::READERS REVIEWS::

Recommended - This book was published in 1987 and contained 56 short stories by 47 writers. There were 30 authors from the United States, 14 from Great Britain, plus Ireland's Sheridan LeFanu and Fitz-James O'Brien and Russia's Turgenev. Of all the writers, nine were women.

The pieces ranged from 1835 (Hawthorne) to the 1980s (Dennis Etchison, Michael Shea, Stephen King, Tanith Lee, Clive Barker), covering virtually each decade. Three-quarters of the stories were from the 20th century. Nearly a third were from the 1970s and 80s.

From the early or mid-19th century, there were Hawthorne, Poe, LeFanu, O'Brien and Dickens. From the late 19th century up to World War II, there were Turgenev, Bierce, Gilman, Chambers, James, Wharton, Lovecraft, Faulkner, Leiber, Bloch and Bradbury, among others. And from England, M. R. James, Hichens, Blackwood, Onions, De La Mare, Lawrence and Collier. Those after World War II included Sturgeon, Shirley Jackson, O'Connor, Matheson, Dick, Ellison, Oates, Disch, Shea and King. And from England, Aickman -- called the best English writer for that period -- Campbell, Lee and Barker. For Aickman and King, three stories each were included.

The editor's introduction discussed how horror fiction had been a vital element of English and American literature for at least 150 years. Three great traditional English writers -- M. R. James, Algernon Blackwood and Walter De La Mare -- plus the Anglo-Irish Lord Dunsany were cited; all but the latter were represented. In the 20th century, U.S. influences included Weird Tales, the magazine founded in 1923, which concentrated on the florid and antiquarian; H. P. Lovecraft -- called the most important American writer of horror fiction in the first half of the 20th century; the pulp fantasy magazine Unknown, founded in 1939, which offered more contemporary settings and clearer prose and helped broaden the category of horror by crossing it with SF; a number of anthologies in the 1930s and 40s; and the trend toward SF horror in the 1950s that included Matheson, Sturgeon and Bradbury. The editor said that the dominant form of horror until the 1970s had been the short story and novella, but this had changed thereafter with the success of novels by Ira Levin, William Peter Blatty and Stephen King.

The editor argued that in horror fiction there were three types of emphasis, often interlinked but with one usually foremost: (1) the moral allegorical, the most popular type, which involved the intrusion of supernatural evil into reality, through things like haunting, possession, ghosts or witchcraft (typically, Lovecraft and Stephen King); (2) the study of aberrant human psychology, which might be either supernatural or psychological, as in The Heart of Darkness, Psycho and -- though he wasn't mentioned -- Poe; and (3) the fantastic, which generally avoided either a supernatural or psychological cause, emphasizing foremost the ambiguous nature of reality and encompassing the surreal (Poe, Kafka, De La Mare, Aickman). The editor's categories were a useful frame for many of the stories.

There were some great stories in the collection. Most enjoyed were the piece by Michael Shea that described a confrontation between two worlds in an original way, and one by Harlan Ellison that showed NYC in a new light. One of these contained the collection's only vampire story, imagined in a new way. There were also tales by Blackwood, De La Mare, Jackson, Aickman and Barker that powerfully suggested supernatural, psychological or other menace ("The Willows," "Seaton's Aunt," "The Summer People," "The Hospice," "Dread"). There was one of Lovecraft's best tales ("Rats in the Walls"). The best combination of supernatural intrusion and aberrant psychology, for this reader, was the one by Onions ("The Beckoning Fair One"). And finally, there was a good though non-horrific description by Disch of a stranger's alienation in a foreign land ("The Asian Shore"). The selections overall made clear the stylistic connections between writers like Blackwood and Lovecraft, and De La Mare and Aickman.

On the other hand, many of the stories after World War II, especially the most recent ones, contained more SF than real, atmospheric horror. Nothing was selected from writers like Irving, Twain, W. W. Jacobs, Lord Dunsany, Paul Bowles, Gerald Kersh, William Sansom, E. C. Tubb or Angela Carter. The editors included a ponderous story by Turgenev, claiming him as one of the few masters of supernatural horror fiction outside the English language in the 19th century, passing over writers like Hoffmann, The Brothers Grimm, Pushkin, Merimée, Gogol, Gautier, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Maupassant and Garshin.

Other large anthologies of horror fiction include The Supernatural Omnibus (1931), A Century of Creepy Stories (1934), A Second Century of Creepy Stories (1937), Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural (1944), Dark Forces (1980), The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural (1981), The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories (1984), The Penguin Book of Horror Stories (1984), Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural (1985), The Penguin Book of Vampire Stories (1989), The Mammoth Book of Terror (1991), The Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1991), Final Shadows (1991), Masterpieces of Terror and the Unknown (1993), The Oxford Book of 20th Century Ghost Stories (1996), The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories (2003), The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories (2005), The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories (2007), American Supernatural Tales (2007) and The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories (2008).

Smaller volumes -- below 300 pages or so -- include The Ghost Book (1926), Great Ghost Stories (1930), Great Tales of Horror (1933), Best Ghost Stories (1945), The Second Ghost Book (1952), The Third Ghost Book (1955), The Supernatural in the English Short Story (1959), The Pan Book of Horror Stories, Vols. 1-30 (1959-88), The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, Vols. 1-20 (1964-84), The Fontana Book of Great Horror Stories, Vols. 1-17 (1966-84), The Thrill of Horror: 22 Terrifying Tales (1975), Roald Dahl's Book of Ghost Stories (1984), Weird Tales: Seven Decades of Terror (1997) and Haunted Houses: The Greatest Stories (1997).

