In
which we take a closer look at each issue. For our capsule history of the
magazine, go here.
Volume
2, Number 6 (September, 1982)
Cover
Art: James Nazz
TZ
Publications, Inc.
President
& Chairman: S. Edward Orenstein
Secretary/Treasurer:
Sidney Z. Gellman
Executive
Vice-Presidents: Leon Garry, Eric
Protter
Executive
Publisher: S. Edward Orenstein
Publisher:
Leon Garry
Associate
Publisher and Consulting Editor: Carol
Serling
Editorial
Director: Eric Protter
Editor:
T.E.D. Klein
Managing
Editor: Jane Bayer
Assistant
Editor: Robert Sabat
Contributing
Editors: Thomas M. Disch, Ron Goulart
Design
Director: Michael Monte
Art
Director: Wendy Mansfield
Art
Production: Susan Lindeman, Carol
Sun, Lori Hollander
Production
Director: Stephen J. Fallon
Controller:
Thomas Schiff
Assistant
to the Publisher: Penny Layne
Public
Relations Manager: Jeffrey Nickora
Accounting
Mgr.: Chris Grossman
Accounting
Ass’t: Annemarie Pistilli
Office
Ass’t: Katherine Lys
Circulation
Director: William D. Smith
Circulation
Manager: Marie Donlon
Northeastern
Circ. Mgr: Jacqueline Doyle
Eastern
Circ. Mgr: Hank Rosen
West
Coast Circ. Mgr: Gary Judy
Advertising
Manager: Rachel Britapaja
Adv.
Production Manager: Marina Despotakis
Advertising
Representatives: Barney O’Hara &
Associates, Inc.
Contents:
--In the Twilight Zone: “A letter from
Machen . . .” by T.E.D. Klein
--Other Dimensions: Books by Thomas M.
Disch
--Other Dimensions: Screen by Ron
Goulart
--Other Dimensions: Etc.
--Other Dimensions: The ‘Unhappy Is He’
Quiz by William Fulwiler
--TZ Interview: Paul Schrader: Embracing
the Beast by James Verniere
--“The Red-Eyed Thing” by Jere
Cunningham
--“MTA Announces New Plan to Ease Subway
Congestion” by Gordon Linzner
--“Cruising” by Donald Tyson
--“The Long Ride” by John Skipp
--“Behind the Doors” by Susan Johnson
--“The Jane Fonda Room” by Jonathan
Carroll
--TZ Screen Preview: Creepshow by Robert Martin
--TZ on the Set: Something Wicked This Way Comes by Ed Naha
--“The Reaper” by Jim Cort
--The Essential Writers: Arthur Machen
by Mike Ashley
--Required Reading: A Machen Sampler by
Arthur Machen
--Show-By-Show Guide: TV’s Twilight
Zone: Part Eighteen by Marc Scott Zicree
--TZ Discovery: “A Machine to Answer the
Question” by Rod Serling
--Looking Ahead: In October’s TZ
--In
The Twilight Zone: “A letter from Machen . . .”
 |
| Arthur Machen |
-T.E.D.
Klein begins his column by recounting a letter Welsh author Arthur Machen (1863-1947)
received from an American autograph collector in 1921. The collector stated
that Machen’s autograph would be placed next to those of the great names in
literature, to which Machen replied that he did not belong in such company.
Such was Machen’s view of his writing career, which is highly regarded in
certain circles but never achieved the commercial success nor the readership
the work deserved. Klein laments the fact that Machen’s long writing career is
essentially represented by a few anthology pieces and hopes that the space
devoted to Machen in the issue can bring new readers to his work. Klein
previously displayed his own debt to Machen’s work in his World Fantasy
Award-nominated short story “The Events at Poroth Farm” (1972), which was
influenced by Machen’s “The White People” (1904), an influence which can also
be seen in Klein’s novel The
Ceremonies (1984), an expansion of the
earlier story.
