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

Skizz (1983) [ with Jim Baikie ]     Captain Britain Omnibus (1985-1987) [ Various Contributors, notably Dave Thorpe, Chris Claremont and Grant Morrison ]     Lost Girls (2006) [ with Melinda Gebbie ]     The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen [ with Kevin O'Neill ]        Black Dossier (2007 ) [ also with Ray Zone ]        Century 1910 (2009)      Century 1969 (2011)     Neonomicon (2010) [ with Anthony Johnston and Jacen Burrow s]     Fashion Beast (2013 originally from a 1985 film script) [ with Anthony Johnston and Facundo Percio ]   Skizz , first published in 1983 for British comic series 2000AD (originator of Judge Dredd and many other iconic comic figures), is a rather heart-warming tale. Yet the tale is told without losing an ounce of the dystopianism for which the British are so well known. Set on the Planet Burmy-Gam, it helps to read the text in a Brummy accent to get a real feel for it. Alan Moore is very good with linguistic clues – his brutal and unhinged

The Voice in the Night (Short Story, 1907) The House on the Borderland (1908) William Hope Hodgson's much-anthologised The Voice in the Night is a n early (1907) example of eco-horror. It tells the tale of a mysterious natural life form in the South Pacific which has the ability to absorb all life around it including any human beings who come into contact with it. It is a fine tale set in the sea-going environment that so often inspired Hodgson. It should also be regarded as science fiction since there is nothing supernatural in the cause of the distress of the couple who come alongside the narrator's ship. I originally discovered William Hope Hodgson initially as the author of one of the better stories in Cuddon's Penguin Book of Horror Stories . The Derelict (1912) is also an atmospheric tale of sea-going monstrosity. He was also the author of the pulp series Carnacki the Ghost Finder . Hodgson is an oddity and The House on the Borderland is an odd story. It fal

Gamiani, or Two Nights of Excess (1833) Alfred de Musset Seduction (1908 but re-published in 2003) Anonymous   Tropic of Cancer (1934) Henry Miller Erotic Comics: A Graphic History (2008) Alice Kominsky-Crumb   Shameful Duties (Probably 1970s but re-published in 2017)  Susan Saraband   Gamiani is a somewhat Sadean quasi-Gothic erotic novel of the 1830s which has been attributed, although not certainly, to Alfred De Musset and which even reached the hands of Edith Wharton no less. However, you would not know any of this from my Edition, a second-hand copy of its inclusion in the Erotic Prints Society's 'Scarlet Library' which has no introduction, notes or bibiliography. What that Edition does have is excellent erotic illustrations by Vania Zouravliov. That is why I am happy to refer to it here while suggesting you find an edition with more background information. As for the story, it is a tale of extreme and destructive erotic passion with the standard issue refer