Dangerous Visions 3 Edited by Harlan Ellison

Dangerous Visions 3
Edited by Harlan Ellison
Copyright 1969

New Introduction by Harlan Ellison
Ellison engages in a bit of self-congratulation in describing the success of the “vivisected” Dangerous Visions, of which this is the third volume. He says that he’s been working on a new volume to be titled Again, Dangerous Visions. He lists the new writers with breathless excitement.

If All Men Were Brothers, Would You Let One Marry Your Sister? by Theodore Sturgeon
An explorer is determined to find a secret planet that is shunned by the rest of the universe. When he gets there, he falls in love with one of the natives, but learns the hard way why this planet is shunned by the rest of the universe.

I thought Sturgeon had a perfectly good short story going here until he brought it to an abrupt halt with an argument as to why incest should not be socially taboo. Then it got really boring and not a little repulsive.

What Happened to Auguste Clarot by Larry Eisenberg
A dogged reporter investigates the disappearance of a world renowned French chemist. When he eventually locates the chemist, he learns that he has used his knowledge and expertise to develop an entirely new means of supporting himself.

Some of the stories in this book I have not enjoyed for one reason or another. None of them left me thinking, so what? Until now.

Ersatz by Henry Slesar
A man in a post-apocalyptic war searches for an aid station where he might get some food and sleep. He finally finds one, attended by a man and young woman. He seeks comfort from the woman and gets more than he bargained for.

An absolutely pointless story which had the science fiction angle as something completely gratuitous. The twist is almost as old as sex itself which made for a thoroughly boring read.

Go, Go, Go, said the Bird by Sonya Dorman
In a dystopian society, a woman flees from pursuers who would eat her to stave off famine. As she runs, she reminisces about being a powerful leader in her tribe.

This one had a pretty good twist. And, who can’t help but like a story set in a cannibalistic dystopia?

The Happy Breed by John T. Sladek
In the late 1980s, the world and its population are controlled by a supercomputer that has removed all danger, all risk, and all excitement from life. Slowly, with the help of the computer, the world’s inhabitants regress to a near infantile intelligence and existence.

This is a powerful story that is as pertinent and relevant today as it was nearly 50 years ago. As our government and society strive to reduce dangerous behavior, control our diet, and remove danger and risk from our lives, they reduce our humanity.

Encounter with a Hick by Jonathan Brand
Is God the moral standard of the universe just because he created it? A space hippy encounters and unsophisticated traveler who claims to be all powerful.

The dialogue in this story hurt the eyes to read and the author tried too hard to be controversial and not hard enough to construct a meaningful plot. Dangerous? No. Annoying? Yes.

From the Government Printing Office by Kris Neville
A three year old feels mistreated by his parents who are raising him based on an instruction manual from the government that explains how to raise a future scientist.

This story started out very weak with no seeming rhyme or reason. When it becomes apparent that the storyteller is narrating the scattered thoughts of a three year old, it works.

Land of the Great Horses by R.A. Lafferty
Whatever happened to the homeland of the Romany? It is revealed when that small sliver of earth is returned by the aliens who took it for examination. They claim a new piece of land to study and create a new type of Gypsy.

This one started out very difficult to follow and seemingly without purpose or reason. But, as it gathered steam and the direction the author was headed became clear, it was quite interesting and quite clever.

The Recognition by J.G. Ballard
A strange circus comes to town and sets up in a remote, desolate part of town. It is operated by a dwarf and an ageless woman. A young man slips in to see the exhibits and finds the cages empty except for a familiar odor. Later, when a few obnoxious sailors stop by, they learn the true nature of the circus and its exhibits.

This story was wonderfully atmospheric, but a little short on plot. Darker than that most famous of haunted circus stories, Something Wicked This Way Comes, it lacks the compelling narrative.

Judas by John Brunner
A man enters a church and asks to speak to God himself. He is recognized as a former priest of this temple. A priest tries to restrain him and he kills him. He then goes to meet God – the God he created and the God he intends to destroy.

