Visions of Fear - Foundations of Fear III (1992)
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D A V I D G . H A R T W E L L
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! CLIVIE BARKER
GERALD DURR’ELL
O C T M I/f BUTLER
E.T.A. HOFFM AN
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RICHARD MATHESON
“Showcas[es] novellas and the trail-
blazing work of some little-anthologized
women w riters. H a rtw e ll’s selections
startle, satisfy, and transfigure our old-
hat assumptions about what constitutes
horror and what it can do. The book is a
delectably macabre feast.”
— Michael Bishop
“The Clive Barker selection is thoughtful and provocative. Another notable
strength is the attention paid to women
writers, whose contribution to the evolution of modern literature is convincingly
demonstrated.
“Hartwell has not only found a good
bunch of stuff for us to read, but he has
also made a significant contribution to
the theory and criticism of the field.”
— Locus
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“A whopping big trea-
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sure-house of horrors—
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and a welcome statement
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that being scared can be
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creepy fun.”
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— Karl Edward Wagner
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“Heads and tails above the majority of the ‘definitive’
type of horror anthologies which crop up every few
years. It is recommended to everyone who needs to
‘catch up’ on the best of the best.”
— Jessica Amanda Salmonson
“ [An] exemplary collection.”
— Brian Stableford
in The New York Review o f Science Fiction
VISIONS OF FEAR
Clive Barker
Philip K. Dick
Gertrude Atherton
E.T.A. Hoffman
Octavia Butler
Richard Matheson
Edgar Pangbom
Mary Wilkins Freeman
Gerald Durrell
Scott Baker
Thomas Ligotti
Tor anthologies edited by David G. Hartwell
The Ascent o f Wonder
Christmas Forever
Christmas Stars
Northern Stars (with Glenn Grant)
The Dark Descent
The Color o f Evil
The Medusa in the Shield
A Fabulous, Formless Darkness
Foundations of Fear
Shadows o f Fear
Worlds o f Fear
Visions o f Fear
Visions
O F
F E A R
FOUNDATIONS OF FEAR VOLUME III
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DAVID G. HARTWELL
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
Note: If you purchased this book w ithout a cover you should be aware
that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “ unsold and
destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher
has received any payment for this “ stripped book.”
This is a work o f fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in
this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events
is purely coincidental.
VISIONS OF FEAR: FOUNDATIONS OF FEAR, VOLUME #3
Copyright © 1992 by David G. Hartwell
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or
portions thereof, in any form.
Cover art by Tom Canty
A Tor Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, N.Y. 10010
Tor® is a registered trademark o f Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.
ISBN: 0-812-55001-3
First Tor edition: November 1994
Printed in the United States o f America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
“ In the Hills, The Cities” by Clive Barker, copyright © 1984 by Clive
Barker. Reprinted by permission o f The Macdonald Group.
“ Faith o f O ur Fathers” Philip K. Dick, copyright © 1967 by Harlan
Ellison. Reprinted by permission o f the author and the author’s
agents, Scott Meredith Literary Agency, Inc., 84S Third Avenue,
New York, New York 10022.
“ Bloodchild” by Octavia Butler, copyright © 1984 by D^vid Publications, Inc. Reprinted by permission o f the author.
“ Duel” by Richard Matheson, copyright © 1971 by Richard
Matheson. Reprinted by permission o f Don Congdon Associates,
Inc.
“ Longtooth” by Edgar Pangbom, copyright © 1969 by Mercury
Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission o f the author’s agent, Richard
Curtis Associates, Inc.
“The Entrance” by Gerald Durrell, copyright © 1980 by Gerald
Durrell. Reprinted by permission o f Simon & Schuster, Inc.
“The Lurking Duck” by Scott Baker, copyright © 1983, 1991 by
Scott Baker. Reprinted by permission o f the author.
“ Notes on the Writing o f H o rro r A Story” by Thomas Ligotti,
copyright © 1989 by Thomas Ligotti. Reprinted by permission of
Robinson Publishing, from Songs o f a Dead Dreamer by Thomas
Ligotti.
