I wrote here (and more pertinently here) about maps in fantasy books, and for no justifiable reason I want to look at the ways in which the nature of Clive Barker's work is largely resistant to cartography. When we think of fantasy maps we tend to think of Christopher Tolkien's classic Middle Earth one (although … Continue reading The Unmappability of Clive Barker
How does Star Wars begin again? Ah yes: “Another galaxy, another time.” That’s right. Wait – what? Star Wars geeks among you already know that the above is true – from a certain point of view. That’s because the sentence comes from Alan Dean Foster’s 1976 novelisation, published under George Lucas’s name. It came out … Continue reading The joy of film novelisations
The book's subtitle puts it better: Ghost Movies. But even that's deceptive. In this 260-page anthology, editor Peter Haining (whose many other spooky collections were familiar to me as a teenager) traces the history of the ghost story onscreen through the works of fiction that inspired such classic films as Night of the Demon, Don't … Continue reading Horror Rewind #11 – “Classics of the Supernatural” (ed. Peter Haining) (1995)
Around the same time I was watching Close Encounters for the first time, BBC2 were showing, in a weekday tea-time slot, a series of 1950s science fiction classics. This was my first exposure to older sci-fi, i.e. things that pre-dated 1977. I'm sure if I dug around the internet the evidence would contradict me, but … Continue reading First Frights: 50s Sci-Fi!
Read Part One The mid-1980s saw a change in Herbert's work, of which Moon (1985) although it contains many similar elements to The Jonah, is the first example. The hero of this transitional novel in Herbert's oeuvre has a "softer" name than his usual heroes - Childes - which reflects his vulnerability. He's a teacher … Continue reading Horror Rewind special: James Herbert! (part two)
"Politically the UK was still in turmoil, economically the country was very much in the doldrums, and culturally we were still living in the sixties, albeit without any of the verve, and certainly none of the optimism...power cuts and the three-day week...endless public sector strikes, IRA bombings and apparent industrial collapse...it wasn't exactly a dystopian … Continue reading Horror Rewind special: James Herbert! (part one)
TV shows had scared me before. But nothing had ever given me the true sense of awe that Close Encounters did (and, largely, still does) the first time I saw it. That's awe in the Romantic sense of the sublime, in which it borders on terror. Every time I watch the film, there's some new … Continue reading First Frights: ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ (1977)
This review first appeared in Horrified magazine in October 2020. Have you exhausted the Horror Channel’s catalogue of Hammer and Amicus classics? Watched every low-budget British horror from the 60s and 70s that Talking Pictures TV has to offer? Subscribe to The Dark Side? Well, did you know that there’s a whole other studio’s worth … Continue reading Review: ‘Studio of Screams’
Sadly, the excellent 'Horrified: In Celebration of British Horror' website closes for business today. It will still be available as an archive resource for all things related to British horror, so please do explore. I've reviewed many books for them over the past two years (and they published one of my stories, too). Over the … Continue reading Horrified no more
"Wyrd and other derelictions" is a brave, not always successful, but nonetheless very welcome collection of experimental horror shorts from Adam Nevill, author of Ritual.
Into the Gyre 