Reviews for The nightmare, and other tales of dark fantasy

The average rating for The nightmare, and other tales of dark fantasy based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-05-27 00:00:00 Aek Pisan What I liked about this collection of stories: The stories within were pretty imaginative. The writing is erudite and fairly polished. Some of the story ideas were very innovative for the time. I can see the legacy that this author has bequeathed to future dark fantasists. What I didn't like: 1. Story stories were often slow-starters and somewhat long-winded. There were too many novellas and not enough shorter stories. It made for harder reading for me. 2. The blatant racism against black people, Chinese, ethnic whites, you name it. Ugly terms for people of various races were used here and there with a distressing nonchalance. Negative traits being assigned and assumed to people of certain races based on their ethnicity was done very casually. There is also some subtle classism. Most of the protagonists are well-off non-ethnic white men (although the writer was a female who had to work for a living). I imagine this was done deliberately, as this is probably a big audience for these stories. This unpalatable racism, xenophobia, and classism is part and parcel of early 20th century literature, but it's still grating on this reader. I'm just exhausted after doggedly reading this book. I usually finish most books I start, and I wanted to get this one read, even though my typical MO is to leisurely work my way through a short story collection. Mental note (please heed this time): Do not pick short story collections for monthly challenge reads!!! Here are my brief thoughts on each story. The Nightmare This was a pretty good story. I can see some elements of 19th century fantasy adventure literature used with fairly good effect here. However, with its very slow start and too quick ending, this story did not impress me. Three and 1/2 stars. The Labyrinth This was my favorite story. I would have given it five stars except I disliked the racism against Chinese people. Otherwise, the humor was good, the diabolical intent behind the labyrinth, and the various characters and their interactions were well-written. I think this probably provided fertile fruit for many future works involving murderous labyrinthine traps. Four stars. Friend Island A short, cute satirical work that shows a world where women rule. I liked it. Four stars. Behind the Curtain A brief story (thankfully) about a man's dream of brutal revenge against his wife who asks for a divorce, involving an Egyptian mummy, and poisoned wine. This would have been very at home in a Weird Tales volume. Four stars. Unseen--Unfeared I can see that this story influenced Lovecraft in a massive way. His style, the use of horrifying creatures beyond our comprehension, the narrative focus, and the casual elitism and racism that he seemed to favor in his stories. The last was a big turn off for me. Two and 1/2 stars. The Elf Trap The good and the bad are equally weighed here. More xenophobic racism. The message seems to ridicule such prejudice in that the protagonist dismisses the gipsies on first sight, finding out later that they assume a mask to hide their elvish existence. I liked the idea behind it more than the execution. Four stars. Serapion I thought this was going to be a good, scary story. It started out so well-with plenty of supernaturally-sinister elements. It turned into more of a melodramatic piece. The protagonist is steadily possessed by the malevolent spirit of his dead uncle. I didn't much like the direction she took with this story, although it was well-written. More casual racism in the depiction of the medium's black servant. Lastly, it was way too long. Three stars. Sunfire A somewhat interesting look at a seemingly deserted pyramid in the Amazonian, which hides a human sacrificial culture and the dangers within to the five men who arrive to explore it. Not a bad story, but it shows the prevalent white racial attitudes of superiority demonstrated in most of the other stories. Three stars. In Summary: I don't want to belabor my point about the racist elements, but it made this collection a lot harder to read. I like reading the classics and pulp literature very much. But as a person of color, it is very difficult to see such blithe ignorance and disrespect for people of differing ethnicities and racial backgrounds. Sadly, the author seemed to be a person of intelligence and vision, but the racist/prejudice attitudes that her stories revealed (although representative of her time) dim the light of the promise shown in these stories (this author was the inventor of dark fantasy as a genre). Reading these stories and other authors from this era make me grateful that the books available in the fantasy genres today are free (in my experience) of such objectionable attitudes. Although I find myself disappointed for the racism and prejudice shown in the stories from this collection, I definitely don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, because that would be a huge waste. Instead, I hope that authors will continue to incorporate some of the inventive, imaginary ideas of this era of writing, and create stories that show a more enlightened perspective on race, ethnicity, and nationality. After all, fantasy is a genre in which the writer's imagination is boundless. There is no place for small minds. A completist reader with an interest in classic/pulp fantasy literature from the early 20th Century should check out these stories, because it is quite clear how influential Gertrude Barrows, who wrote under the pseudonym of Francis Stevens, was on future writers. Overall rating: 3.5/5.0 stars.