Review: "The Tribe" by Bari Wood

 

The Tribe by Barri Wood Valancourt Books, 2019   The Tribe, by Bari Wood—which was originally published by NAL in 1981—is a slow burning and suspenseful horror novel with a genuine Jewish golem at its core. It begins with the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp Belzec at the end of World War 2. Major Bianco, an American officer, becomes curious about the inmates living in barracks 554 because, unlike the camp’s other survivors, they are skinny but not emaciated. Bianco searches the barracks and inconceivably discovers boxes full of food, which should have been impossible since the Nazi’s were starving any Jews that weren’t sent to the gas chambers. But before Bianco can question the men of barracks 554, they disappear from a military transport. The Tribe’s roots are in Nazi Germany’s extermination camps, but the story is set in New York City and Long Island in 1980. The murder of a young Jewish academic by a ragtag Brooklyn street gang starts things off, but the police investigation is cut short when the killers—all of them are still boys, really—are beat to death in the basement of an abandoned house. The only clue, and it’s not helpful to anyone, is the clay-like mud covering the crime scene. The Tribe is a good example of 1980s horror. It is smart. The characters are well-drawn. The suspense is built scene-by-scene, and while the reader knows what the monster is, the mystery about the how and the why of the beast is intriguing and surprising. A richness of detail about the Jewish communities in New York City and Long Island, and the experiences of these men and women during the Holocaust, adds texture. The story says something about racism and hate, too. Its only real flaw, and this can be said of so many popular novels of a certain length, is that the story’s pacing slows to a crawl in the few dozen pages it takes for the characters to come together for the big and satisfying climactic showdown. *               *               * This review originally went live, in basically the same form, on January 23, 2020. The Tribe was featured in Grady Hendrix’s Paperbacks from Hell: The Twisted History of ’70s and ’80s Horror Fiction (2017); which is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon in Kindle (as I write this) here. It was republished as part of Valancourt’s Paperbacks from Hell series. The Paperbacks from Hell books are published in mass market—although the pricing is higher than I would like for a mass market at $19.99—and in Kindle with some truly excellent cover art.

Check out The Tribe at Amazon—click here for the Kindle edition and here for the paperback.

"You Think You Know Westerns—A Double Western Review" by Mike Baker

 

