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Author: James McGlothlin

The Last Wolf: Karl Edward Wagner is a Warts-and-All Look at One of the Exemplars of Sword & Sorcery

The Last Wolf: Karl Edward Wagner is a Warts-and-All Look at One of the Exemplars of Sword & Sorcery

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The Last Wolf (Knight Visions/Yellow Rose, December 12, 2020)

Documentaries seem to be sort of a thing right now. And they can be absolutely fascinating when the subject is something you’re into. The ones I most enjoy tend to be about my favorite bands, albums, or movies. But I especially like documentaries about my favorite authors, particularly when those authors are on the verge of being forgotten.

At Black Gate we often bemoan the neglect, or approaching neglect, of authors and works in the “speculative” field (broadly conceived). But that lament should be doubled when it comes to the late writer Karl Edward Wagner (1945–1994). Wagner was one of the greatest writers of horror and weird fantasy, in my humble opinion. And though he disavowed the term, I think he was also one of the greatest exemplar writers of sword and sorcery. (Wagner preferred the term “Gothic fantasy” to describe his own work.)

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Elven Phantoms, Children of the Corn, and Kane: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VI (1978), Edited by Gerald W. Page

Elven Phantoms, Children of the Corn, and Kane: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VI (1978), Edited by Gerald W. Page

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VI (DAW, 1978). Cover by Michael Whelan

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VI, published in 1978, was the third volume in the series edited by horror author and editor Gerald W. Page (1939–). Michael Whelan (1950–) appears for the fourth time in a row on the cover, though with a very different style from his previous efforts. Where Whelan’s covers usually have a big surreal background, this one is more muted and draws your eyes to the foreground. It’s fairly creepy, but not one of my favorite Whelan horror pieces.

In comparison with the series’ first British editor, Richard Davis, Gerald Page tend to focus on American authors, almost all men. There are three women in this volume: Janet Fox, Tanith Lee, and Lisa Tuttle, and a total of three Brits: Ramsey Campbell, David Campton, and Tanith Lee. 

Series VI includes fourteen stories, only one from a professional magazine; three came from books, four from fanzines, but six stories were original to this volume. Six! Almost half of the stories in an anthology called Year’s Best were not published previously. Defending another editor in a different context John O’Neill recently said, it’s “entirely the editor’s call.” But doesn’t Year’s Best imply more than simply the editor’s own particular choices? Maybe not. And perhaps it doesn’t matter if the collected stories are indeed that good.

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Witches, Curses, and Wagner’s Kane: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V (1977), Edited by Gerald W. Page

Witches, Curses, and Wagner’s Kane: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V (1977), Edited by Gerald W. Page

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V (DAW, 1977). Cover by Michael Whelan

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V was the fifth volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories, copyright and printed in 1977. It was the second edited by Gerald W. Page (1939–), who was also a successful horror author and editor at the time.

Michael Whelan (1950–) appears for the third time as the cover artist. Whelan is a classic genre artist and I really liked his previous two covers, but this is the best yet. Though it has something of a sci-fi landscape in the background, it is by far his most horror-themed piece in the series up to this point.

Gerald Page’s selections for The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V includes several authors from the last volume, such as Joseph Payne Brennan, H. Warner Munn, and Fritz Leiber. Of the fourteen stories, eight come from magazines, two from books, and four are original to this volume. (As I stated in the last two posts, I am very puzzled by how editor include new stories in a “Year’s Best” anthology.) All the authors are American men, the only exception being the female British author Tanith Lee.

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Lethal Vegetation and Nasty Christmas Presents: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV, edited by Gerald W. Page (1976)

Lethal Vegetation and Nasty Christmas Presents: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV, edited by Gerald W. Page (1976)

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV (DAW, July 1976). Cover by Michael Whelan

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV was the fourth volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror, copyright and printed in 1976. This one introduced a different editor, American author Gerald W. Page (1939–). Page had edited the successful weird tales magazine Witches & Sorcery from 1971 to 1974, and some stories from his ‘zine had made the earlier volumes of Year’s Best Horror. My guess is this put him on Don Wollheim’s radar when he sought out a new editor. I couldn’t find any information on why British editor Richard Davis had been replaced; but as I said in my review of The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, I was disappointed by his last volume, especially since his first two were so good.

Michael Whelan (1950–) returns as the cover artist. Whelan is a great artist and though this cover is in something of a sci-fi, surrealistic mode, I think it sufficiently announces the book as a horror anthology.

Under Page’s editorship, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV definitely has a different flavor and lineup. The front cover proclaims at the bottom that it is “The unique annual of weird tales.” And many of the authors included are indeed associated with the older Weird Tales pulp era, including Frank Belknap Long, Joseph Payne Brennan, E. Hoffman Price, H. Warner Munn, and Fritz Leiber.