I initially thought this was a negative riff on Christianity and the story of Christ’s crucifixion and rebirth. But it seems to be a commentary on man’s reliance upon machinery to carry out daily tasks and man’s increasing dependence upon it.

Test to Destruction by Keith Laumer
A man undergoing interrogation is unknowingly tested by aliens who want to assess mankind’s mental stability. However, he turns the table on them and becomes the ultimate power in the universe.

What intelligent, insightful, and brilliantly written science fiction this story was! Laumer shows that you can

Carcinoma Angels by Norman Spinrad
A self-made billionaire who has never met a challenge he could not conquer learns that he has cancer. The cancer is deemed terminal. He will not accept that answer and sets out to cure or remove his own disease.

This story was written in a different time when most forms of cancer were death sentences. To get a cancer diagnosis instilled terror in the heart. However, Spinrad approaches the subject as a dark comedy and delivers a mildly funny, but exceptionally well-paced story that was a pleasure to read.

Auto-Da-Fe by Roger Zelazny
In the future, matadors will be replaced by mechanadors who do battle not with bulls, but with cars. The best mechanador of them all takes on a host of Buicks, Fords, and Pontiacs.

A surprisingly old sci-fi trope of taking something old and replacing it with something new or fictional works well in Zelazy’s tale.

Aye, and of Gomorrah by Samuel R. Delany
This is a story about Spacers who are eunuchs who work in space to repair satellites and equipment. Felks are the sexually deviant earth inhabitants that lust for Spacers. A spacer encounters a Felk in Instanbul who cannot pay him for his services. But it is not money that he wants.

I thought this was a rather vanilla tale with which to wrap up this anthology. I read with some anticipation to find out what a Spacer and a Felk were. Once I found out about halfway through the story, I lost interest.

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction Volume I

A Treasury of Great Science Fiction
Volume 1
edited by Anthony Boucher
Copyright 1959
Doubleday

Contains the following stories:

Rebirth
by John Wyndham
This is a powerful novella about post-apocalyptic Newfoundland and a young boy’s coming of age in a profoundly religious society

David, the son of THE local minister in a society where any physical deviation from the normal makeup of the human body, encounters a little girl with six toes. They try in vain to hide the secret, but are unsuccessful and the girl and her family are forced to flee. David, meanwhile, shares a small mental abnormality -- telepathic ability -- with several other local youths who all work hard to conceal it. When David’s new sister is born, they soon find their own abilities pale in comparison to hers. They fear their secret will get out.

This book is dripping with social commentary on religion versus intellectual progress and the role of religion in our society. The characters lack the alienation of a Kafka hero, but it is not hard to sympathize with them as their culture tells them they are abominations before God. While the bit about collectivism at the end smacks a little of socialistic superiority, the story blends just the right amount of social analysis with action to make a truly engaging story.

The Shape of Things That Came
by Richard Deming
A scientist’s nephew finds his time traveling T-shirt and uses it to travel from the year 1900 to 1950. Upon his return, he writes a short story about the experience that his editor simply finds implausible. The man explains what he saw.

Pillar of Fire
by Ray Bradbury
This was the antithesis of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend. In this story, the vampire struggles against the humans who dominate society. The last existing corpse comes to life in the 25th century to fight for its existence and to exterminate humans. In a perfectly ordered society, nobody suspects any abnormalities despite the chaos around them

Bradbury gives hints at what would come in Fahrenheit 451, which he wrote later. Our vampire compares himself favorably to the anti-heroes of the works of Edgar Allan Poe and H.P. Lovecraft in a society that has burned such disorderly books.

Waldo
by Robert Heinlein
The world’s greatest scientist is presented with an engineering problem that could threaten civilization. He is forced to appeal to a much older and arcane form of problem solving to develop the solution.

This was science fiction for engineers. WAY too much technology and not nearly enough story. I struggled to finish it.

The Father Thing
by Phillip K. Dick
Aliens have eaten Charles Watsons’ father. He must flee from the awful thing that has taken its place and take revenge on its evil master.

