Sweet Freedom

Friday, June 24, 2011

FFB: NEW WORLDS OF FANTASY (1967) and its sequels (1970, 1971), edited by Terry Carr

The first New Worlds of Fantasy was one of the first anthologies Terry Carr would edit on his own, having already become the junior editorial partner for fantastic literature (including gothics and, soon, the significant Ace Specials line) at Ace Books and been paired with boss Donald Wollheim on the World's Best Science Fiction annual; looking back at them now, I'd failed to realize when reading them in the late '70s how much they attempted at least a reasonably focused sampling of the current fantasy fiction, particularly of the kind that has since been tagged as "urban" or contemporary fantasy, which seemed to be flourishing alongside the new emphasis on literary ambition in science fiction in the latter '60s and early '70s. Every volume features a story by Carr himself, which isn't simply egomania, as he was a brilliant and unprolific fantasist, and usually in this mode...his one collection of short fiction missed essentially only one major short work, "Virra," that would be collected in a special convention anthology a few years later. Jorge Luis Borges is in each volume, as are R. A. Lafferty and Avram Davidson (though Davidson is not represented, I'd suggest, by the best possible selections, even stressing their contemporary status), and there's no one in the books who is clearly, utterly out of place, and several you'd be hard-pressed to find too many other places, at least in anthologies of fiction, such as the fannish writer Britt Schweitzer or chess humorist Victor Contoski...I've yet to seek out anything else by Alfred Gillespie, and I suspect that Carr read the Leonid Andreyev in its then-recent Magazine of Horror reprint...happily, there's been at least a little more translated from him. I think Carr might've been the first to reprint Peter Beagle in a fantasy-tagged context, to the benefit of all. And the second volume particularly featured new fiction...even if it's very strange that it took until the third volume for Carr to collect a Fritz Leiber story.

A fine trio of books, and indicative of how Carr would continue his valuable, too short career as an editor, and his too sparse career as a writer of fiction.

from the Contento indices:

New Worlds of Fantasy ed. Terry Carr (Ace A-12, 1967, 75¢, 253pp, pb); In England as Step Outside Your Mind (Dobson 1969).

8 · Introduction · Terry Carr · in
11 · Divine Madness · Roger Zelazny · ss Magazine of Horror Sum ’66
18 · Break the Door of Hell [Traveler in Black] · John Brunner · nv Impulse Apr ’66
52 · The Immortal · Jorge Luís Borges · ss Labyrinths, New Directions, 1962
66 · Narrow Valley · R. A. Lafferty · ss F&SF Sep ’66
80 · Comet Wine · Ray Russell · nv Playboy Mar ’67
97 · The Other · Katherine MacLean · ss New Worlds Jul ’66
101 · A Red Heart and Blue Roses · Mildred Clingerman · ss A Cupful of Space, Ballantine, 1961
118 · Stanley Toothbrush [as by Carl Brandon] · Terry Carr · ss F&SF Jul ’62
133 · The Squirrel Cage · Thomas M. Disch · ss New Worlds Oct ’66
147 · Come Lady Death · Peter S. Beagle · ss Atlantic Monthly Sep ’63
164 · Nackles [as by Curt Clark] · Donald Westlake· ss F&SF Jan ’64
172 · The Lost Leonardo · J. G. Ballard · ss F&SF Mar ’64
190 · Timothy [Anita] · Keith Roberts · ss sf Impulse Sep ’66
203 · Basilisk · Avram Davidson · nv *
228 · The Evil Eye · Alfred Gillespie · nv The Saturday Evening Post Jan 15 ’66

New Worlds of Fantasy No. 2 ed. Terry Carr (Ace 57271, 1970, 75¢, 254pp, pb)

9 · Introduction · Terry Carr · in
13 · The Petrified World · Robert Sheckley · ss If Feb ’68
23 · The Scarlet Lady [as by Alistair Bevan] · Keith Roberts · nv Impulse Aug ’66
63 · They Loved Me in Utica · Avram Davidson · ss *
67 · The Library of Babel [1941] · Jorge Luís Borges · ss Ficciones, Weidenfeld Nicolson, 1962
76 · The Ship of Disaster · Barrington J. Bayley · ss New Worlds Jun ’65
93 · Window Dressing · Joanna Russ · ss *
100 · By the Falls · Harry Harrison · ss If Jan ’70
108 · The Night of the Nickel Beer · Kris Neville · ss Escapade Dec ’67
118 · A Quiet Kind of Madness · David Redd · nv F&SF May ’68
148 · A Museum Piece · Roger Zelazny · ss Fantastic Jun ’63
158 · The Old Man of the Mountains · Terry Carr · ss F&SF Apr ’63
168 · En Passant · Britt Schweitzer · ss Habakkuk Dec ’60
175 · Backward, Turn Backward · Wilmar H. Shiras · nv *
196 · His Own Kind · Thomas M. Disch · ss *
206 · Perchance to Dream · Katherine MacLean · vi *
209 · Lazarus · Leonid Andreyev · ss, 1906; Weird Tales Mar ’27
229 · The Ugly Sea · R. A. Lafferty · ss The Literary Review Fll ’60
243 · The Movie People · Robert Bloch · ss F&SF Oct ’69