To the editors and anthologists who first gave the genre
a canon in the 19 2 0 s-1940s;
To the publishers who stuck with it and gave the genre
an identity for better or worse;
To the writers who often ignored them all and just
wrote powerfully and well;
And finally, to my children, Alison and Geoffrey,
without whom I couldn’t have completed the book
during difficult times.
Acknowledgments
This book continues the revaluation of horror
literature I began in The Dark Descent, and so to
the same people and books given credit there I continue my indebtedness. Discussions with Alfred Bendixen (and of course his books) have proven helpful,
and with Robert Hadji, whose wide reading in and out
of the genre and considered critical judgement have
influenced several of my choices for inclusion herein.
The support of those who were enthusiastic enough
about The Dark Descent to demand that I continue
working in this area— particularly Joanna Russ—carried me through a number of rough spots. Certainly the most important acknowledgment is to Kathryn
Cramer, not only for discussion, critical commentary,
and moral support, but for sharing with me her
unf
inished writings and researches on horror publishing and the distinctions between category and genre, and on Henry James, as well as her published work
surveying influences among horror writers today. AP
every point her creative insights have been provocative and useful. The critical reconsideration of the evolution of horror in literature begun by Kathryn
Cramer, Peter D. Pautz, and myself five years ago has
borne a variety of fruits, including all our various
anthologies. This is only the most recent.
No acknowledgment would be complete without
proper recognition of the support of my publisher, Tor
Books, who took a chance. To Tom Doherty, publisher, and Melissa Singer, editor, for patient enthusiasm, my sincere gratitude.
Contents
Introduction David G. Hartwell
1
Introduction to Visions o f Fear
22
In The Hills, The Cities
a
23
Clive Barker (b. 1952)
Faith of Our Fathers
61
Philip K. Dick (1928-1982)
The Bell in the Fog
101
Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948)
The Sand-man
129
E.T.A. Hoffman (1776-1822)
Bloodchild
173
Octavia Butler (b. 1947)
Duel
198
Richard Matheson (b. 1926)
Longtooth
228
Edgar Pangborn (1909-1976)
Luella Miller
271
Mary Wilkins Freeman (1852-1930)
The Entrance
288
Gerald Durrell (b. 1925)
The Lurking Duck
349
Scott Baker (b. 1947)
Notes on the Writing of Horror: A Story
410
Thomas Ligotti (b. 1959)
Introduction
I
High and Low
There is no delight the equal of dread.
— Clive Barker, “Dread”
. . . if not the highest, certainly the most exacting
form of literary art.
—L.P. Hartley on the ghost story
Taken as a whole, the o u tp u t. . . stands in need of
critical study, not to erect theories upon subterranean surmises, but by using direct observation and following educated taste . . . to enlarge for all readers the repertory of the well-wrought and the enjoyable.
—Jacques Barzun, Introduction to
The Penguin Encyclopedia o f
Horror and the Supernatural
We dislike to predict the future of the horror story.
We believe its powers are not yet exhausted. The
advance of science proves this. It will lead us into
unexplored labyrinths of terror and the human
desire to experience new emotions will always be
with u s .. . . Some of the stories now being published in Weird Tales will live forever.
—editorial, Weird Tales (vol. 4, no. 2; 1924)
This anthology of horror literature is a companion
volume to The Dark Descent, continuing a pano-
2
David G. Hartwell
rama of examples and an examination of the evolution
of horror as a mode of literary expression from its roots
in stories in the early Romantic period to the rich
varieties of contemporary fiction. In The Dark Descent,
it was observed that the short story has, until the 1970s,
been the dominant literary genre of horror throughout
its evolution (horror was in at the origination of the
short story and has evolved with and through it); and
that it is now evident that the horror novel is in a period
of rapid development and proliferation, for the first time
achieving dominance over the shorter forms. So it is a
particularly appropriate historical moment for us to look
back over the growth and spread of horror stories.
Furthermore, a general consideration of literary examples yields several conclusions about the nature of horror. First, that horror is not in the end either a marketing category or a genre, but a literary mode that has been
used in every genre and category, the creation of an
atmosphere and emotional environment that sparks a
transaction between the reader and the text which yields
the horrific response. Horrific poems and plays and
novels predate the inception of the short story. There
can and have been western horror stories, war horror
stories, ghost stories, adventure stories, mystery stories,
romances— the potential exists in every category.
