Customer Reviews

Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural

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

 

 

This is the entire starred Publishers Weekly review:

Inferno Edited by Ellen Datlow. Tor, $25.95 (384p) ISBN 978-0-7653-1558-8
Datlow (The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror) makes a solid claim to being the premiere horror editor of her generation with this state-of-the-art anthology of 20 new stories by some of horror fiction's best and brightest. Several outstanding selections feature imperiled children and explore the horrific potential of childhood fears, among them Glen Hirshberg's "The Janus Tree," which gives a creepy supernatural spin to a poignant memoir of adolescent angst and alienation, and Stephen Gallagher's "Misadventure," in which a young man's near-death experience as a child endows him as an adult with consoling insight into the afterlife. The compilation's variety of approaches and moods is exemplary, ranging from the natural supernaturalism of Laird Barron's cosmic horror tale "The Forest," to the unsettling psychological horror of Lucius Shepard's "The Ease with Which We Freed the Beast"; the metaphysical terrors of Conrad Williams's "Perhaps the Last"; and the slapstick grotesquerie of K.W. Jeter's black comedy "Riding Bitch." If this book can be taken as a gauge of the vitality of imagination in contemporary horror fiction, then the genre is very healthy indeed.
(Dec.)
And chosen by PW as one of the best sf/f titles of the year.

Anthologies like this are about the only place to find horror short stories these days, which is unfortunate because I think scary short stories are pretty awesome. The perfect length to read before turning off the light at night. And reading one right before bed is like dropping a little bit of mental lsd into your dreams.

Ellen Datlow has been doing the horror thing for a couple of decades now. She's edited over 50 anthologies and won a ton of awards for doing so. The point is, if you are gonna pick somebody to take you by the hand and show you what's good in horror short fiction these days, she's the one you wanna pick.

This anthology doesn't have a theme. It's 20 stories that Datlow chose "to showcase the range of subjects imagined by a number of my favorite writers inside and outside the horror field". When I looked through the contents I saw only half a dozen or so authors whose names were familiar to me.

I particularly like "Bethany's Wood" by Paul Finch, "Stilled Life" by Pat Cadigan, and "An Apiary of White Bees" by Lee Thomas. Oh, that stories like these have made it into YBFH 2008. I read the Datlow-chosen stories in YBFH 2007 right after reading Inferno and was disappointed; the story by Oates, in particular, seemed misplaced: I'm a fan of the bizarre, and this one seemed pointlessly grotesque instead. But Inferno is everything I look for in modern horror! I think it's Ellen's best book so far.

I've read all 3 of Datlow's Best Horror anthologies, and many of the earlier Year's Best Horror and Fantasy. Each of these was better than this. None of these stories was more than mildly interesting, certain none made me "leave the light on after dark" or "check under the bed" for creepers. If you want subtle, literate slow-moving stories, these may be for you, but nothing here was really intense, exciting or unusual.

I had been an admirer of ghost stories and the "quiet horror" (although I never used to know it under that name) ever since I started reading fiction. Violence, especially if that is described to be taking place in the commonest possible circumstances (e.g. within the four walls of a drab room occupied by a family not that different from mine), or which involves loss & pain to people who can be actually felt for in everyday life (e.g. someone's children or wife getting lost or murdered or tortured) is not preferred by me while trying to acquire that pleasing chill by going through printed words. Perhaps that is not a very literate thing to do, esp. since I have been reading horror for many-many years now. But this collection, often dealing with exactly those issues which I detest, succeeded in moving me and compelling me to read every one of them, often against my own wishes. After reading these stories, I was forced to conclude that the editor has been supremely successful in her objective: giving the readers an idea about how it really might feel while burning in the fires of own hell. I had gone through it during the reading!

