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megapolisomancy's review
3.0
In which Gerald Page takes over as editor and raises the bar a good bit. Mostly reprints from 1974-1975, with a few originals tossed in (augh). All men (double augh).
Forever Stand the Stones (Joe Pumilia)
Stonehenge traps two spirits outside of time. The structure is ambitious, the prose better than most, the content (a series of ritualistic murders repeated throughout history) largely uninteresting.
And Don’t Forget the One Red Rose (Avram Davidson)
A dull worker in Queens visits his upstairs neighbor’s new bookstore, which has an eccentric pricing system. Things escalate with his shitty boss. Somewhat Blochian in its approach; the title is an injunction to the main character never uttered in the actual story, which I don't think I've ever run into before.
Christmas Present (Ramsey Campbell)
A Christmas party in Liverpool is cast awry by a stranger giving the antithesis of a Christmas present to prove a point. Wonderfully uncanny, full of weird sounds, put me in mind of Aickman’s “Ringing the Changes.” Short but punchy.
A Question of Guilt (Hal Clement)
~200 AD, a Roman family live in a cave to protect their last son after the first 3 died because of complications from hemophilia. Dad is focused on action to find a cure, mom is convinced she's cursed by the gods. Endless descriptions of trying to invent a needle/IV. In theory an interesting spin on the origin of vampire legends, in practice exceedingly tedious.
The House On Stillcroft Street (Joseph Payne Brennan)
In a small New England town, voracious ivy vines have taken over a reclusive botanist's house. An utterly pro forma creature feature, but at least Brennan knew exactly what he was aiming for.
The Recrudescence of Geoffrey Marvel (G.N. Gabbard)
Germany, 1653, a drama-quoting English cad faces down a ghost-taunting baron to save a barmaid. Vacuous pastiche.
Something Had to Be Done (David Drake)
Two army guys go to serve a death notification to next of kin during the Vietnam War, but it turns out one of them had ulterior motives. Brief, but another nice spin on vampires, tying them into the imperialism of the war (whether or not Drake meant it to come across that way).
Cottage Tenant (Frank Belknap Long)
A boy, obsessed with his theory about parrot-ish sea monsters winning the Trojan war, accidentally summons one because of the Jungian collective unconscious and anxiety about the Bomb (or something). Ridiculous; absolutely wooden prose.
The Man with the Aura (R.A. Lafferty)
The handsomest, richest, most respected, most popular man in the US is really a two-bit crook with an “aura machine.” He explains this endlessly to a politician who responds to confessions of arson and matricide with “such drollery!” Quite apropo to modern American life, but spins the joke out longer than it should have (much like modern American life).
White Wolf Calling (Charles L. Grant)
An elderly rural couple lament their loser twin sons; the father finds a surrogate child in their Czech neighbor. How do you say "Black Shuck" in Czech? Feels authentic, strikingly better than most of the others prose-wise.
Lifeguard (Arthur Byron Cover)
A teenager smokes a lot of pot, sees the ghost of a colonial woman, and learns that's why some people never make it out of his dead-end town. The apathetic post-hippie youth make this feel more of-its-time than many of these other stories.
The Black Captain (H. Warner Munn)
A man isolates himself in the desert, terrified of any exposure to darkness or shadow. The backstory reveal is trite, the prose overwrought at points, but the whole thing is convincingly arid and desolate and terror-stricken.
The Glove (Fritz Leiber)
A woman is assaulted; the perpetrator’s glove takes on a life of its own. Very much lesser Leiber, although as always the SF apartment building full of freaks and outcasts is well-drawn. A reread.
No Way Home (Brian Lumley)
A rural area in England confuses drivers such that they end up in an alternate dimension where no one has heard of their town and they find themselves rootless and alienated. Very Twilight Zone, creepy and relatively low-key, Lumley almost had me with this one! Then, in a further-removed dimension, house-shaped monsters attack the protagonist, “plooping” after their prey.
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