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-02-25 00:00:00 Benjamin Guyer Up until recently, Minneapolis-born author Francis Stevens had been a very solid 3 for 3 with this reader. Her first novel, 1918's "The Citadel of Fear," had proved to be a mindblower, dealing as it did with the lost city of Tlapallan, nightmarish creatures, and battling Aztec gods. Her second novel, 1919's "The Heads of Cerberus," was a dystopian affair set in a totalitarian Philadelphia and is one of the first sci-fi offerings to feature a parallel time track. And in Stevens' fourth novel, 1920's "Claimed," a mysterious box that had been belched up from the Atlantic depths by volcanic activity causes major problems (to put it mildly!) for all its subsequent owners. After reading these three exceptionally fine novels by the author whom critic Sam Moskowitz has famously referred to as "the most gifted woman writer of science fiction and science-fantasy between Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley and C. L. Moore," I resolved to read everything else in Stevens' comparatively small oeuvre; namely, that third novel, four short stories and four novellas. Coming to my rescue was Bison Books' 2004 collection "The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy," which collects those eight shorter works, in strict chronological order, in one generously sized, 400+-page volume; the first and, to my knowledge, only anthology of Stevens' shorter fiction. Preceded by a scholarly introduction by Gary Hoppenstand, this collection of tales is simply marvelous (emphasis on the syllables "mar-vel"), and demonstrates what a fine author Stevens was even at the very beginning of her brief career. The eight tales are drawn from the pages of four of the foremost pulp magazines of the day--"All-Story Weekly," People's Favorite Magazine," "Argosy" and "Weird Tales"--from the period 1917 to 1923, encompassing such disparate genres as horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and the Haggardian lost world/lost race story. Each shows off the author who would later be called "The Queen of Dark Fantasy" to winning effect and allows the reader to understand why Stevens would soon be so admired--and "homaged"--by the authors Abraham Merritt and H. P. Lovecraft. Simply put, this collection is still another winner from this woefully underappreciated writer. The volume kicks off in a very big way with Stevens' very first published work, the novella-length lost-world story "The Nightmare." In this one, meek, foppish, mild-mannered millionaire Roland C. Jones prepares to go to bed while on board the ill-fated Lusitania, just south of Ireland, and suddenly finds himself floundering in the waters of what later turns out to be...the Pacific?!?! He fetches up on the shore of a lonely, volcanic island, where two contending parties, each led by adversarial, Russian prince brothers, are in search of...well, perhaps I'd better not say. Oh...the island also comes replete with man-eating plants and monstrously huge spider, bat, and hairless bear creatures, just to keep Jones & Co. on their toes and the reader entertained. This is a marvelously self-assured first effort for a novice writer, only marred by a rather unconvincing explanation for Jones' advent on the island itself. Still, tremendous fun. In the collection's lengthiest offering, the novella entitled "The Labyrinth," Hildreth Wyndham goes in search of his cousin Veronica, who has apparently been abducted by the lovesick governor of the state, Clinton Charles. Wyndham is accompanied in his quest by Veronica's fiancé, Rex Tolliver, and before long, the two men attempt to penetrate the governor's heavily guarded compound, known as Asgard Heights. The four main characters are ultimately reunited in the nighttime gardens of the estate, only to fall into a devilish, subterranean maze that the home's original owner had constructed. It is a truly hellish underground trap, indeed, with sliding walls, knife-edged panels, asphyxiating gas traps, dead ends, and mocking Biblical inscriptions to taunt the captured quartet. This is a pretty wonderful story, with four well-drawn characters forced together in an increasingly horrifying situation, and is marred only by its very slight racism as regards several of the governor's Chinese servants; a racism, to be perfectly honest, that was part and parcel of so much pulp writing of the time. "Friend Island" is set in the futuristic era of 2100; a time in which women have dominated the males both physically and mentally. Here, our narrator plies a female sailor with tea and macaroons (!), and gets the old she salt to relate a tale of her youth. The nameless sailor had been involved in a disaster at sea and had washed up on a completely deserted island (as opposed to the one in "The Nightmare"). The mariness had dubbed this Pacific island Anita, and soon came to realize that the island could not only sense her moods, but anticipate her wishes and react in kind. It was a living, sentient island, which only led to problems when a male sailor had later washed ashore.... Stevens' story deftly combines elements of science fiction and fantasy, and its unique setting and amusing "battle of the sexes" are elements that should go over well with 21st century female readers. The story's ultimate moral is one that really shouldn't need repeating, but here goes: Good manners really do count when dealing with a proper lady! "Behind the Curtain" is a very clever homage to the great Edgar Allan Poe, in particular his classic short story of 1846, "The Cask of Amontillado." In this one, an