New Worlds of Fantasy No. 3 ed. Terry Carr (Ace 57272, 1971, 75¢, 253pp, pb)

9 · Introduction · Terry Carr · in
11 · Farrell and Lila the Werewolf [Sam Farrell] · Peter S. Beagle · nv guabi #1 ’69
39 · Adam Had Three Brothers · R. A. Lafferty · ss New Mexico Quarterly Review Fll ’60
53 · Big Sam · Avram Davidson · ss Alchemy & Academe, ed. Anne McCaffrey, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970
61 · Longtooth · Edgar Pangborn · nv F&SF Jan ’70
107 · The Inner Circles · Fritz Leiber · ss F&SF Oct ’67
125 · Von Goom’s Gambit · Victor Contoski · ss Chess Review Apr ’66; F&SF Dec ’66
133 · Through a Glass—Darkly · Zenna Henderson · nv F&SF Oct ’70
165 · The Stainless Steel Leech [as by Harrison Denmark] · Roger Zelazny · ss Amazing Apr ’63
173 · Sleeping Beauty · Terry Carr · ss F&SF May ’67
187 · The Plot Is the Thing · Robert Bloch · ss F&SF Jul ’66
197 · Funes the Memorious [1941] · Jorge Luís Borges · ss Ficciones, Weidenfeld Nicolson, 1962
207 · Say Goodbye to the Wind [Vermillion Sands] · J. G. Ballard · ss Fantastic Aug ’70
227 · A Message from Charity · William M. Lee · ss F&SF Nov ’67

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog (nee Nase, though once that would've been Neis in some circumstances...see the accompanying plate of plate)

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

just another link: Tuesday's (into Wednesday's) Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: 21 June

Thanks, on yet another day of Blogger/Blogspot Acting Up, for your critique contributions and your readership (of course, since Wordpress was acting up on Sunday, Bloggy couldn't be left out of the fun for long--and even Mystery*File was giving some grief briefly). If I've missed yours or someone else's Overlooked post, please let me know in comments...thanks again!

Bill Crider: Kiss Me Deadly (1955)

Brian Arnold: Domestic Life

Chuck Esola: Grizzly II: The Predator (aka Predator: The Concert)

Dan Stumpf: House of Frankenstein; The Mummy's Curse

Eric Anderson: The Eye 3/10, The Uninvited (2003), Melancholia (2006)

Evan Lewis: "The Old Man of the Mountain" (the Betty Boop/Cab Calloway cartoon)

Graham Powell: The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp

Iba Dawson: Strange Days

James Reasoner: The Vampire's Ghost

Jerry House: Michael Shayne (1960-61)

Juri Nummelin: Finnish Western Society screening: Hell's Hinges, The Terror of Tiny Town, The Phantom Empire, Les Petroleuses (aka Frenchie King), The Wackiest Wagon Train in the West (aka episodes of Dusty's Trail)

Michael Shonk: Cliffhangers!

Patti Abbott: Rambling Rose

Randy Johnson: The Last Challenge

Rod Lott: Growin' a Beard

Ron Scheer: Broken Lance

Scott Cupp: The Whole Wide World

Steve Lewis: Anna Lee: Headcase

Todd Mason: Sons & Daughters (1996 sitcom), Dementia (aka Daughter of Horror); Go the F*ck to Sleep as read by Samuel Jackson (not too overlooked!); The Greatest Jazz Films Ever (sic)

Walter Albert: The Devil's Bait

Yvette Banek: Five Came Back; Back from Eternity

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: SONS & DAUGHTERS (2006), DEMENTIA (1953) (aka DAUGHTER OF HORROR), and other matters...

Much delayed, but my it's been even more of rollercoaster of late than usually. From work demands to food poisoning, life's rich pageant can be a bit too rich at times.

Sons & Daughters was one of the best sitcoms ever strangled in its crib; a partially improvised half hour on ABC (which has been in a race with Fox over the last decade or so to see how many actually good series they could commission and quickly cancel while carefully nurturing as much offal as possible), it featured the kind of dysfunctional extended family that it took the collective overrating of Arrested Development and the eventual dumbing-down to the level of Modern Family to make a success...when with a little support, ABC might've had the hit, or at least a solid supporting player, years back, with an impressive ensemble cast led by Fred Goss and Gillian Vigman, and not quite adequately represented below, but this gets across a sense of the quality of the show and range of characters:

10 episodes aired on ABC...the Seven network in Australia aired all eleven that were made, and not a hint of DVD action so far...

