Between 1983 and 1993, a small press from Arlington Heights, Illinois called Dark Harvest published close to 50 books. In that decade they released nine volumes in the seminal anthology, Night Visions, along with novels and story collections by such giants in the horror and SF field such as Fritz Leiber, Isaac Asimov, George R. R. Martin, Dean R. Koontz, Ray Garton, F. Paul Wilson, Dan Simmons, Robert R. McCammon, and many more. Toward the end of Dark Harvest’s run, they made a foray into the mystery genre. An anthology called Criminal Intent 1 appears to have been the last book they published. Perhaps the limited edition market collapsed in the early 1990s, or mystery readers didn’t care for small press editions as much as SF and horror readers. Or, maybe the publishers just decided to call it quits. At any rate, it’s a shame that Dark Harvest stopped publishing books.
I think I started buying Dark Harvest books with F. Paul Wilson’s books, then some of the Night Visions books and other anthologies, plus a few others here and there. Although I’m not aiming for a complete collection of Dark Harvest books, I recently picked up three books by this publisher from various locations.
Fiends, by John Farris (1990). A horror novel by an author of whom I know next to nothing. I’ve started reading this book, and it looks intriguing.
Blue Champagne, by John Varley (1986). A collection of short stories by this master of science fiction. I still have a vivid memory of seeing this book in the shelves at Austin Books on North Lamar in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I really wanted it, but back then was unable to afford the cover price. This year I paid a little bit more than cover price for this copy, but it’s in pristine condition and well-worth the price. Dark Harvest switching to SF is almost like Arkham House releasing SF books (oh, wait — they did release a few SF books), but the first story in the collection did make me a little nervous, almost like a horror story.
The Nightrunners, by Joe R. Lansdale (1987). An interesting book, and probably the only book that I’ve seen with this warning: “WARNING: Extreme violence, language and sexual situations may offend some readers.” Of course, that’s almost every Lansdale book, but it was strange to see this from one published back in 1987. I guess those were different times. Some of the pieces that make up this novel have appeared elsewhere as short stories or vignettes. One such episode I recently read, but I cannot remember where. I’m not about to hunt through all my books with Lansdale stories to find where I read it, but I do remember it was a disturbing piece, well worth that warning from the Dark Harvest edition.
There’s now a dozen of the 50 or so Dark Harvest books that I don’t own. I’m really only interested in six of these, but I won’t be surprised if I start looking for the rest. After all, they’re all a piece of history, at least in terms of genre fiction.