This story contains that theme of impostors and conspirators that was so common in the Golden Age Science Fiction of the 1950s. This is comparable to Invasion of the Body Snatchers which was also published in 1954.

The Children’s Hour
by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore
A man goes to a psychologist to be hypnotized so he can recall what happened to missing hours and days in his life. He recalls a young, beautiful girl to whom he was engaged. But fate -- or the intervention of some higher power -- always seems to get in the way.

This was a somewhat intriguing story that built the tension nicely, then veers off in a really odd direction that can't really be called a twist. Melds contemporary psycho-drama with mythology, and in the end, plain old fashioned sci-fi.

Gomez
by C.M. Kornbluth
A prominent scientist receives a letter from an immigrant dishwasher asking him to verify his theory regarding nuclear physics. When the government finds out about it, the young immigrant dishwasher finds his life dramatically altered.

An ok, if non-descript story

The Widget, the Wadget, and Boff
by Theodore Sturgeon
Aliens conduct sociological and scientific experiments on a group of boarding house residents to ascertain whether or not the human race has the necessary mental capacity and ability to survive. As they engage their science from a higher plane of existence, they behave like a typical human married couple.

I don’t normally like character studies like this, but Sturgeon’s characters were meaningful and engaging. The story’s sci-fi tie-in is really tertiary to how human beings of various backgrounds dwell in the same habitat and how they see each other and themselves within that habitat.

Sandra
by George P. Elliot
A first person narrative about a man who purchases a female slave who is obedient and dutiful (and willing to sleep with him). He falls in love with her and she becomes lazy, disobedient, and independent. So he puts her back into slavery and she reverts to her normal form.

I guess this story qualifies as some alternative reality story since the guy purchased his slave at an Oakland department store, but nothing else in the text indicates any hint of sci-fi or alternative reality. It was racy for its time, I’m sure, but today would be dismissed as highly misogynistic.

Beyond Space and Time
by Joel Townsley Rogers
A brilliant scientist teams with a brilliant engineer to design and build the first rocket-ship designed to leave the galaxy. When the engineer is launched, he learns more about what is going on on Earth and his personal life from billions of miles away than he ever did while on Earth.

Ok, if somewhat light, story.


The Martian Crown Jewels
by Poul Anderson

A locked room whodunit in space. The Martian Crown Jewels are being transferred from Earth --- where they were being studied --- to the Mars moon Phobe where they will be unloaded and returned to Mars. They are stowed in a locked cabinet aboard an unmanned freighter. When that freighter arrives, the jewels are gone. Terrified diplomats turned to a skilled Martian detective to help them solve the unsolvable case.

The Weapon Shops of Isher
by A.E. Van Vogt

A group of dissidents operate transient weapons shops that move from town to town and village to village to sell specialized self-defense weapons to help repress the tyranny of an imperial government. A young man defies his father who finds the weapon shops offensive and strikes out on his own with the help of a young woman associated with the weapon shops.

This story was superb and embodied everything that is good about Golden Age science fiction. The characters are strong and the story plot driven. The pro-2nd amendment advocacy is not even thinly veiled, but allows the reader to identify with characters confronting the same issues 5000 years in the future that we confront today.

A website I found describes Van Vogt as the third pillar of Golden Age sci-fi along with Bradbury and Asimov. It also claims that this novella was actually a series of short stories published separately.

Sturgeon is Alive and Well by Theodore Sturgeon

Sturgeon is Alive and Well
By Theodore Sturgeon
Copyright 1971

Theodore Sturgeon was a writer of science fiction in what is known as its Golden Age, or the era before, during, and following World War II. His contemporaries include Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Robert Bloch, and A.E. Van Vogt. Although he only wrote a few television scripts, older members of Generation X will remember his work on Star Trek, having penned the episodes “Shore Leave” which is an acceptable if not memorable episode and “Amok Time” which is a much more powerful and well known episode. He is the creator of Star Trek’s famous ”Prime Directive” that was integral to many episodes and spin off shows that followed. He died in 1985.

