthly ken of supernatural terrors to envision a universe of "cosmic horror," populated by a pantheon of monstroud deities inimical to humanity. Despite his tortuous prose, the Cthulhu Mythos weaves a powerful spell of paranoia, alienation, and fear of the limitless void." --- R. S. Hadji.
My former colleague Clif is a highly knowledgeable fantasy fan; he was bang on with his admiration for Tolkien and many other classic 20th century works, and as time would tell, even some modern authors like Brian Lumley, the surprising recipient in 2010 of both a Horror Lifetime Achievement Award and World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. I even bow to his reverence for R. A. Salvatore, who proved over time that he was much more than just another derivative fantasy writer. But Clif was wrong to paint Lovecraft as grossly overrated. For all his human faults and "tortuous prose," Lovecraft's fiction is singularly powerful stuff, so singularly powerful in fact that even those who would try to imitate him from a position of absolute sincerity usually fail to reach his cosmic heights by more than an adjective or two.
"Drawing upon a wide knowledge of Hermetic magic and Celtic folklore, Machen's gruesome symbolist fables opened a Pandora's Box of ancient evils lurking beneath the streets, the soil, even the skin of Victorian England. He was a master of evocative settings, whether city or country, at once intensely real yet subtly disturbing. Behind the facade of life, a greater, more terrible reality always lay hidden." --- R. S. Hadji.
Machen's best fiction is absolutely superlative. One of his very best stories was picked for List 10, with two more getting honorable mentions.
If you can get hold of these two paperbacks you've got the best of Arthur Machen in your hands. They're not exactly rare, but the price keeps going up on them, like everything in our greedy, price gouged world. Both were published by Panther in 1975, with terrific cover art by British artist Bruce Pennington. I owned a dozen Panther's at one time, but I never liked the feel of the things, preferring instead to collect American paperbacks. Foolishly, like always, I let them go for next to nothing. Now I feel differently about them (age can do that to you), and am currently seeking out these and any other British horror paperbacks that I can get my hands on. Wish me luck, I'll need it.
"The first American genius of the macabre, Poe used the mechanics of Gothic fiction as a metaphor for the abnormal psyche. Himself of a naturally morbid temperament, he pursued and was pursued by demons of the mind, yet, reaching to the limits of imagination, managed to embrace both sublime beauty and loathsome horror in his work. Poe's influence on the genre has been incalculable and definitive." --- R. S. Hadji.
Poe is Poe, and his written works are almost without peer in my estimation. As far as the filmed adaptations of his works go, well, apart from a cool version or two of "Murders in the Rue Morgue," they are about as off-putting to me as any of the worst things I can think of in cinema.
My little set of ten The Works of Edgar Allan Poe Commemorative Edition hardcovers (little in that they measure only 6 x 4 inches) were published by Funk & Wagnalls in 1904. At least that's their copyright date, they may in fact be later editions. They're the pride of my book collection though. Each volume has its own individual frontispiece by a different artist (for V.1 it's Stuart). Their value? Minimal, except to me. However, they are attractive looking, with textured navy blue boards and gilt top-edges. But time's decay has taken its toll---the edges are showing wear and the bindings have started to loosen---but I won't get rid of them, not ever! My Dad acquired them from an auction back in the 1950's, now they represent the best part of my reading youth.
"Ray was a Belgian journalist, virtually unknown in the English-speaking world, but he produced an enormous body of work, covering every aspect of the supernatural genre. He rarely left Ghent save in imagination, but in that medium roamed a chaotic universe of extraordinary happenings, inhabited by ghosts, goblins and grotesques of every description. His work followed no consistent ethos of the supernatural, but seemed to be guided by a sort of internal dream logic, reminiscent of the Surrealists." --- R. S. Hadji.
"A master of naturalism in the supernatural tale, Seignolle draws upon an intimate knowledge of the French countryside, its inhabitants and their folklore. In his work, the supernatural is a living force of nature, releasing sexual and physical violence in its wake. It is as much a part of the landscape as the soil or the trees, and is accepted as such." --- R. S. Hadji.
