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Don't Turn Out the Light: the third volume of
the new Not at Night series
edited by Stephen Jones
(PS Publishing, £35.00, 279 pages, signed, numbered, limited
edition hardback; also available as signed, numbered, limited edition
deluxe hardback priced £60.00; published April 2005.)
Review by Mario Guslandi
The first two volumes of the new "Not at night" series edited by Stephen
Jones were reprint anthologies where a group of selected writers had
the opportunity to retrieve from oblivion a tale they felt had been
overlooked or unjustly  forgotten.
This interesting idea has been partially abandoned in the current volume,
which, in addition to a number of reprints includes various brand new
stories. The change doesn't seem to have made any improvement to this
literary project which, in terms of quality , appears to be undergoing
a substantial setback. But, surprisingly, the weaker stories in this
volume are the reprints chosen by the invited contributors, which proves
once again that writers are often the worst judges of what they have
written. Legendary authors such as Ray Bradbury and Richard Matheson,
for instance, have decided to unearth some questionable material and
if Bradbury's "Fever dream" is no more than a cute, unpretentious vignette
about the weird consequences of a bad fever affecting a young boy, Matheson's
"Dance of the dead" is positively awful. On the other hand Charles Grant's
tale about a nasty baby-sitter ("Are you afraid of the dark?") and Peter
Atkins' SF piece "King of outer space" are just ordinary, while Jay
Russell's idea of revising an unpublished splatterpunk story that had
been lying for 15 years (and rightly so) in the bottom drawer is simply
embarrassing.
Hugh B Cave's "The cult of the white ape" -- which, incidentally has
been chosen by the editor and not by the late writer -- is a much better
selection, a typically strong Cave story masterly blending exotic places,
ancient, forbidden cults and supernatural powers ready to take revenge
on corrupt foreigners. By contrast Richard Christian Matheson's "City
of dreams" is another dull reprint describing so unemotionally a ghostly
encounter that the only reaction it elicits in the reader is that of
mild curiosity. The only standout among the previously published stories
is Lisa Tuttle's "Flies by night" a gently disquieting, accomplished
piece of fantastic fiction about women whose true nature is that of
flies willing to freely take wing across the world.
In general the new stories provide a better reading, but not all of
them. "The bite of Tawse" by John Burke very predictably deals with
the old cliché of a secret society in a small community and its
unholy initiation rites. "Shirley's ghost" by John Glasby is another
ordinary and unsurprising ghostly tale, unfortunately devoid of any
ability to provoke fear or uneasiness.
David Schow's "Expanding your capabilities..." is a technological horror
story on the unforeseen properties of a DVD player, entertaining albeit
not fully convincing. Mark Samuels' contribution "Shallaballah", a puzzling
tale about a famous actor whose face is reconstructed after an accident,
remains for the most part irritatingly obscure.
By contrast "Inheritance" by Paul McAuley is a standing example of
how a conventional, quite ordinary plot (a man returns from the USA
to visit his ancestors' land and is plagued by vengeful ghosts) can
be transformed into an excellent story by the writing ability of a gifted
author.
The same applies to Basil Copper's "Queen bee" where the feeling of
dread induced by the trivial event of a bee persistently pestering a
house is greatly enhanced by the writer's skill as a storyteller.
"Phoenix man" by Garry Kilworth is a solid, old-fashioned yarn with
a touch of SF and a bitter aftertaste about a man who, literally, likes
to set himself on fire.
In Roberta Lannes' excellent "The other family", an unsettling, kafkaesque
tale set between dream and reality, two kids and their parents meet
their own doppelgangers from a different age and a different dimension.
"Sickhouse" is one of the very first fruits of the long-awaited return
of Terry Lamsley to fiction writing. The story has the distinct quality
of a nightmare taking place in a weird hospital where, instead of healing
the sick, doctors make healthy people fall ill. Although not entirely
plausible as far as the plot is concerned the tale confirms the outstanding
writing abilities of this extraordinary author.
When all is said and done, however, this anthology offers too little
to satisfy the average reader of dark fiction. Sadly the series seems
to have suddenly come to a standstill and a fourth volume appears to
be rather improbable.
Elsewhere in infinity plus:
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