To Here and the Easel

A blocked painter conjures up in his mind an alternative world where he is held prisoner by an evil magician. In that world, he must escape the clutches of the magician and save a princess. In this world, the blank canvass torments him, so he uses money to exercise some sort of influence within the prime material plane. A female interloper tells him to rediscover his talent, he must find out why he paints.

This was actually published as a short novel in an anthology of short novels published by Frederick Pohl in 1954 entitled Star Short Novels. The story very much reminds me of Lovecraft in the use of the imagery that Lovecraft was so wont to borrow from Lord Dunsany. These were not my favorite Lovecraft stories, but Sturgeon makes judicious use of that imagery in crafting his alternative world. The artist’s flaunting of his bizarre behavior in our world is also entertaining. The end of the story, however, I think is a bit of a cheat since the reader wasn’t given any of the clues necessary to anticipate the twist.

Slow Sculpture

A woman afflicted with breast cancer goes to an unconventional healer who injects her with a mysterious drug and tells her unquestioned faith is needed for the drug to work. As she strengthens her resolve and her faith, she helps the healer delve deep into the nature of his mental affliction to help him excise the “disease” that afflicts him.

This is much more character study than story. But the characters are developed through interaction and dialogue with each other rather than constant introspection. I tend to look more for a plot driven story when reading short fiction, but Sturgeon’s approach to developing the loan characters of his story makes it engaging.

It’s You

A single man finds the woman of his dreams hitchhiking outside a gas station. Within days, he’s moved in with her. Within weeks, he’s given up his old friends and habits. Within months, he’s given up his profession for a more mundane profession, all at her gentle urging.

This one read like an hour long television drama. It contained not an element of sci-fi or fantasy. Just like the previous story, this story was purely a character study and the study of the give and take of relationships and the problems when one gives more than the other. I am usually disappointed when I find a piece of “mainstream” fiction folded between my usual genre fare, but I wasn’t disappointed in this story.

I also enjoyed Sturgeon’s informal style of writing here. The narrative lapses from independent narrative to first person narrative and, on occasions, into second person narrative which all our high school creative writing teachers told us to eschew. The greats know how and when to thumb their noses at the comp teachers and stray from the rigid tenants of structured writing. To do so is to dare greatly for there is a reason our instructors warned us away from the non-conventions: they are exceptionally difficult to do well and fail horribly when their done less than perfectly.

Take Care of Joey

A mildly deranged man arrives in a local bar and starts problems with the patrons. His “caretaker” is summoned to retrieve him. A curious patron walks home with the “caretaker” and learns his odd, but compelling reason for making sure that Joey stays out of harm’s way.

This is a classic story of irony. Well told with a climax that is difficult to predict.

Crate

A spaceship carrying a probation officer and her charges crashes on a remote planet that they were to settle and be reformed. The probation officer is hurt badly. She gives each of them private instructions and tells them they must carry a crate to a nearby settlement if they are to survive. The kids learn about themselves and each other as they carry their burden and carry out the final wishes of their ward.

The sci-fi setting is tertiary to the story. It could have been set in an American desert and accomplished the same thing. While the story was completely different, the character development made me recall Lord of the Flies.

The Girl Who Knew What They Meant

A man marked for death by the mob holds up in a low rent motel. No matter where he hides, the mobsters find him, call him, and tell him the precise date and time his death will occur. He meets a woman with whom he falls in love and she changes his destiny.

I don’t know if the woman in the story was incredibly intuitive, or if she had some supernatural power. She is well written while his character is the barest essence of development. The formula works and this is a great story.

Jorry’s Gap

A willful teenager defies his parents and leaves the house for the evening to hang out with his friends. We learn his mother’s perception of his friends through her admonishments and his perception of his friends through his thoughts as he cruises the town looking for them. Through their actions, he learns that perhaps, sometimes, parents do know something.

This was perhaps the weakest story in the book. It has no major flaws. But it’s message is not veiled or disguised in any way. The characters are also bit like caricatures.

It Was Nothing – Really!