You Think You Know Westerns— A Double Western Review by Mike Baker    Stay Away, Joe by Dan Cushman Popular Library, 1953   In Stay Away, Joe (1953) by Dan Cushman, Louis Champlain and his family live on a Cree reservation in Montana just after the Korean War. Louis has been given 19 heifers and one bull by the Federal government to help him and his family out of poverty. News travels fast on the Rez about Louis’ newfound wealth and a big whoop up, a large unruly three-day beer party, spontaneously commences with Louis and all his friends and relations. Louis wakes up hungover on the third day to discover they drunkenly slaughtered and ate his only bull. His son Big Joe, bronc riding WWII and Korean War vet, comes back from the rodeo riding circuit and offers to help his dad get a new bull which everyone tells Louis is a bad idea, as Joe is a drunken, philandering, petty criminal, but Louis loves his boy, and things go horribly and ridiculously wrong from there. Stay Away, Joe sequentially tells a series of stories about how Louis goes from having nothing to being “rich” to having nothing again. Each step along the way either Louis or his family, driven either by the “old ways” are too generous or by trying to be like how they imagine “white folks” would act derail the Federal program of which they are currently a part. The book’s opening, and if you’ve read my reviews you know how much a I love a strong opening, is charming and hilariously funny. I can’t say more than that. You need to read it. Beyond that, the book meanders. It reminds me of Max Evans’ Rounders which seemingly goes nowhere except it does. It has what I call a “ta da” moment that cinches together all the threads into something tangible you can take away. Stay Away, Joe doesn’t do that. The book hangs. Cushman’s characters are fulsome and meticulously drawn deeply flawed human beings. They are not Indian stereotypes but, because Cushman was a white guy, you might make that claim. He doesn’t seem to me to be judging them but rather his critique might be what happens when you impose values on someone who isn’t native to those values or worse, you see someone else’s values as superior to your own and you acquiesce.   Cruel Angel Past Sundown by Hailey Piper Death Head’s Press, 2023        Meanwhile, Cruel Angel Past Sundown (2023) by Hailey Piper is about ranch wife Annette Klein the day she’s visited by a naked pregnant woman dragging a cavalry saber out of the desert. Annette and her husband Frank bring the woman inside where upon the woman straddles Annette’s husband in bed and eviscerates him with the saber as Annette, in a weird bloody eyed stupor, watches unable to stop the deranged pregnant woman as the woman eats her husband’s viscera. Later that night, Annette stabbed by the pregnant woman’s father who shows up looking for his daughter who he believes is the reborn virgin Mary carrying the Christ child. Annette gets away on her bull Big Pete who takes her into the town of Low’s Bend where she and her friends fight off father and daughter who have come to Low’s Bend, for different reasons, to pretty much murder everyone there. The book evolves rapidly though from a straight-ahead splatter western with a goth twist, something like a weird western but with a horror bent, into something more metaphysical which I did not see coming, wasn’t prepared for and struggled against until the end of the book. Piper writes in a mix of the mundane and the poetical and sometimes suffers for this because, imho, her voice feels uneven. It would be hard to write a book that was solidly poetical so that you have to find a balance drawing out certain lines. It reads here like two separate narratives, almost. There’s a particular moment, somewhere in the middle, where the main character gets bogged down arguing with a supernatural villain. It would be comical if it wasn’t meant to be deadly serious. It’s where the book is heading. Like I said, somewhere metaphysical. Also, the book deals with LGBTQ+ issues which I imagine might turn some readers off, you know who you are, even you guys should read this. I would, like Marcellus Wallace suggested, fight through that shit because it pays off. You might not like it but a few days later, as what I experienced sunk in, I got that I’d read something maybe important and, at the very least, interesting enough to be worth my time. You might ask yourself why I’m reviewing these two vastly dissimilar books simultaneously. It works like this: I started both books believing they were westerns and, it turns out, they are westerns in the same way Star Wars is a movie about trash compactors and intergalactic cabarets. They both have cowboys and Indians and horses and stuff but neither fits the bill for what most anyone would call a western. This is not a bad thing. The genre, which I love dearly, needs to be stretched and changed if it is to survive. My generation, as well as the generation before mine, won’t keep it alive. I believe that traditional westerns will only live on if first younger readers see a way into the stories and books and writers like Hailey Piper will bring in those readers. I wonder if Dan Cushman’s book had a similar effect in 1953 when it came out. I would like to imagine that it was the gateway drug from cultural elitists who read it, felt intellectually vindicated and then, while buying smokes at the corner store, saw a Louis L ’Amour book and thought, why not.

Stay Away, Joe, was adapted into a wonky and unfaithful film starring Elvis Pressley and Burgess Meredith in 1968. *             *             * Click here to purchase Cruel Angel Past Sundown for Kindle or here for the paperback edition at Amazon

A STIR OF ECHOES by Richard Matheson

      Richard Matheson’s 1958 novel, A Stir of Echoes, is more than a horror story. The plot is speculative—Tom Wallace, after being hypnotized at a neighborhood party, is able to read people’s thoughts and see events in the near future. He thinks his new abilities are connected with a ghostly woman who visits his home in the night’s quiet hours, but nothing is as simple it seems.      Matheson paints the 1950’s Southern California suburban setting vivid with a lucid and cinematic style. The characters are full-bodied. Tom’s neighbors look  and act genuine. They love, dream and live. At least that’s how it appears on the surface, but what Tom discovers with his new abilities is much darker because he now also sees their lust and hate, anger and fear, betrayal and vindictiveness; all those unsavory emotions and actions we do our best to hide.
      There’s a mystery, too, that is rife with Cold War paranoia. The paranoia reflects the attitude of the American society in the 1950s: Everything’s great! Except we’re all going to die (figuratively through communist assimilation and literally with the hydrogen bomb). But it’s the humanity Matheson uncovers that provides the power and longevity of the work and the great thing about A Stir of Echoes is, it can be read as illuminative literature or as a straight horror novel, and even better, as both.

