Is that a misleading title? Probably. And for that, I apologize, for I’ve always been impressed by all the Ray Garton stories that I’ve read.
Recently, I picked up a nice copy of Ray Garton’s collection, Pieces of Hate, published by Cemetery Dance in 1996 — which is 30 years ago today! My copy is number 97 of 500 signed and numbered copy of this title. The book contains just nine stories, none of which I’ve read. I own just a handful of Garton’s books, all from small press publishers — Dark Harvest, Ziesing, Borderlands Press, and now Cemetery Dance. This is but a small subset of the books published during Garton’s lifetime. He died in 2024, all too young and with many years of fiction ahead of him. So tragic.
Horror and dark fantasy is but a small subset of genre fiction, but Garton was a major name in that arena. The first Garton story I read was “Monsters” in the Dark Harvest anthology, Night Visions 6, where he appeared alongside F. Paul Wilson and Sherri Tepper. I don’t remember anything from this story, but I do remember Lot Lizards, a vampire novella published by Ziesing back in 1991. Since then I’ve picked up a few more of his books, all hardcover. His original paperback horror books are hard to find these days, as are some of his more famous (or infamous) books, like Live Girls.
With Pieces of Hate you get the stories, and that’s it. No author introductions. No afterwords, no encomia from fellow authors. Leave that to other books. I look forward to readin this book with great anticipation. I’m sure the stories will be troubling. That was the case with Lot Lizards, as it was with Trade Secrets, another of Garton’s novels that I recently read. I still have a few of his unread books in my shelves, which sometimes is a good thing. I’ve yet to come across any Garton paperbacks anywhere, but perhaps someday I’ll find more of his books, and mourn the fact that he’s no longer around.
I’ve forgotten how many times I’ve read a book series out of order. I just know that it happens, and if by chance the second or third book in a series is good, and I read it first, well, I have to go hunt for book number one. Is a themed anthology in the same boat, however?
One of the books I picked up recently in Phoenix was Thrillers 2, published by Cemetery Dance in 2007. A signed/limited edition was too good to pass up. Edited by Robert Morrish, it features ca. 20,000 words each from four contributors — Gemma Files, Tim Waggoner, R. Patrick Gates, and Caitlin R. Kiernan. This anthology is apparently the “long-overdue return of a dark fiction series that debuted in 1993.” I’m not sure that a 14 year absence makes it a series, especially since no more books in this “series” followed. However, since I had book two, I naturally went out and searched for a copy of the first book…
Perhaps it’s unfair to compare Thrillers to another “dark fiction” series. Still, Thrillers seem to attempt to vill the void left from the demise of Dark Harvest’s Night Vision series, which ran for nine installments, then was partially resurrected by Subterranean Press for three more installments. The first Thrillers appears in 1993, just two years after Dark Harvest ceased the run of Night Visions books. The cover and concept seems to share a great deal with Night Visions: multiple writers contributing original fiction. With Night Visions, there were three writers – two well-known, and one new (and up-and-coming) writer. Majro names like F. Paul Wilson, Stephen King, Robert R. McCammon, Joe R. Lansdale, Dean Koontz, George R. R. Martin, and others, appears in Night Visions. Thrillers has four authors, a mix of new and well-known names. The font on the nine Night Visions books was consistent and recognizable. The font on the two Thrillers books, not so much.
The first book has stories by Rex Miller, Ardath Mayhar, Chet Williamson, and Nancy A. Collins, plus a short introduction by Joe R. Lansdale. The second Thrillers has fiction by Gemma Files, Tim Waggoner, R. Patrick gates, and Caitlin R. Kiernan. I checked ISFDB and despite close to 600 publications to its name, Cemetery Dance never released a third Thrillers.
It’s strange, but 2007 seems like just yesterday, and yet it’s almost two decades in the past. Going back to 1993 seems like a deep dive into the past. Since then, dark fantasy and horror anthologies have come and gone, yet there seems to be nothing like Night Visions, an annual publication with cutting edge fiction. Small press publishers have come and gone. Arkham House exists now in the distant past. Subterranean Press (soon to cease, alas) has published great fiction, mostly from individual authors. Golden Gryphon existed for a few years. Gauntlet Press and Borderlands Press publish just a few books each year. The same is the case for Cemetery Dance, which produced these two Thriller anthologies. Other small presses these days seem to focus on high-end expensive books for collectors with a lot of money.