A scientist emerges from the bathroom, his pants about his ankles and toilet paper in his hand. He demands that his secretary come immediately to his office and take a memo. That memo becomes the object of desire of the government who will stop at nothing to learn its contents.

This story contains a note of dark humor and overflows with keen observation about the nature of the cosmos. The greatest scientific revelations lie in the simplest of things.

Brownshoes

A brilliant scientist develops physics’ Holy Grail – the perpetual motion machine. Convinced that its applications will create Heaven on earth, he makes his discovery public. Only, the governments of several countries and the captains of many industries will stop at nothing to prevent its commercial development.

This story is incredibly average. The economic and social upheaval of the mythical perpetual motion machine have been plumbed in other works. However, the interaction between the hero, Mensch and his wife, Fauna, make the story interesting enough to read.

Uncle Fremmis

Uncle Fremmis is a man with a knack for making things work. But he can’t fix anything except dinner. He also has a way of making people “work” more efficiently. His nephew relates Fremmis’ tale of how he got that way and the man behind it who wields incredible power for good.

Electrical and mechanical altering of conscience is pervasive in science fiction. This is a worthwhile take on that premise. The narrative voice is well written and makes the story an easy read.


The Patterns of Dome

A soldier has been planning a political assassination since he was a teenager, painstakingly planning every detail and conducting a decade long charade. However, when he goes to carry it out, his plan is thwarted. Those who thwart his attempt are convinced the only way to bring down a despot is to make him immortal.

Best story in the book! Great story with intrigue and irony! It also contains some real sci-fi content, which is unusual for this book.

Suicide

A man decides to end it all by jumping off a cliff. But, when he lands alive, but badly wounded, he struggles to survive. Why?

This was an interesting, albeit brief character study. Just a little more background on what brought the man to the cliff would have given us some insight into why he was there.

My Favorite Horror Story edited by Mike Baker and Martin H. Greenburg

My Favorite Horror Story
Edited by Mike Baker and Martin H. Greenberg

The concept of this anthology is simple. The editors asked several prominent horror and science fiction writers to submit their favorite horror stories. The sum is a collection of stories that inspired today’s best writers to write.

I enjoy short horror fiction. Stephen King, in describing the satisfaction of reading a good short story, made an apt comparison between the short story and a novel. He likened a novel to a long love affair while comparing the short story to a quick kiss from a stranger. While I’ve ever experienced the latter, I’ve got to believe the experience would be enjoyable.

Sweets to the Sweet
By Robert Bloch
Submitted by Stephen King

A nanny has quit the employ of a wealthy aristocrat because she can no longer care for the man’s daughter whom she describes as evil – so evil even her own father hates her. When the man’s brother goes to his house to see the girl and investigate, he finds the girl playing with her toys, which are really just “candy”.

Movie fans know of Bloch’s most prolific work, Psycho, a novella that Alfred Hitchcock made into one of the greatest horror movies of all time. Connoisseurs of horror fiction know Bloch as one of the masters and great contributors to contemporary genre fiction. Like most Bloch work, the prose is short and the story well paced.

The Father Thing
By Phillip K. Dick
Submitted by Ed Gorman

Aliens have eaten Charles Watsons’ father. He must flee from the awful thing that has taken its place and take revenge on its evil master.

This is the only Dick story I’ve ever read and, while I enjoyed it, I enjoyed the movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” more which this story resembles closely. That novel was written by Jack Finney and they were written about the same time. Finney’s allegory about the Red Scare of the 1950s is deliberately thinly veiled. Dick’s story is not an allegory, but an attempt to convey the horror of a child. As we all know from being children, the imagined horrors of our youth are the most intense. Dick does an adequate, but not superb job in capturing that.

The Distributor
By Richard Matheson
Submitted by Ed Gorman

A new man moves into Joseph Alston’s neighborhood and promptly introduces himself to Alston as Theodore Gordon. At first, Gordon seems amicable enough. But soon, he starts to “redistribute” the belongings of his neighbors. When they complain, Gordon seizes control of the neighborhood through nefarious and prurient means.

