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✭✭✭“Seaside Town”, Brian Evenson ✭✭✭✭“Neithernor”, Richard Gavin ✭✭✭“Least Light, Most Night”, John Howard ✭✭½“Camp”, David Nickle ✭✭✭“A Delicate Craft”, D. P. Watt ✭✭✭“Seven Minutes in Heaven”, Nadia Bulkin ✭✭✭½“Infestations”, Michael Cisco ✭✭“The Dying Season”, Lynda E. Rucker ✭✭✭✭½“A Discreet Music”, Michael Wehunt ✭✭✭½“Underground Economy”, John Langan ✭✭✭½“The Vault of Heaven”, Helen Marshall ✭½“Two Brothers”, Malcolm Devlin ✭✭✭“The Lake”, Daniel Mills (2015) ✭✭✭“A Change of Scene”, Nina Al...
I first dipped into Aickman’s Heirs a couple of years ago, when I was eagerly trying to consume every last word by Nina Allan that I could get my hands on, in order to read her brilliant contribution, ‘A Change of Scene’. I always meant to come back and read the rest; reading the collection Dark Entries, and subsequently wanting to revisit ‘A Change of Scene’, gave me the perfect excuse to do so.The editor’s introduction cautions against expecting fiction that feels ‘the same’ as Aickman’s, sugg...
In his introductory note, editor Simon Strantzas describes the new anthology Aickman’s Heirs as “a sampler of how Robert Aickman’s work has become a significant source of inspiration for contemporary writers.” The volume’s fifteen original tales have been contributed by some of today’s finest practitioners of strange fiction.What is it about Aickman’s work—often described as “quiet horror”—that continues to influence and intrigue? For one thing, his most compelling, frequently noted stories are
Robert Aickman's stories were all about the irrational and the unknowable. The authors in this homage anthology put those same qualities to good use in fifteen intriguing tales of the unknowable's intrusion upon seemingly normal lives.The writing is uniformly beautiful, although this reader will admit to finding a few of the stories frustratingly oblique. Regardless, there were many standouts for me, including Brian Evenson's "Seaside Town," which makes great use of the dream or nighttime logic
So many of my fave contemporary horror authors creating fascinating characters and situations. Unfortunately, too many arrive at clunky, unnatural, purposefully ambiguous endings that erase the charm of what came previously in the story. Still some nice work, though.
Table of Contents:ix - Introduction3 - “Seaside Town” by Brian Evenson21 - “Neithernor” by Richard Gavin35 - “Least Light, Most Night” by John Howard47 - “Camp” by David Nickle61 - “A Delicate Craft” by D.P. Watt73 - “Seven Minutes in Heaven” by Nadia Bulkin85 - “Infestations” by Michael Cisco101 - “Drying Season” by Lynda E. Rucker119 - “A Discreet Music” by Michael Wehunt135 - “Underground Economy” by John Langan147 - “Vault of Heaven” by Helen Marshall165 - “Two Brothers” by Malcolm Devlin183...
somewhere between a 4 and 4.5 on the 5-star scale. Well, I must say that there is nothing like writing about a book two months after you've read it, but I saw this book just sitting here and realized I'd never posted about it. Doh! I do have a long post about it here at the strange/weird fiction page of my online reading journal if you're really inclined to read a brief blurb about each story. If not, let me just say this:Last year when I was first started looking at Aickman's work, and as I w...
Like all anthologies this was a hit-and-miss one for me. I'm not familiar with much of Aickman's work so I possibly may have enjoyed it more if I 'got' all the references. While the writing in all the stories was spot-on, there were four stand-outs for me that left me with that unsettled creeping sense of dread that I crave in short stories, without too much of my bewilderbeast showing. Seaside Town - Brian Evenson. Very creepy, felt like the protagonist was in some sort of twilight zone.Neithe...
Yet another fantastic collection from Undertow! The stories collected here by Simon Strantzas are all (big surprise) indebted to some degree to the writing of Robert Aickman, but as Strantzas says in his introduction, Aickman's writing is inimitable. So what we're presented with here is a family of stories which all have that same quiet weirdness and sudden turning to the uncanny that he was known for, all in other authors' voices. And it's great! The collection houses authors I love (Cisco, Wat...
A mixed bag of a collection here — some stories fall flat on their face, coasting on atmospheric prose and ambiguity to shore up what is an ultimately substanceless narrative. Others feel exemplary of the genre, balancing mood, tone and suspense perfectly to build upon Aickman's own work.Also, why is it that both stories which feature gay (or otherwise queer) men prominently conclude with those men turning into birds?
This anthology just won the Shirley Jackson award for best anthology. It is that good.I am not a Robert Aickman fan, but the quality of fiction produced by those who feel his influence is astounding. I will need to dig out my Aickman collections and reread them. Maybe it'll click.In the meantime, buy this anthology. Show some actual support for the small presses you claim to love. This anthology will 'f**k your couch'!
A superior anthology collection of short stories all paying tribute to the influence of Robert Aickman. Aickman's "strange stories" managed to convey an unparalleled sense of the eerie and unsettled that lurked beneath the surface of everyday life and, with their equivocal and opaque endings, he managed to give us some of the 20th Century's most wonderfully surreal and entertaining weird fiction. Simon Strantzas has done a masterful job of putting together an incredibly solid line up of authors