-The remainder of the column is devoted to brief
profiles of the issue’s contributors along with thumbnail images. There is an
error in the case of the latter. The column includes a profile and picture of
Al Sarrantonio who does not contribute to the issue. Klein clears up the error
in next month’s issue when he explains that Sarrantonio’s story was initially
slated to appear in the September issue but was pushed back. Klein mistakenly
let the profile and image run in the September issue. There are some
interesting new contributors to the magazine, including novelist Jonathan
Carroll and “splatterpunk” writer John Skipp, as well as Jere Cunningham, an
author then experiencing success in the horror paperback market.
--Other
Dimensions: Books by Thomas M. Disch
-Disch
returns as books reviewer with a look at two novels, The Transmigration of Timothy Archer by Philip K. Dick and Friday by Robert E. Heinlein. Disch has written
several times on the works of Philip K. Dick. He provided the introduction to The
Little Black Box (1987), volume five of Dick’s collected stories (reprinted
as We Can Remember It for You Wholesale and
The Eye of the Sibyl) as well as an
introduction to the Gregg Press edition (1976) of Dick’s 1955 novel Solar
Lottery. Disch also wrote a poem, “Cantata
’82: An Ode to the Death of Philip K. Dick,” and reviews of Dick’s novels The
Golden Man, Valis, The Divine Invasion, and
The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike.
-Disch describes The Transmigration of Timothy Archer as “in essential respects another self-portrait, and one that succeeds
better at capturing certain characteristics of its author than did Valis.” Disch also feels that the novel is perhaps
Dick’s finest mainstream work but is being marketed as science fiction. Disch
brackets the novel with two of Dick’s later works written near the end of the
writer’s life, Valis and The
Divine Invasion, which Disch views as
“singularly difficult to consider apart from their author and his legend.” Disch describes Valis as “one of the most remarkable, not to say
strangest, self-portraits in all literature,” and The Divine Invasion as “set in that grungy, starveling,
astroturfed future common to many Dick novels, wherein a bumbling Unholy
Alliance between the Papacy and the Kremlin acts the role of Messiah being
smuggled by spaceship to the Bethlehem of Earth.”
-Disch describes Robert Heinlein’s Friday as “quite
the best novel he’s written in years.” Disch explores the deceptive nature of
the action novel genre which served as Friday’s model as well as the gender and sexual politics present in the work. Disch
concludes by stating that “Heinlein has exercised all his novelistic wiles to
embody his argument in a story as devious as an eel – so that even if one
disagrees there can be great sport in doing so.”
--Other
Dimensions: Screen by Ron Goulart
-Goulart
returns to fill in for regular films reviewer Gahan Wilson with a look at three
films: The Road Warrior, Garde à Vue,
and Wrong Is Right. The only film in which Goulart is remotely
positive in his critique is The Road Warrior which he enjoyed but afterwards felt guilty for enjoying (presumably
due to its outlandish characteristics). Goulart singles out the performance of
actor Bruce Spence in the film. Goulart is less forgiving of Garde à Vue, a French mystery film which Goulart felt was
clichéd, predictable, and which ultimately forgot to present a mystery, and Wrong
Is Right, a political thriller in which
Sean Connery plays an American television journalist who stumbles upon a
terrorist plot. Goulart states of the latter film, “what (director Richard)
Brooks attempts to do here is blend international intrigue, social satire, and
a little nuclear nightmare fantasy. Nothing works, mainly because he has
violated a basic rule of all three of the above categories – the rule that can
perhaps best be stated as, ‘There are only so many times you can kick a dead
horse.’”
--Other
Dimensions: Etc.
-This
miscellany column is headlined by a reader’s letter to Carol Serling inquiring
about her feelings on the unauthorized use of Rod Serling’s voice and likeness
in respects to marketing, to which Mrs. Serling replied that it has become
increasing irritating while also asking for reader assistance in ferreting out
unauthorized use so that orders to cease and desist may be issued. As an
illustration of the unauthorized use of Serling’s likeness, an advertisement
for an unnamed Rhode Island deli is presented which features an image of
Serling and advertising written in imitation of Serling’s Twilight Zone narrations.