NIGHT CALLER by Daniel Ransom (Ed Gorman)

Ed Gorman is best remembered as a crime and western writer, but he wrote eight horror novels between 1986 (Toys in the Attic) and 1996 (Night Screams) using the pseudonym Daniel Ransom. The results were mixed; most are entertaining, but Gorman thought one of the books was so bad he wouldn’t allow a copy to cross the threshold of his home. The second Daniel Ransom novel, Night Caller (1987), is my favorite of Gorman’s Ransom novels for its perfectly cheesy 1980’s setting and its sharp plotting.

While vacationing in the Midwest with her teenage daughter, Jamie, Sally Baines’ car breaks down on a rural highway. A gentleman farmer gives them a ride into a nowhere town called Haversham. Their rescuer treats them well, but Sally is unsettled by the way he looks at Jamie, and later her unease grows when she sees the farmer pointing Jamie out to another townsperson. The two women check in to The Royal—Haversham’s only hotel—after the mechanic tells them the car won’t be ready until the next day. And when the sun goes down, things really get weird.

Night Caller is a small town horror with a smattering of Psycho and a dash of Stephen King. The characters are strange and amusing, especially a local doctor and a disgraced national television news reporter. The mother-daughter team of Sally and Jamie are easy to root for, and become more likable as the story unfolds. Ed Gorman, as he did with everything he wrote, adds a layer of mystery and ratchets the suspense with admirable craft. Night Caller is a hokey and fun light horror novel. It would make a perfect television movie—something similar to the campy-Stephen King television films made in the 1990s—but until an enterprising producer makes that happen, at least we have this appealing novel.

Night Caller was revised and reissued under the title The Girl in the Attic. I’ve never read the revised edition, but it’s available as an ebook and as an audio book.

THE TRIBE by Bari Wood

The Tribe, by Bari Wood (NAL, 1981), is a slow burning and suspenseful horror novel with a genuine Jewish golem at its core. It begins with the liberation of the Nazi extermination camp Belzec at the end of World War 2. Major Bianco, an American officer, becomes curious about the inmates living in barracks 554 because, unlike the camp’s other survivors, they are skinny but not emaciated. Bianco searches the barracks and inconceivably discovers boxes full of food, which should have been impossible since the Nazi’s were starving any Jews that weren’t sent to the gas chambers. But before Bianco can question the men of barracks 554, they disappear from a military transport.

The Tribe’s roots are in Nazi Germany’s extermination camps, but the story is set in New York City and Long Island in 1980. The murder of a young Jewish academic by a ragtag Brooklyn street gang starts things off, but the police investigation is cut short when the killers—all of them are still boys, really—are beat to death in the basement of an abandoned house. The only clue, and it’s not helpful to anyone, is the clay-like mud covering the crime scene.

The Tribe is a good example of 1980s horror. It is smart. The characters are well-drawn. The suspense is built scene-by-scene, and while the reader knows what the monster is, the mystery about the how and the why of the beast is intriguing and surprising. A richness of detail about the Jewish communities in New York City and Long Island, and the experiences of these men and women during the Holocaust, adds texture. The story says something about racism and hate, too. Its only real flaw, and this can be said of so many popular novels of a certain length, is that the story’s pacing slows to a crawl in the few dozen pages it takes for the characters to come together for the big and satisfying climactic showdown.

"The Double Whammy" by Robert Bloch

Rod has been a pitchman for a carnival sideshow—“a lousy mud-show that never played anywhere north of Tennessee”—for three seasons and he’s good at the spiel, convincing marks to split with their money for a chance to see the geek bite off a chicken’s head. Rod’s never been bothered by the show before. It’s “just a lousy chicken.” 

But lately, Rod’s had a problem.

“[S]omething was spooking him. No use kidding himself, he had to face it.

“Rod was afraid of the geek.”

The trouble is, the geek isn’t a monster. His name’s Mike, and Mike is the same as all the other geeks. A wino with an addiction and luck bad enough for him to play the geek, raving and biting chickens for a few dollars and a bed.

“The Double Whammy” is classic Robert Bloch; atmospheric, frightening, and clever. Rod, the tale’s narrator, is a touch unreliable and there is more happening than the reader knows (maybe). But what the reader knows is enough, and what the reader doesn’t know. Well, that makes the story that much better. And I enjoyed its every word.

