Horror: The 100 Best Books (39 page)

EDDY C. (CHARLY) BERTIN (b. 1944) was born in Hamburg-Altona, Germany, but at a very early age he moved to Belgium, where he still lives. He started writing horror stories at the age of 13 and began selling fiction to British anthologies and American magazines in 1967. After having unsuccessfully tried to sell his work in Dutch for over 10 years, he finally got his first book published on the strength of his overseas sales. Berlin's first professional collection,
De Achtjaarlijkse God
(
The Eight-Yearly God
) was published in the Netherlands in 1970, and he has subsequently published over thirty books in Holland, Belgium, France, Germany and Poland. More than fifty short stories have been translated into English, including various stories chosen for the Year's
Best Horror
and
World's Best SF
series. His best-known books (in Dutch) include a massive science fiction trilogy known as
Membrane Universe
and a dark fantasy novel about Edgar Allan Poe,
The Shadow of the Raven
. His short horror fiction has been collected in various volumes, among them
My Beautiful Darkling
and
The Most Gruesome Stories of Eddy C. Berlin
. He wrote over forty pulp novels (mainstream, western and crime) using various pseudonyms, but since 1986 has concentrated on mainly horror and SF novels for younger readers, including
This House Wants Blood
,
The Ship from the Future
,
The Planet of the Golden Spiders
,
Witchcraft at Full Moon
,
Prisoners of the Video
and
Midnight Date
.

JOHN BLACKBURN (1923-1993) has been described as "today's master of horror" and "the best British novelist in his field". Born in Northumberland, Blackburn served in the merchant navy during World War II and prior to becoming a full-time writer he worked as a lorry driver, a teacher in London and Berlin, and the owner of an antiquarian bookshop. His first novel,
A Scent of New-Mown Hay
(1958), was an instant success, and he followed it with more than thirty books, most of them in the horror genre. Among his best-known titles are
A Ring of Roses
,
Children of the Night
,
Nothing But the Night
(filmed in 1972, starring Christopher Lee and Peter Gushing),
Bury Him Darkly
,
Blow the House Down
,
For Fear of Little Men
,
Devil Daddy
,
Our Lady of Pain
and
The Cyclops Goblet
. Blackburn's short fiction has appeared in such original anthologies as
Cold Fear
,
The Taste of Fear
and
The Devil's Kisses
.

ROBERT BLOCH (1917-1994) was born in Chicago and lived in Los Angeles, California, for many years. His interest in horror first blossomed after he was frightened by Lon Chaney's classic 1925 portrayal of
The Phantom of the Opera
. A young devotee of the pulp magazine
Weird Tales
, he began corresponding with author H.P, Lovecraft, who advised him to try his own hand at writing fiction. Bloch's first published story was "Lilies" (1934) and a year later he made his professional debut with "The Secret of the Tomb". Quickly establishing himself as a popular and prolific short story writer, Bloch's early work obviously emulated Lovecraft's own distinctive style and themes, but by the early 1940s he had developed a unique blend of twisted psychological horror and grim graveyard humour (perhaps best exemplified by one of his most reprinted tales, "Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper"). However, despite having over two dozen novels and hundreds of short stories to his credit, he will always be identified with his 1959 book,
Psycho
, successfully filmed by Alfred Hitchcock the following year. Bloch often scripted adaptations of his own work, starting with the radio show
Stay Tuned for Terror in
1944, and including the television series
Alfred Hitchcock Presents
,
Thriller
,
Star Trek
,
Tales from the Darkside
and
Monsters
, and such movies as
Torture Garden
,
The House That Dripped Blood
and
Asylum
. His recent books include the novels
Psycho II
,
The Night of the Ripper
,
Lori
,
Psycho House
and
The Jekyll Legacy
(with Andre Norton), he edited
Psycho-Paths
, and his short fiction has been collected in
Fear and Trembling
,
Midnight Pleasures
and the 500,000-word three volume set of
The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch
. He won the science fiction field's Hugo Award in 1959 for "The Hell-Bound Train", was the first recipient of The World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement Awards in 1975, and also received Life Achievement Awards from both The Horror Writers of America and the first World Horror Convention.