The column also presents quotes from Ambrose Bierce (The Devil’s
Dictionary) and Clark Ashton Smith (The
Black Book of Clark Ashton Smith), a news
story about a policeman who was disciplined for a “joke” gone bad when he
fashioned a mock voodoo doll and pasted pictures of his superiors upon it, a
comic strip from Bloom County, a
mistake in the New York Times in
which writers L. Sprague de Camp and Lin Carter were stated to be married, and
two items of little interest: another use of “Twilight Zone,” this time to
describe lost luggage, and a notice of distinction for TZ Magazine being one of
only a few American periodicals to not have printed a photo of American actress
Pia Zadora in a string bikini. The column is capped off by the standard promise
of a poster of TZ cat Maximillian for any reader who sends along useful
material.
--Other
Dimensions: The ‘Unhappy Is He’ Quiz by William Fulwiler
-The
first in a semi-regular feature which presents quizzes on aspects of fantasy
and science fiction. This first quiz is centered on the first lines of notable
works of weird fiction, which encompasses horror, fantasy, and science fiction.
The aim is to identify the story or novel by its first line. The quiz is posted
below along with the answers beneath for readers who want to give it a try.
--TZ
Interview: Paul Schrader: Embracing the Beast by James Verniere
“Cat
People’s controversial director
confronts the ‘beast of sexuality’ in a film he calls ‘about as nostalgic as a
mugging.”
-Interviewer
James Verniere begins by providing a rundown of Paul Schrader’s career in which
trends in Schrader’s screenplays and films as a director are examined as well
as early critical responses to his remake of Cat People. The film was the
subject of a TZ Screen Preview in the April, 1982 issue and was reviewed by Ron
Goulart last issue.
The interview begins with Schrader’s reaction to
reviews of the film. Schrader, once a films reviewer himself, speaks on the
nature of roles in the exchange between critics and the filmmaker and the ways
in which those roles are disturbed and lead to bad reviews or misunderstood
films. Cat People is discussed in detail, from the heightened
use of violence and sexuality to the use of live animals, the lack of nostalgia
despite scenes of homage, challenges in writing the script, and aspects of the
production design, special makeup effects, and editing. Schrader speaks on not
having seen the original Cat People until
after he read the script for the remake. He also speaks on changes he made in
the script, his reluctance to label Cat People a horror film, and explains the use of surrealism and humor in the
film. The interview’s final section concerns the ways in which Schrader has
changed as a writer and director, focusing on his violent early work (Taxi
Driver, etc.) and the transition to more
optimistic work. A selection of critical responses to Cat People is also provided.
--“The
Red-Eyed Thing” by Jere Cunningham
Illustrated by D.W. Miller
“It lay in wait for him among the liquor
bottles. But maybe if he stayed drunk, he’d be able to forget . . .”
-A
vicious drunkard who abuses his daughter and infant grandchild gets his
comeuppance when he is left alone with a shadowy creature who lives in his
liquor cabinet.
-This
stark supernatural horror is a particularly grim illustration of the internal
becoming the external in the form of the monstrous. The story succeeds mostly
in demonstrating a level of utter wretchedness in both character and setting. Jere
Cunningham (b. 1943) is new to the magazine fresh off the success of two horror
novels, The Visitor (1979) and The Abyss (1981), that are finding new readers these
days on the wave of resurgent interest in 1970s and 1980s horror novels. Cunningham
published few short horror stories, placing a story in Modern Masters of
Horror (1981) and another in the seventh
volume of Charles L. Grant’s Shadows (1984).
“The Red-Eyed Thing” was reprinted in the first issue of Night Cry.