* * *

“The Double Whammy” was published in Fantastic (February 1970) and I read it in the uneven, but enjoyable, anthology, The Wickedest Show on Earth, edited by Marcia Muller & Bill Pronzini (Morrow, 1985).

COME OUT TONIGHT by Richard Laymon

Richard Laymon is a legend in the horror genre. His work is brutal, violent and, at times, almost pornographic. His novel Come Out Tonight is no exception. It is the story of Sherry Gates and her scrape with a demented underage serial killer.

The novel opens with Sherry sending her boyfriend, Duane, to a local convenience store for condoms. When he doesn’t return she gets nervous and goes out looking for him. She finds Duane’s van, but she doesn’t find him. This sparks an all-night search, a chance meeting with a helpful older man and an encounter with two charmingly innocent teenage boys. And, somewhere in between, she is kidnapped, beaten, and raped. The plot takes a number of surprising turns. And in the end, it becomes difficult to tell the good guys from the bad.

Come Out Tonight opens with a bang. The prose is quick and sharp. The story is interesting and the characters are fun, even if a little familiar to anyone who has read Richard Laymon’s work. It is dialogue rich, and a very quick read. Unfortunately, like many of Laymon’s novels, it lacks a certain amount of believability. It is difficult to ignore the glaring fact that all of this pain, fear and horror could be escaped by simply picking up the telephone and dialing three numbers: 9-1-1.

While the characters motives are suspect, and not adequately explained, this is still a fun novel. The reader just has to ignore the obvious holes in the plot, and the fact that Laymon’s characters never make the right decision. They always run down the wrong corridor, or choose the wrong road, or alley. They are innocent, or ignorant, of their true situations, and they always think they can handle it. They never, when it is available, ask for help. And, of course, their actions always lead them into deeper, darker and more frightening places.

Fortunately, it isn’t very difficult to ignore the novel’s weaknesses. Richard Laymon can weave a damn good story and make you want to ignore the blemishes. He does it with a sturdy understanding of the tale and its impact on the audience. He tightens the suspense like a noose around the reader’s neck. He makes you want to believe the tale. It is very much like a campfire story. You know it is not real, and could never be real, but somehow it still enthralls and even scares you.

The action is violent and stuffed with sex—most of the novel is filled with sexual torture, but somehow, as written by Laymon it is less disturbing and nasty than it could be; perhaps because it is seemingly written through the eyes of a thirteen year-old boy. It is more fantasy than reality. And that fantasy is somehow innocent and almost coy.

Come Out Tonight is not for everyone. If you are offended by violence, sex, or just about anything else, avoid this book. If, on the other hand, you like a little heady action and quick-shot violence you just might like this offering. Be careful and don’t take it too seriously, or we all may have to question both our sensibilities and our sanity.

SHERLOCK HOLMES: ZOMBIES OVER LONDON by Stephen Mertz

I have always wanted to hear Sherlock Holmes say—

“Zombies.” and “The undead.”

—but I didn’t know it until I read those words in Stephen Mertz’s Sherlock Holmes: Zombies Over London. It features, as the title suggests, Arthur Conan Doyle’s timeless detective Sherlock Holmes. It is, as are the bulk of Conan Doyle’s original stories, narrated by Dr. John Watson and the narration is close to perfect – the cadence, noun and verb selection, characterization, and setting very much capture the feel and time of the original stories.

It opens with a punch. Holmes and Watson are inflight aboard the futuristic military dirigible Blackhawk, approaching Castle Moriarty to rescue Watson’s wife, Mary Morstan, from the clutches of Professor Moriarty. Moriarty kidnapped Mary as a form of extortion to keep Holmes and Watson from investigating his most recent criminal endeavor. An enterprise Holmes knows nothing about, except Moriarty’s plan to auction off its results, whatever it is, to the highest bidder. The two men jump from the dirigible, a “flight enabler” – very much like a hang glider – strapped to their backs, landing safely on the roof of the castle. Once on the castle they notice a group of empty-eyed workers loading wagons in a precise, rigid manner; to Watson’s confusion, and incredulity, Holmes labels the workers as zombies. And Moriarty, always the master criminal, has more than zombies in his plans.   

