Home » Posts tagged "horror classics" (Page 2)

Book Review: The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

cover art for The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

Bookshop.org  |  Project GutenbergAmazon.com )

The Willows by Algernon Blackwood

ISBN-13 : 978-1081920890

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition, audiobook, Project Gutenberg

 

Having just finished T. Kingfisher’s book The Hollow Places, I discovered in the afterword that she had been inspired by a novella by Algernon Blackwood titled The Willows, which was much admired by H.P. Lovecraft as an example of horror and weird fiction. The story follows the narrator and his traveling companion (referred to throughout as “the Swede”) as they journey down the Danube River, which is almost a character in the story. Having left the town of Pressburg during a rising tide, with the threat of a storm on the way, they are washed out of the main channel of the river and into a wilderness of islands, sandbanks, and swamp covered with willow bushes, a “separate little kingdom of wonder and magic… with everywhere unwritten warnings to trespassers.”

With the waters still rising and the winds blowing the two find an island large enough to camp on that they are sure they will not be washed away. The rising water, the shouting wind, the crumbling islands, and the masses of willows all together create a sense of unease and terror in the narrator, which he tries to dismiss by focusing on practical matters. He and his companion avoid speaking about their current situation, even when all they have to occupy themselves with is conversation. Alone, collecting driftwood for the fire, the narrator describes the willows as “utterly alien,” a vast army of “innumberable silver spears”. Although he suspects his companion shares his feelings of disquiet, the two men don’t speak about their unease. After their first night on the island, the narrator sees that the islands, covered in willows, have moved closer to their own, which is washing away. His companion has discovered that they cannot leave right away, though, because one of their steering paddles is missing, the second has been filed so it will break on usage, and there is now a hole in the bottom of their canoe, and believes the damage was done to make them victims of a sacrifice. The narrator, not wanting corroboration for his feelings of unease and fear, attempts to come up with logical explanations, but neither of the two can really believe them. Both men are terrified of their upcoming fate, but his companion advises him that it’s best to neither talk nor think of the willows who may be searching them out and hope that, in their insignificance, the creatures of the “beyond region” they have strayed into, will fail to find them.

A camping trip with a friend doesn’t sound like it would be ominous and terrifying, but Blackwood’s vivid descriptions of the natural world and the narrator’s disintegrating state of mind turns what seems at first like a river inlet filled with willow bushes that might be a good place to stay overnight, into an unnatural, dread-inducing enviroment. It’s creepy in the “I can’t believe these characters slept at all on the island” kind of way. You will never look at willows without seeing them as sinister again.

Blackwood’s descriptions of the willows as an “unearthly region” where the beings “have nothing to do with mankind” marks this story as an early work of weird fiction, and you can clearly see the influence on Lovecraft’s work. It’s easy to see why Blackwood is considered a master of the genre. Highly recommended.

Note: I read the Project Gutenberg edition of this novella, not the one pictured above.

Book Review: Frozen Hell: The Book That Inspired “The Thing” by John W. Campbell, Jr., illustrated by Bob Eggleton

Frozen Hell: The Book That Inspired “The Thing” by John W. Campbell, Jr.,  illustrated by Bob Eggleton (Amazon.com)

Wildside Press, 2019

ISBN-13: 9781479442829

Available: Hardcover, paperback, Kindle edition

 

Frozen Hell is John W. Campbell, Jr.’s original and previously unpublished novel that became the novella “Who Goes There?”, and the basis for three movies (The Thing from Another World (1951), The Thing (1982), and The Thing (2011)). The book includes three extra chapters at the beginning. The story opens with McReady, Vane, Barclay, and Norris arriving at a camp to investigate a magnetic anomaly that has occurred in the area. Upon their excavation, the team unearths a piece of highly polished metal and a frozen creature with blue skin and three red eyes. The description of the Thing is fantastic, and I don’t do it justice here, but I also don’t want to take away from the reader experience. Blair and Copper arrive at the camp later, and they make the decision to take the body back with them. Little do the men know that by returning to basecamp with the body the hell that will be unleashed. Paranoia and isolation run rampant through the camp after the body is found to be missing. When they do realize what is happening, it may already be too late.

Material that is included in this volume are, as mentioned, new chapters that detail the discovery of the Thing and its metal spacecraft, as well as rich description of the Antarctic landscape and atmosphere. Some reviewers felt that this took away from the story, but I felt that it added a slow burn element, and I’m a sucker for deep description of landscapes. I understand this element isn’t for everyone, however. The book includes a preview of a sequel written by John Betancourt. Alec Nevala-Lee provides a great discussion of how he found the manuscript in Campbell’s archival collection in Harvard’s Houghton Library. Robert Silverberg introduces the book, and the illustrations and wraparound full colour cover by Bob Eggleton add a nice spooky touch to the book. The text and table of contents needed an additional review by an editor, but otherwise the book was put together well. I would recommend this as a great companion piece to Campbell’s “Who Goes There?”.

Recommended

Reviewed by Lizzy Walker

Musings: 2020 Is Nearly Here! The Classics Are Coming!

phantom       

It’s been a big year for looking back, with the establishment of the Paperbacks from Hell imprint, Looking forward to 2020, it appears that it will be a big year for looking even further back.  The publication of several books of ghost and Gothic tales in 2019 looks like it was the beginnings of a return to the classics of the genre. 2020 will bring the first volume of HWA’s Haunted Library series that will be published in conjunction with Poisoned Pen Press, The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. In addition, Crystal Lake has just announced that they’ll be publishing Crystal Classics, dark tales from the late 19th and early 20th century,  with occasional titles that “challenge” a classic title, and the covers look lovely. Their December newsletter says the first three of these are out in paperback and will also be available as ebooks: they are The Great God Pan by Arthur Machen, with an introduction by William Meikle;  Dagon Rising, a “challenge” to Lovecraft by William Meikle; and The Willows by Algernon Blackwood, with an introduction by Jasper Bark. I’ve been watching over the past several years now as some of the older or lesser-known writers are starting to be introduced to readers who may never have encountered them before, and I think we’ll continue to see this appreciation of writers from earlier times. Given the publication of books like Monster, She Wrote this year, which set a focus on lesser-known women writers (or women writers whose supernatural work was lesser-known) I think we can be sure that there will be more to uncover and appreciate! Of course, time, and literature, and our fears, move on forward, and I think we’ll see more diversity among contemporary writers in 2020 as well, if what I’m already seeing is any indication. It’s an exciting time to be a writer, publisher, librarian, researcher, and reader, and I can’t wait to see what directions the genre goes in next.