Weird,Tales,1988-Fall,v50n03,-,Weird,Tales

　THE UNIQUE MAGAZINE ISSN 0898-5073 Fall 1988 Art by Carl Lundgren Studios THE ORDEAL STONE

　.......................................................................... Keith Taylor

　 18 It dealt out madness — in the guise of truth. THE HAUNTING OF MARA

　................................................................ Keith Taylor

　32 The price for stealing cattle was higher than he"d thought. MEN FROM THE PLAIN OF LIR

　....................................................... Keith Taylor

　45 They escaped slavery to find a worse fate ... EMMA"S DAUGHTER .......................................................................... Alan Rodgers

　58 ... or, A Zombie Grows in Brooklyn. THE FOOL

　.......................................................................... Ronald Anthony Cross

　78 Everyone"s a fool at the beginning of a journey ... LITTLE ONCE

　...................................................................... Nina Kiriki Hoffman

　94 It didn"t cry much ... it just refused to die. AVATAR

　...................................................................................................... Lois Tilton

　97 Who can replace a god? STILL THE SAME OLD STORY

　............................................................ W.T. Quick 105 It was just a game — until he found Atlantis! CHILD OF AN ANCIENT CITY

　........................................................ Tad Williams

　116 The vampyr hungered for more than blood ... VERSE PSYCHE IN THE NIGHT, CUPID BY LAMPLIGHT by Ace G. Pilkington: 57, STARTREADER by Walter Shedlofsky: 93, CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF"S WIFE by Bruce Boston: 115, WALPURGISNACHT by Lin Carter: 145 FEATURES THE EYRIE

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　4 THE DEN ........................................................................ John Gregory Betancourt 10 WEIRD TALES™ TALKS WITH CLIVE BARKER

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　Robert Morrish 14 PROFILE: KEITH TAYLOR ............................................................ Cherry Weiner 31 Published quarterly by the Terminus Publishing Company, Inc., P.O. Box 13418, Philadelphia PA 19101-3418. Application to mail at second class postage rates pending at Philadelphia PA and additional mailing offices. Single copies, $4.00 (plus $1.00 postage if ordered by mail). Subscription rates: Eighteen months (six issues} for $18.00 in the United States and its posessions, for $24.00 in Canada, and for $27.00 elsewhere. The publishers are not responsible for the loss of manuscripts, although reasonable care will be taken of such material while in their possession. Copyright© 1988 by the Terminus Publishing Company, Inc.; all rights reserved; reproduction prohibited without prior permission. Weird Tales is a trade mark owned by Weird Tales, Limited. Typeset, printed, and bound in the United States of America.