Then again, with books like these day, I continue to mine the past with occasional success.
Many years ago F. Paul Wilson wrote five novellas in the Sims “saga.” These novellas were published by Cemetery Dance between 2000 to 2010,. In between those dates, they were released as a novel by Tor Books in 2003. While the former novellas were limited, the novel from Tor was a mass market publication.
Why it took Cemetery Dance seven years after the novel was published to round out the five volumes remains a mystery to me. Each novella from Cemetery Dance was limited to 750 numbered copies, and signed by Wilson. As a Wilson fan, currently looking to fill in missing gaps of books published over the past few years, I never felt compelled to seek out these novellas, as I already had the collected set of novellas gathered in the book from Tor (inscribed to me by Wilson at the World Fantasy Convention in Austin, TX, in 2006, I think). However, when I found them listed this year from various sellers at prices well below the original listed price of $35 per book, I thought, “Why not?”
As I write this in 2024, I vaguely remember the plot of Sims, the novel. I know that I read it back then, and voted for it when it was nominated for the Prometheus Award. Over 20 years had passed since I last thought about this story. When I picked up the five individual novellas this year, I re-read them in that format. I was surprised at how little I remembered, yet also at some of the details that remained stuck in my memory.
The first book, La Causa, sets the stage. The world of Sims, much like the five-book world of the LaNague Federation, is independent of Wilson’s Secret History saga. Here, genetically enhanced chimpanzees are cheap labor (more like slaves; not to dissimilar from the clones in Dydeetown World), even acting as caddies on golf courses (or worse, as we’ll see). A young lawyer, Patrick Sullivan, gets asked by some of the sims to represent them to form a labor union, and takes the case. This puts him in opposition to SimGen, the company that created and owns the sims. Their attempts to intimidate him only makes him dig in his heels harder, and he ends up embracing their cause. Meanwhile, another character, Romy Cadman, works for the government investigating research risks, while at the same time moonlights for a shadowy person trying to bring down SimGen. Her handler in this group goes by Zero, wears a mask to hide his features, and seems to have insider knowledge into the plans and workings of SimGen. At once we have multiple, yet intersecting, conflicts with many potentials.
The second installment, The Portero Method, brings Sullivan closer together with Romy. Portero is the security head of SimGen, but also seems to be working for another group, one that occupies the shadows. The Portero method is harsh, brutal, and throws a major wrench in Sullivan’s unionizing attempts. It also drives into the same group as Romy and Zero, now even more determined to bring down SimGen.
The third, Meerm, introduces a new character, and a new element to the story, one that will bring everything to a crashing climax. Meerm is another sim, on the run from a low-budget gene-lab, yet one with the potential to bring down SimGen, and the race is on to find this sim. Three groups are trying to find her: Portero’s two employers, as well as Zero’s cell.
The fourth, Zero, focuses on the person behind the mask. As the prime mover against SimGen, Zero has hired both Patrick Sullivan and Romy Cadman, hiding behind a mask the entire time. We learn of his ties to SimGen, giving him inside information. The hunt for Meerm ratchets up, with multiple groups trying to find this pregnant sim.
The fifth and final entry, Thy Brother’s Keeper, ties it all together. Everything erupts when we learn of Zero’s identity, and the ending is both heroic and tragic. Meerm’s baby seals the fate of SimGen, although the true origin of the sims remains a secret the public will never know. Lives are shattered, and it’s not just a happy ending for everyone. Wilson truly keeps everyone on their toes.
With this stack of books in hand, signed and numbered, each limited to 750 copies, I wonder if owning them is any different from owning the Tor edition of Sims? My Tor edition of Sims is inscribed to me by Wilson, and although all the five novellas are signed, does this equate to talking to Wilson, handing him a book and getting it returned as inscribed? On one level, it doesn’t. And yet, the Tor book was printed in thousands of copies, while the Cemetery Dance books had a much lower print run. They also contain illustrations that the Tor book edition did not. I sometimes struggle between the idea of a collector and a fan. I’m a fan of FPW, but as a collector, I’m more random and haphazard in my actions. Yet, for some weird reason, owning these five books gives me a thrill that the Tor Books edition never gave me. Why is that? Is that some innate human behavior, or just a focused aspect of some obsessive compulsive disorder?
