Reddit reviews The Dark Descent (NO. 1)
We found 5 Reddit comments about The Dark Descent (NO. 1). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Tor Books
Reddit reviews The Dark Descent (NO. 1)We found 5 Reddit comments about The Dark Descent (NO. 1). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Some of these are a bit older and aren't all single-author collections, but they contain some really high-quality stuff:
Prime Evil by Douglas Winter (ed)
Dark Forces by Kirby McCauley (ed)
Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe by Thomas Ligotti
The Dark Descent by David Hartwell (ed)
Alone with the Horrors by Ramsey Campbell
Dark Gods by T.E.D. Klein
Wormwood by Poppy Z Brite
Black Evening by David Morrell
Over the past two weeks, I have been slowly making my way through The Dark Descent anthology that was put together by David G. Hartwell back in the 80s. At a little over 1000 pages, it’s contains over 50 short stories and novellas and it quite literally has dread for days.
Contents if you’re interested:
Introduction by David G. Hartwell
Part 1
“The Reach” by Stephen King (1981)
“Evening Primrose” by John Collier (1940)
“The Ash-Tree” by M. R. James (1904)
“The New Mother” by Lucy Clifford (1882)
“There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding” by Russell Kirk (1976)
“The Call of Cthulhu” by H. P. Lovecraft (1928)
“The Summer People” by Shirley Jackson (1950)
“The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” by Harlan Ellison (1973)
“Young Goodman Brown” by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1835)
“Mr. Justice Harbottle” by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1872)
“The Crowd” by Ray Bradbury (1943)
“The Autopsy” by Michael Shea (1980)
“John Charrington’s Wedding” by E. Nesbit (1891)
“Sticks” by Karl Edward Wagner (1974)
“Larger Than Oneself” by Robert Aickman (1966)
“Belsen Express” by Fritz Leiber (1975)
“Yours Truly, Jack the Ripper” by Robert Bloch (1943)
“If Damon Comes” by Charles L. Grant (1978)
“Vandy, Vandy” by Manly Wade Wellman (1953)
Part 2
“The Swords” by Robert Aickman (1969)
“The Roaches” by Thomas M. Disch (1965)
“Bright Segment” by Theodore Sturgeon (1955)
“Dread” by Clive Barker (1984)
“The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe (1839)
“The Monkey” by Stephen King (1980)
“Within the Walls of Tyre” by Michael Bishop (1978)
“The Rats in the Walls” by H. P. Lovecraft (1924)
“Schalken the Painter” by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1935)
“The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1892)
“A Rose for Emily” by William Faulkner (1930)
“How Love Came to Professor Guildea” by Robert Hichens (1897)
“Born of Man and Woman” by Richard Matheson (1950)
“My Dear Emily” by Joanna Russ (1962)
“You Can Go Now” by Dennis Etchison (1980)
“The Rocking-Horse Winner” by D. H. Lawrence (1926)
“Three Days” by Tanith Lee (1984)
“Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor (1955)
“Mackintosh Willy” by Ramsey Campbell (1979)
“The Jolly Corner” by Henry James (1908)
Part 3
“Smoke Ghost” by Fritz Leiber (1941)
“Seven American Nights” by Gene Wolfe (1978)
“The Signalman” Charles Dickens (1866)
“Crouch End” by Stephen King (1980)
“Night-Side” by Joyce Carol Oates (1977)
“Seaton’s Aunt” by Walter de la Mare (1922)
“Clara Militch” by Ivan Turgenev (1897)
“The Repairer of Reputations” by Robert W. Chambers (1895)
“The Beckoning Fair One” by Oliver Onions (1911)
“What Was It?” Fitz-James O’Brien (1859)
“The Beautiful Stranger” by Shirley Jackson (1968)
“The Damned Thing” by Ambrose Bierce (1893)
“Afterward” by Edith Wharton (1910)
“The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood (1907)
“The Asian Shore” by Thomas M. Disch (1970)
“The Hospice” by Robert Aickman (1975)
“A Little Something for Us Tempunauts” by Philip K. Dick (1974)
The Dark Descent is a very useful anthology:
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Descent-Clive-Barker/dp/0312862172/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1419410800&sr=1-1&keywords=dark+descent
I've seen quite a few weird fiction readers in /r/printsf. I'll ask if I can advertise there.
I just finished Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural and it was excellent. Last week I also read Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer which I thoroughly enjoyed.
I haven't decided what to read next. I was looking at Dark Descent or a collection of Kafka stories which includes one of my favorite weird stories, In the Penal Colony.
In my experience, horror works best with short stories. And even if you disagree, anthologies are brilliant for exploring the genre in manageable pieces.
The Dark Descent is a very good compilation.
I also have a Penguin Book of Ghost Stories which I'm very fond of -given to me by a now-dead grandmother when I was but a wee lad, and all that-; its sister Book of Horror Stories is not quite as good but worth the read, if only to round out your sojourn with some more obscure stories.
If you want to look into H.P. Lovecraft, Necronomicon is a very high quality book for its price.