　Vol. 50 No. 3 Whole No. 292 3

　 We are very sorry to report the recent death of Lin Carter, who once edited Weird Tales™ with distinction. He also wrote some of the most interesting letters we received during our own editorship of this magazine. As editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series, he had an enormous impact on the fantasy field. We all miss him very much. Robert Price, editor of Crypt of Cthulhu magazine, put it best by saying that "Lin Carter"s obsessions have enriched us all."" We are gratified by the reader response to Weird Tales"". Many letters of praise you"ve sent us are simply that — praise — but while this makes your editors very happy, epistle after epistle of "Weird Tales" is wonderful!" might be a tad boring for you to read, so we will get on to letters with more meat. For those of you who keep asking for reprints of stories from old issues of Weird Tales, our feeling is that the pages of Weird Tales" are too precious to use up with such reprints when many fine anthologies are appearing and when there are so few markets for first-rate new weird and fantastic stories, especially the longer ones. We recommend a fine new anthology, Weird Tales : 32 Unearthed Terrors, edited by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, and Martin H. Greenberg (Bonanza Books, 1988). This book includes one story from each year of the magazine"s 1923-54 run, with many classics and lost gems, some reprinted for the first time. Another fat volume of Weird Tales" reprints will be published soon by Nelson Doubleday, this one edited by Marvin Kaye and encouragingly titled Weird Tales": The Magazine That Never Dies, with not only classic stories from the early years of the magazine, but stories from recent issues as well. We understand it will include Darrell Schweitzer"s "The Mysteries of the Faceless King" (from our Spring 1988 issue). The few reprints we have used are stories from obscure sources, such as Gene Wolfe"s "The Dead Man" in our Spring 1988 issue, from a 1965 issue of Sir! so scarce that even the author didn"t have a copy. And we hasten to point out that neither this current issue nor the one just before it, Summer 1988, contains any stories previously published anywhere. Editor/publisher W. Paul Ganley writes of our Summer 1988 issue: This is a very superior issue. All the fiction is extremely well written, though some of the stories left me wondering where the next chapter was when I come to the end. The two Lee stories are outstanding, the interview is charming, and the artwork is fully up to the standard set in the previous issue, in my opinion. I thought the best story was Brian Lumley"s, however. He told me some time ago that this one had sold to you, and he was very excited about it (as if you guys were working for Farnsworth Wright or something) and considered it one of his best-ever pieces. What impressed me about it was that you could remove the hint of the supernatural (the woman"s coffin could have been constructed from the wood of one of the old houses, for instance, with no mention of Haiti) and it would still have been a wonderful mainstream story. It reminded me of Bradbury stories like "The Next in Line." With regard to the lettercolumn, I am definitely on your side in the matter of choosing fiction for a contemporary Weird Tales™. Still, there should be a way to (somewhat) placate those "hard core" fans who really would love it if you could spray that old pulp smell on their copies. You could carry a "vintage reprint" or do a "Mythos revisted" series, one new Cthulhu Mythos story an issue. After you finish the series of issues that are directed toward "special authors" you might consider such an idea, or throw it up for grabs and see what the readers might say about it. One of my all time favorite series is Doc Smith"s Lensman saga. I can still re-read them in an effort to capture the reactions I had to them in 1949. But I find that there are some modern books that are much better written that give me the very same reactions I had to the Doc Smith stories, and in this case, in particular, I am thinking of Piers Anthony"s Cluster stories — intergalactic in scope, almost visionary, with convincing pseudo-science. I don"t see why you shouldn"t aim for the same effect in Weird Tales — bringing us things, today, that we react to in the same way people reacted

　to Kuttner, Moore, Lovecraft, Ashton Smith, et al. in their heyday. We agree, Paul; you"ve stated our editorial policy quite succinctly. This is exactly why we don"t want a lot of reprints or stories which deliberately pastiche the old Weird Tales styles. Those would not give modern readers the same effect that Lovecraft and so on gave the readers of the 1930s. Imagine the reader of 1930 being confronted with reprints of the weird fiction of 1880, or stories written in that manner. That"s not the impression we want to make. As for special "theme" issues, what do you readers think of them? We"ll certainly let this idea slosh around in the fetid cauldron of our collective editorial brain for a while. Even a Cthulhu-Mythos issue is possible, but it will be hard to get even two or three really good, non-imitative, genuinely scary Mythos stories. Ultimately, though, we will have to pass from doing "special author" issues and "theme" issues to just plain issues. After all, we intend to be publishing Weird Tales 7 " for a long time to come. Author and poet Joe R. Christopher writes: / was rather disappointed by the letters on the first issue, in one way. Surely some of George Barr"s imitations of the artists extended beyond Weird Tales. Wasn"t he "doing" Edd Cartier on pp. 18, 21, and 125 (the woman, not the detail of jewelry) ? Car-tier, of course, was in Unknown. / think I could hunt around and find the original of the linear drawing on p. 69 (Astounding in the 1950s?), and even the grease-pencil illustration on p. 81 strikes dim memories, although I"m not certain where to check for the source. While the identification of certain artists was nice — confirming my identification of the Finlays and Boks — / did appreciate the reference to Dolgov, whom I didn"t know. The stories were nicely varied. The one I liked least — Lumley"s "Fruiting Bodies" — was typical of its horror mode. Cross"s "The Initiate" was a nice occult piece; Springer"s "Bad Lands" was distinguished by its western setting. I appreciated that you"d use a story with typographical oddities in it — Wisman"s "My Mother"s Purse." In fact, Wis-man"s story, Turtledove"s "After the Last Elf is Dead," and Lee"s semi-Arthurian "The Kingdoms of the Air" were my favorites — in ascending order. Lee"s "The Unrequited Glove" was not as good, I thought, but I"m probably just not turned on by the "Flayed Hand" motif, although I admit that Lee did do some variations on the type. Llywelyn"s "Princess" was a clever re-doing of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, with touches of Brownies given the Dwarfs. Was there any special reason you didn"t do a complete listing of Tanith Lee"s books? I notice that some of the Flat Earth series are not in your list — two of the five, I believe . . . or a couple of them have alternate titles. Anyway, I"m enjoying the revival. I"d like to see an issue completely illustrated by Tim Kirk before you stop — and what about Alicia Austin? Indeed, what about Alicia Austin? We have a lot of artists in mind for special issues. Hank Jankus is next. More will follow. The Tanith Lee bibliography was listed as "Selected" because we didn"t include any of her short fiction. But if any of the books were left off, then we are in error.