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Burger Creatures and Halloween Stories: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III (1975), edited by Richard Davis

Burger Creatures and Halloween Stories: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III (1975), edited by Richard Davis

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III (DAW, 1975). Cover by Michael Whelan

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III was the third volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories, copyright 1975, printed in that same year. Like the first two, British author and anthologist Richard Davis was the editor, though he would not continue with DAW after this volume. The cover was by Michael Whelan (1950–), his first for the series. Whelan was becoming more and more ubiquitous on sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks at the time. I think Whelan’s cover is horror-based but it does seem to lean toward the surreal, psychedelic vibe that was common in the 70s. Unlike Volume Two, this one contains no inner art.

Of the thirteen stories in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, three were originally published in books, three in magazines, and two in fanzines; five appeared here for the first time, which I’ll come back to in a moment. At least five of the authors were British, five were American, one was Canadian (Allan Weiss) and Eddy C. Bertin is the lone Belgian, for the third volume in a row. Like the last installment, this anthology contains only male authors. All three of Davis’ DAW volumes have had a bit of a British slant, but this is unsurprising given that Davis was British as well. We’ll see if that changes when we switch to an American editor, Gerald W. Page, for the fourth book.

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Exorcists Take Warning: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories II (1974), edited by Richard Davis

Exorcists Take Warning: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories II (1974), edited by Richard Davis

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories Series II (DAW, July 1974). Cover by Hans Arnold

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series II was the second volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories. Copyright 1972, 1973, but printed in 1974. Like the first, it was edited by Richard Davis. The cover, by Swiss artist Hans Arnold (1925–2010), was much more in line with a horror themed anthology than the first one. Clearly the cover is an homage to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, though there’s no story with a similar theme found within.

It had been two years since the release of DAW’s first The Year’s Best Horror Stories, which had been adopted — story for story — from Davis’ first British Sphere edition with same name. But for DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series II, Davis did more than simply bring over every tale from the second Sphere volume. Some stories were dropped, and some added. Comparing the tables of contents, both volumes contain the Foreword by actor Christopher Lee, “David’s Worm” by Brian Lumley, “The Price of the Demon” by Gary Brandner, “The Knocker at the Portico” by Basil Copper, “The Animal Fair” by Robert Bloch, “Napier Court” by Ramsey Campbell, and “Haunts of the Very Rich” by T. K. Brown, III.

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Killer Dolls and Murderous Dimensions: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories I (1972), edited by Richard Davis

Killer Dolls and Murderous Dimensions: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories I (1972), edited by Richard Davis

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories (DAW, 1972). Cover by Karel Thole

The first Year’s Best Horror Stories, DAW No. 13, published in 1972, was edited by British author and editor Richard Davis, who would go on to produce many more horror and sci-fi anthologies throughout the 1970s and 1980s. He also edited the next two Year’s Best Horror Stories for DAW, but he primarily published through British outlets.

The Year’s Best Horror Stories, No. 1, was first published by Sphere in the UK in May 1971, and reprinted by DAW in the US fourteen months later, dropping the No. 1 from the title in the process. The cover of the DAW edition was by Dutch painter Karel Thole (1914–2000), a regular on sci-fi covers during the time. I think the cover is more psychedelic than horrific. In 1975 DAW reprinted the book with a new cover by Hans Arnold, one much more fitting to the horror genre.

This first volume has a strong lineup, and I can see why Donald A. Wollheim sought to get Davis’ Sphere release as the debut for his new Year’s Best Horror Stories series. It was also, somewhat surprisingly for the time, quite diverse.

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Introduction to DAW Books’ The Year’s Best Horror Stories (1972–1994), edited by Richard Davis, Gerald W. Page, and Karl Edward Wagner

Introduction to DAW Books’ The Year’s Best Horror Stories (1972–1994), edited by Richard Davis, Gerald W. Page, and Karl Edward Wagner

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20 of the 22 volumes of The Year’s Best Horror Stories (DAW Books)

Today I’m beginning a new series of posts investigating DAW Books’ Year’s Best Horror Stories series, which ran from 1971 to 1994. As a fan of literary horror, I’m excited to sequentially read through these volumes and share my thoughts with you. I’m hoping that we’ll be able to discover some great stories and authors, perhaps some we’ve never read before, and I’m also hoping that we will be able to see how trends in horror have changed over the years. Each post will investigate one volume at a time.

Except this first one, in which I want to explore the impetus and beginnings of the series as a whole.

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Science Fiction With Real Humans: The Best of James Blish

Science Fiction With Real Humans: The Best of James Blish

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The Best of James Blish (Del Rey, 1979). Cover by H. R. Van Dongen

The Best of James Blish (1979) was the twenty-first (and penultimate!) installment in Lester Del Rey’s Classic Science Fiction Series. (Only one more to go!) Science fiction author Robert A. W. Lowndes (1916–1998) provided the introduction — his only one in the series. Sci-fi artist H. R. Van Dongen (1920–2010) provides the ninth cover in the series, the most used artist of the series.

James Blish (1921–1975) was an American science fiction and sometimes fantasy author. He was one of the original Futurians, and besides writing oodles of short fiction and novels, he became also well-known for writing a series of Star Trek novelizations with his second wife J. A. Lawrence. According to Wikipedia, Blish is credited with inventing the term “gas giant” to refer to large planetary bodies. Blish is someone I had never read before, but whose name often comes up in discussion of classic science fiction.

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