Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium

Rating:
Summary: Revolting
Review: Darkside is a compilation of 30 short horror stories: 1."Skinwriters" by Robert J. Levy - A pale woman with a rare skin condition becomes a living work-in-progress for a struggling writer. A little unsettling, yet beautiful. 2."Ice Dreams" by Elizabeth Massie and Robert Petitt - A perverse "family tradition" of ice-cold sex leads to the murder of several young women. This was a pretty good thriller/mystery, except for the child abuse. The ending was great though. 3."Wasting" by Lauren Fitzgerald - An at-home tutor helplessly watches as her 14-year-old student succumbs to anorexia nervosa. Psychologically disturbing, but not scary. 4."Backseat Dreams and Nightmares" by K. K. Ormond - A 13-year-old girl is raped and killed in the backseat of a car. Completely unnecessary trash. 5."The Stick Woman" by Edward Lee - For years, a woman is held captive by her husband in the basement of their home. Without a doubt, the most sickening, memorable story in this book. 6."Soul of the Beast Surrendered" by Wayne Edwards - The drawings of a young boy come to life and seek his help. Good ending. 7."October Gethsemane" by Sean Doolittle - An artist creates his masterpiece by painting with his own blood. Good ending, especially the pleading review for more of his work by an art critic. 8."Scars" by Lucy Taylor - Set in Africa, a man is sexually tormented and manipulated by a demon to kill. 9."ystery orm" by Brian McNaughton - A college student receives a mysterious letter concerning his dreams. 10."Tears Seven Times Salt" by Caitlin R. Kiernan - A young woman travels into the underground tunnels of New York in search of her heritage. Confusing, bizarre. I didn't understand the point of this one. 11."One-Eyed Jack" by S. Darnbrook Colson - The stakes in a game of poker escalate to sexual favors. I didn't think this story belonged here at all. It wasn't remotely scary. Just another excuse for more gratuitous sex, I guess. 12."Elena" by Steve Rasnic Tem - A woman's various sexual exploits with men and women. Again, not scary at all. 13."Family Album" by Adam-Troy Castro - A father witnesses his son's brutal death by looking at the photo album his serial killer made. Too short even for a short story--3 pages--, but probably not one I'd enjoy even if it were lengthened. 14."Having Eyes, See Ye Not?" by Sue Storm - Imitating Jesus' death, a young woman crucifies herself. Confusing, another baffler. 15."Sisters in Death" by D. F. Lewis - Three sisters share the same bed and die young. Very short. I didn't understand this one at all. Not going to try either, even though it's only 2 pages. 16."Window of Opportunity" by Roman Ranieri - A young man seeks payback on his bully. Pretty good 4-paged story, but not exactly horror. 17."Envy" by Christa Faust - An s/m routine between two lesbians. Pornographic, not scary. 18."The Man of Her Dreams" by Alan M. Clark - For years, a young woman is haunted by her dead abusive stepbrother. 19."For the Curiosity of Rats" by Jeffrey Osier - After the death of their young daughter, a married couple tries to cope with their loss. 20."The Stranger Who Sits Beside Me" by Yvonne Navarro - The woman who sits next to him on the commuter train slowly replaces his wife. A puzzler. 21."In Pieces" by Deidra Cox - A woman seeks a new victim for her kidnapper. 22."Voices Lost and Clouded" by David B. Silva - An older man is haunted by the accusatory questions of his mother. 23."If Memory Serves" by Jack Ketchum - A woman with a multiple personality disorder retells her horrific, Satanic upbringing. Good ending. 24."The Tears of Isis" by James S. Dorr - A woman is forced to remember her incestuous relationship with her brother when she starts seeing apparitions of a crying woman. Deals with Egyptian mythology. 25."Stick Around, It Gets Worse" by Brian Hodge - A man comes to terms with the purpose of his life after his wife dies. 26."Voices in the Black Night" by Larry Tritten - A trip to the library changes a man's life when he meets another man who can hear the books speaking. 27."Stealing the Sisyphus Stone" by Roberta Lannes - A pedophile seeks treatment via virtual reality. 28."The Nightmare Network" by Thomas Ligotti - A multinational corporation creates chaos among its employees. Confusing, boring, a bunch of long-winded gibberish. 29."Fiends by Torchlight" by Wayne Allen Sallee - The "Oklahoma City Bomber" shares his conspiracy theories. 30."...And Thou Hast Given Them Blood to Drink (and They Are Drunken with the Blood of Saints and with the Blood of Martyrs...)" by T. Winter-Damon and Randy Chandler - A lengthy biblical explanation of how the world is going to hell.