　Paul A. Kesler gets right to the heart of the matter:

　/ wish to avoid discussions of any particular authors or stories. I wish, instead, to concentrate on this issue of content, or scope, which you raised in your Spring and Summer columns.

　You say in your Spring issue, for example, that the occasional unclassifiable story will see print in the future. This is commendable, I feel. You also state, in your Summer issue, that you do not intend to make Weird Tales™ a "Conan-type magazine." Again, commendable. But since this is all in the interest of updating and expanding the parameters of the magazine, I have some suggestions for some writers — and types of writing — that might be considered for the future.

　Take, to begin with, the matter of reprints. You say that only little-known reprints will appear, with an emphasis on quality. But why limit such reprints to the same old traditional circles: the Seabury Quinns, the H.P. Lovecrafts, or — as Mr. Forrest Ack-erman suggested — the David H. Kellers and C.L. Moores? Or, for that matter, to any of the writers whose stories have so numerously populated past issues of Weird Tales""?

　If you"re looking for obscure reprints of quality, why not draw on the equally rich vein of fantastic fiction that stems from Franz Kafka, or the French surrealists, or the many Latin American exponents of "magic realism"?

　In the line of Kafka descendants, for example, there"s the work of the brilliant Polish fantasist, Bruno Schulz, whose collections The Street of Crocodiles and Sanitarium Under the Sign of the Hourglass might be scanned for reprints. Or why not include an occasional piece by such Italian fantasists as Dino Buzatti, Italo Calvino, or Thomas Landolfi ? Reprints from the Latin American fantasists could draw from the works of Jorge Luis Borges, Carlos Fuentes, or Julio Cortazar (to name but a few), or — going further back — Horacia Quiroga, a number of whose stories have already been translated into English. Even Kobo Abe, the Japanese novelist, has done some bizarre short stories — perhaps more than I"m aware of — and there may well be more shorter works in this vein by his fellow countryman, Yasunari Kawabata, which have yet to be translated into English. (For a treat, see his already-translated story, "One Arm," in The House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories.) And what of Russian authors? Vladimir Odoyevsky (a 19th century writer), Fyodor Sologub, Yevgeny Zamyatin, and Abraham Tertz all offer possibilities.