3
Rides into Terror:
--“MTA
Announces New Plan to Ease Subway Congestion” by Gordon Linzner
Illustrated by Randy Jones
“Leave it to those ingenious New
Yorkers. No halfway measures for them!”
-An
unlucky businessman, along with his fellow passengers, discovers that the city’s
solution to congestion on the New York subway is to bring passengers to the end
of the line and gas them.
-This
was an enjoyable story with a heart of pitch-black humor and an excellent
evocation of the claustrophobia-inducing congestion of crowds stuffed into
tight places. T.E.D. Klein informs us that, at the time of this issue, Linzner
“lives in modern-day Manhattan near the 72nd Street IRT Station.” Gordon
Linzner previously appeared with stories in the June, 1981 and November, 1981
issues but those stories were concerned with Linzner’s interest in feudal Japan
whereas this story is a tale of urban terror with the perfect blend of humor
and horror. Linzner would return to the pages of TZ with a story, “The
Peddler’s Bowl,” in the July/August, 1983 issue and another, “The Magistrate’s
Pillow,” in the March/April, 1985 issue.
--“Cruising”
by Donald Tyson
Illustrated by Frances Jetter
“The girls in the Chevy were a pair of
sultry sirens . . . and he wasn’t one to resist.”
-A
tough guy in a muscle car is baited by two young women in a pursuit along the
city streets but pays dearly for playing their game when the women reveal that
they play for keeps.
-This
conte cruel is a sharp shocker with a nasty ending. T.E.D. Klein described the
reaction of TZ Magazine staffers as “hair raising to stomach churning.” It is the
type of non-supernatural horror story which gained in popularity as the 1980s
drew on and is sometimes labeled “dark suspense.” The story was selected by
Karl Edward Wagner for The Year’s
Best Horror Stories XI (1983) and
reprinted in the Summer, 1985 issue of Night Cry. Tyson (b. 1954) has written a book-length study of H.P. Lovecraft as
well as several Lovecraftian stories, many of them published in S.T. Joshi’s Black
Wings anthologies.
--“The
Long Ride” by John Skipp
Illustrations by Bruce Waldman &
J.K. Potter
“It was a matter of life and death – and
throughout it all, his meter was running.”
-A
taxi driver works the dangerous night shift in the city, even after his death.
-This
was my favorite story in the issue, a nice combination of urban decay and
traditional ghost story which moves effortlessly from horrifying to
heartbreaking. The story is the professional debut of John Skipp (b. 1957) who
soon became known for a series of novels written with Craig Spector which came
to define the short-lived but influential Splatterpunk trend in horror fiction.
Those novels were The Light at the
End (1986), The Cleanup (1987), The Scream (1988), Dead Lines (1989), The
Bridge (1991), and Animals (1993). Skipp, described by T.E.D. Klein as
“a guitarist, singer, and rock-opera composer who recently moved to New York to
pursue a career in music,” published a lot of fiction in the pages of TZ and Night
Cry, much of it written in collaboration with
Spector, with stories in the September/October, 1983, December, 1986, and
February, 1988 issues of TZ as well as fiction in the Spring, 1986, Fall, 1986,
and Summer, 1987 issues of Night Cry. “The
Long Ride” was reprinted in the Winter, 1985 issue of Night Cry.
TZ Magazine became an important showcase for a more
daring and confrontational style of horror fiction, jestingly coined at the
Twelfth World Fantasy Convention (Providence, 1986) by David J. Schow as
“Splatterpunk,” after the Cyberpunk movement in science fiction. TZ published leading
authors of the movement including Skipp and Spector, David J. Schow, Joe R.
Lansdale, and Richard Christian Matheson. TZ’s companion magazine, Night Cry, was
created in part to showcase this new style of horror fiction. Although “The
Long Ride” is not a Splatterpunk story, the more confrontational nature of the
illustration by J.K. Potter (Artist Guest of Honor at the ’86 World Fantasy
Convention) for its reprint in Night Cry three years later is
indicative of the type of horror fiction gaining favor by the middle part of
the decade.
