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Saturday, July 28, 2007
Cemetery Dance Publications is the biggest and most successful small press horror publisher in business today. As such, they are an easy target for criticism. And of course, they are not without blame.
CD is behind on quite a few book publications and some customers are justifiably concerned, if not downright angry. I've been in communication with CD and they are determined to get everything in order and up to date.
Most have heard about a long illness and death in the family of CD boss, Richard Chizmar. Yes, that can be viewed as an excuse, but I for one completely understand. I lost my own brother to cancer last year and I know just how devastating and unbearable it is. And again, yes, business shouldn't suffer because of it, but CD is a small company. It's like a family business and I like that.
I think CD has learned from their mistakes. If you notice, they no longer announce books upon conception, but rather when they are about to go to the printer. There is a much shorter waiting period for them than in the old days. Some criticize that long-delayed books are on the back burner while new ones come to fruition. I guess it's easy to look at a business from the outside and say what should and what shouldn't be done, but I can't begin to imagine the numerous delays and problems in the production of a book. And Cemetery Dance does much bigger runs than most of the other publishers. Bigger runs, bigger problems.
It has been an enormously difficult year for Cemetery Dance and they have fallen behind on their schedule. But I know for a fact that they are busting their chops to get things right and I am confident that they'll catch up and stay caught up.
One big complaint about CD is their pre-ordering policies. They require payment in full for each sale. Most of the other companies do not charge until a book is ready to ship. Which is preferable?
Well, I kind of like paying in advance, if you can believe that. For an enthusiastic horror fan such as myself, it's easy to get in over my head with pre-ordering commitments. My Shocklines preorder list is finally getting lower, which is good. I used to look at it with a mixture of dread and anticipation. Mostly dread. When I pay in advance, it's so nice to get the book in the mail. It feels like I got it for free.
Shocklines was extremely convenient for a lot of us. You didn't pay in advance and you got a small discount in most of the cases. But when you are on CD's mailing list, you are advised of numerous sales and specials. It's not unheard of to save 40 or 50% on titles, which is not something you're liable to get from any secondary market.
I'm not happy that Shocklines is closing down. Not at all. But I am glad to be dealing direct with CD again. And I've heard hints of some incredible projects on the way that haven't been announced yet. I'm damned excited about what the future holds for Cemetery Dance and its writers and customers.
I said above that CD has learned from its mistakes. I think that the other publishers have also learned from the experiences and efforts of Richard Chizmar . CD blazed the trail for the current small press scene and they have given horror readers an unparalleled body of literature.
And then there is the magazine. I was crushed when The Twilight Zone Magazine folded, but Cemetery Dance was there soon after and it more than filled the vacant spot. The fiction, the articles and even the advertisements in CD are a wonderfully intimate look into the world of horror fiction. I became a Lifetime Subscriber over 10 years ago and I've never regretted that move.
If this sounds like I'm biased in favor of Cemetery Dance, that's because I am. I love the company and everything about it. Richard Chizmar and his employees are the best people in the world as far as I'm concerned. And while I'm not always in agreement about what is good in the current state of horror literature, the fiction that CD delivers is always top of the line. I'll take a chance on an untested writer if he or she is published by Cemetery Dance Publications. I can't say that about any other publisher.
One more thing: This plug is a labor of love and I am not in any way affiliated with Cemetery Dance. There is a banner on the message board of Horror Drive-In, with a link to CD's site. I do that out of love and support and I get no payment for it. Nor would I wish to.
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Saturday, July 21, 2007
God I love John Waters' original Hairspray movie. I'm a huge fan of all his pictures, but Hairspray is something special. Having grown up in Baltimore in the 1960's, I well remember The Buddy Dean Show, which is represented in Hairspray as The Corny Collins Show. I recall the hysteria and the way that families watched the show with fascinated obsession. Waters captures it perfectly, and his comic eye was never more shrewd or on target.
A big theme in Hairspray is racism and integration of blacks into what was considered an all-white television show. But Waters never gets preachy in it. His points are brought home with affectionate wit, which can be more effective than a sledgehammer effect.
Remakes abound today and almost everyone is sick of them. Everyone but the short-sighted teenagers that supposedly fill the movie seats. But this new version of Hairspray is not exactly a remake. Hairspray was adapted into a stage musical, which became one of the most beloved and successful in recent memory. The new Hairspray, which hit theaters this weekend, was based on that play. And it makes sense. People seem to love the play and the songs in it, but you can't take a play home. Now we can see it on the silver screen and later own it alongside our copies of the old Hairspray.