　There are, in short, myriad authors of many nationalities who have either specialized in, or frequently concentrated on the weird and the bizarre, Then, too, there are the "forgotten" writers, such as the French master of the macabre Marcel Schwob, whose works have seen a recent translation. (See The King in the Yellow Mask, published by Carcanet Press.) How many readers who generally peruse the pages of Weird Tales™ are familiar with the above writers? Yet don"t at least some of them deserve representation? If you want obscure reprints of quality fiction, I can"t think of a better start than by exploring this vast realm. Finally, there"s the area of the short-short story, or prose poem, which I feel could have a great potential in Weird Tales. Clark Ashton Smith did a number of minature prose poems, and of course Fredric Brown was a notorious master of the short-short "shocker." But the form really goes back to French writers such as Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and the very macabre, but largely unknown Aloysius Bertrand. Couldn"t many contemporary authors be approached for miniature fictions on weird and macabre themes? After all, this field has experienced a great renascence in recent years, especially in the little magazines (appropriately enough). Barr Yourgrau"s Wearing Dad"s Head is the most recent collection of strange miniatures that comes to mind (though Yourgrau emphasizes humor as much as the bizarre or the grotesque). I realize that every magazine has to draw guidelines and criteria for exclusion as well as inclusion. I can"t expect that all the work for the authors I"ve mentioned would be at home in Weird Tales™. Nevertheless, I hope this letter stimulates some thinking regarding alternatives for future exploration. Love-craft and Robert E. Howard were fine in their day, as are Ramsey Campbell and Gene Wolfe in ours. I will always love the old tradition. But there are many other writers out there, from the past, the present, and even the future, waiting their turn. We"re not not sure how one gets stories from the future, except possibly by time-travel, but . . . seriously, thanks for your long, fine letter, Paul. Yes, we would like Weird Tales"" to be more international and cosmopolitan. If a new or previously untranslated story by Borges or Fuentes or Cortazar came our way, we would snap it right up. . . . However, much of the work of the authors you recommend is already available in the United States. We would certainly like to see translations of foreign works (authorized by the works" authors, of course). We suspect that science fiction and fantasy fans are often too narrow in their tastes, and we welcome exploration of "outside" writers. (How many of the writers you list have we heard of? Calvino, Borges, Fuentes, Cortazar, Abe, Sologub, Zamyatin, and Tertz. Not the others, alas. There is so much yet to be explored!) Certainly your listing is a guideline for any enterprising anthologist. Several excellent international anthologies exist, notably Black Water edited by Alberto Manguel and published by Lester & Orpen Dennys in 1983. As for getting stories by writers outside of the usual genre-pool, we"re proud to have one in hand from Jonathan Carroll, the author of The Land of Laughs, who is one of the best (and perhaps the best) horror writer living. We have bought a couple of short-shorts in the Fredric Brown mode, and certainly would welcome more. Prose poems are an entirely different art form, except for length. Those of the Clark Ashton Smith or Baudelaire type (actually the same type, since Smith was profoundly influenced by, and even translated the author of Fleurs du Mai) would also be welcome. Harry Morris"s wonderful little magazine, Nyctalops, was filled with such works a few years ago. Our criteria for reprints remain: 1) outstanding by contemporary standards 2) not previously published in English in the United States in its present form, or at least 3) published previously only in some virtually unobtainable edition, like a $35.00 pamphlet with a print-run of 100. And that concludes the discussion of reprints for the time being. In order to persuade more people to subscribe to Weird Tales, we send out postcards and other mailing pieces, in large batches. It is simply not practical to screen an outside list — such as the 25,000 names we recently rented from Isaac Asimov"s Science Fiction Magazine — to remove the names of all our own subscribers. So, if you already subscribe to Weird Tales but nevertheless receive some of these advertisements, we do apologize. We haven"t lost your subscription — we wouldn"t dare! To check the status of your subscription, look at the pair of numbers that follow your name on your copy"s mailing label. The first is the whole number of the current issue (292 for this issue); the second, the whole number of your subscription"s final issue. Thus "292 295" after your name means that your subscription is good through issue number 295. We really do want to hear your likes and dislikes, so we can steer the magazine in directions that you will enjoy. Keep those letters coming! The Most Popular Story As we go to press, we haven"t received enough votes on issue 291 (Summer 1988) for more than this preliminary report: First place was "Fruiting Bodies" by Brian Lumley. Runners-up were "The Unrequited Glove" and "The Kingdoms of the Air," both by Tanith Lee, and "Princess" by Morgan Llywelyn. D

