Customer Reviews

The Howling Man

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I do from time to time cull my collection of books I've already read. I will usually carry them to my local used book store (or send them to my brother who has his own store, A Latte Books and Music, in Hobart, Indiana) so as to help out the folks who provide me with so much reading material.

There are, however, some books that simply cannot be traded away. "The Howling Man" is one of them, and it was a lucky find for me at just such a used book store. Author Charles Beaumont's legacy is usually that of his "Twilight Zone" scripts or his screenplays for Roger Corman, but that just doesn't do the man justice. This book contains a goodly heping of his short stories, some of which were adapted into TZ scripts, and a portion of the original manuscript for "The Intruder", which is quite possibly the best movie you've never seen. Read this book and gain an appreciation for a talent that was taken from us WAY too soon.

It is a crying shame that TOR or some far-sighted indy publisher hasn't seen fit to reprint this work and perhaps collect all of Beaumont's published works in one collection. Till then, hold on to your copy of THM for dear life. I certainly will.

Charles Beaumont was a visionary unappreciated in his time and unlikely to be appreciated since his passing. His mastery of short fiction characterization and plot is unparalled by Stephen King and is only approached by the Short Fiction in Orson Scott Card's Unaccompanied Sonata.

The Howling Man and other stories in this collection are outstanding. Beaumont is a great talent of the writing craft and writers like King and Straub stand on his shoulders. He's the most gifted and least recognized writers I've had the pleasure of reading.

I bit the bullet and bought this Beaumont collection and I'm glad I did. Some publishing company needs to reprint this material so that the masses can experience Beaumont. He is largely forgotten except by those who have seen the Twilight Zones that he wrote or the handful of movie scripts that he did.

I'll keep this brief. The stories in this book are terrific.
Some creepy, some scary but all are just extraordinarily well written stories. It truly is a shame this book is out of print. Fans of horror, sci-fi and just plain well written short stories will eat this up. Someone re-print this !!!