It's funny...who could have guessed that John Waters, The Prince of Puke, who made some of the most nauseating and disgusting movies of all time, would make such a cherished family classic as Hairspray? It has become one of the most beloved movies of all time. Some old Waters fans bristled at the notion of their hero doing a movie that everyone and their grandparents could watch and love. I said and continue to say, phooey on that. It would be boring for John Waters, or any other filmmaker, to continue to make the same type of picture over and again. With Hairspray, Waters managed to maintain his integrity and personal vision, while establishing himself as a genuine, marketable film director who enjoys making comedies his own way to this day.
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Tuesday, July 17, 2007
There is quite a bit of talk at Shocklines today about reviewers that only give glowing reviews. It's a good point and it was suggested that only doing positive reviews invalidates a reviewer. That he or she isn't serving the critical process duly.
Yes, I'm guilty of it and I emulated the best. Back when I pored over every page of The Twilight Zone Magazine, I used to despise the reviews of Thomas M. Disch. I thought he was a repugnant, smarmy, detestable asshole who delighted in putting a book or author down. It seemed more like cruelty than criticism to me and I've never been able to read a word of Disch's own writing because of it.
Disch thankfully left the magazine and when Edward Bryant took over the book review pages, for me it was like a breath of fresh air. Bryant seemed to wish to point the interested reader toward the good stuff, and there was plenty of it to go around. I never detected a hateful sentiment in his valuable reviews. He seemed to go against the critical process and I loved him for it.
Rest assured, I don't consider myself to have a fraction of the talent that Bryant has. I only love his style and it has been an inspiration to me.
I've been accused of being full of shit, but I don't give a damn. That's fine and I probably am. But I do not wish to be accused of being a critic, which I most certainly am not. Nor would I wish to be one.
I know I'm not the best reviewer out there and I think I've abandoned more half-completed reviews than ones I've uploaded. Some, or more precisely, a lot of them just come across like shit to even me, so I can't imagine that anyone else would want to read them.
This is a big part of why I started this place up. I love books and movies and I like to talk about them. But I don't like deadlines or anything like that. I like being my own boss here and if I feel like getting a review or anything up, I do it. If I don't, I don't.
One thing I give you my absolute word about: I do not give a blanket good review to everything that passes my way. If I praise something, it's from the heart. Everyone might not agree and I might not put it in the most eloquent terms, but it's genuine.
Quite a few people have had some very kind things to say to me about the site and its content. For that I am humbly grateful. I do this out of pocket to share the things I love. I hope that a few will read or watch something that moved me and that they will feel the same things. Maybe help sell a few books or movies. That's it.
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Sunday, July 01, 2007
My roots in reading are mostly in the science fiction genre. My older brothers were SF readers and I was introduced to the writings of Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein at a very early age. I took it much further than they did and I read hundreds of SF books. The ones I loved the most were from what is known as The Golden Age of Science Fiction.
The Golden Age is generally considered to have started in the late 1930's and ran up to about the year 1960. The one individual that is credited more than any as the instigator of that renaissance period was John W. Campbell. Campbell took over the editorial reigns of Astounding Stories (which he renamed Astounding Science Fiction) in 1938, after working as an assistant for about a year. Campbell was a hands-on editor, notoriously so in some cases, but his acute eye for material and his vision of what direction the field should go in had a greater influence than perhaps anyone else in the history of science fiction.
I also liked a lot of the pulp era fiction that preceded The Golden Age. Much of it was what some call Space Opera, not a lot different than a cowboys and Indian yarn with space suits and rockets instead of a tall hats and horses. But there was an unbridled energy and optimism in the best of the Scientifiction of the 1920's.
 The man responsible for bringing the first magazine that regularly published science fiction was Hugo Gernsback. In 1908, Gernsback created the first magazine dedicated to electronics, called Modern Electrics, which printed fiction in its pages. After various other publishing efforts, Hugo Gernsback unleashed the first magazine fully dedicated to science fiction: Amazing Stories.
Gernsback, in addition to being known as the Father of Science Fiction, also instigated what was later called fandom, by printing addresses of those that wrote to Amazing Stories. Enthusiastic readers began writing feverish letters to each other and in time started publishing their own amateur fanzines.
Hugo Gernsback also wrote his own fiction, most notably a novel called Ralph 144C 41+, but it was turgid stuff and he is mostly remembered as an editor. Many came to despise him, as his policy seemed to be to pay writers only as a last resort. This seems to be a heinous practice, but all lovers of science fiction owe the man a debt. The world of imaginative fiction would be far different had it not been for his efforts.