　 by John Gregory Betancourt

　The Den is going to be a bit short this time; we had to squeeze it to make room for the Clive Barker interview. But next issue it"ll be back full length . . . maybe even a bit longer, if I can manage it. I had hoped to make this a special column devoted solely to new horror writers — the people just now breaking into the horror-book field. I constantly see novels by people I"ve never heard of before, and I keep wondering if any of them are any good. The packaging makes them all look alike: pre-dominantly black covers, with lots of die-stamping and sometimes a splash of foil. Alas, most of the publishers" publicity departments were slow in getting me books (those that sent books at all: it"s far harder to get review copies of horror titles than science fiction and fantasy, I"ve found), and I haven"t had a chance to read most of what I"ve selected. A few titles that caught my eye are in this batch. The rest (plus whichever ones turn up in the meantime) will be in the next issue. Till then, a brief reminder: review copies should go to me at 410 Chester Ave., Moor-estown, NJ 08057. Valley of Lights, by Stephen Gallagher TOR books, 276 pp., $3.95 This is the first book I intended to read for my "new writers" column. I must admit it confused me. It seems to be an original horror novel, published for the first time in the U.S. — but it has cover quotes from the British Fantasy Newsletter, the Glasgow Evening Times, and the Yorkshire Evening Post. Was there a British edition that isn"t acknowledged on the copyright page? Is the author British? (He doesn"t seem to be: he writes the President"s American perfectly, and the story is set — very convincingly — in Phoenix, Arizona.) Why aren"t there any cover quotes from American sources if the book is an original novel by an American? Why isn"t there an About-the-Author paragraph at the back to answer all my questions? In any case, Valley of Lights looks like your average run-of-the-mill horror novel: a very dark cover, a pair of sinister eyes superimposed over a city scape, with black mountains and blood-red clouds hovering on the horizon. But it"s not a horror novel; it"s science fiction, with a measure of suspense thrown in. The plot device is a familiar one: a sentient creature that lives in humans and can switch from one body to another almost at will. We"ve all seen this sort of thing before, in books like Heinlein"s The Puppet Masters. It"s even made it to television on shows like Star Trek (both new and old). The only real difference here is that Gallagher"s creature is not physical; it"s an essence, a soul or spirit — we"re never quite sure exactly what, and the creature itself says it doesn"t know. There are a few standard horrific elements: the creature can only occupy a human who is brain-dead, and it keeps a supply of bodies in remote areas as backups in case anything happens to the one it"s "wearing" — it switches bodies as easily as a person changes clothes. Having brain-dead people lying around all the time is not really convincing: I"d think lack of hygiene and lack of exercise, then disease and bedsores would quickly make the bodies useless. . . . Ignoring these technical problems and getting to the plot itself, we find a good, solid, workable story: Alex Volchak, a cop, discovers a room full of unconscious people in a motel. When they are carted off to a hospital, they are found to be brain-dead. Alex takes a special interest in the case and tracks down the man who had rented the motel room — but this man closes his eyes and dies when caught. Then one of the brain-dead men in the hospital suddenly regains consciousness and escapes. Alex rapidly becomes convinced that some creature is moving from body to body, and he tracks it down. The creature — seemingly immortal — is incredibly old. It has taken to murdering humans, particularly children, for sport. It kidnaps Alex"s girlfriend"s daughter and forces Alex to play a cat-and-mouse game with the little girl"s life as the prize. The most horrific element is the paranoid tension that comes when you realize the creature might