Sherlock Holmes: Zombies Over London is a hybrid adventure and detective novel. Its mystery is genuinely interesting. It features more than one nicely turned sub-plot, which effectively adds texture and confusion to the primary mystery without cheating. Its cast is unique and includes H. G. Wells and a teenage Albert Einstein. There are several scenes that display Mr. Mertz’s keen ability to develop action in a sparse, believable manner without losing the voice and tone of a Sherlock Holmes story. It is an impressive display of storytelling. It captures the essence of Conan Doyle’s stories while being wholly original, and it is a showcase of Mr. Mertz’s range as both storyteller and writer. And, it is damn fun.

JOYLAND by Stephen King

Hard Case Crime recently released a new Stephen King novel—straight to trade paperback—titled Joyland.  It is a short novel, probably not much more than 50,000 words, but it is Mr King’s best work in several years.  Joyland is a difficult novel to categorize.  It is part supernatural ghost story and mystery, but it doesn’t easily fit into either, or even both categories.  It is something approaching a working class soliloquy.  It is narrated as though the protagonist is speaking to himself attempting to find the truth hidden in the story’s events.

Devin Jones is an early-twenties college student with an unfaithful girlfriend, a mourning father, and a dead mother.  In the summer of 1973 Devin takes a job at an amusement park in the small resort town of Heaven’s Bay, North Carolina, called Joyland.  The summer changes Devin; he meets two life-long friends, a murderer, a dying boy, and in the process discovers adulthood.

The story is centered on two primary events.  The first is a murder in the funhouse of Joyland, which occurred a few years before the story begins, and the second is Devin’s introduction to a dying boy named Mike.  The two story lines run parallel, but neatly and satisfactorily collide in the final climax.     

Joyland is a carnival novel—every horror writer should have one—but it is much more.  It is a coming of age story where the protagonist is dragged into adulthood by circumstance; a truer understanding is achieved, and the naiveté and brilliance of youth is forever lost.  It is a sad and wistful tale, but it doesn’t dwell on sorrow; rather it is more about hope than anything.  The opening lines frame the mood and pacing of the novel perfectly:

“I had a car, but on most days in that fall of 1973 I walked to Joyland from Mrs. Shoplaw’s Beachside Accommodations in the town of Heaven’s Bay.  It seemed the right thing to do.  The only thing, actually.” 

Joyland is a small masterpiece.  It is smoothly readable, and while it tells a story of meaning it does so with a strong and interesting story.  It is anything but HCC’s usual fare, but it is an appealing novel, which should be well liked by Mr King’s usual suspects, HCC’s readers, and a bunch more.  You should try this one.

COME OUT TONIGHT by Richard Laymon

Richard Laymon is a legend in the horror genre. His work is brutal, violent and, at times, almost pornographic. His novel Come Out Tonight is no exception. It is the story of Sherry Gates and her scrape with a demented underage serial killer.

The novel opens with Sherry sending her boyfriend, Duane, to a local convenience store for condoms. When he doesn’t return she gets nervous and goes out looking for him. She finds Duane’s van, but she doesn’t find him. This sparks an all-night search, a chance meeting with a helpful older man and an encounter with two charmingly innocent teenage boys. And, somewhere in between, she is kidnapped, beaten, and raped. The plot takes a number of surprising turns. And in the end, it becomes difficult to tell the good guys from the bad.

Come Out Tonight opens with a bang. The prose is quick and sharp. The story is interesting and the characters are fun, even if a little familiar to anyone who has read Richard Laymon’s work. It is dialogue rich, and a very quick read. Unfortunately, like many of Laymon’s novels, it lacks a certain amount of believability. It is difficult to ignore the glaring fact that all of this pain, fear and horror could be escaped by simply picking up the telephone and dialing three numbers: 9-1-1.

While the characters motives are suspect, and not adequately explained, this is still a fun novel. The reader just has to ignore the obvious holes in the plot, and the fact that Laymon’s characters never make the right decision. They always run down the wrong corridor, or choose the wrong road, or alley. They are innocent, or ignorant, of their true situations, and they always think they can handle it. They never, when it is available, ask for help. And, of course, their actions always lead them into deeper, darker and more frightening places.