In the 1960's and early 70's, Marabout of Belgium published most of Seignolle's fiction in mass-market paperbacks (Jean Ray's too). The cover art is pretty darn incredible, especially the early ones; picture Richard Powers on a wicked mind trip. I believe the artist in question is Henri Lievens (1920-2000), a ferociously imaginative Belgian painter and illustrator who produced more than 200 book and magazine covers for various European publications, and probably just as many interior illustrations too.
Histoires Malefiques (Evil Stories) was published in 1965.
Contes Macabres (Macabre Tales) was published in 1966
Contes Macabres (Macabre Tales) was published in 1969
La Malvenue (The Unwelcome One) was republished in 1972 (1965).
Histoires Veneneuses (Poisonous Stories) was published in 1972.
13 ALL-TIME CLASSICS OF FANTASY, selected by Thomas M. Disch:
Fantasy was my thing back then, 'heroic' mostly, but also whatever Ballantine had or was publishing in its celebrated "Adult Fantasy" paperback series. Of these particular Disch "classics" I had only been exposed to three: The Turn of the Screw, The Werewolf of Paris, and Conjure Wife. Spell on!
by William Godwin (1756-1836. English). "A good man hounded to... his grave? I won't tell. The first epic of paranoia." --- Thomas M. Disch.
CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE |
British artist William Hopwood (1784-1853) produced this illustration, a probable engraving, as the frontispiece for an 1824 edition of Things As They Are, which was published by S. Fisher of London.
by Matthew Gregory "Monk" Lewis (1775-1818. English). "The first X-rated gothic romance---and still juicy after all these years." --- Thomas M. Disch.
Penguin published this black-striped softcover edition of The Monk in 1999. The cover features a small image cropped from a much larger triptych painting by the Netherlandish artist Dieric Bouts (1410-1475), titled The Last Judgment, circa 1470. The left panel, where this image was pulled, is named The Fall of the Damned. The center panel is lost. The right panel, The Ascension of the Elect, resides along with the left in the Little Palace of Fine Arts in France.
by Baron de la Motte Fouque (1777-1843. German, born Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte). "This fairy tale-novel from the heyday of German romanticism tells in a gentl, sentimental manner of the love of the water-sprite Undine for the young knight Huldbrand. Wagner was rereading this on his deathbed." --- Thomas M. Disch.
German artist Julius Hoeppner (1839-1893), produced a beautiful illustration for the frontispiece of an 1890 edition of Undine, published by Griffith Farran & Company of London. All of Hoeppner's paintings are gorgeously executed; he was an outstanding illustrator in every regard.
by Charles Robert Maturin (1780-1824. Irish). "The quintessential Gothic novel; a virtual mince pie of horrors, including a splendid tour of the dungeons of the Inquisition." --- Thomas M. Disch.
I decided to never read this book, mainly because I don't believe any tour of the dungeons of the Inquisition could be anything but sickening. I do like mince pie though.
by James Hogg (1770-1835. Scottish). "Gide waxed enthusiastic for Hogg's portrait of the devil in modern dress; it's also the last word on doppelgangers. The sinner of the title is an awesomely sanctimonious hypocrite." --- Thomas M. Disch.
There was no frontispiece with the 1824 first edition, and of the many republished editions this cover of the 2010 Oxford reprint seems to be the one that stands out the most. Literally. It's an ink and watercolor painting by the English poet, artist and printmaker William Blake (1757-1827), titled Red Dragon. It depicts a hybrid creature, half human, half dragon, spreading its wings over a woman enveloped in light. This was from a group of more than 100 Biblical themed paintings that Blake produced over a fertile five year period.
by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935. American). "At the turn of the century madness displaced the supernatural as the crux of Gothic horror, and this tale of incipient schizophrenia is a monument of that transition-- and an important document of modern feminism." --- Thomas M. Disch.