--“Behind
the Doors” by Susan Johnson
Illustrated by Harry Pincus
“Her world was beautiful and serene, but
something in it terrified her – something locked away.”
-A
young girl’s idyllic summer is interrupted by the constant presence of muted
voices behind doors, in closets and other concealed places. The girl comes to
realize the horror of her situation and the meaning of the voices in a moment
of terrible awareness.
-This
story read like a subtle and affecting dream and reminded me of an older style
of supernatural tale in which atmosphere and ambiguity were used in place of violence
and overt supernatural effects. The story is described by T.E.D. Klein as a
departure for Johnson, who to this point mostly wrote about animals for
specialized periodicals. Johnson did write a series of essays, “Running It
Back,” for American Fantasy Magazine in the late 1980s and placed a story,
“Painted Lady,” with Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Fantasy Magazine for the Summer, 1990 issue.
--“The
Jane Fonda Room” by Jonathan Carroll
Illustrated by Peter de Seve
“Even the star’s most fervent fans
learned something shocking when they entered . . .”
-Hell
seems like a pretty nice place to Paul Domenica. He even gets to choose his
room, the Jane Fonda Room. What’s not so nice is now Paul will get to spend
eternity in the room watching Jane Fonda’s films in an endless cycle.
-Jonathan
Carroll (b. 1949) is an American writer born in New York who has lived in Austria
since 1974. Much of his work is difficult to neatly describe as his novels and
stories contain elements of magical realism, horror, slipstream, fantasy, and the
mainstream. His first novel, The Land
of Laughs appeared in 1980. His highly
sought-after collection of short fiction, The Panic Hand, which includes “The Jane Fonda Room,” appeared in 1995 but did not receive a U.S.
edition. His collected stories, The Woman Who Married a Cloud, was brought out in 2012 by Subterranean
Press.
--TZ
Screen Preview: Creepshow by Robert
Martin
“George Romero and Stephen King pay
homage to the horror comics with a two-hour shockfest of Grand Guignol and
gore. TZ’s Robert Martin tours the set.”
-Robert
Martin reports from the set (Penn Hall Academy in Mooreville, PA) of the 1982
horror anthology film Creepshow. Creepshow was written by Stephen King, directed by George Romero, with makeup
effects by Tom Savini. It was widely released by Warner Brothers on November
12, 1982. The cast included Twilight Zone veterans Fritz Weaver, Jon Lormer, and Don Keefer, alongside Hal
Holbrook, Adrienne Barbeau, Leslie Nielsen, Ed Harris, E.G. Marshall, Ted
Danson, Tom Atkins, Stephen King, Joe (Hill) King, and Carrie Nye. The film was
adapted into a graphic novel by artist Bernie Wrightson (who also collaborated
with King on such projects as Cycle of the Werewolf, The Stand: Complete
and Uncut, From a Buick 8 (limited edition),
and The Wolves of the Calla) published
by Plume in 1982. A sequel, Creepshow 2, followed in 1987, directed by Michael Gornick (who served as Director
of Photography on Creepshow), written
by George Romero based on stories by Stephen King. Creepshow was the subject of the 2007 documentary Just
Desserts: The Making of Creepshow and
served as the model and inspiration for the 2019 Shudder series of the same
name.
Creepshow was the result of a meeting between Stephen
King, George Romero, and producer Richard Rubinstein in which they discovered a
shared love of the EC Comics of the early 1950s, particularly the horror comics
Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and The Haunt of Fear. King, Romero,
and Rubinstein initially set out to adapt King’s novel The Stand (a project which never came to fruition
though King’s novel was eventually filmed for a television miniseries) and
thought a good way to secure funding for that project was to mount a
lower-budgeted movie to show the profitability of their collaboration. Though
King wanted to make something budgeted in the Night of the Living Dead range, Creepshow was picked up by Warner Brothers who put money behind it to the tune of
eight million dollars.