I have a passion for Matheson’s work. I have read about half of it and am looking forward to taking more soon. He is rivaled only by Bradbury in his ability to tell great genre short stories. Matheson’s prose is a forerunner to that of writers such as Stephen King who tells great tales in a straightforward manner (usually). The Distributor is just another of Matheson’s wonderful stories. Certainly not his best, but I’ve never read or seen anything by Matheson I would call bad.

The thing about Matheson is, almost everybody is familiar with his work, but they don’t know it. He wrote 13 scripts for Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” including several of its most famous episodes like “Terror at 20,000 Feet”. He wrote I Am Legend that has been made into three different movies. He also is known for blending romance and fantasy in such books made into movies as Somewhere in Time and What Dreams May Come.

A Warning to the Curious
By M.R. James
Submitted by Ramsey Campbell

A young man spins a tale in an English country inn about great and powerful artifacts of a forgotten age buried in the countryside. He convinces two older gentlemen to help him unearth these artifacts. Someone lives to tell the tale. . .

This is the one story in the book I really did not enjoy. Campbell tells us he appreciates the “lightness” of James’ writing. I found it dull. I liked the story concept a great deal. The two older gentlemen remind me of members of “The Chowder Society” of Peter Straub’s Ghost Story. However, sometimes the failing of a story is in the poor telling of a good tale.

Opening the Door
By Arthur Machen
Submitted by Peter Atkins

A cynical journalist recounts his encounter with a man known as “The Canonbury Clergyman”. His interviews with the clergyman leave him with large gaps in his memory and disorients him in a way that is hard to reconcile with his journalist’s hardened sensibilities. When the clergyman vanishes, he recounts it as perhaps the only true case of a human being truly disappearing from existence.

I like the journalist character who, as a Fleet Street tabloid writer, is a bit of an anti-hero. Machen tells the tale as any journalist would – events chronologically told with insights from the author. It reads like a feature article from a newspaper. Machen was a journalist by trade, so he was in his element when he wrote it. This was my first experience with Machen and he’s an author more of whose works I hope to read.



The Colour Out of Space
By H.P. Lovecraft
Submitted by Richard Laymon

A meteor crashes into a New England farm. Soon, the family living on that farm devolve from human beings into subhuman beings. His neighbors and the local constabulary investigate to find the greatest horror man has ever known.

Lovecraft never tells a tale from the point of view of the victims of horror. Lovecraft’s narrative always comes from a third party observer. That is how Lovecraft terrifies the reader without ever quite showing the source of that terror. This story is a rare instance when the narrator is directly engaged in the action and sees the nature of the horror – a meteor whose description is of no color, yet of all colors. Stephen King retold this tale in a campy fashion for his anthology movie, “Creepshow”.

The Inner Room
By Robert Aickman
Submitted by Peter Straub

A young girl acquires a large dollhouse from a country antique store. The dollhouse is large enough that an entire room is required to accommodate it. Parts of it are strangely inaccessible, although its features can be observed through windows – except for room in the center of the house. The secrets of that room and that house will go on to dominate the girl and her brother into their adult years.

I read this story in a series of short installments and that may have made the experience less rewarding. I found the description of the house confusing and impossible to picture in my own mind. However, as the kids grow and the memories of the house instead of the house itself , come to the fore, the story really picks up and finishes nicely.

Young Goodman Brown
By Nathaniel Hawthorne
Submitted by Rick Hautula

A young man ventures into the woods on a quest to discover his own nature and test his own morals. While there, the true nature of his wife, friends, and associates is revealed in its most debased form. Brown’s own morality is tested and he is tempted with his basest desires by the devil himself.

I read this in college and enjoyed it a great deal. I did not enjoy it so much when rereading. Some stories can only by enjoyed once, I think. I’m not a fan of classical literature – preferring modern prose. However, it is impossible to not acknowledge the contributions of early writers like Hawthorne to the development of genre fiction.

The Rats in the Walls
By H.P. Lovecraft
Submitted by Michael Slade

A young man, traveling by bicycle through New England, tries to find shelter in what appears to be an empty house. But the house is not empty. It is inhabited by a absurdly weird man who has a number of guests “living” upstairs.