(...) I began this book at full-speed last November until I read Edward Lee's "The Stick Woman", and then I set the book aside for two months before slowly continuing with the others. If you've already read the above story, then you'll understand my shock. It was hard to digest such a brutal, appalling story--and what was even worse to imagine was that this sort of activity actually happens in our society. "The Stick Woman" left me completely desensitized, and it certainly reconfirmed my underlying belief that there is "no end to the absolute evil of men". (p 63)

In summary, this book was a complete gore fest with pretty much every author trying to outdo the other with the most traumatic, disgusting childhoods and fantasies. The majority of them are very disturbing and graphic. There are a few good stories in here though (i.e., "Skin Writers", "Ice Dreams"), but the rest are just polluted with extreme sex and violence. I would strongly discourage most people from reading this book. If you're used to reading about snuff and such, then proceed; otherwise, skip this one and preserve your sanity. In my opinion, somebody needs to stick a warning sticker or an NC-17 rating on this book.

Rating:
Summary: A fairly strong, new horror collection.
Review: I'm not sure what "horror for the next millenium" is supposed to mean; are these destined to be new classics to last us the next thousand years?
A bit presumptuous, maybe, but there is some great work here. A poet finds a most unusual collaborator in Robert Levy's "Skinwriters"; a teenage girl takes a contemporary disorder to horrifying extremes in Lauren Fitzgerald's "Wasting"; a child's escape fantasy runs out of control in Wayne Allen Sallee's "Soul of the Beast Surrendered"; a girl discovers her underground origins in Caitlin Kiernan's "Tears Seven Times Salt" and Brian McNaughton's Lovecraftian "ystery orm" takes us to the frightening snowbound desolation of a foreign university, where a solitary student receives a warning...but of what? And honorable mention must go to Edward Lee's "The Stick Woman", a story of imprisonment and torment which is quite possibly one of the nastiest things I've ever read in my life.
Unfortunately, most of the second half isn't as impressive as the first. A few exceptions from David Silva, Jeffrey Osier and Jack Ketchum shine in the midst of a lot of pretty standard material. Still, it's an anthology worth picking up, as it shows the genre's death has been somewhat exaggerated. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these wound up in a year-end anthology somewhere.

Rating:
Summary: Some great stuff, some awful stuff, most in between.
Review: John Pelan (ed.), Darkside: Horror for the next Millennium (Roc, 1996)

First off: there are a slew of really awful reviews for this book out there. Most of them seem to have some of their criticisms in the right place (the subtitle is utterly meaningless being the most common that actually has a shred of validity). The rest of them seem to require a quick history of horror. Recent horror, especially, but that known as "splatterpunk" is nothing new. The complainers might do well to go back and read some of the more visceral work from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before talking about how wonderful it is that old horror is still on the shelf instead of this dreck.

There are two schools of horror now. This is most obvious in the Japanese film industry, but they both seem alive and well in the American horror story, too. There is the atmospheric, spooky horror (aka JNH in the Japanese film industry), and then there is the extreme horror (aka the Guinea Pig movement, in honor of the series of extreme horror films of that name). Extreme horror rose to prominence in America in the eighties on the wings of authors like Ed Lee, Ray Garton, and Candace Caponegro; it has been the strongest direction in which horror has gone since, especially with the publication of the seminal, brilliant anthology Splatterpunks.

Darkside should, rightly, have been Splatterpunks III. Only a few of the stories would have seemed out of place, and the complainers would have known to steer clear.(Oh, horrors. Your fourteen-year-old got his hands on a copy and you took it away from him. If HE doesn't have a problem with the subject matter and YOU do, have you ever stopped to consider it's not your child's psyche that is the problem here?) The truly memorable stories here would get their due; especially chilling are Lauren Fitzgerald's "Wasting," Edward Lee's now-infamous tale 'The Stick Woman," and Sue Storm's "Having Eyes, See Ye Not?" (especially amusing as I write this, as some bonehead inspired by a recent film tried to do exactly the same thing a few days ago). The JNH-style stories, in standing out as different from the rest, would get even more due than they have (the book's opener, Robert J. Levy's "Skinwriters," is crafted with a precision that beings to mind Richard Christian Matheson's immortal story "Red", and Brian McNaughton's "ystery orm"is far more a Thomas Ligotti story than Ligotti's own contribution here). I'd still have to wonder what two of the book's last three stories are on about (Ligotti's "The Nightmare Network," which is still unfathomable upon second reading, and t. Winter-Damon and Randy Chandler's boring, overly-messaged "...And Thou Hast Given Them Blood to Drink," a piece cut from their novel Duet for the Devil).

Flashes of real genius here are rare, as they are in most anthologies; Levy is definitely a writer to watch, as are McNaughton and Adam-Troy Castro, among others. Some of the heavy hitters bring out decent material, as well. Along with Lee, Wayne Allen Sallee definitely delivers the goods (a very short monologue from the point of view of Timothy McVeigh), and Jack Ketchum and Lucy Taylor deliver good, solid work, if nothing groundbreaking. Some of the other stories fall flat (surprisingly, Caitlin R. Kiernan's is one of them; rare is the Kiernan story that is not perfect), and some of the young writers notorious in their absence here may take some of the luster away (notably, Poppy Z. Brite was still a neophyte when this came out).

Final call: some good, some bad. You always have to wade through the swine, but the pearls are worth it; "Skinwriters" alone is worth the cost of admission here, everything else is icing on the cake. ***