Fortunately, it isn’t very difficult to ignore the novel’s weaknesses. Richard Laymon can weave a damn good story and make you want to ignore the blemishes. He does it with a sturdy understanding of the tale and its impact on the audience. He tightens the suspense like a noose around the reader’s neck. He makes you want to believe the tale. It is very much like a campfire story. You know it is not real, and could never be real, but somehow it still enthralls and even scares you.

The action is violent and stuffed with sex—most of the novel is filled with sexual torture, but somehow, as written by Laymon it is less disturbing and nasty than it could be; perhaps because it is seemingly written through the eyes of a thirteen year-old boy. It is more fantasy than reality. And that fantasy is somehow innocent and almost coy.

Come Out Tonight is not for everyone. If you are offended by violence, sex, or just about anything else, avoid this book. If, on the other hand, you like a little heady action and quick-shot violence you just might like this offering. Be careful and don’t take it too seriously, or we all may have to question both our sensibilities and our sanity.

Purchase a copy of Come Out Tonight at Amazon.

This review originally went live April 5, 2007, and since it is October I dusted it off and made it new again.

"Nina" by Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch is a legend. He is popularly known as a horror writer, but his production was wide and impressive. He wrote extensively in the crime, science fiction and horror genres. He had a particular skill at taking the style of one genre—hardboiled crime—and mixing it with the theme and expectations of another genre—horror. Think Psycho.

I recently read his short story “Nina” and I was impressed (to say the least). Nolan is an American running a plantation in the wild country of Brazil. The closest city: Manaus. The plantation’s only access is by boat, and Nolan isn’t completely comfortable with the workers. It’s not that they don’t work well, but rather it is their ceaseless drumming during the night. Add the heat. The humidity. The mosquitoes. And Nolan is a miserable man.

His life on the plantation changes when a woman appears. She is unknown to the local workers, and Nolan’s translator, Moises, calls her an “Indio” and “savage.” She soon becomes Nolan’s bedmate, and when his wife and child arrive to visit, Nolan’s world is shaken on its head.

“Nina” has all of the elements of a terrific horror story: a foreign and exotic location; a creepy and dark fabric; mysticism; outright strangeness; and a violent, and very peculiar, loss. It is very much horror, but it is brilliantly delivered with hardboiled prose, which provides a raw power—not to mention forward momentum—many horror stories lack:

“After the lovemaking Nolan needed another drink.

“He fumbled for the bottle beside the bed, gripping it with a sweaty hand. His entire body was wet and clammy, and his fingers shook as they unscrewed the cap. For a moment Nolan wondered if he was coming down with another bout of fever. Then, as the harsh heat of the sun scalded his stomach, he realized the truth.”

“Nina” is one of the better genre stories I have read. Its power is heady and visceral with a shadow-like quality; the narrative creates a shifting, soft focus, of the events. The characters feel real and the narrative is perfect. It captures the essence of the story and delivers it with an impressive blend of force and jaded subtlety most writers never achieve.

“Nina” originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction in 1977. I read it in the anthology The Best Horror Stories Volume 1 edited by Edward L. Ferman and Anne Jordan. It was published by St Martin’s Press in 1988.

This was originally posted February 6, 2009, but since I have read a few Robert Bloch short stories recently, and reviewed his fantastic “The Hell-Bound Train” I thought it would be interesting to find some of my prior writings about Mr Bloch’s work. I also reviewed his stories “The Real Bad Friend” and “Lucy Comesto Town” in 2014.

"That Hell-Bound Train" by Robert Bloch

Robert Bloch, at least to the small but select audience of this blog, needs no introduction. He is one of the great writers to graduate from the mid-Twentieth Century pulp racket, and—like all true pulp writers—if it sold, he wrote it. He worked several genres including crime, horror, science fiction and fantasy. He is best known for his fine novel Psycho—later transformed into its faithful film adaptation Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho—but his work has a depth and quality rarely seen. If Mr Bloch wrote it, it is likely pretty great.