SCOTT BRADFIELD (b. 1955) was born in California and divides his time between the American West Coast and London. He received his Ph.D in American Literature from the University of California, where he taught for five years. Bradfield's stories, essays and reviews have appeared in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, including
Omni
,
Ambit
,
The Year's Best Horror Stories
,
The Year's Best Fantasy Stories
,
Interzone
,
New Statesman
,
The Listener
,
The Evening Standard
,
Other Edens 2
and
The Times Literary Supplement
. His short fiction is collected in
The Secret Life of Houses
and
Dream of the Wolf
, and his novels include
The History of Luminous Motion
and
Greetings from Earth
.

EDWARD BRYANT (b. 1945) was born in White Plains, New York, and grew up on a cattle ranch in Southern Wyoming. He met Harlan Ellison, who assisted his early career, at the Clarion SF Writer's Workshop in 1968 and 1969, and Bryant sold his first short story, "They Come Only in Dreams" to
Adam
in 1970. His fiction has appeared in a wide variety of magazines and anthologies, and two stories, "Stone" (1978) and "giANTS" (1979), both won the Nebula Award. Bryant's collections include
Among the Dead and Other Events Leading Up to the Apocalypse
,
Cinnabar
,
Wyomming Sun
,
Particle Theory
, one-third of
Night Visions 4
, and
Neon Twilight
. He collaborated with Ellison on the short novel
Phoenix Without Ashes
, edited the original anthology
2076: The American Tricentennial
, and has published a short horror novel,
Fetish
. Bryant currently reviews horror books for
Locus
and other publications, and he continues to contribute superior short stories to such anthologies as
Blood Is Not Enough
,
Alien Sex
and
Book of the Dead
.

RAMSEY CAMPBELL (b. 1946) has been justly described as "perhaps the finest living exponent of the British weird fiction tradition", and in 1991 he was voted the Horror Writer's Horror Writer in the
Observer Magazine
. A lifelong resident of Liverpool and Merseyside, John Ramsey Campbell sold his first story, "The Church in the High Street", to August Derleth in 1962. Leaving school that same year, his first collection,
The Inhabitant of the Lake and Other Less Welcome Tenants
appeared from Derleth's Arkham House imprint two years later. Campbell worked for the Inland Revenue and later in a library until he became a full-time writer and reviewer in 1973. Although his early fiction was heavily influenced by H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos (yet set in a distinctly British milieu), his subsequent books and stories have revealed him to be a unique voice in horror fiction -- whether as an anthologist (
Superhorror
aka
The Far Reaches of Fear
,
New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
,
New Terrors
,
The Gruesome Book
,
Fine Frights
,
Best New Horror
series, with Stephen Jones), in his collections of short fiction (
Demons By Daylight
,
The Height of the Scream
,
Dark Companions
,
Cold Print
,
Scared Stiff
,
Dark Feasts
,
Waking Nightmares
), or as a novelist (
The Doll Who Ate His Mother
,
To Wake the Dead
(US:
The Parasite
),
The Nameless
,
The Face That Must Die
,
Incarnate
,
Obsession
,
The Hungry Moon
,
The Influence
,
Ancient Images
,
Needing Ghosts
,
Midnight Sun
,
The Count of Eleven
,
The Long Lost
). A multiple winner of both the British Fantasy and World Fantasy Awards, Campbell has also completed several of Robert E. Howard's stories of Solomon Kane, written the novelizations of
The Wolf Man, Bride of Frankenstein
and
Dracula's Daughter
under the house name "Carl Dreadstone", and is the author of
Claw
(US:
Night of the Claw)
behind the somewhat obvious alias of "Jay Ramsey". In 1992 he celebrated thirty years of chilling spines, and the bumper collection of his best short fiction,
Alone With the Horrors
, commemorates the event.