The contents are:

1) Riding Bitch by K.W. Jeter
2) Misadventure by Stephen Gallagher
3) The Forest by Laird Barron
4) The Monsters of Heaven by Nathan Ballingrud
5) Inelastic Collisions by Elizabeth Bear
6) The Uninvited by Christopher Fowler
7) 13 o'clock by Mike O'Driscoll
8) Lives by John Grant
9) Ghorla by Mark Samuels
10) Face by Joyce Carol Oates
12) An Apiary of White Bees by Lee Thomas
13) The Keeper by P.D. Cacek
14) Bethany's Wood by Paul Finch
15) The Ease With Which We Freed the Beast by Lucius Shepard
16) Hushabye by Simon Bestwick
17) Perhaps the Last by Conrad Williams
18) Stilled Life by Pat Cadigan
19) The Janus Tree by Glen Hirshberg
20) The Bedroom Light by Jeffrey Ford
21) The Suits at Auderlene by Terry Dowling.

Many of these stories (among which, I would like to draw your attention towards those by Glen Hirshbirg, Lucius Shepard, Paul Finch, Laird Barron and Stephen Gallagher) have later got reprinted into different thematic anthologies and have found their individual (eminently justified) accolades. But I am, nevertheless, determined to knock-off a star from the rating, because that is the least that I can do after burning myself in INFERNO!

In Stephen King's Danse Macabre, King compared Ramsey Campbell's prose to a low level acid trip. I was thinking of that description many times throughout this anthology, were most of the stories take place in this world but something's not right. NOt just the horror portion of the stories but everything about these characters and their world is off-kilter in some way or fashion.

Take for example "Riding Bitch" by K.W. Jeter where the protagonist is a loser biker who takes corpses to the funeral home to pick up extra money. By this time we've all seen the tropes from the tough biker to the seedy bar, but add in a dead girlfriend who won't quite stay dead or is dead but he hears it - you can never tell - and it's a story that won't let you go.

Similarly "Monsters of Heaven" being reminiscent of Marquez's "Man with Wings" (sic?) doesn't just let the characters get by with ignoring the angels. Even as they are embroiled in a lost child tragedy, they still have time to do some truly horrific things to each other and finally an innocent.

Not all of the stories work, but the stories that don't work for me are the ones that appear to be trying too hard like Laird Barron's "THe Forest" or Lee Thomas's "An Apiary of WHite Bees." They are strange but I never get the sense of being taken along for a ride. More like I'm being told about someone's acid trip laden vacation.

Ultimately these stories are disturbing because human beings are disturbing. Vampires, werewolves and ghosts have nothing on Basra militias or Serbian death squads. These stories reflect the evil that humans do to each other on a constant basis and they are much more powerful for that.

Inferno is the kind of anthology a reader waits and hopes for. It's filled with disturbing tales from some of the best horror/dark fantasy authors, and these tales leave chilling, lasting impressions. The deepest impression on me came from P.D. Cacek's "The Keeper." Simple, heartbreaking, and powerful. Ellen Datlow has compiled another incredible collection here. She's the best editor in the field. Highly recommended!

Editor Ellen Datlow sets the stage for what she demanded of her twenty contributors in the Introduction to her first nonthemed new tales anthology. She directed her chosen author to shock the audience into a psychosomatic fear so that the reader sleeps fitfully with the lights on ultra bright or seek company to pretend their fright is under control. The entries for the most part provide "the reader with a frisson of shock, or a moment of dread so powerful it might cause the reader outright physical discomfort ... or to linger in the reader's consciousness...long after the final word is read." No story is bad with most being excellent and meeting the Datlow bar using a creepy atmospheres will scare the sense of safe security out of everyone even Michael Chertoff. Fans of Elizabeth Bear will want to read "Inelastic Collisions" as she implies what may be coming in her Great Bear constellation. Others like Christopher Fowler's homage to the 1960s "The Uninvited" and "Ghorla" by Mark Samuels will resonate with older readers. With a virtual who's who, INFERNO is a strong short story horror collection that shows why this genre is so suited to the format, but needs a warning label that our electricity bills are going to exponentially rise.

Harriet Klausner

I was looking for some newer authors of horror and the macabre, after reading and re-reading my home library of Poe and Lovecraft to the point of boredom. I did find some new authors in this anthology whose other works I will now pursue further (specifically, Stephen Gallagher, Mike O'Driscoll, Mark Samuels, Lee Thomas and Simon Bestwick.) However, there was more of a sci-fi element present in this collection than I would have preferred. If you are looking for straight horror, this book does not fit the bill. It is a nice compilation of stories, though, and well put together by Ms. Datlow. Enjoyable reading.