Art Nouveau artist Elisha Brown Bird (1867-1943) designed the cloth cover on this 1901 hardcover edition of The Yellow Wall Paper, a collection of three stories by Charlotte Perkins Stetson (Stetson was Gilman's first husband). Note the pair of laughing faces in the lower half of the design, and above them, even more faces, representing, possibly, the patterns in the wallpaper as seen by the schizophrenic woman in the story.
by Henry James (1843-1916. American born British). "Still the sneakiest and most sinister of ghost stories. Are Miles and Flora being corrupted by Peter Quint's ghost---or is the governess imagining things?" --- Thomas M. Disch.
There's a lot of similarity between the Dell cover by Brooks and this U.K. paperback edition of The Turn of the Screw, published by WDL Books in 1960. The artist, R. W. Smethurst (also called Ron), was known to sometimes recreate, at least partially, someone else's cover illustration, probably not so much to be a ripoff, but more in line with convenience, or perhaps pastiche (WDL republished a lot of Dell titles). Maybe Smethurst couldn't afford to pay for models. Either way, he still managed to produce dozens of pretty cool covers for British publisher World Distributors Ltd., in addition to an output of comic books.
by Oliver Onions (1873-1961. English, born George Oliver Onions). "Paul Oleron rents a floor of a house on a London square, unaware that he's moved into the very St. Paul's Cathedral of haunted houses." --- Thomas M. Disch.
I recommended Onion's most famous ghost story to Peter Collins, a good friend and colleague (and one of the funniest guys I know), believing that he would enjoy it as much as I did. When asked about it later he admitted he hated the story, and in fact he couldn't say one positive thing about it. I was crestfallen. After that I decided to be more cautious about recommending books to friends, to the point of not recommending anything at all. Even restaurants.
"The book is prefaced with a "Credo," in which are set forth both the writer's point of view and his theory of the field the "ghost story" may legitimately cover, and in addition the whole has been designed as a coherent unit, eerie, grim, and often horribly beautiful, to the refrain of "From Ghaisties, Ghoulies and long-leggity Beasties and Things that go Bump in the night---Good Lord, deliver us!"
This novel was probably the third or fourth title that I read on List 2, and its first real disappointment. It just didn't measure up to being a so-called "masterpiece." A rereading might be in order though, not because I trust Disch now any more than I did then, but because now that I'm older I have a better understanding of what good writing actually is. Or at least I'd like to think I do.
Michael Loew (1907-1985) produced the cover art for Penguin's 1946 edition of Lady Into Fox. He was a regular at Penguin and Signet before embarking on a fine arts career in Abstract Expressionism. Later in life he taught art at the University of California in Berkeley and then at the School of Visual Arts in New York. His works have been exhibited in galleries, museums and other cultural institutions all across the United States.
10. The Werewolf of Paris (1933)
I was a huge sword & sorcery and heroic fantasy fan when I was young, and still am I guess, but ironically, I never got into Leiber's celebrated Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories. Not a one. His other works, like this novel and Our Lady of Darkness, are really outstanding though, and shouldn't be missed at peril of one's literary growth.
The illustrative femme fatal credentials of famed artist Robert Maguire run pretty deep, so it's not surprising that his masterful cover art on Conjure Wife cast quite a spell on me. This is also the very first paperback edition of Leiber's novel, and the very first vintage paperback I ever bought in a used bookstore. What a find! It was published by Lion Books in 1953. That bookstore was Black Ace Books on East Colfax in Denver, owned by beatnik poet Tony Scibella, where eventually I bought two or three hundred more vintage pb's when the store had its going-out-of-business sale (actually Tony relocated to Los Angeles and founded the annual Black Ace Vintage Paperback Show).
by Sarban (1910-1989. English, born John William Wall). "The Nazis won World War II, and now they're breeding lesser races as game to be hunted on their estates. Several degrees more chilling than "The Most Dangerous Game." --- Thomas M. Disch.
I had already read Sarban's other classic novel, Ringstones (Ballantine, 1961), so to be asked to read this one was like being asked if I wanted a second helping of chocolate cake on my birthday.
13. Snow White (1967)
by Donald Barthelme (1931-1989. American). "Postmodernism in collision with Walt Disney and the Brothers Grimm. Much fun, many games." --- Thomas M. Disch.
Look for Lists 3 & 4 in a future post.
[© April, 2022, Jeffersen]
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