Customer Reviews

Darkside: Horror for the Next Millenium

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Although this collection contains a few outstanding finds, they are buried in a pile of unrelenting dreck.

After opening with Robert J. Levy's "Skinwriters," an imaginative, terrifically well-written piece, the collection descends into a mire of mindless violence and bad writing.

Look, I'm an ardent, lifelong fan of horror fiction, and my disgust with this book is not related to "shock" or to an inability to handle its subject matter -- which is unremittingly violent, brutal, and sadistic. What is repellent is that this explosive subject matter is given slipshod, sensationalistic treatment: there is no artistry here, no concern for anything beyond immediate shock value.

This is the kind of sloppy writing, sloppy thinking, and disdain for any reader's intelligence that gives the entire genre of horror a bad name.

Even the good writers here seem to have phoned in their stories. After all, I expect dreck from someone like Roberta Lannes (I can't tell you what her story was about, because I fell asleep reading it), but I do expect more from writers like Steve Rasnic Tem, who turned in a piece of incomprehensible mush, and Lucy Taylor, whose piece must have been meant as a joke. Elizabeth Massie is a superb writer, but her contribution here, co-written with Robert Pettit, is weak, silly and pointless.

And that arrogant subtitle -- Horror for a new millenium? Please. "New" is the last thing anything here is. This is nothing but a garbage heap of worn-out cliches and mind-numbing, repetitive, gratuitous sexual violence. By my count, at least 80% of the stories dealt with sexual abuse/incest, with nothing new to say, no new twists or insights. Either that subject is the theme to this anthology or, as I suspect, merely indicative of a dwindling supply of imagination among the authors represented here.

If you want truly superior anthologies of horror fiction, check out Robert Bloch's "Psychos," a rollicking collection of stories that really zing and zap, or ANY anthology edited by Stephen Jones. As for Darkside, that's where it belongs -- in the darkest side of your dumpster.

John Pelan does it again, putting together a great collection of modern-day horror masters, along with intriguingly ghoulish stories from some fresh names. If you are a fan of the short-story horror anthologies as I am, you won't want to miss this first edition of Pelan's 'Darkside' books.

Table Of Contents:
'Skinwriters' by Robert J. Levy
'Ice Dreams' by Elizabeth Massie and Robert Petitt
'Wasting' by Lauren Fitzgerald
'Backseat Dreams & Nightmares' by K.K. Ormand
'The Stick Woman' by Edward Lee
'Soul Of The Beast Surrendered' by Wayne Edwards
'October Gethsemane' by Sean Doolittle
'Scars' by Lucy Taylor
'Ystrey orm' by Brian McNaughton
'Tears Seven Times Salt' by Caitlin R. Kiernan
'One-Eyed Jack' by S. Darnbrook Colson
'Elena' by Steve Rasnic Tem
'Family Album' by Adam-Troy Castro
'Having Eyes, See Ye Not?' By Sue Storm
'Sisters In Death' by D.F. Lewis
'Window Of Opportunity' by Roman Ranieri
'Envy' by Christa Faust
'The Man Of Her Dreams' by Alam M. Clark
'For The Curiosity Of Rats' by Jeffrey Osier
'The Stranger Who Sits Beside Me' by Yvonne Navarro
'In Pieces' by Deidra Cox
'Voices Lost & Clouded' by David B. Silva
'If Memory Serves' by Jack Ketchum
'The Tears Of Isis' by James S. Dorr
'Stick Around, It Gets Worse' by Brian Hodge
'Voices In The Black Night' Larry Tritten
'Stealing The Sisyphus' Stone by Roberta Lannes
'The Nightmare Network' by Thomas Ligotti
'Fiends By Torchlight' by Wayne Allen Sallee
'... & Thou Hast Given Them Blood To Drink' by t. Winter Damon & Randy Chandler

With such a line-up, I can only mention a few of my favorites. 'Skinwriters' is a haunting tale of a writer's success putting pen to milk-white flesh. 'Wasting' will give you a terrifying view of anorexia. 'The Stick Woman' showcases Edward Lee at his sickest, flaunting his uncanny fetish for amputations and poo. 'Soul Of The Beast Surrendered' brings you into contact with the strangest imaginary friends I've ever read about. 'Scars' calls upon a deadly evil lurking in a small African village. 'Ystery Orm' left a vicious chill settled in my spine after reading it: this is the place of a nightmare, strange buildings with unexplainable entrances containing nothing but empty, crawling dread. 'Tears Seven Times Salt' left me feeling damp, shivering with cold, fright, and mystery. 'Voices In The Black Night' is a tale of words captured from library books by a strange man.

'Darkside: Horror For The Next Millennium' is the first of Pelan's 'Darkside' collections. Be sure to pick up 'The Darker Side: Generations Of Horror', 'Walk On The Darkside: Visions Of Horror', and 'Lost On The Darkside: Voices From The Edge Of Horror' if you like this collection. Horror is back, creeping around your house at night, settling its poison to the bottom of your water glass, and howling at the moon as you turn restlessly in your sleep. Light a candle, pour a glass of wine as red as blood, and settle into your armchair for a full night's reading pleasure with a 'Darkside' book. Enjoy!

I bought this book at a little news stand while waiting for my train. I've long been a reader of Lovecraft, Poe, King, Stoker, Wilson and others, but these authors aren't exactly new to the genre. In fact, the newest horror writer I've read is Clive Barker, so this book and its subtitle piqued my interest. Full of authors and stories I'd never heard of (except for Ligotti), I was curious to see what more recent horror writers had to offer.

