T.E.D. Klein’s list of “The 13 Most Terrifying Horror Stories”

Forty years ago, in two issues of Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine dated May-June and July-August 1983, editor T.E.D. Klein published a series of ten lists under the overall title “The Fantasy Five-Foot Bookshelf.” The lists were by “three unusually erudite scholars (with unusually strong opinions),” including Thomas M. Disch (two lists), R. S. Hadji (four lists), Karl Edward Wagner (three lists), plus one by T.E.D. Klein.

Klein, Hadji and Disch played the game seriously, while Wagner took a more oblique approach, listing real rarities of dubious quality that quickly brought an often undeserved cachet for the Wagner-listed titles on the rare book market. This trend has only worsened over the years, and as they have been reprinted (often ignoring their still-in-copyright status), they have been over-promoted with nonsensical claims of being lost masterpieces. 

Thus the three “Wagner lists” have a disproportionate reputation over that of the other lists. Here I’d like to remedy that, and in a series of four posts, consider the ten lists by each of the four authors. 

First, I’d like to discuss the single list by editor T.E.D. Klein, “The 13 Most Terrifying Horror Stories.” Klein starts with four undisputed classics:

1. “Casting the Runes” (1911) by M.R. James
2. “The Novel of the Black Seal” (1895) by Arthur Machen
3. “The Willows” (1907) by Algernon Blackwood
4. “The Dunwich Horror” (1929) by H.P. Lovecraft

A number of Klein’s other selections are lesser-known stories, but often by well-known writers:

5. “Bird of Prey” (1941) by John Collier
6. “Who Goes There?” (1938) by “Don A. Stuart” (John W. Campbell)—
     this story is better-known as the basis for John Carpenter’s film
     The Thing (1982).
10. “First Anniversary” (1960) by Richard Matheson
11. “The Autopsy” (1980) by Michael Shea
12. “The Trick” (1980) by Ramsey Campbell

Klein’s final selection is, as he says, “natural rather than supernatural horror.” It’s a fine tale, but (to me, though it has been some decades since I read it) one more of suspense than of horror:

13. “To Build a Fire” (1908) by Jack London

Three stories are rather more obscure:

7. “They Bite” (1943) by Anthony Boucher
8. “ Stay Off the Moon!” (1962) by Raymond F. Jones
9. “Ottmar Balleau X 2” (1961) by George Bamber 

The Boucher story is well-written, but minor; it involves a man in the desert encountering the fact behind a strange legend. The George Bamber story presents one side of an epistolary story written by a madman. It is cliched and over-the-top. “Stay Off the Moon!” is a novelette, dated and silly in its basic premise. It would have made for a typical D-grade sci-fi movie in the 1950s, and one must have a similar dislocation of the intellect to read this novelette as one needs to watch such films.  

Klein closes with a handful of honorable mentions, three short stories and two short novels:

“Fritzchen” (1953) by Charles Beaumont
“Mimic” (1942) by Donald A. Wollheim  
“A Bit of the Dark World” (1962) by Fritz Leiber
Ringstones, by “Sarban” (John William Wall)
The House on the Borderland (1908), by William Hope Hodgson

The two short novels are both superb. “Mimic” is more of a short sketch than a story; its kernel idea was expanded with a plot to make the 1997 film Mimic. “Fritzchen” is an interesting tale about the discovery of a new (malevolent) creature. "A Bit of the Dark World" is a gem-- a meditation on perception, cosmicism, and the universe.  It is the best thing by Leiber that I have read (and I've read several books by him). Wow!

All in all, fairly worthy selections, though I think the Raymond F. Jones and George Bamber stories can be skipped.

Klein’s list, with all his annotations, is reprinted in his Providence After Dark and Other Writings (2019).

 

The Ship That Sailed to Mars: A Centenary

The Ship That Sailed to Mars is a book of legendary beauty and equally legendary rarity, written and illustrated by the English-born artist William Mitcheson Timlin (1892-1943) who spent much of his life in South Africa. A large oversized book, with the text hand-lettered by the author/illustrator, and with 48 full-color plates, the book was originally issued in November 1923 an edition of only 2,000 copies (priced astronomically at 42s. each, with 250 of these shipped to America and sold by Frederick A. Stokes for $12 per copy).