　be anyone — even be your best friend. What if you don"t notice? It"s good to see that the book didn"t dissolve into another little-girl-in-peril story. The writing is smooth. The characters are thoroughly real, from the sadistic creature to Alex and the other policemen. I have no idea whether this is a first novel, or a tenth; but if I see another by Gallagher, I intend to read it. The Selected Stories of Robert Bloch, by Robert Bloch Underwood-Miller, 1,128 pp. (2 vols.), $80.00 (trade); $125.00 (signed) Suffice to say, this is the Robert Bloch short-story collection — 98 stories in three volumes, half a million words in all. As an overview of Bloch"s writing — from the mystery magazines to the science-fiction pulps to the slick men"s magazines — it"s unmatched (and, of course, superb). But yet I noticed quite a few stories missing that I would have liked to read again. I guess they"re in other collections, like the Lefty Feep books, which are still in print. I imagine there are enough of Bloch"s stories out there for two or three (or more) collections of this size. I hope Underwood-Miller finds the time and inclination to do them. About the only thing missing from this collection is an introduction (but what do you say about Bloch that hasn"t been said a hundred times before?) and interior artwork. Such things are purely a matter of personal preference, and this book certainly doesn"t suffer without them. You can order directly from the publisher: Underwood-Miller, 515 Chestnut St., Columbia, PA 17512. Be warned: specialty press books like this one tend to sell out rather quickly. Bright and Shining Tiger, by Claudia J. Edwards Popular Library/Questar, 218 pp., $2.95 What attracted me to this book was its cover: a man and a woman on horseback, she wielding some sort of magical power, with an intricate pattern as a border around them and a giant silver tiger poised overhead — very striking, and I don"t think my description quite does it justice. In any case, Edwards is a very competent writer. She sets up an old situation, the wanderer in search of a place in the world, and adds a bit of new fire by making the wanderer a woman named Runa. When Runa reaches the fringes of civilization, she finds a village of peasants in need of a pro-tector. She moves into Silvercat Castellum, the abandoned fortress, planning to stay only a short time before moving on. But the land"s supernatural guardian, the Silvercat (the giant silver tiger pictured on the cover) decides to adopt her as the land"s sorceress-mistress. Conflicts follow: the Silvercat tries to revive its lands, the neighboring rulers try to oust Runa, and Runa struggles to decide what she really wants from life. The book held my interest; the background was interesting, if a bit muddled (is this the far future, or an alternate past or present?), and the characters were convincingly real. It"s not the best thing since sliced bread, but it"s a fun way to spend an afternoon. Try it if you get a chance. The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars, by Tom Disch Doubleday, 80 pp., $11.95 I thoroughly enjoyed The Brave Little Toaster (the novella to which this slender volume is a sequel) for a couple of reasons: it was a mythic story in all the best sense of the word, with a terrific if improbable hero, a quest that kept me interested, and a supporting cast that I cared about. Most of the appliances from the first tale are back in The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars. It is written in much the same style as the first story — and it"s fun . . . but nothing more than that. The mythic qualities are missing, somehow, and the science-fictional gloss stretched my sense of belief a little too far. Sentient appliances are okay in a fantasy story; but this is a somewhat militant SF tale, and the combination doesn"t sit as well as it should. Or perhaps I"m old and jaded. Children will doubtless love both Toaster books. Perhaps Doubleday will soon publish an omnibus edition . .. perhaps even with pop-up illustrations? Zombie! by Peter Tremayne St. Martin"s Press, 182 pp., $2.95 I love this book"s tacky cover. There"s a hideous decaying face (die-stamped), and the blurb screams, They Die. They Walk. They Kill... For them the grave is only the beginning. ZOMBIE! Classy, huh? I wish I had liked the book"s, um, innards as much as I liked its packaging. But, alas, no. I quote a few lines from the first page: "Only the flickering of the flaming brands, which many of them held in their hands, gave their grave faces animation with the multitude of lights and shadows they caused to dance over their sweat-glistening coppery skins." . . . "There came the sharp staccato call of the birds which, with some uncanny sense, had