I’ve read almost all of Lovecraft’s fiction and this story still ranks as my favorite. The key component of Lovecraft’s fiction is dread. Seldom do we witness the horror – whether it precedes the story or is the climax. In this story, as in most others, our imagination finishes the tale for us much better than any written word. Lovecraft knew, perhaps better than any other writer, how to let the reader’s imagination finish the tale.

The Dog Park
By Dennis Etchison
Submitted by Richard Matheson

In the wealthiest of suburbs in Los Angeles, there is a dog park utilized by the rich and the famous – and their dogs. The hero of the story lost his dog in that park and isn’t quite sure why. He goes back to explore the park and meets a woman. As they talk, the woman’s dog meets its fate and the man learns the park’s secrets.

While this was an enjoyable tale, the social commentary was entirely too thinly veiled as to detract from the story. I have to believe Matheson has read better fiction than ths.

The Animal Fair
By Robert Bloch
Submitted by Joe R. Lansdale

A drifter comes across a traveling “jungle show” and is horrified with inhuman cruelty which the show’s host submits the show’s prime exhibit – a trained gorilla. After leaving the show, the drifter is hitchhiking when he is picked up by the show’s master. As they travel across the country – with the poor ape in tow – the circus master relates his own tale of inhuman cruelty done to him.

While the nature of the tale is much different than that of Psycho, the telling is the same. There’s no supernatural or fantastic element to the story. It’s just a horrific tale of the sometimes inhumane nature of man.

The Pattern
By Ramsey Campbell
Submitted by Poppy Z. Brite

A young couple – the man an artist and the woman a writer – rent a secluded cabin in the English country. Their first night there, the hear a horrific scream which could only be human. They search for its source and can find no evidence of anything amiss. When they make inquiries of the locals, they are told some secrets are better left undiscovered.

The story was decent, but what struck me was how vividly Campbell can describe a setting or scene. While good settings are an element of a story, they usually can’t carry a story. Here, Campbell’s brilliant descriptions elevate an average story to brilliant.

The Tell-Tale Heart
By Edgar Allan Poe
Submitted by Joyce Carol Oates

A young man slays a rival and conceals his body beneath the floor boards of his home. He tries to convince himself of both the infallibility of his concealment and the righteousness of his deed. When the inspectors arrive to search for the missing man, he smugly invites them in to examine his abode, quite confident they will not find the missing body. But the beating of the heart. . .if he can hear it, can the inspectors?

It is impossible to take a high school literature class and not be assigned this story. It is one of the most famous stories in history, spoofed, imitated and retold countless times. Poe’s legacy is the most enduring of any American horror writer.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
By Ambrose Bierce
Submitted by Dennis Etchison

A confederate spy is about to hang for attempting to sabotage the Owl Creek Bridge. The hanging goes awry and he escapes into the river below. He eludes the Union troops pursuing him until he gets home when. . . .

I first read this story when I was in grade school and it was my first experience with a plot twist. It made an indelible impression on me. I forgot the author, but never the story, until I was in high school when it assigned in a literature class. Now, the name Ambrose Bierce, for me, will be forever linked to everything that is great in short fiction.

Bierce wrote more than one hundred short stories – mostly real life or supernatural horror from the Civil War. This particular story was adapted into a 22 minute film, without dialogue, for Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” with exceptional quality. It was also adapted for radio for the CBS Radio Mystery Theater in the 1970s.

The Human Chair
By Edogawa Rampo
Submitted by Harlan Ellison

A Japanese writer receives a strange letter from a furniture maker, telling her of how he designed a chair that allows him to hide inside it, undetected. He recounts how he used the chair to take up residence in an expensive hotel and make a living as a thief. Soon, his use of the chair becomes more prurient and horrifying.

This story had a delightful twist. It was originally written in Japanese and the translation is sometimes a bit stilted – lapsing into passive voice when active voice would have b been better. Nonetheless, Ellison promises a horror story to rival anything written by American or British authors and he does not disappoint.