Scary stuff - Comprehensive collection of horror stories. Lots of familiar authors here, perhaps some writers will gain new fans as a result of reading them for the first time. Would like to see more current authors included in the book, many of the stories are dated. It's a huge book, so it's worth the price for all the reading.

A surprising anthology of horror classics - I originally ordered this book thinking it was just a small collection of short stories. However, the total in this book is a whopping 56 stories, and only acouple under 10 pages. Keep in mind though, this is no small book. It's more on the size of a dictionary then a novel, weighing in at almost 3 pounds and clocking over 1000 pages.

The book contains a massive collection of stories by about 50 authors, everyone from dickens, poe, lovecraft, to king. very few authors have more then one story in the book, with the exception being stephen king who has three (one I've never read before [The Reach], the others have been released in his other collections of short stories [The Monkey, from Skeleton Crew, and Crouch's End from Nightmares and Dreamscapes, i believe]), and h.p. lovecraft with two stories.

It also contains a rather interesting introduction to the whole anthology that sheds a bit of light on not only the book, but the history and importance of short stories; as well as very short, interesting and informative introductions to the stories themselves and the authors.

If you're a fan of horror stories, and enjoy the oddities that come from the short stories then this book is highly recommended. The stories range from everything horror and spread almost the entire history of the genre.

I must be missing something - Why all the 5 star reviews? Am I really that picky or is everyone else that easy? Did we read the same book, I mean the WHOLE over 1,000 big pages? Well enough questions, there were some really excellent stories in this compilation namely "The Crowd", "The Autopsy", "Sticks", "Yours Truly, Jack The Ripper", "Dread", "How Love Came To Professor Guildia", "MacIntosh Willy", sadly those were in the minority. Some stories as in most compilations this vast were from early 1900's and the language requires careful reading to interpret the words or phrases used in those times. Also so many stories stacked side by side with winners like those mentioned above seemed to have almost nothing at all to do with horror and left me completely bored such as "The Asian Shore", "night side", others were just about unreadable and must have been included on a bet or a favor of some sort such as "The Jolly Corner" and "Larger Than Oneself". Glad I only paid over $6 from an Amazon Marketplace shop instead of the $29.95 cover price.

Not Free SF Reader - Part of a larger series that takes a look at various types of horror writing, with an introduction giving some detail and thoughts on the topic, as well as to each author and story.

This is a good collection, and is well to the ghost story end of the spectrum, in general.

Fabulous Formless Darkness : Smoke Ghost - Fritz Leiber
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Seven American Nights - Gene Wolfe
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Signal-Man - Charles Dickens
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Crouch End - Stephen King
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Night-Side - Joyce Carol Oates
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Seaton's Aunt - Walter de la Mare
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Clara Militch - Ivan Turgenev
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Repairer of Reputations - Robert W. Chambers
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Beckoning Fair One - Oliver Onions
Fabulous Formless Darkness : What Was It? - Fitz-James O'Brien
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Beautiful Stranger - Shirley Jackson
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Damned Thing - Ambrose Bierce
Fabulous Formless Darkness : Afterward - Edith Wharton
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Willows - Algernon Blackwood
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Asian Shore - Thomas M. Disch
Fabulous Formless Darkness : The Hospice - Robert Aickman
Fabulous Formless Darkness : A Little Something for Us Tempunauts - Philip K. Dick


Spectral look.

3.5 out of 5


Play things.

3.5 out of 5


Danger light haunting.

4 out of 5


Mythos scoffer mortality.

4 out of 5


Seance surprise.

3.5 out of 5


Ghost house.

3.5 out of 5


Poisoned woman not all gone.

3.5 out of 5


PR work not nice, free death not popular.

4 out of 5


Loopy writer problems.

4 out of 5


Nightmare rather solid it appears.

4 out of 5


Our house got lost.

3 out of 5


Invisible monster.

4 out of 5


Ghost visit.

3 out of 5


Wind in the tree monsters.

4.5 out of 5


Turkish twists.

3 out of 5


Lodging lacks lager and fun.

3 out of 5


Time to avoid own deaths.

4 out of 5

Five Stars as a Gift for the Horror and Weird Fiction Fan -
I have not read this book, but I gave it to a dear friend and teaching colleague who has been a horror afficianado for years, and who once taught a class on the development of "ghost stories." Scott, however, is definitely a more "M. R. James - Lovecraft" fan, someone who really appreciates the tales and "weird fiction" of the time around the turn of the century which spawned the modern "horror" genre. So, apart from the selections of people like LeFanu and Lovecraft which he had already digested ad nauseam, I was honestly not sure he would enjoy the book since much of it is written by more modern authors. Further, he is, like all devoted readers in any genre, more than aware that anthologies can often be real disappointments.

I am pleased to report that he absolutely loved the book, especially the short stories from Shirley Jackson and Clive Barker. And Scott is not a man who minces words over fiction he finds displeasing or amateurish. He was especially taken with the two little-known Jackson offerings which, he says, are as frightening as "The Lottery." I also asked him about the binding, since books of this size on glue spine tend to fall apart pretty easily, and he reports that he encountered no problems. He did note, though, that any hardback would be "well worth shelling out for," and that's about as high a compliment I suppose anyone could pay. He gave it an unequivocal "five stars."

So, while I have not taken "The Dark Descent," I thought it might be helpful for prospective purchasers to know that a true horror fan of many, many years did, and found the trip more than merely enjoyable. It is indeed rare that I would offer someone else's opinion as a review unless I had the highest regard for it. And I hope Scott's thoughts are indeed helpful.

As a gift for the horror fan, I can definitely recommend it.