The film consists of five stories and a connecting
narrative centered on a young boy whose forbidden horror comic comes to life to
tell the stories. Three of the stories and the bridging narrative were original
to the screenplay with King adapting two of his previously published stories to
round out the film. “Father’s Day” is a tell of revenge from beyond the grave,
“The Lonesome Death of Jordy Verrill,” adapted from King’s 1976 story “Weeds,”
is about a simpleton whose rural property is overrun with alien vegetation,
“Something to Tide You Over” finds murdered lovers returning from a watery
grave, “The Crate,” adapted from King’s 1979 tale, concerns a strange creature
discovered beneath the stairwell of a university hall, and “They’re Creeping Up
On You” is about a vicious germophobe battling an army of cockroaches in a high
rise apartment.
Robert Martin’s interview with King centers the piece
and various aspects of the production are discussed, from the development of
the script to the special effects (with particular attention paid to the
roaches used in the final segment) to the influence of EC horror comics. Martin
ends the article by suggesting that if Creepshow
proved a financial success (it did) then
it would help the cause of a Twilight Zone movie, which appeared the following year.
--TZ
on the Set: Something Wicked This Way
Comes by Ed Naha
“Ray Bradbury’s supernatural classic is
at last before the cameras, and the carnival is in full swing. Ed Naha reports
from the set.”
-The
article begins with a rundown of the complicated history of bringing Ray
Bradbury’s 1962 dark fantasy novel to the screen. Through interviews with
Bradbury and producer Peter Douglas (son of Kirk Douglas), Naha reveals the
long road which finally brought the project to Walt Disney Studios and director
Jack Clayton (director of The
Innocents).
The genesis of Bradbury’s novel is a childhood love of
carnivals and the films of Lon Chaney. Years later Bradbury was invited by Gene
Kelly to a screening of Kelly’s film Invitation
to the Dance, which contained a carnival
scene that fired Bradbury’s imagination. When Kelly expressed a desire to work
with Bradbury, the author scrambled to find a suitable story to adapt for the
screen. He lighted upon an unfinished story titled “The Black Ferris,” which
Bradbury originally planned to title “Dark Carnival” and use as the title story
of his first book. Bradbury published a story titled “The Black Ferris” in the
May, 1948 issue of Weird Tales, elements
of which made it into the novel, but this apparently is not the same story as
that which Bradbury referred to as “Dark Carnival.” From an afterword Bradbury
wrote to a 1998 edition of the novel: “I found a story, ‘The Black Ferris,’
that I had planned to use under the name ‘Dark Carnival’ in my first book. The
story was never finished, and the book Dark Carnival was published minus its title fantasy.” Bradbury wrote an eighty-page film treatment of the unpublished story
and gave it to Kelly who was ultimately unable to secure financing for the
project. Bradbury decided to turn his film treatment into a novel and spent the
next five years working to that end.
Several directors were at one time or another
connected with a proposed film adaptation, including Sam Peckinpah and Stephen
Spielberg. One director to whom Bradbury showed the novel in its early stages
was Jack Clayton, who Bradbury met on the set of John Huston’s Moby Dick. Clayton
was interested in the project but the time never seemed right until years later
when it was picked up by young producer Peter Douglas. Douglas first shopped
the project to Paramount but the deal ultimately fell through. Two years later
Walt Disney Studios called and expressed interest leading to production of the
project at Disney.
Naha gives a rundown of the cast and their roles in
the film as well as the logistics of building the Green Town set which is the
centerpiece of the film. Bradbury speaks on the difficulty of trimming the
screenplay down to a reasonable length as well as the emotional effect of
seeing his work come alive on set.
Something Wicked This Way Comes arrived
in theaters on April 29, 1983. Although the film was favorably reviewed it was
not a financial success, returning only $8.4 million domestically against a
budget of $19 million.
--“The
Reaper” by Jim Cort
Illustrated by Gregory Cannone
“How can you ignore a visitor who looks
so much like death?”