On the far side of great is his 1958 story “That Hell-Bound Train”. It won the 1959 Hugo Award, and it is the best science fiction story—short or otherwise—I have read in a long time. It features a young bindlestiff called Martin. His father “walked the tracks for the CB&Q” until he met with a drunken accident and his mother ran off with a traveling salesman. He skipped the orphanage and drifted with the rails. He tried his hand at crime, and on a cold and lonely November midnight he determined to go straight—

“No sir, he just wasn’t cut out for petty larceny. It was worse than a sin—it was unprofitable, too. Bad enough to do the Devil’s work, but then get such miserable pay on top of it!”

Martin’s dream of a straight life is interrupted by the unexpected appearance of an unfamiliar running train. The windows dark. Its whistle “screaming like a lost soul.” The conductor who steps from its forward car is off—the way he drags a foot when he walks, and his nonstandard technique of lighting his lantern with his breath. It takes only a moment for an offer of a ride to be tendered, but Martin negotiates a deal. He will gladly ride for a single wish in exchange. He wants, at his own choosing in a moment of happy contentment, to stop time. The conductor accepts the bargain, and Martin is certain he fooled the devil. He finds a job in the nearest town and plots his own happiness, looking for that moment where he wants to spend forever.

“That Hell-Bound Train” is brilliantly executed. Its narrative is seemingly simple, but the simplicity is misleading. A study of misdirection, really. It shows the reader enough to make a conclusion (incorrectly) about where the story will finish, fulfilling that expectation in a way, and then taking it further. And that final step takes the story from pretty good to great. It is very much like the best of The Twilight Zone, and a shame it was never treated in an episode.

“That Hell-Bound Train” was originally published in the September 1958 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I read it in the anthology The Hugo Winners, Volume 1 edited by Isaac Asimov and published by Fawcett Crest in 1973.                   

EARTH ABIDES by George R. Stewart

This review of George R. Stewart’s novel Earth Abides was originally written for SFReader a very, very long time ago, and my opinion of it has altered somewhat in the passing years. Its significance as a novel has increased—the ideas and story have stayed with me as much as any novel I have read. The haunting and bleak images of humanity’s passing are powerful, and while I still think the novel would be better served if the omniscient voice were removed or limited, I also understand it frames the story’s ideas.

Earth Abides is lauded as one of the most noteworthy post-apocalyptic novels ever written. It was originally published in 1949, and its author, George R. Stewart, was better known as a writer of nonfiction than fiction, but Earth Abides is easily his most recognizable work.

Ish Williams is a graduate student working on his thesis—“The Ecology of the Black Creek Area”—in the wilds of northern California when a virulent virus destroys humanity. When Ish returns from the wilderness he finds an empty world. There are no bodies littering the streets, no signs of struggle, nothing except the surreal stillness of empty towns, streets, businesses, and homes. Everything is gone, and Ish doesn’t understand what happened until he reads the bleak, desperate headlines of the final issue of a newspaper in an abandoned magazine shop.

Earth Abides is the story of Ish’s survival. He is a man of intellect—he mourns the passing of knowledge—and he can visualize the future not as an abstract idea, but as it very well may be. Ish chronicles the remnants of humanity as it forms itself into small tribes. The tribes survive from what the “old ones” left behind. Their food comes from cans. They raid sporting goods stores for firearms and ammunition, and miraculously the remnants survive and grow. Ish begins his journey as an observer, but quickly finds himself as a participant in the new world.

Earth Abides is one of the most troublesome novels I have read. It is troublesome because the writing—style, narrative, and plotting—drove me batty. In a matter of a few pages it would cycle from powerful and energetic to dull and overly analytical. The major reason for this wild swing was the frequent interruption of narrative with an omniscient spoiler every few pages. The spoiler acted as a chapter heading, but it, in very academic and technical style, detailed exactly what was going to happen over the next several pages.

It is also an unflattering portrayal of the terribleness of surviving civilization’s death. There is nothing romantic, or wholesome, or evil, as in many other popular post-apocalyptic stories, but rather it highlights the difficulty, the loneliness, and downright miserable aspects of survival. It reads realistically—the way I imagine it would be if nearly everyone died leaving only a few people holding the bag; suicides, drugs, alcohol, and insanity the flavor of the day.