avid collector of Egyptian antiquities, named Santallos, invites to his home one Ralph Quentin, who has been having an affair with the older man's wife. He gives Quentin a glass of Amontillado wine, which has been mixed with a lethal poison, and suggests to the young man that the female mummy in his collection might just be of a very recent vintage.... Anyway, Stevens' creepy little story takes several unexpected twists, managing to insert two surprising developments into its brief eight-page length, and ending on a note of necrophilic ghoulishness. Lovecraft, who deemed Poe the greatest of all horror writers, probably loved it. In "Unseen--Unfeared," a man walks through a tenement district, in what I take to be NYC, and comes across a window with a sign reading "See the Great Unseen!" Curious, he enters the rundown building and is ushered into the apartment of one Professor Holt, who has come up with a novel contraption built with special plates, chemicals, and a paper filter of rare South American origin. With this device, our narrator is able to see what is normally hidden from human vision: the "huge, repulsive starfish...centipedish things...furry spiders...sausage-shaped translucent horrors that moved--and floated through the air...." Viewers who have seen the bonkers 1986 film "From Beyond" will perhaps have some idea of what I'm referring to here. This is a pretty fascinating story, again marred by some pronounced racism (which is explained away at the conclusion, to its credit) and a pretty far-out and unconvincing explanation at the tail end for all the cosmic mishegas that had preceded it. Still, a very entertaining romp, in all. In "The Elf Trap," we are returned to the realm of magical fantasy. Here, a college professor, Theron Tademus, an expert in the field of cytology, goes on a doctor-recommended rest cure in the mountains of North Carolina. He is appalled by the nearby presence of a camp of Gypsies--in an instance of yet more casual racism, they are referred to as "a peculiarly ill-favored set, dirty and villainous of feature"--just as he is charmed by the equally nearby presence of Carcassonne, an artists' colony, and especially by one of its female residents, Elva, a young woman who dances wildly and weaves honeysuckles into garlands. The stodgy professor is so entranced by his new artist friends that he is tempted to stay on...until, that is, the call of science returns him to reality, with tragic results. Or are they tragic? This mysterious, atmospheric story weaves a truly magical spell and ends on a note of decided ambiguity. Up next is a novella that Hoppenstand calls the best piece of work in this collection, and it just might be my favorite, too. In "Serapion," a 24-year-old college graduate named Clayton Barbour ignores an older friend's warning and attends a séance at the home of James Barton Moore and his wife, Alicia. Mrs. Moore is reputed to be one of the only genuine physical mediums in the world, and indeed, the séance seems to go very impressively...until, that is, things get out of hand and one of the outer-world spirits manages to break loose into our plane! As it turns out, this spirit is that of Clayton's Uncle Serapion, an uncle whom he had never met. Serapion's spirit appears to him whenever he closes his eyes, as the weeks go on, and even begins speaking to him, driving the poor nephew to the brink of madness and then...murder! Stevens manages to keep matters nicely ambiguous, it seems to me, so that the reader is never 100 percent sure that Serapion's spirit is real or only a figment of Clayton's deranged mind. On a personal note, it was during my reading of this 95-page novella that I suffered a slight concussion (a "nightmare" of my own!) and was told by a doctor not to read for a while. But this story was just so powerfully irresistible that I found myself sneaking pages every day, prolonging my recovery period. So yes, I can honestly say that I did indeed risk my mental health because of this story, a revealing statement regarding its "unputdownable" nature. This collections final tale, which was also Stevens' last published work, is the novella-length "Sunfire," which originally appeared in the fifth and sixth issues of "Weird Tales"; the July/August and September 1923 issues. Here, five explorers discover a hidden pyramid on a small island deep in the Amazon jungle. Upon making their way into the long-deserted structure, the men find a redheaded dancing maiden, a monstrously huge centipede (far larger than the ones experienced in "Unseen--Unfeared"), a witchlike hag...and an enormous diamond, used, as it turns out, to magnify the sun's rays during human sacrifices! Stevens' final tale is a lost-world story, thus, featuring five sharply drawn lead characters, great color and suspense, and breathless action, once again marred by instances of casual racism (the "N word") and by a somewhat unconvincing explanation, this time regarding that dancing girl's origin. Still, it manages to bring this wonderful collection to an eminently satisfactory close. So there you have it: eight superlative tales, four long, four short, from one of America's earliest creators of dark fantasy, Francis Stevens, who is now, I'm happy to report, an even more solid 4 for 4 with me. And that only leaves the previously mentioned third novel to experience, 1919's "Avalon," which Hoppenstand describes as being the author's "weakest novel." Still, if I'm ever going to call myself a Stevens completist, I suppose that I will have to seek it out. Stay tuned.... (By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at … a most ideal destination for all fans of Francis Stevens....)