I'm reading a book now about the history of the science fiction genre. It's called The Futurians and it is one of the most fascinating, hilarious and entertaining books I've ever read. The Futurians were a group of fanatical science fiction enthusiasts that formed in 1938. Members of went on to become some of the most influential and celebrated writers and editors of the science fiction genre. Frederik Pohl, Donald A. Wollheim, Isaac Asimov, C.M. Kornbluth, Judith Merrill and James Blish among others were members. The Futurians book was written by one of its own, Damon Knight, who imbues his historical account with impish glee.
The Futurians were a remarkable group of individuals. By turns this book is wildly hysterical, sad, moving, shocking and obscene. Dirt poor and surviving by their wits, there were always dissent between rivaling factions, all of which were detailed in the numerous fanzines the group published and distributed. In the small world of SF fandom, they make stars of themselves and bit by bit, they became the professionals in the field that they knew they would eventually be. It's a profound story of the search for one's dreams and this motley group, that were often dirty, deranged and ill-mannered, found theirs.
More than just a writers' support group, The Futurians often lived together and were like a family. And as with all other families, there were huge altercations, betrayals and often downright hatred. But there was also a great deal of affection and loyalty.
Published in 1977, I read The Futurians when I was 16 years old. I was moved by it and it made me jealous. I wished that I had been born back in the time that is known as First Fandom. Shortly after I heard that there was a local science fiction organization in my town and I was thrilled. I contacted them and went to my first meeting with great excitement. That excitement was short-lived, as I found the group to be silly, trivial and boring. Nothing like the kind of group I'd want to be a member of.
Clearly fandom had gone in a different direction as the decades went on. And it's gotten even worse today. Much worse.
Last night I was in Barnes and Noble. Drinking a green tea, I perused the science fiction section. What I found there was complete depression.
Yes, there were some books by Frederik Pohl. Dick is more popular today then when he was alive. Heinlein continues to be discovered by new generations and for that I am grateful. Asimov can be found and so can Clarke. Frank Herbert too, but I've never been a big fan of his work.
But what of C.M. Kornbluth? Alfred Bester? Cordwainer Smith? Murray Leinster? Clifford Simak? Edgar Pangborn? Lester Del Rey? Jack Williamson? C.L. Moore? Algis Budrys? Eric Frank Russell? Henry Kuttner? Leigh Bracket? Avram Davidson? William Tenn? Poul Anderson? John Brunner? Stanley G. Weinbaum? Chad Oliver? Richard Wilson? L. Sprague DeCamp? Fritz Leiber? Damon Knight? John Wyndham? Nelson Bond? Heck, at this point I'm even feeling nostalgic about good old Mack Reynolds.
For the most part, the stuff on the shelves looks awful to me. The cover art is garish and tacky, looking like some kind of anime cartoon. That's unfair, because I haven't read many of the newer writers. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt though, and say that they are all worthy of publication and acclaim. But what of the ones that created the genre? The pioneers that built the field with their guts and brains. They are being forgotten at a rapid pace. Many of them worked for starvation wages and were poverty-stricken in their so-called 'golden age'.
I grew weary of science fiction in the early 80's. I had read a hell of a lot of the older stuff, but the new writers just weren't doing it for me. Hard SF was making it big and a lot of what was being marketed seemed to be Star Wars and Tolkien clones. I wanted something different and I made the switch from being a science fiction fan to a horror freak.
The 80's were a great time to be a horror fan. In fact, I consider it to be the Golden Age of Horror. All manner of fiction was being published, from atmospheric to ultra violent. And as with the Golden Age of Science Fiction, I like just about everything that was being published. Well, maybe not the z-grade Pinnacle paperback originals and the like, but the stuff that was being published by the serious editors in the field.
I stuck with horror through the hard years of the 90's and I still liked the majority of what I read. Even while I started reading a lot of suspense as well. I read very, very little SF in these years.
Now we're approaching the second decade of the 21st Century. Like with science fiction of the 80's the field is becoming too big. Fandom has become an enormous thing and everything but the kitchen sink is being published and touted as being brilliant. Looking around, the horror community isn't as comfortable and constructive as I once saw it to be. And the old science fiction classics are calling me back.
It has been decades since I read most of the great fiction from The Golden Age of Science Fiction. I miss it and it has been just about long enough ago that I need to go back. Re-read it and remember the awe and wonder I felt as a child. Will it hold up? Some, undoubtedly, will not. But I think that a lot of it will.
Don't worry. I'm not abandoning horror and I'll continue to read it, watch it and comment on it. And maybe in fifteen or twenty years I'll be yelling at all the young whippersnappers for neglecting the classic horror fiction from the70's, 80's and 90's.
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