Friday's "Forgotten" Books: Gerald W. Page, ed., THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES V (DAW Books 1977)

From the Contento indices:

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series V ed. Gerald W. Page (DAW 0-87997-311-0, Jul ’77, $1.50, 237pp, pb)
7 · Introduction · Gerald W. Page · in
9 · The Service · Jerry Sohl · ss F&SF Feb ’76
17 · Long Hollow Swamp · Joseph Payne Brennan · ss AHMM Jan ’76
27 · Sing a Last Song of Valdese [Kane] · Karl Edward Wagner · ss Chacal Win ’76
44 · Harold’s Blues · Glen Singer · ss Cthulhu: Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos #1 ’76
56 · The Well · H. Warner Munn · nv *
94 · A Most Unusual Murder · Robert Bloch · ss EQMM Mar ’76
107 · Huzdra · Tanith Lee · ss *
126 · Shatterday · Harlan Ellison · ss Gallery Sep ’75; Science Fiction Monthly v2 #8 ’75
140 · Children of the Forest · David Drake · ss F&SF Nov ’76
159 · The Day It Rained Lizards · Arthur Byron Cover · ss *
179 · Followers of the Dark Star · Robert Edmond Alter · ss Mystery Monthly Aug ’76
194 · When All the Children Call My Name · Charles L. Grant · ss *
214 · Belsen Express · Fritz Leiber · ss The Second Book of Fritz Leiber, DAW, 1975
227 · Where the Woodbine Twineth · Manly Wade Wellman · ss F&SF Oct ’76

I had been, at times feverishly, tearing through the collections and anthologies I could find in libraries and through Scholastic Book Services and bookfairs for four or five years by the time I had begun to get to go to bookstores on my own recognizance, as a not quite teen, when I happened upon this volume. Now, I knew there were mystery/crime fiction magazines and science fiction magazines still around, and even The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction hadn't completely escaped my notice by 1976 and I knew it contained at least some horror fiction, but this was one of the first compelling bits of evidence that the great years of horror fiction weren't solely in the past, that there were ongoing traditions and new as well as old favorite writers still enriching the form. In fact, most of the work by the older hands, including Bloch's pleasant story, were among the slighter contributions, though Wellman's story was both solid and fine, Leiber's "Belsen Express" was suitably nasty and Ellison's "Shatterday" was fully up to what I was hoping for from him. The folks new to me, and in 1977 most not so very far along in their careers, such as Wagner, Cover, Drake, Grant and Lee were the even happier discoveries, as was my first opportunity to read H. Warner Munn, whom I'd read referred to, but not yet read...and while his story, an original in what seemed like it should be a reprint-only anthology, was more Count of Monte Cristo adventure than horror story, it was great fun.

Wagner would, of course, take up the editorial duties after Page's last volume, the seventh, and continue till his premature and unfortunate (and foreseen) death; it was only a few years ago that I learned that Page had, in the '70s, worked for TV Guide, as I did till the recentish dismemberment of that organization (my usual joke involves a misquotation of Julius Caesar--TVG, actually unlike Gaul, is now in four parts). Page's four annual volumes had followed DAW Books's reprints, rather haphazard, of two volumes of a British annual split into three annual books...and while the DAW series died with Wagner, we currently still have two annuals, those of Stephen Jones and Ellen Datlow, which continue the tradition. But this great read, along with with the First World Fantasy Awards and "Hitchcock" volumes I've already cited (and the interstitial material in Ellison's and Asimov's anthologies and collections) helped draw my to the point where I'd be participating in such fannish projects as Patti Abbott's FFB, of which further examples can be found at her blog.