After picking up a pair of Centipede Press books that were bundled together (see my comments on those books here), I saw that the publisher had dropped the price on another book that long had looked interesting. This was John McPartland’s Tokyo Doll (2023). Listed for $19 in their “Specials and Nearly Sold Out” section, well off the original cover price ($55, I think), it was hard to resist.
Tokyo Doll first appeared in 1953, early in McPartland’s career. McPartland is firmly entrenched in the American noir detective genre, the titles almost as shocking as the covers (at the time). In fact, all of his books appeared during the 1950s. Sadly, his life and career ended prematurely in 1958 at the early age of 47, shortly after he got into screenwriting in Hollywood. Unlike a handful of other authors from that decade, most of his books remain out of print.
The cover of the hardcover edition of Tokyo Doll is considerably less lurid than the original paperback edition. In fact, the Centipede Press cover is nothing short of amazing, and the image below hardly does it credit.
Perusing the first few pages, the prose is tight, hard as a steel blade, almost breathless in pace and atmosphere–all typical of that genre. This is a book I look forward to reading. It’s not Centipede Press’s first foray in McPartland’s books; they published See You in Hell in a limited edition in 2020. The cover on that book doesn’t look nearly as nice, though prices for it now are well above what I paid for Tokyo Doll, which was, I guess, “priced to move.” I think See You in Hell was published in a limited edition only; the publisher mentions 500 numbered copies for Tokyo Doll, but the one I picked up was the unsigned, unnumbered version, which is fine by me.
At the same time as I bought the McPartland book, I also bought from Centipede Press a book in their long running series, The Library of Weird Fiction. These books usually go out of print quickly, given that they are massive retrospectives of well-known writers of early twentieth century fantasy/horror fiction (see Algernon Blackwood, Ambrose Bierce, Bram Stoker, Edgar Allan Poe, H. P. Lovecraft, etc,). I’ve never been able to snag one until now (with one exception: a gift I bought for my wife, as she’s a huge Bram Stoker fan). This book in the Library of Weird Fiction contained stories by Frank Belknap Long. As his book was listed as one of the books nearly sold out, I picked it up at the (non-discounted) cover price of $60—unlike the Dune books, $60 is a cover price that’s at a manageable budget. Long’s name was familiar to me, but I don’t think I’d read any of his fiction, unless they appeared in some obscure collection. At over 800 pages, there’s a lot to absorb in terms of his short fiction.
The Library of Weird Fiction covers are uniform, with black and white photographs of the author. Owning a complete collection of these books likely is the mark of a true aficionado of that kind of fiction. On the secondary market the prior volumes fetch an absurd amount (well over $100-$200), so if I continue to collect the books in this series, I suspect I’ll need to make that happen when the books appear from the publisher, and not wait until they show up on the “almost out of print” section. There’s a brief introduction from noted scholar S. T. Joshi, and some photos of Long.
I’m more familiar with Richard Chizmar as an editor and the publisher of Cemetery Dance. Recently in a used book store I came across two copies of his 2019 novel, Gwendy’s Magic Feather. This is a sequel to a book he co-wrote with Stephen King. I stopped reading King’s books after the last Gunslinger novel, so I’d never heard of the first Gwendy book. But, as I’m a sucker for small press books, I picked this one up on the spot. King wrote the introduction, handing off the baton fully to Chizmar, rather than continuing to collaborate on the story. When I think of King’s writing, I’m reminded of the SNL skit where King (actor Jon Lovitz) is interviewed while he pounds out stories on typewriter (yes, this was before the computer…). King obviously has not stopped banging out stories, so any King collector needs a lot of shelf space.
Gwendy’s Magic Feather appears aimed at the juvenile market, with insanely short chapters and quite a few illustrations. It makes me wonder how many copies they produced and hoped to sell, especially with King’s name on the cover. If a pair of them ended up in the same used bookstore, did they really succeeded in that effort? Still, it’s available as a paperback, the story lives on. The short chapters, however, make me hesitate slightly to get into the book. That and the fact that it’s a sequel…
