Shipping now, Jason V. Brock’s new collection of essays, Disorders of Magnitude: A Survey of Dark Fantasy. Sadly it comes from a $80-a-book publisher which aims at sales to university libraries and tenured professors rather than the fans, but Amazon ships it slightly cheaper than the list-price and some used paper copies are now filtering onto Amazon at somewhat lower prices. There’s also a Kindle ebook edition, but it’s a ridiculous $76.65.
I’ve highlighted the items of likely interest to Lovecraftians…
Contents:
Section One: The Darkest Age
The Smoldering Past: The Creation of the Modern from Frankenstein and Dracula to the Great War and Beyond
“Cosmic Introspection”: Lovecraft’s Attainment of Personal Value by Way of Infinite Insignificance
Forrest J Ackerman: Fan Zero
Gathering Darkness: In Appreciation of the Artists of Weird Tales
Frank M. Robinson: First Fandom and Beyond
Section Two: Things Become
The Burden of Now: Welles’s “Panic Broadcast,” World War II, and Creeping Anomie
Ray Bradbury: The Boy Who Never Grew Up
Cinematic Dream Logic: How Movies Permanently Altered the Fabric of Reality
Individual Sexual Liberation Becomes Social Emancipation: Playboy Changes the World
Harlan Ellison: L’Enfant Terrible (Sort Of)
Section Three: The Rise of the Speculative Mind
Rod Serling: Articulating the American Nightmare
A Howling at Owl Creek Bridge: Observations on Two Important Twilight Zone Episodes
George Clayton Johnson: A Touch of Strange
L’Age d’Or to Gotterdammerung: How Bradbury, Serling, Beaumont, and “The Group” Shaped a Pop Future
Roger Corman: Socially Conscious Auteur
Finding Sanctuary: Running from the Zone to Logan
The Long Nuclear Shadow: Atomic Horror, Godzilla, and the Cold War
The Horror of It All! EC [comics] and the Beginnings of Modern Media HOOHAH!
Madly Yours, Al Feldstein
An End, a Middle, a Beginning: Richard Matheson and His Impact
Section Four: Slashers, Blockbusters, and Bestsellers
Riding the Dark Wave: The Role of Dystopian Science Fiction in Popular Culture
Celluloid Asylum: O’Bannon, Romero, Carpenter, and the Liberals Lose (and Find) Their Collective Minds
Terrible Beauty: Slasher Film Connections to Conservatism, Pornography, and Misogyny
King of the Dead: Filmmaker George A. Romero on Politics, Film, and the Future
Dan O’Bannon: Not Gone, Not Forgotten
H.R. Giger: A Darkness Faster Than Light
The Emperor’s New Book [on the decline of horror publishing]
The Doctor Is In: F. Paul Wilson
Sounds Horrific: Art Rock, Soundtracks, and the Zeitgeist
Section Five: A Century of Speculation
Carnivora: The Dark Art of Automobiles
David J. Skal: Monster Kid Ambassador of Horror
Seasons in Hell
Kris Kuksi: Dark Horizons in the Realm of the Senses
Bluewater Comics’s Darren G. Davis: On the Run in the Digital Age of Comics
The H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival: Cosmic Chaos on the Silver Screen
S.T. Joshi: Champion of the Weird Tale
Marc Scott Zicree: As Timeless as Infinity
Section Six: From (and Into) the Beyond
Fangoria’s Chris Alexander: Cinephilia, Music, and All the Rest of It
Bruce Campbell: From The Evil Dead to Burn Notice and Beyond
The Inner World of William F. Nolan
The Mammoth Book of Body Horror
Two of a Kind: Lee-Anne Raymond and Demetrios Vakras
“Cthulhu, a Vampire, and a Zombie Walk into a Bar…”: Why These Themes, Why Now, and What’s the Matter with Hollyweird?
John Shirley: The Tao of Identity
Ray Harryhausen: A Note on the Passage of Giants
Kneeling at the Dandelion Shrine: An Appreciation
William F. Nolan and Ray Bradbury: Reflections
Introduction: The Pope of Speculative Fiction
Future Shock? (De)Parting Thoughts
Appendices
Index
About the Author
chiaroscuro5 said:
Boy, I SURE wish it was more affordable! Alas, beyond my control! Please note my very positive review of Joe Pulver’s first collection is in this too, called “Seasons in Hell” in this TOC. Thanks for the mention!