A Pre-Halloween Special: Will Errickson Tackles “Dark Forces”, Other 80s Horror Anthologies, and Horror Fiction Cover Art
About the Interviewee: Will Errickson has been an avid fan of horror since his 1970s childhood in southern New Jersey. He discovered King, Barker, Lovecraft, Campbell, et. al., during the heyday of the 1980s horror paperback boom. Working in a used bookstore after high school exposed him to more writers and novels, and his love of collecting vintage paperbacks was born. He studied film at North Carolina State University and currently lives in Portland, Oregon, with his girlfriend and of course hundreds upon hundreds of horror fiction paperbacks. His reviews of vintage horror paperbacks can be found at Too Much Horror Fiction, a Bookshelf Beats favorite.
In case you missed it, also make sure to check out our earlier interview where we discuss Joan Samson’s The Auctioneer.
(A note from Gino: The majority of the amazing cover art in this article can be found in Will’s review of Dark Forces at Too Much Horror Fiction.)
“What separates ‘Dark Forces’ is its literary ambition, which it wears on its sleeve.”
Gino: Dark Forces was already considered an essential horror anthology. Has the recent passing of editor Kirby McCauley added a level of meaning and significance to the book?
Will: For me, no, but for the authors included in it who are still around and were clients and colleagues of McCauley, I’m sure his passing has them reflecting on the beginnings of their careers…and perhaps their end.
“I will never forget the young protagonist idly wondering, ‘What if you had a job that took you from town to town, what if you killed someone in each one of those towns and hid the bodies so it’d take them a long time to be found. Your work would never be done.’”
Gino: What separates Dark Forces from other 80s horror anthologies?
Will: What separates it is its literary ambition, which it wears on its sleeve by featuring stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Joyce Carol Oates, Robert Aickman, and maybe a couple other SF/Fantasy authors known for their prose styling. While I enjoyed some of those works to one degree or another, there is a stodginess about Dark Forces, and a take-me-seriously tone that some horror readers may find a tad off-putting. I level this same charge at Douglas Winter’s Prime Evil from 1988. It really seemed like Dark Forces was presented as a gateway to ’80s horror, a marker, a milestone, a guidepost for where the genre would be headed in that decade. I think it was, but it’s just not my favorite of that era, although “The Mist” remains one of my top favorite King works.
Gino: Are their superior anthologies from the same era that deserve rediscovery?
Will: Better, I think, is Dennis Etchison’s Cutting Edge from 1986. Some of the same writers are featured in all three, but Etchison gathered stories that have real energy, a twitchy anxiety, with splatterpunk-style violence and psychological dissolution: “Muzak for Torso Murders” by Marc Laidlaw, “Goodbye, Dark Love” by Roberta Lannes, “Lacunae” by Karl Edward Wagner, “Lapses” by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro. I think Peter Straub’s “Blue Rose” is a major work of the era. I will never forget the young protagonist idly wondering, “What if you had a job that took you from town to town, what if you killed someone in each one of those towns and hid the bodies so it’d take them a long time to be found. Your work would never be done.”
And David J. Schow’s Silver Scream from ’88 is great, rollicking fun, although “fun” would never be a word I’d use in conjunction with Joe Lansdale’s eternally great “Night They Missed the Horror Show.”
Gino: Earlier you mentioned Isaac Bashevis Singer’s inclusion in Dark Foces. He won the Nobel Peace Prize in literature in 1978. Do you think having his story included in this anthology made some people who snubbed their nose at the genre give it a second chance?
Will: Singer’s story “The Enemy” is very good. It operates in that dream-time of myth and fable, like an old Jewish legend that speaks of the timeless evil nature of man. I don’t think it made people suddenly go out and buy the latest horror paperback, it probably just made them go and buy the latest Singer book. That’s why I’m not crazy about that kind of ambition, getting people who wouldn’t normally read horror to read horror. Lots of horror fiction is and has always been terrible dreck, written by “writers” and published to cash in on the latest horror movie trend. This is true, I’m sure, of all genre fiction.
Reading the better writers in horror made me seek out more challenging fiction in general, since I certainly wasn’t finding it in horror. Twenty-five-odd years ago I went from Clive Barker, Michael Blumlein, and Kathe Koja to J.G. Ballard and James Ellroy and William Burroughs. Lots of “horror” in those writers, but you’ll never see them on bookstore horror shelves. Revisiting horror from back then today has introduced or reintroduced me to good writers I’d overlooked like Thomas Tessier, Lisa Tuttle, Ken Greenhall, Bernard Taylor, Michael McDowell, Jack Ketchum, and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.
