Fans of Science Fiction and Horror are not always the same people. The spectrum between Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror is wide. As a result the types of fans vary from the nuts ‘n bolts SF reader to the vanilla Fantasy bestseller binger to rabid Horror junkies. And then there are people like me, who float between all of them (and other cross-genre mixes like Sword & Sorcery, Weird Westerns, paranormal Fantasy, etc.) Everyone has their spot on the spectrum (or spots).
This, to my mind, explains why there aren’t that many openly Horror Science Fiction anthologies. Editors traditionally tend to stay within one genre, especially when selling to SF fans. The stigma of the “weirdies” was well established even back in the 1920s. Readers of Amazing Stories weren’t always fans of Weird Tales. Which makes me laugh a little when you consider both would have read an H. G. Wells masterpiece like The War of the Worlds (1898) and enjoyed it on their own terms.
Occasionally we have been lucky enough to get a collection of stories that is openly both. Selling to SF fans, first and foremost, but finding material that contains a degree of Horror elements. I say degree, because I think most Horror fans would find the selections a little underwhelming.
It shouldn’t be surprising that the first editor to really try this was August Derleth. Strange Pots of Call (1948, Pellegrini & Cudahy) has a lovely introduction about defining Science Fiction but his selections lean towards the horrific. Most of Derleth’s authors are Weird Tales alumnists. The edited paperback release removes all the Lovecraftian stuff.
“The Cunning of the Beast” by Nelson S. Bond
“The Worm” by David H. Keller
“The Crystal Bullet” by Donald Wandrei
“The Thing from Outside” by George Allan England
“At the Mountains of Madness” by H. P. Lovecraft
“Mars on the Ether” by Lord Dunsany
“The God-Box” by Howard Wandrei
“Mr. Bauer and the Atoms” by Fritz Leiber
“The Crystal Egg” by H. G. Wells
“John Jones’ Dollar” • (1915) by Harry Stephen Keeler
“Call Him Demon” by Henry Kuttner
“Master of the Asteroid” by Clark Ashton Smith
“A Guest in the House” by Frank Belknap Long
“The Lost Street” by Carl Jacobi and Clifford D. Simak
“Forgotten” by P. Schuyler Miller
“Far Centaurus” by A. E. van Vogt
“Thunder and Roses” by Theodore Sturgeon
“The Green Hills of Earth” by Robert A. Heinlein
“Blunder” by Philip Wylie
“The Million Year Picnic” by Ray Bradbury
Science Fiction Terror Tales by Groff Conklin (1955, Gnome Press) surprised me because of Conklin’s reputation as an SF critic but Mr. SF Anthology did a straight horror collection In the Grip of Terror (1951, Permabooks). His choices are a nice mix of new and old (Ernst’s story dates back to the 1930s!). Conklin is the first to use Heinlein’s “They” which will appear again and again.
“Punishment Without Crime” by Ray Bradbury
“Arena” by Fredric Brown
“The Leech” by Robert Sheckley
“Through Channels” by Richard Matheson
“Lost Memory” by Peter Phillips
“Memorial” by Theodore Sturgeon
“Prott” by Margaret St. Clair
“Flies” by Isaac Asimov
“The Microscopic Giants” by Paul Ernst
“The Other Inauguration” by Anthony Boucher
“Nightmare Brother” by Alan E. Nourse
“Pipeline to Pluto” by Murray Leinster
“Impostor” by Philip K. Dick
“They” by Robert A. Heinlein
“Let Me Live in a House” by Chad Oliver
Terror In a Modern Vein by Donald A. Wollheim (1955, Digit Books) is a bit of an ironic title since several pieces date back to the turn of the century. Wollheim selects of Weird Tales writers too including Lovecraft.
I first became conscious of this new form of fear fiction back in 1937 when I first read Wells’s The Croquet Player. Against the booming mania of the war drums, Wells struck a responsive note. Here, he wrote, is a new and real ghost, derived from that which haunts us today rather than that which haunted our greatgrandfathers’. The eerie atmosphere of this short novel, one of Wells’s last great imaginative works, rang true. But it could never be correlated to accepted ghost-story formulae. From that point on, as a collector and connoisseur of fantasy fiction, I earmarked similar stories, tales that reflected terror in the modern vein.
“The Croquet Player” (excerpt) by H. G. Wells
“They” by Robert A. Heinlein
“Fritzchen” by Charles Beaumont
“The Girl with the Hungry Eyes” by Fritz Leiber
“Fishing Season” by Robert Sheckley
“The Crowd” by Ray Bradbury
“He” by H. P. Lovecraft
“The Strange Case of Lemuel Jenkins” by Philip M. Fisher
“The Rag Thing” by Donald A. Wollheim
“The Burrow” Franz Kafka
“Gone Away” by A. E. Coppard
“The Silence” by Venard McLaughlin
“Mimic” by Donald A. Wollheim
“Shipshape Home” by Richard Matheson
“The Dream Makers” by Robert Bloch
“The Republic of the Southern Cross” by Valery Brussov
“The Inheritors” by Robert A. W. Lowndes and John B. Michel
The Dark Side by Damon Knight (1965, Doubleday) features mostly authors from John W. Campbell’s Unknown or more recently from Fantasy & Science Fiction. Mr. Knight seems to never have heard of Weird Tales. (Except that’s where “The Black Ferris” appeared!)
“The Black Ferris” by Ray Bradbury
“They” by Robert A. Heinlein
“Mistake Inside” by James Blish
“Trouble with Water” by H. L. Gold
“c/o Mr. Makepeace” by Peter Phillips
“The Golem” by Avram Davidson
“The Story of the Late Mr. Elvesham” byH. G. Wells
“It” by Theodore Sturgeon
“Nellthu”by Anthony Boucher
“Casey Agonistes” by Richard McKenna
“Eye for Iniquity” by T. L. Sherred
“The Man Who Never Grew Young” by Fritz Leiber
The Berserkers by Roger Elwood (1974, Pocket Books) is a weird mix of stuff, heavy on the 1970s writers like Barry n. Malzberg.
“The Berserks” by Arthur Tofte
“Trial of the Blood” by Barry N. Malzberg
“The Horseman from Hel” by Gail Kimberly
“The Price of a Drink” by James Blish
“As in a Vision Apprehended” by Barry N. Malzberg
“And Mad Undancing Bears” by R. A. Lafferty
“Thaumaturge” by Raylyn Moore
“Coincidence” by William F. Nolan
“The Patent Medicine Man” by Daphne Castell
“A Freeway for Draculas” by Richard A. Lupoff
“Night and Morning of the Idiot Child” by Virginia Kidd
“Skinflowers” by David Gerrold
“Form in Remission” by Barry N. Malzberg
“Echo” by James Sallis
“The Genuine Article” by Adrian Cole
More recent anthologies include two by Hank Davis: In Space No One Can Hear You Scream by Hank Davis (2013, Baen) and The Baen Big Book of Monsters by Hank Davis (2014, Baen). It is nice to see the idea hasn’t shriveled up sine the 1970s. I suppose that first book title is significant in that it came from the movie Alien (1979). Since that film and many others after, the concept of Horror SF was easier to peg since you could point at Alien and say “Like that!” The poor reception of George R. R. Martin’s Nightflyers last year seems to mean fans are still conflicted.
