Snakes on a Grave!
Awhile back I stumbled across The First Orbit Book of Horror Stories and The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series II at a local second-hand store and went ahead and adopted bought them. Both are edited by a gentleman named Richard Davis (who, I’m embarrassed to say, I’ve not heard of before). A quick Google search finds scant information about him — which is a shame because it seems (based on his bio in the Orbit Book) that he was an active editor, literary agent, and author who was contributing a lot to the development of the horror field during a time many look back on fondly as its post-Exorcist heyday.
I’ve yet to dive into either book yet (like everyone, lots of books awaiting me in my to-be-read pile), but a quick glimpse at the TOCs suggest I should start reading these stories. Between the two books, there are three stories by one “J. Ramsey Campbell” (now I want to know what the J. stands for). I found it interesting (if not surprising) that Davis selected two of Campbell’s tales for the Year’s Best Horror antho. I doubt an editor would do that these days, simply because of the desire to include a wide array of voices.
The Year’s Best Horror antho is also distinctive because Christopher Lee wrote the foreword. I’ve skimmed it, and I find it intriguing to read the Hammer star’s views regarding what makes horror fiction work.
The books also include stories by Harlan Ellison, Robert Bloch, and T.E.D. Klein. Perhaps even more interesting are all the folks I’ve never heard of before before who have stories included in these volumes. As a newer author myself, I can’t help but wonder what happened to them. I wonder if they kept writing horror but just didn’t find additional success, or if they just stopped writing at some point. Each author would have had to be thrilled to be included in either one of these books. And yet so many of these names aren’t recognizable now — perhaps they never made their mark on the field. Ironically, that may end up the most haunting thing about these books, at least for me.
