Scary Women Mixtape

Apparently, it's Women In Horror Month. As part of this you'll find many great female horror writers talking about their work, which can only be a good thing - I don't know if there's any residual sexism meaning woman have a harder time getting accepted as a horror author than their male counterparts, but given that dickheads like Vox Day exist, the answer is probably yes.

(Don't google "Vox Day" if you are unaware of the man or his views. Seriously, don't. You'll end up feeling worse about people in general, which is never good.)

Anyway, for Women In Horror Month I thought I'd post 20 of my favourite horror short stories by female authors. For no other reason than I like compiling imaginary anthologies; it's like making mix-tapes all over again...

This list is off the top of my head, so it's pretty biased towards stories I've read recently, but I've tried to include both classic and contemporary stories. I've only picked one story per author and as ever my definition of what makes a story 'horror' is pretty loose.

Further suggestions very much welcome in the comments...

In The Waterworks (Birmingham, Alabama, 1883) - Caitlin R Kiernan
The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Idolised - Emma Newman

The Screwfly Solution - James Tiptree Jr.
The Little Dirty Girl - Joanna Russ
Don't Look Now - Daphne du Maurier
Cold Coffee Cups & Curious Things - Cate Gardner
A.G.A. - S.P. Miskowski

The Summer People - Shirley Jackson
The Dark - Karen Joy Fowler
Replacement - Lisa Tuttle
Under Fog - Tanith Lee
The Dog That Bit Her - Autumn Christian
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas - Ursula K. Le Guin
The Room Upstairs - Sarah Pinborough
The Devil of Delery Street - Poppy Z Brite
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? - Joyce Carol Oates
The Hortlak - Kelly Link

Afterward - Edith Wharton
White Roses, Bloody Silk - Thana Niveau

I have finished The Weird...!

I don’t know if you've ever seen the Man Vs. Food TV program (if not, basically some idiot attempts to eat an 40oz steak or 3ft pizza or something…) but I've just finished reading The Weird, a vast (100+ stories, 750000 words) anthology of weird fiction put together by Jeff and Ann VanderMeer.

“The publishers believe this is the largest volume of weird fiction ever housed between the covers of one book” the blurb says, as if there’s any doubt…

Just the physical size of the book is somewhat imposing, especially when you see the double-columns of small type inside. I've been reading this on and off since January, and part of the reason it has taken so long is that its pretty much impossible to read this book (in its non-ebook version) on public transport or in bed. It’s just too heavy and unwieldy.

But unlike those huge steaks (I imagine) The Weird doesn't let quantity get in the way of quality. Given the sheer number of selections there’s no way people will love every one, but there’s not a story here that’s anything less that interesting to the horror fiction aficionado. I don’t think any anthology before this one has stories spanning such a range before, whether in time (the oldest story is from 1908; the newest 2010); geography (stories from twenty countries across the globe, some in translation for the first time); or genre (traditional horror rubs shoulders with science-fiction, literary fiction, fantasy and even humour).

Some of the stories I had read before – and it’s always a pleasure to read The Willows or The Hospice again. But many others were brand new to me; of those that I've not read before these were my favourites:

• Hanns Heinz Ewers, “The Spider,”
• H.F. Arnold, “The Night Wire,”
• Clark Ashton Smith, “Genius Loci,”
• Robert Barbour Johnson, “Far Below,”
• William Sansom, “The Long Sheet,”
• Robert Bloch, “The Hungry House,”
• Jerome Bixby, “It’s a Good Life,”
• Charles Beaumont, “The Howling Man,”
• Mervyn Peake, “Same Time, Same Place,”
• Gahan Wilson, “The Sea Was Wet As Wet Could Be,”
• Dennis Etchison, “It Only Comes Out at Night,”
• James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon), “The Psychologist Who Wouldn’t Do Awful Things to Rats,”
• George R.R. Martin, “Sandkings,”
• William Gibson/John Shirley, “The Belonging Kind,”
• Joanna Russ, “The Little Dirty Girl,”
• F. Paul Wilson, “Soft,”
• Garry Kilworth, “Hogfoot Right and Bird-hands,”
• Lucius Shepard, “Shades,”
• Joyce Carol Oates, “Family,”
• Karen Joy Fowler, “The Dark,”
• Lisa Tuttle, “Replacements,”
• William Browning Spenser, “The Ocean and All Its Devices,”
• Craig Padawer, “The Meat Garden,”
• China Mieville, “Details,”
• Brian Evenson, “The Brotherhood of Mutilation,”
• Margo Lanagan, “Singing My Sister Down,”
• Steve Duffy, “In the Lion’s Den,”
• K.J. Bishop, “Saving the Gleeful Horse,”

But that’s not to belittle the quality of the others.

In my opinion The Weird sets a new standard for an anthology of ‘weird fiction’ – as well as the stories themselves, the Introductions and Afterwords are thought-provoking, and as if the book itself wasn't enough there’s a whole website called The Weird Fiction review with articles, interviews and fiction by many of the authors.

In short, if you’re a horror fiction fan with a taste for the weirder, more articulate or surreal side of the genre, this is pretty much a must-read.

Strange Stories #18: Objects in Dreams May be Closer Than They Appear by Lisa Tuttle

Strange Story #18: Objects In Dreams May Be Closer Than They Appear
Author: Lisa Tuttle
Anthologised In: The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2012; House of Fear

I didn’t know why he felt the need to revisit the past like that...

Looking back through the sixteen ‘Strange Stories’ to date I noticed something disturbing the other day – not a single haunted house story…

Let’s rectify that with Lisa Tuttle’s thoroughly haunting Objects in Dreams May be Closer Than They Appear.

The most obvious way to define a haunted house would be to say it’s one that contains a ghost (or ghosts). But that’s a bit boringly literal, and I prefer to think of these stories are being ones where our dwellings, our homes - where we should feel at our safest - turn out to be some kind of trap. Houses are not the same as other things that we buy, and not just because of their price. We buy a certain kind of house because we want a certain kind of life. Because we can imagine a certain kind of life there.

I would have been happy to go on for months, thinks the narrator in this story, driving down to the West Country, looking at properties and imagining what our life might be like in this house or that... 

People talk about finding their ‘dream house’… and the one in Tuttle’s story might be just that. It is first glimpsed by a young couple house hunting – their dream house seen in a glimpse whilst they are driving. But despite hours of trying, and checking with the local estate agent, they can’t find the road, or any road, that leads to it. The house seems to remain like a mirage on the horizon.

There it was, so close it must be just beyond the next curve of the road, yet forever out of our reach. The faint curl of smoke from the chimney inspired another yearning tug...

They don't find a route to that house - to their dream, if you like. And the story is narrated from the vantage point of years later, after the breakup of their relationship in the thoroughly normal, non-dreamlike house that they did end up living in.

Years later they meet up - and Michael (her old husband) has found the house again... and found a route to it.

“You’re not talking about our house,” she says. Outwardly she has her misgivings about going to look for the house - not out of fear, but because she doesn't want to relive the past. But maybe some part of her has been dreaming all these years - "our house" she says.

And they do find a way to their ‘dream house’ from all those years ago, and foolishly enter. The trap springs shut, and it’s an utterly compelling and unnerving one which I won't spoil here. But it is note-perfect, Tuttle managing to make it both incredibly disturbing and a perfect demonstration of how old dreams can curdle and warp.

Next Time: Strange Stories #19:  The Beautiful Stranger by Shirley Jackson