Bill Crider, in his posting of trailers that catch his eye, snagged that for Daughter of Horror a month or so back, and I'm glad he did, since this clearly no-budget obscurity from the '50s had completely gotten by me before, either under its proper title, Dementia, under which it was completed in 1953, or the 1956 distribution title, from Exploitation Pictures no less, under which it was circulated, with a fairly ridiculous, if happily sparse, narration track added by an enthusiastic Ed McMahon. The "real" film has no dialog, and while it has sound effects, they are most pretty clearly Foley effects added later...and what it does have is a soundtrack, and a fine one, by George Anthiel, as playfully avant-garde as anything he recorded for film (and not too dissimilar to his concert work) and featuring the wordless vocals of a young Marni Nixon, which makes room for a composition by Shorty Rogers and His Giants for "Wig Alley" in a brief sequence in a jazz club. It also has some excellent cinematography, for its budget, by William Thompson, who had a career almost exclusively in no-budget film, including work with Ed Wood and Dwain Esper...but even Vilmos Zsigmond started in the States with the likes of Ray Dennis Steckler. I've yet to see the slightly longer original cut, available on DVD from Kino, but Archive.org offers a good public-domain print of the slightly chopped version (below, and double-click for a full-screen image), which gives a sense of virtue made of necessity of this arty bit of work, involving the nightmarish, somewhat delusion-ridden night of a young woman in Los Angeles who might or might not have committed multiple murders. I'm going to have to pick up the Kino release...the inspiration of the likes of David Lynch by this film is almost certain.

My friend Tom Kraemer was somewhat surprised by the YouTubed version of this, since he hadn't come across the viral campaign Go the F*ck to Sleep (as it is coyly titled) had enjoyed over the last several months...Funny or Die, being professionals, actually paid for the right to post this from Audible.com (or so I assume), and so they have reader Samuel Jackson's little preface appended (you might not want to play this into the open air in uptight situations, such as many offices):

And Rick Robinson brought to my attention the compilation The Greatest Jazz Films Ever...which we agree hardly lives up to that boast, but does have a lot of impressive work on it, most of it from television performances (the least of the problems with its title)...I've seen almost all of these from other sources, and there is at least some complaint about the transcription quality of this disc, but if your can get it from a library (or, now, watch it online, in some countries or from "stateless" e-addresses)...you could do worse.

Guest Post: Tuesday's Overlooked Films: Eric Anderson on MELANCHOLIA (2006), THE EYE III (2005), and THE UNINVITED (2003)

Asian Horror: The Pretty Good, the Pretty Bad, and the Confusing

Eric Anderson

My last few movies have been recent Asian horror releases, including

The Pretty Bad: Melancholia (2006), a Japanese film directed, well, pretty badly by Takaaki Ezura. This is basically a Japanese doppelganger movie that makes the unfortunate mistake of trying to explain the doppelganging scientifically, by way of cloning technology or some such. But, while unfortunate, this is not all that important, as the movie is beset by serious flaws in pacing and cinematography, flaws far more irritating than a botched attempt to rationalize the irrational. To try to capture some sense of life with a doppelganger, Ezura opts for numerous very annoying visual and aural repetitions. For reasons I can't even begin to fathom, Ezura also chooses a visual style that looks a lot like home camcorder naturalism (without any shaky hand-held "realism," but with most of the movie looking kind of like bad low-budget teevee). I made it all the way through this one, but was Facebooking at the same time, because I had to.

The Pretty Good: The Eye 3, aka Gin Gwai 10 or The Eye 10. My Netflick actually came with the right movie but the wrong jacket, as there's another movie out there called The Eye 3. The one I watched is a 2005 Pang Brothers release, much of which is set in Hong Kong, but with an interesting mix of Cantonese and Thai dialogue. I didn't expect a third sequel to be any good, but this one surprised me. So far as I can remember the first and second Eyes, #3 bears little or no family resemblance to its precursors. One of the clever things about it is that it uses a "Ten Ways to Raise a Ghost" book as its organizing principle -- so that it's kind of like an omnibus, but with a reasonably clear narrative through-line. This is not to say that I followed the storyline with complete success, but I quite liked this movie's energy, inventiveness, and even wit. It has probably the best, or one of the best, dance sequences I've ever seen in a horror movie. And it also actually made me that bit unsettled here and there -- success!! Between the creative energy and some unpredictable twists and turns, this one worked pretty well for me.

Finally, the Confusing: The last film I watched was the Korean version of The Uninvited (2003), directed by Su-yeon Lee. I liked this film's grimness -- if you want a film that's absolutely committed to downtrodden, much-chagrined and humiliated characters who suffer terrible setbacks and can't look each other in the eye, this is the film for you. One thing I love about Asian horror is its brilliant ability to evoke bleak and empty urban landscapes and to give us houses that are far too unsettled to be homes. Watching these films, I sometimes almost feel like I'm in a Korean Edward Hopper painting. The Uninvited nails this; visually, it's another really striking Asian horror film, with fabulously depressing and alienating cityscapes. But the plot! At some point about an hour or so in, I finally just gave up trying to follow along. The movie has enough going for it that you can actually get something out of it even while in an advanced state of confusion. (You know that the characters are downtrodden, for example.) That said, it was pretty hard for me to keep track of some of the players, and it seemed to me that a couple of seemingly important pieces of the story got set aside, or maybe something was lost in translation, or maybe I dropped the ball, or something. Anyway, I liked this one pretty well. But I don't really know what the hell it was about.

(Eric Anderson is a George Mason University English and American Studies professor and horror enthusiast, among the other hats he wears.)