But by the early twentieth century, horror began to
spread and separate in two directions, in literary fiction
and in popular literature, mirroring the Modernist distinction between high art and low, a distinction that is rapidly disintegrating today in the post-M odem period,
but remains the foundation of marketing all literature in
the twentieth century. For most of the century, horror
has been considered narrowly as a marketing category or
a popular genre, and dismissed by most serious readers
and critics. In many ways, horror is associated with
ghosts and the supernatural, which in a way stand for
superstition and religion— and one of the great intellec
Introduction
3
tual, cultural and spiritual battles of the past 150 years
has been on the part of intellectuals, to rid western
civilization of the burdens of Medieval religion and
superstition, especially in the wake of the great battles
over Darwin and Evolution. The Modernist era, which
began in the late nineteenth century, is an era of science.
The death of horror was widely announced by Modernist critics (particularly Edmund Wilson, who devoted two essays to demolishing it), the specialists such as
Lovecraft and Blackwood denounced, and the psychological investigations of Henry James, Franz Kafka, Joseph Conrad and D.H. Lawrence enshrined as the next
stage in literary evolution, replacing superstition and
the supernatural as the electric light had replaced the
flame.
Yet it was precisely at that moment, in the 1920s and
1930s, that the first magazines devoted to horror began
to appear, that the first major collections and anthologies
of horror fiction from the previous hundred years were
done, and the horror film came into prominence. Significantly, Lovecraft, in his classic study, Supernatural Horror in Literature (1936, revised), in examining the
whole history of western literature concluded that over
centuries and in a large preponderance of texts, the true
sensations of horror occur rarely, and momentarily— in
parts of works, not usually whole works. He wrote this
during the generation when horror was actually becoming a genre, with an audience and a body of classic texts.
A threshold had been reached after a century of literary
evolution, in which a parallel evolution of the ghost story
and the horror story had created a rich and varied body
of tropes, conventions, texts, and passed, and the horror
genre was established as a vigorous variety of popular
literature, in rich interaction with the main body of the
literature of this century ever since. One can speculate
that, since the religious and superstitious beliefs had
pass
ed from overt currency in the reading public, their
4
David G. Hartwell
transformation into the subtext of horror fiction fulfilled
certain desires, if not needs, in the audience and writers.
As was noted in The Dark Descent, the most popular
current of horror fiction for decades has been moral
allegories of the power of evil.
The giant of the magazines of horror was Weird Tales,
founded in 1923 and published until the 1950s (and
recently revived). It was there that H.P. Lovecraft, Frank
Belknap Long, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith
and many others flourished. Davis Grubb, Tennessee
Williams, Ray Bradbury and many other literary writers
also published early work in Weird Tales, which was
hospitable to all forms of the weird and horrific and
supernatural in literature. “Up to the day the first issue
of Weird Tales was placed on the stands, stories of the
sort you read between these covers each month were
taboo in the publishing world. . . . Edgar Allan Poe
. . . would have searched in vain for a publisher before
the advent of this magazine,” said the editorial of the
first anniversary issue in 1924.
One of the conditions that favors genrification is an
accessible category market, and Weird Tales provided
this, along with a letter column in which the names and
addresses of correspondents were published. This allowed readers and writers to get in touch with each other, and they did. The Lovecraft circle was composed of
writers, poets and readers, and generated thousands of
letters among them over several decades, forming connections that lasted years after Lovecraft’s death in 1937, some at least until the death of August Derleth in
the 1960s. Some of the early correspondents were involved, as Lovecraft was, in the amateur journalism movement of the teens and twenties, and they generated
amateur magazines and small press publications, which
flourished frqm the 1930s to the 1960s—their descen-
dents exist today. The World Fantasy Awards has a
separate category award for excellence in fan publishing
each year, and there are many nominees. So Weird
Introduction
5
Tales was seminal not only in creating a genre, but also in
creating a field, a subculture of devotees.
In the 1940s and 1950s, the development of the popular form continued and, through a series of historical accidents, came under the protective umbrella of the