As it turns out, almost nothing at all. As with so many so-called horror movies in Hollywood, these authors don't seem to know what horror means at all. What we have is a collection of stories rife with guts and gore and ghastly sexual perversions. The crowning jewel, Stick Woman, is a magnificent display of torture, degradation, despair, perversion, and disgust. Whoopty-doo if that's what you like, but where's the HORROR? Horror writing can certainly contain these things too, but horror itself means FEAR, and not one of these stories barely grazes it, nor even tries to. Stick Woman and many of the other stories in this anthology belong in the same category as the works of the Marquis de Sade, not with Lovecraft and Stoker and Barker.

It's hard enough for literary bigwigs to take horror writing seriously. If this is what is now being embraced by the genre, then for once they may have a point. How very discouraging.

"Skinwriters" by Robert J. Levy, "For the Curiosity of Rats" by Jeffrey Osier, and "The Stranger Who Sits Beside Me" by Yvonne Navarro all are top-notch fiction, intent on illumation instead of grossout. They are all so VERY good that they stand out as tremendous achievements in an anthology that otherwise runs the gamut from interesting all the way down to thoroughly repugnant.

There's precious little innovation (or horror) among these so-called tales "for the next millennium." The subtitle seems meaningless, except perhaps in reference to the apocalyptic themes of the last three stories. I'm a great fan of several of the contributors -- Jack Ketchum, Wayne Sallee, Edward Lee, Lucy Taylor, Thomas Ligotti, Caitlin Kiernan -- but in DARKSIDE, even the stories by these faves are mostly dull and/or depend on a standard formula or trick ending rather than any real effort of imagination. (These writers are well worth checking out in other venues, though Edward Lee seems to be going for the scatological gross-out in everything he writes these days, and I'd, well, just really rather not.) Many of the stories in DARKSIDE center around sexual themes and imagery -- S/M, incest, mutilation, pedophilia and child sexual abuse -- often, it seems, simply aiming for shock value. And falling flat. Anybody who's read, say, one of the gazillion "erotic horror" collections out there has already seen these themes used many times, and better than they're used in DARKSIDE -- nothing new is explored here. Extreme violence and sex can be powerful ingredients in horror (as in the SPLATTERPUNKS anthology, or anything by Skipp and Spector, or the unparalleled EXQUISITE CORPSE by Poppy Z. Brite), but "cutting-edge" requires more than simply "extreme." DARKSIDE does contain a few good stories. Thomas Ligotti's "Nightmare Network" is excellent; it starts out like light satire, and ends with a great silent chord. Kiernan's piece is a nice little "rite of passage" story written in rich, sensual language; when I reached that one, it was a real treat. Editor John Pelan has put the stories into an interesting sequence of thematic associations. (However, the book is riddled with typographical errors. John, hire a proofreader.) But most of the stories left me bored or annoyed, and overall the book was a deep disappointment. This isn't a book I'm going to keep.

If constant sexual situations and the unending splattering of entrails qualifies as horror for you, then get this book. If you require smart writing, evocative ideas, and any attempt at suspense or psychological terror definately look somewhere else. The "horror" of this anthology quickly falls into silliness as each author tries to outdo the others in a race to find the most cartoonish mix of sex and violence that they can. I can honestly say that this is the only book that I have ever returned to the store because I was so disappointed in its quality.

I disagree with many of the posts below. This anthology is about horror. Anyone who is unaware of the nature of horror stories should not be purchasing this book. With very few horror publications coming out these days, I was pleased to find a new anthology of fresh work and great premises. Lauren Fitzgerald's "Wasting" is one story that stands out in my mind. Her story is not merely a scary tale, it is a broad statement about society and our standards of perfection. Plainly stated, if you are not interested in reading horror, you won't like this book. If you are, you will not be disappointed.

I bought this book many years ago, when it was relatively new on the market. What I found on reading it, instead of the light, pulpy anthology I thought I'd find, was a selection of either impenetrable 'arty' tales that made little sense to me, sex scenes with no point beyond shock and titillation, and one of the most vile, nauseating stories I've ever had the misfortune to read - 'The Stick Woman.' The sheer sexual sadism of this piece still inspires nausea at the thought to this day; I am filled with remorse that I ever read it.

So unpleasant was this book, that is the only book I have ever ripped up and thrown in the trash. Looking back, I wish I had burned it too.

COuld've been better and stronger, but definitely worth reading. I wouldn't pay much for it, but if you can get it used grab it.

I'm not sure what "horror for the next millenium" is supposed to mean; are these destined to be new classics to last us the next thousand years?
A bit presumptuous, maybe, but there is some great work here. A poet finds a most unusual collaborator in Robert Levy's "Skinwriters"; a teenage girl takes a contemporary disorder to horrifying extremes in Lauren Fitzgerald's "Wasting"; a child's escape fantasy runs out of control in Wayne Allen Sallee's "Soul of the Beast Surrendered"; a girl discovers her underground origins in Caitlin Kiernan's "Tears Seven Times Salt" and Brian McNaughton's Lovecraftian "ystery orm" takes us to the frightening snowbound desolation of a foreign university, where a solitary student receives a warning...but of what? And honorable mention must go to Edward Lee's "The Stick Woman", a story of imprisonment and torment which is quite possibly one of the nastiest things I've ever read in my life.
Unfortunately, most of the second half isn't as impressive as the first. A few exceptions from David Silva, Jeffrey Osier and Jack Ketchum shine in the midst of a lot of pretty standard material. Still, it's an anthology worth picking up, as it shows the genre's death has been somewhat exaggerated. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these wound up in a year-end anthology somewhere.