“Reading the better writers in horror made me seek out more challenging fiction in general.”
Gino: You list Karl Edward Wagner’s “Where the Summer Ends” as one of your favorite stories from Dark Forces in your review on Too Much Horror Fiction. I love the opening sentence, “Along Grand Avenue they’ve torn the houses down, and left emptiness in their place.” What about Wagner’s style resonates with you?
Will: Now that you mention that opening sentence, to me it sounds like it could be a line from a classic Springsteen song, which may have been intentional. I’ve caught references to other rock lyrics in his writing, the Doors in particular. This factors into one thing I like about Wagner’s style: he writes like a person who lived a varied and interesting life. His depictions of romantic relationships have an honest, albeit sometimes bitter quality to them. He’s good at showing male friendship and bonding, making me think he’s drawing from his own experience.
I love stories about writers, students, literary types, that kind of thing, and that was stuff he knew well. Even the sordid aspects like drug and alcohol use ring true, which is what eventually killed him. Too many horror writers only write at the surface, with as much depth as a TV commercial or a mainstream Hollywood movie or the last popular horror flick. “Where the Summer Ends” first seems like the tale of a broke college student who’s trying to fix up his shitty apartment by buying interesting pieces from an old drunk’s junkyard collection. Then you get to the last part and you realize you’ve been reading a horror story all along.
“Too many horror writers only write at the surface, with as much depth as a TV commercial or a mainstream Hollywood movie or the last popular horror flick.”
Gino: Do you find Wagner’s other horror works match the quality of this story?
Will: Pretty much. His paperbacks collections from the 1980s, Why Not You & I? and In a Lonely Place, are pretty essential for readers who like smart, yet pulpy, horror. “Sticks” is one helluva Cthulhu mythos tale. Movies and genre fiction also appeared in his stories, which I appreciate. “Old Loves,” “More Sinned Against,” “Neither Brute Nor Human” and “The Last Wolf” all utilize those aspects to various degrees. I don’t think they’re particularly scary but they do have moments of unease and discomfort, and all are marked by Wagner’s trenchant psychological insight. People may not know he trained as a psychiatrist but left the field to pursue writing. He also excelled at dark heroic fantasy, à la Robert E. Howard. That sub-genre isn’t to my taste personally, but I know many of my Too Much Horror Fiction readers love Wagner’s work in it. I’m happy to say I still have plenty of Wagner’s stories to read still.
Gino: I love the Dark Forces cover shown below that you discussed in your review of the book. What about the cover resonates with you?
Will: I guess what I like is that the woman standing there doesn’t seem to be afraid of the bright light or mist or whatever it is. To me it always seemed like a character from Stephen King’s “The Mist” standing before the supermarket windows, transfixed by what’s happening outside.
Gino: Where does this cover rank among your all-time favorites?
Will: It doesn’t rank whatsoever! The paperback cover isn’t that hot and the hardcover is boring beyond belief.
Gino: Was the artist responsible for other paperback works of that era?
Will: Unfortunately there is no artist noted on the copyright page. If someone is interested in looking up paperback cover artists of that era, I’d suggest looking into Don Brautigam, William Teason, Lisa Falkenstern, Jill Bauman, George Ziel, and Rowena Morrill just for a start!
Gino: It seems like horror fiction covers have followed the same path as 80s VHS horror covers. As both formats evolved from VHS to DVD to Blu-Ray and paperback to e-book, publishers have moved away from the warm, authentic cover art that was once commonplace. Do you think there is any hope for a resurgence of old-school horror fiction cover art? I ask because it seems like there is ripe market for making t-shirts, posters, and framed original prints of classic paperback covers.
Will: I’ve seen some King t-shirts featuring the Night Shift and Pet Sematary cover art, but it’s still a niche market. Some ebooks probably have throwback lurid art, but I doubt publishers of actual paperback books will be giving those kinds of covers another go.
Gino: King’s “The Mist”, which many consider to be a highlight of the collection, was turned into a successful film. As a reader, do you think any of the stories from this anthology could have worked as full-length novels?
Will: Maybe T.E.D. Klein’s “Children of the Kingdom.” He wrote a longish short story in the early ’70s called “The Events of Poroth Farm” that’s fairly well-known in horror fiction circles, and he turned it into a full novel about 10 years later called The Ceremonies. I prefer the original short story.
Bookshelf Beats is a website run by Gino Sorcinelli. I interview people about books that change their lives, inspire them, and/or make them think differently. If you enjoyed this article consider subscribing to my Medium publication.