　awakened noisily to herald the dawn which lay just below the unseen horizon. Their countless cries mingled with the high pitched orchestration of a myriad crickets and the awful melody of countless croaking frogs from their swampy homes." "From within they could hear it — the slow rhythmic beat of a goatskin drum giving shape and body to the wailing female voice, rising and falling, rising and falling." Talk about muddled prose — and, what"s more, scenes are told from shifting viewpoints. As a result, the reader is forced to jump from character to character, unable to know or sympathize with any one of them. The people in the book don"t say much, either — they aver, grin, smile, return, and muse their words. To his credit, I have found Tremayne"s short fiction to be of much higher quality. There are a couple of possible explanations for Zombie!"s problems. It might be a very old work — the copyright says 1981. Since Tremayne started writing fiction in 1977, according to an article on him in Discovering Modem Horror Fiction II, this doesn"t seem terribly likely. Another possibility is that somehow the book"s editor or copy-editor interfered heavily. Or Tremayne got sloppy and nobody bothered to fix the book or to make Tremayne fix it (again the editor"s fault), which is a real shame. Zombie! is a good one to skip. Discovering Modern Horror Fiction II, edited by Darrell Schweitzer Starmont House, 169 pp., $9.95 (trade pb) Horror fiction is very much in a boom period — lots of new writers, lots of older writers reaching prominence, lots of classics being rediscovered and reprinted. The Discovering Modern Horror Fiction series seems to be sampling mainly from the middle group — Name writers who are now prominent in the field. Authors covered in this volume are: Peter Straub, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury, Robert Aickman, Michael McDowell, Robert Bloch, David Case, Charles L. Grant, T.E.D. Klein, Ramsey Campbell, James Herbert, Joseph Payne Brennan, Michael Shea, John Collier, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Peter Tremayne, and the poetry of Richard Tierney, William Breiding, and Joseph Payne Brennan. This book is, in fact, the only place I found detailed information on Tremayne when I tried to do a bit of research on Zombie! The articles range from fair to excellent, and at $9.95 seems a distinct bargain: most such academic books sell for two to five times as much, mostly because libraries buy them and libraries are at the mercy of the publishers. A Rendezvous in Averoigne, by Clark Ashton Smith Arkham House, 473 pp., $22.95 Clark Ashton Smith is a favorite of mine. He is the author most responsible for getting me into the fantasy field: I found a British paperback of one of his short story collections as a child, and the first story I read was his classic "The Weird of Avoosl Wuthoqquan," about a greedy money-lender who buys some stolen gems, only to have them roll off his table and out the door. When he follows them, they lead him to his doom. It"s not so much Smith"s plots that thrill me, it"s his use of language, the strange and beautiful images he conjures up. His work has a bizarre vividness which has never quite been matched. Here is a brief passage from "Xeethra": "Wondering and curious, the boy peered into the inviting gloom of the cavern, from which, unaccountably, a soft balmy air now began to blow. There were strange odors on the air, suggesting the pungency of temple incense, the languor and luxury of opiate blossoms. They disturbed the senses of Xeethra; and, at the same time, they seduced him with their promise of unbeholden marvelous things." That is precisely the way I feel about Smith"s work. There is poetry here, and magic. Smith was a genius, and A Rendezvous in Averoigne is a terrific sampler of his weird fiction. Unfortunately I already have all the stories in it in other collections and didn"t find anything new (except the cor-rected text of "The City of the Singing Flame," which appears for the first time as Smith originally wrote it). Recommended, especially if you"re unfamiliar with the bulk of Smith"s work.

　D

　WEIRD TALES TALKS WITH CLIVE BARKER

　by Robert Morrish

　Weird Tales™: Now that you"ve had a chance to reflect on your directorial debut, would you say that you"re satisfied with how Hellraiser turned out?

　Clive Barker: For the money and the time? Yeah. It does what it does. For the most part, the reviews have been extremely kind. The audiences seem to have been having a good time with it, which is a major satisfaction. So I would have to say yes, I"m satisfied.

　One of the interesting things about watching the picture with audiences is seeing how it actually does disturb people. Of course there"s the laughter, of course there"s the tension release but ... it seems to work on people, it really seems to scare them, which is great. And there"s some images in the picture, like the guy with the hooks in his face, that I really like a lot. Hopefully some people will be dressing up as Cenobytes this Halloween.

　WT: Maybe we"ll see the creation of a whole Hellraiser subculture.

　CB: Absolutely. That would be great. At some of the signings I"ve been to, people have been coming up with drawings of Cenobytes. I think it would be great if some of the images from the movie become . . . images which recur in people"s heads and stick with them. So much of horror is about image...

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