The story is basically a fairy-tale, despite the science-fictional overtones of the title. It tells of an elderly inventor who designs and—with the help of fairies—builds a huge ship (that looks almost exactly like a terrestrial sailing ship) which he sails to Mars, a planet with its own fairies who have troubles of their own, which the inventor helps to solve. The story is in many ways slight, but with the added dimension of the Rackham-esque illustrations, one finds a unique charm in the book. Timlin made pictures for a second book, The Building of a Fairy City, which was regrettably never published, though some of the artwork was reportedly issued in South Africa on picture postcards.*

There have been a number of reprints of The Ship That Sailed to Mars in the modern era, some elegant, if overdone (Easton Press), and others less special (StoneWall Publications), but hands-down the nicest and best value for its price is the one from Calla Editions (an imprint of Dover) ISBN: 9781606600177, with an Introduction by artist John Howe.

Ray Russell has a short video here showcasing a copy of the original 1923 edition, one hundred years old this month.  

*The first two paragraphs are reprinted from my Late Reviews (2018).

The City Moated and Walled, by W. Todd

 The City Moated and Walled,* by W. Todd, was published in London by Hodder and Stoughton in late March 1930. It is a strange book, telling the story of Rolf Micklewright, a young man of Bembis, whose uncle spent twenty years across the world in Granaloni, and from him Micklewright learned the language of Granaloni. This comes in handy when Micklewright is drugged and kidnapped, and then taken to Moated-and-Walled in Granaloni, where he is to serve the young girl Empress. The kidnapping was set-up by the curious Dr. Zurimai, the heathen clergyman who dominates the Empress. Zurimai has by some magical means also caused Micklewrigth to forget everything but his name. He is then sent to spy on some aristocratic revolutionaries, including Mr. Gloaming and the Klinbalek family, one of whose daughters, Saffery, soon catches Micklewright’s interest. But even before that Micklewright quickly switches sides, and thereafter has a number of adventures which take on the feeling of dreams, as, eventually, he regains his memories and returns to Bembis.

This is the only book by “W. Todd”, about whom nothing would be known save for the fact that in registering the U.S. copyright, the publisher gave the author’s full name as Winifred Todd, and noted she was a resident of London.

The dust-wrapper illustration, by J[ohn] Morton Sale (1901-1990) [an illustrator of Lewis Carroll, among other books, see here ], depicts the Empress of Granaloni with a striking red dress, and her head framed by a ring of peacock feathers. It is presumably Dr. Zurimai who sits at her left. 

*I know the title come from a line in a poem by  Longfellow, but it doesn't otherwise seem to have any relation.

Try to Race the Storm

It was hardly to be expected that I would resist a booklet in pale orange wrappers entitled British Thunderstorms, with the subtitle ‘Continuing Summer Thunderstorms’ (1935), edited by S. Morris Bower, as part of the Survey of Thunderstorms in the British Islands, Estab. 1924. The publisher of this went under various names, latterly as The Thunderstorm Census Organisation.

The archipelago of Britain and Ireland often has changeable weather conditions, of abiding interest to its inhabitants, and from Edwardian times at least there was a great deal of amateur enthusiasm in observing and recording these. I first encountered this in a splendid book, British Rainfall 1910, which I found at the Ilkley Book Fair in the Winter Gardens of the little spa town. The narrative reports in this struck me as so characterful, with a mood of melancholy about them, that I selected and arranged some for my found poem ‘Rain Instruments’.

I later chanced upon a copy of Symons’s Meteorological Magazine for 1909, which listed articles on a white rainbow, black rain, and an Easter snowstorm, and had headings which sounded like the titles of short stories: ‘Hot Wind at Lynmouth’, ‘Summer Frosts’, ‘Weather Reports of a Peach Tree’. I depicted just such a weather periodical, The Barograph, in my story ‘Armed for the Day of Glory’ (in This World and That Other, a shared book with John Howard, Sarob, 2022).