Realism is the novel’s strength. Mr Stewart’s vision of desperation is vivid and consuming; early in the novel, when Ish returned to emptiness, he drives from town to town honking his horn, waiting for a response that never arrives. The loneliness and desperation is palpable.

Earth Abides is a roller coaster. I enjoyed yes, but I also disliked it. It is a novel filled with ideas, but its impact is lessened by an over-evaluation of those ideas.

"The Real Bad Friend" and "Lucy Comes to Town" by Robert Bloch

This 1978 collection included "The Real Bad Friend"

When I think of Robert Bloch, I think of his novel Psycho, which isn’t completely fair because Mr Bloch wrote a number of excellent stories—both novels and shorts. But Psycho is special in his cannon simply because it, due to Alfred Hitchcock’s film, has become a cultural icon. It is something of an originator of the modern serial killer novel (but so much better than most of the modern fare), and it really is a classic of both suspense and horror.

Something I didn’t know, until very recently, is the novel is preceded by two short stories that share a theme—psychotic multi-personality antagonists—which act as something close to building blocks for the novel. The stories are, “The Real Bad Friend” and “Lucy Comes to Town,” published in 1957 and 1952 respectively.  

“The Real Bad Friend” is, of the two stories, the easiest to trace directly back from Psycho. The protagonist is one George Foster Pendleton. George is a dull, unimaginative vacuum salesman with a mother fetish—he married his wife Ella because she reminded him of his mother and he wanted a woman to care for him—and a solitary friend named Roderick. Roderick is something of a mystery. He comes and goes at odd times, and while he and George often travel together Roderick has never met Ella. In fact, Ella knows nothing about George’s friend Roderick.

The catalyst of the story is Ella’s inheritance of $85,000, which gives Roderick an idea, which germinates into a plan. A plan George is something of a passive, almost unwitting, accomplice.

“George Foster Pendleton would never have thought of it. He couldn’t have; he was much to dull and respectable. George Foster Pendleton, vacuum salesman, aged forty-three, just wasn’t the type. He had been married to the same wife for fourteen years, lived in the same white house for an equal length of time, wore glasses when he wrote up orders, and was completely complacent about his receding hairline and advancing waistline.”

“The Real Bad Friend” is a full-bodied psychological dark suspense story. It is written in third person in a pedestrian and unadorned style. The prose is the physical embodiment of George’s personality (and lifestyle); dull, dry, reliable. But the prose is key to the success of the story. It is hiding a psychotic rottenness with an ordinary complacency. It shares a commonality with both “Lucy Comes to Town” and Psycho; a primary character who is much more than he (or she) appears.

“Lucy Comes to Town” is a simpler story than “Friend,” but it is no less interesting. It is written in first person by an alcoholic woman named Vi. Vi is both confused and scared, and her friend Lucy makes matters worse. Lucy convinces Vi that her husband is holding her hostage in their home. He is intentionally keeping Vi’s friends away, and the nurse he hired to help Vi rehab is actually nothing more than a guard.

Lucy helps Vi escape from the house, and the bulk of the story takes place in a dingy motel room as conversation between the two women. Lucy leading Vi back to the bottle and in the process into a dark ranting paranoia.

“I lay down on the bed and then I was sleeping, really sleeping for the first time in weeks, sleeping so the scissors wouldn’t hurt my eyes, the way George hurt me inside when he wanted to shut me up in the asylum so he and Miss Higgins could make love on my bed and laugh at me the way they all laughed at me except Lucy and she would take care of me she knew what to do now I could trust her when George came and I must sleep and sleep and nobody can blame you for what you think in your sleep or do in your sleep…”

The relationship between “Lucy,” “Friend,” and Psycho is obvious as one reads the stories. All three feature a primary character with multiple personalities, but more importantly are the stylistic and thematic relationships. Each has the feel of a generic crime story that Mr Bloch handily transforms into something darker, developing a psychological element and a disturbing realism. A dark realism that not only envelopes the characters, but also is relevant (the realism part) to the reader who, very likely, fears the possibility of insanity.         

I read both “The Real Bad Friend,” and “Lucy Comes to Town” in the anthology Murder in the First Reel, edited by Bill Pronzini, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greenberg and published by Avon Books in 1985.