BOOK AND PODCAST REVIEWS - FICTION

The Penguin Book of Horror Stories (1984)   Editor: J. A . Cuddon   Redshift: Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction (2001) Editor: Al Sarrantonio   The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels (2007) Editor:  Gardner Dozois The Penguin Book of Horror Stories has some gems and a certain breadth but it suffers from a weak almost nerdy academic introduction filled with fact but weak on interpretation. It is a Wikipedia article before its time. The definition of horror is very wide. The brutal realism of Prosper Merimee's primitive and vengeful Mateo Falcone (a story that disturbed me as a child and disturbs me today) sits alongside a pulp tale of derring-do (the oft-anthologised Leiningen Versus The Ants ) and a sardonic and satirical horror tale like Robert Graves' Earth to Earth . But yet there is little true cosmic horror - no H P Lovecraft or Arthur Machen. What are the best stories in an average collection? Apart from decent works by Hogg, Merimee (see above), Poe, H

Buffy The Vampire Slayer (BFI TV Classics, 2005) Anne Billson   Buffy The Vampire Slayer: The Long Way Home (Season 8 Volume 1) (2007)  Joss Whedon/Georges Jeanty Anne Billson's short guide to the Buffy TV series is one of a series from the British Film Institute, providing 'critical readings' of TV series. The series follows similar and generally excellent guides to important movies. Unfortunately, the editorial guidelines have encourage the authors to see these series in the context of their 'personal response', a dangerous licence to self-indulgence especially as the film-related booklets benefited from offering in-depth research on their subjects, albeit from different perspectives, without constant use of the 'I' word. Anne Billson is not too bad in her judgements. Given the iconic status of Buffy in promoting contemporary 'girl power', it is useful to have a woman outline her responses to the series as it unfolded. She can be tiresome