Customer Reviews

Complete Stories of Robert Bloch: Final Reckonings (Complete Stories of Robert Bloch, Volume 1)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Robert Bloch's first volume of complete stories is gruesome fun. Some of his most famous and chilling short stories can be found in this collection. Many of these stories were translated into either film by Amicus productions (The House That Dripped Blood, Asylum, Torture Garden, Tales from the Crypt, etc.) or made into a radio play. Among the great stories contained are "Mannikins of Horror" where an insane nueroscientist plays god and breathes life into clay; "Frozen Fear" tells of a Cajun curse that will chill you to the bone; "The Man Who Collected Poe" is a fantastic tale of a man's obsession going beyond the mortal realm; and "I Like Blondes" deals with an individual's taste in women. This collection contains 27 stories, all of which are a blast to read. If you enjoy horror short stories without all the ambiguous endings that seem to plague the current market, this is the collection for you.

Most people only know Robert Bloch for 'Psycho', but his career is way beyond that. He was a prolific writer, and the youngest member of the so-called Lovecraft Circle. This collection encompasses some of his best works, some of them heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. I'd suggest this tome to anyone who is into the Mythos or any kind of fantastic literature and fiction. I enjoyed it quite a lot, and I'm sure you'll do too.

Despite being famous for a novel, Robert Bloch's greatest contributions to genre literature were arguably in the short story format. Whether writing for the pulps or the slick professional magazines, Bloch could be counted on delivering a unique and addictive blend of twisted shock and sarcastic black humor. These volumes are pretty much required in any genre fans library. Highly recommended.

This book is very interesting. Robert Bloch is able to write a suspensful story. When you read this book, you will be in for a surprise. There are many shock endings to the stories. Most of them are horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. Sometimes he weaves two of them together. Overall, I thought that this was an excellent book.

This is a wonderful short story collection by Lovecraftian apostle Robert Bloch. Bloch is an accomplished writer of chilling and gripping short stories that will have you reading them through to the very end. He has a creative and masterful style that paints a scene before you walk into it. You are made aware of your surroundings and the feelings of each of his characters as Bloch is a masterful genius of science fiction for any age. Most of these stories were written in the 1950's but are relevant for today in terms of holding your interest--definitely for those of us that love creative sci-fi. Some of the best stories are -- Mannikins of Horror -about an invalid neurosurgeon who brings miniature clay beings to life through his masterful skill as a doctor and surgeon, The Unspeakable Betrothal, about beings from another world channeling through a young girl's dreams and The Goddess of Wisdom, about a futuristic time where rocket travel is mainstream and interaction with people is something to be coveted... overall, a great find if you can find it! By the way, he wrote for various tv shows, including Alfred Hitchcock and the Twilight Zone!

Robert Bloch was an incredible writer. He's mostly known for writing "Psycho." I didn't discover him until I took a literature class in college but he writes with an incredible kind of style that builds suspense until the very last pages of a story. If you like being mesmerized and scared at the same time you should definitely pick this volume up.

This is the first volume of a 3 volume collection of Robert Bloch's short stories. However it is NOT complete. I have a 1960s collection of his short stories and none of them are in any of these three volumes. Still--this is probably as close as we're going to get:)

These are the early Bloch stories--from 1939 to 1956. He was a very good writer. His stories are direct and to the point. He doesn't waste time on descriptions or details. He gives you just what you need to know and goes full speed ahead. Not all of the stories are that great anymore. Some are cliched but you have to realize he INVENTED the cliches! None are bad at all--just a few are familar. Still they're quick, easy reads and always had a macabre twist at the end. The twist endings are just great--some you'll see coming but others come out of left field. Also it's fun to read these stories and remember how they were used for episodes of "The Twilight Zone" and movies. ALL the stories for the 1972 film "Asylum" are in this collection! They're slightly different though. An excellent thorough enjoyable collection. Highly recommended.

Block can write, that's plain. He is able to enter into the mind of his character and speak with the appropriate voice. That said, these stories fail at their goal of inspiring either interest or dread.

From the first page the reader can predict the ending...well, maybe not exactly but close enough to make reading the rest a bore and reading the final twist anticlimactic.

When one of his characters is expected to be a vampire only to reveal himself as a werewolf in the last line, is this a payoff worth plodding through a long, bland story? It is not.

When a "man" describes his appetite for blondes for ten pages and then in the last page he reveals himself to be an alien who eats blondes, is this shocking? No. It's been expected from the first line and was not worth the long, hard slog through to the end.

As for the best part of any fiction or film, the part before the explanations, the part where you're asking yourself: where can this be going? how can this be? how can it all make some sort of sense? Well, that mystery is nonexistent in Bloch's writing, and that's a shame. Why suffer through a story only to be rewarded with a hackneyed, trite, expected ending?

It is well that many of the writers from the golden age of SF are being brought back into print, but some authors deserve to be allowed to fade into obscurity.