HUGH B. (BARNETT) CAVE (b. 1910) was born in Chester, England, but emigrated to America with his family when he was five. While editing trade journals he sold his first story, "Island Ordeal", to
Brief Stories
in 1929. He quickly established himself as an inventive and prolific writer and sold a staggering 800 stories to such pulps as
Strange Tales
,
Weird Tales
,
Ghost Stories
,
Black Book Detective Magazine
,
Thrilling Mysteries
,
Spicy Mystery Stories
, and the so-called "shudder pulps",
Horror Stories
and
Terror Tales
. Cave left the field for almost three decades, moving to Haiti and later Jamaica, where he established a coffee plantation and wrote two highly-praised travel books,
Haiti: Highroad to Adventure
and
Four Paths to Paradise: A Book About Jamaica
, along with a number of mainstream novels. He also contributed fiction regularly to
The Saturday Evening Post
and other "slick-paper" magazines. In 1977, Karl Edward Wagner's Carcosa imprint published a hefty volume of Cave's best horror tales,
Murgunstrumm and Others
, and he returned to the genre with new stories in
Whispers
and
Fantasy Tales
and a string of modern horror novels:
Legion of the Dead
,
The Nebulon Horror
,
The Evil
,
Shades of Evil
,
Disciples of Dread
,
The Lower Deep
,
Lucifer's Eye
and
Forbidden Passage
. He has also written two young adult novels,
The Voyage
and
The Wild One
, and a second collection,
The Corpse-Maker
, was edited by Sheldon Jaffery. Starmont House published a biography by Audrey Parente, titled
Pulp Man's Odyssey: The Hugh B. Cave Story
(1988), and in 1991 he received the Life Achievement Award from The Horror Writers of America.

SUZY McKEE CHARNAS (b. 1939) was born in New York City but currently lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she moved with her husband and two step-children in 1969. After working in Nigeria with the Peace Corps from 1961-63, she returned to New York to tour suburban high schools as part of a drug abuse treatment team. Her first novel was published in 1974:
Walk to the End of the World
, a feminist view of futuristic amazons, it was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award. A sequel,
Motherlines
, followed four years later. Two vampire stories, "The Ancient Mind at Work" and "Unicorn Tapestry" (winner of the 1980 Nebula Award for best novella) led to her acclaimed novel
The Vampire Tapestry
. She has followed this with the adult fantasy
Dorothea Dreams
and the "Sorcery Hall" series of young adult novels, which includes
The Bronze King
,
The Silver Glove
and
The Golden Thread
. In 1990 her offbeat werewolf story, "Boobs", won science fiction's Hugo Award.

R. (RONALD) CHETWYND-HAYES (b. 1919) was born in Isleworth, West London. His first book was
The Man from the Bomb
, an undistinguished science fiction novel published in 1959. A supernatural thriller,
The Dark Man
, followed in 1964, and by the early 1970s he was turning out a prolific number of ghost stories and gentle tales of terror, tinged with a disarming sense of humour. These have been much anthologised and collected in numerous volumes, such as
The Unbidden
,
The Elemental
,
The Night Ghouls
,
A Quiver of Ghosts
,
Tales from the Dark Lands
,
Tales from the Other Side
,
The House of Dracula
,
Tales of the Hidden World
and
The Haunted Grange
. He has edited
Cornish Tales of Terror
,
Scottish Tales of Terror
, twelve volumes of the
Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories
and the
Armada Monster Books
series for children. Chetwynd-Hayes is also the author of two film novelizations,
Dominique
and
The Awakening
(the latter based on Bram Stoker's
The Jewel of the Seven Stars
), and his own stories have been adapted for the screen in
From Beyond the Grave
and
The Monster Club
(in which the author was portrayed by actor John Carradine). In 1989 he was presented with Life Achievement Awards by both The Horror Writers of America and The British Fantasy Society, and his recent novels include
The Curse of the Snake God
and
Kepple
.