In his Foreword to this issue of British Thunderstorms, written from Langley Terrace, Oakes, Huddersfield, on October 8^th, 1938, S. Morris Bower thanks the 1,217 voluntary recorders who have contributed to the survey. He also reveals that there was a sister publication to Summer Thunderstorms, entitled Winter Thunderstorms (which sounds even better), but the two are now amalgamated in this new form. He acknowledges the help not only of the Met Office, but of the Elder Brethren of Trinity House, the Commissioners of Northern Lights, and the Commissioners of Irish Lights. All three of these sound like the leaders of revivalist sects, but are in fact lighthouse services.

The journal, as might be expected, has a lot of tables, charts and maps. But there are also narrative reports, starting with the Fifth Annual Report for 1935, a synopsis of storms throughout the year: ‘The Summer of 1935 was noteworthy for its thunderstorms. The total number of days with thunder or lightning in the British Isles reached 122 . . . it is interesting to observe . . . an unusually large amount of thunder in June 1935’.

More detailed notes on the months follow, with local information. Here there was an exciting allusion to my own county of origin: ‘The series of thunderstorms which culminated in the Great Northamptonshire Hailstorm of September 22nd, 1935 are of special interest because they indicate that four squall lines passed over Southern Britain during the preceding hours’ (italics in original). Four squall lines eh? Sadly, we do not hear more of the Great Hailstorm.

Next follow the special interest reports, starting with a regular ‘Report on Trees Struck by Lightning’: there were 59 reports for 1935. This naturally put me in mind of the song ‘The Lightning Tree’, as performed by The Settlers, with its very catchy chorus (‘Grow, Grow, The Lightning Tree, it’s never too late for you and me’). The most frequently struck (because, I suspect, tallest and commonest) were Ash, Oak, Elm, and Poplar, but there were also two each of Cedar, Sweet Chestnut, Sycamore and Wellingtonia. However, there are more thrills to come in the section on ‘Strokes of special interest, 1935’, as witness this report:

‘Lightning struck in the middle of a field of Brussels sprouts in Leicestershire (16^th June, 1935). The young plants over an area of about ten square yards were killed and there was a small hole in the centre about “ten inches round and about ten inches deep”. A boy dug into the hole to try to find a “thunderbolt”, and reported discovering some blackened stones: but the farmer himself did not see them and was distinctly sceptical — “You know what boys are!” he said.’

It sounds like a Young Adult Fantasy: The Boy Who Dug for Thunderbolts. And I suspect that boy would go far. No doubt he sold or swapped some of his scorched stones, claimed to be thunderbolts, to his friends, in return for cigarette cards, stamps or marbles.

A new specialist section is a ‘Report on Damage to Land Transport’, which discusses lightning strikes on bicycles, trams, cars and carts. There had been 19 reports, supporting the idea that ‘such damage is comparatively rare’, although two motorists and one cyclist had been left in a shocked or dazed condition, as one might well imagine. In another case ‘the roof of a saloon car was marked with a tree-like pattern after the flash’, but the occupants were uninjured. Nevertheless, despite the rarity, the report offers advice to drivers, compiled by Mr S T E Dark:

‘Try to race the storm, where speed permits, but failing this make for a well-wooded region, and drive the car in under a beech tree for preference or, failing a beech, under some other smooth-barked tree such as a sycamore or horse-chestnut’.

I am sure I have read some Thirties thrillers where our clean-cut hero and his flapper girlfriend ‘try to race the storm’ through the narrow English lanes at night. Perhaps they had read Mr Dark’s advice. He is listed in the journal as Sidney T.E. Dark, M.Sc., M.R.S.T., of 21 Fernwood Avenue, Streatham, London SW16, and I think this must be author and journalist of the same name, who was for a while the editor of John O’London’s Weekly, the book magazine, and the Church Times. ‘Try to race the storm’ has rather the flavour of a maxim for life generally.

After all these salutary examples there is, shrewdly enough, a back cover advertisement for lightning conductors from R C Cutting & Co, of Vulcan House, 56 Ludgate Hill, EC4, contractors and advisers not only to The Lords of the Admiralty and the Office of Works, but also the Deans and Chapters of Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, for lightning may strike the high and the low, the sacred and the profane. And just in case, they also contract for ‘All Lofty Structural Repairs’.

(Mark Valentine)