-A
man whose life is spiraling into misfortune finds himself shadowed by the
presence of a grim reaper.
-This
story’s greatest effect is the touch of melancholy attendant to a character
undergoing a series of unfortunate rounds in the turnstile of life. Jim Cort is
described by T.E.D. Klein as someone who “works for a Newark insurance firm and
keeps his rejection slips in a peanut butter jar.” Cort placed another story
with the magazine, “Pookas,” in the May/June, 1984 issue.
--The
Essential Writers: Arthur Machen by Mike Ashley
“From the forest of his native Wales to
the slums of Victorian London, he looked beyond the everyday to a world of
dread and wonder.”
-The
return of this semi-regular feature highlighting important writers in the fields
of horror and the supernatural means another excellent essay from literary
historian and editor Mike Ashley. Ashley’s focus this month is the Welsh writer
Arthur Machen (1863-1947), a novelist, essayist, and story writer best known
for a handful of tales of supernatural horror which have served anthologists
well down through the years. Ashley gives a thorough account of Machen’s life
and career beginning with his childhood in Wales, his early work as a humorist
and translator, his move to London and the period when Machen created most of
his best-known works, and on to Machen’s later life and career. The famous
episode of “The Bowmen” is recounted in which Machen’s tale of spectral archers
at the Battle of Mons was taken to be a true account. Machen’s marriages are
briefly discussed as are his years as a journalist. The profile concludes with
a look at Machen’s eightieth birthday celebration where the always impoverished
Machen was presented with a fund of money raised by his literary friends,
including T.S. Eliot, Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare, W.W. Jacobs, and
others. A portion of Machen’s appreciative speech is reprinted.
Machen is a hugely important figure
in the history of supernatural fiction but one who has never attained the sort
of literary stature of which he is deserving. Machen’s oft-reprinted tales,
such as “The Great God Pan,” “Novel of the White Powder,” “Novel of the Black
Seal,” and “The White People,” are widely celebrated but Machen’s writing
career was a long one and contained many gems for the attentive and patient
reader, including the novel The Hill
of Dreams, three volumes of autobiography,
and much quality work from later in his career. Machen’s importance can perhaps
best be seen in his influence upon subsequent writers, particularly on the two
American writers H.P. Lovecraft and Stephen King. Lovecraft stated of Machen:
“Of living creators of cosmic fear raised to its most artistic pitch, few if
any can hope to equal the versatile Arthur Machen, author of some dozen tales
long and short in which the elements of hidden horror and brooding fright
attain an almost incomparable substance and realistic acuteness” (Supernatural
Horror in Literature, 1927). King has
rated Machen highly throughout his career. His 2008 story “N.” was influenced
by Machen’s own story titled “N” (1936) and King also dedicated his 2014 novel Revival
in part to Machen, writing: “And to
Arthur Machen, whose short novel ‘The Great God Pan’ has haunted me all my
life.”
The recent Oxford collection The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories edited by Aaron Worth (2018) is an excellent
primer of Machen’s fiction. The fellowship organization, The Friends of Arthur
Machen, is an excellent place for information and news on Machen.
 |
| Illustration by Gary Harkins for Machen's "The White People" |
--Required
Reading: A Machen Sampler by Arthur Machen
“Scenes of beauty, mystery, and madness
by one of fantasy’s premier stylists.”
-Unlike
previous entries in this series, T.E.D. Klein elected not to reprint a single
story but to present excerpts from a number of Machen’s works. The idea was to
give a sense of Machen’s variegated prose stylings but I feel that reprinting in
full one of Machen’s quality but lesser-reprinted tales, such as “The Red
Hand,” “The Inmost Light,” or “The Shining Pyramid,” would have been a better
choice as none of the excerpts are designed to be self-contained episodes and
thus may feel incomplete to a reader. The sampler presents excerpts from the
following works:
-“The
Great God Pan,” the first part of which was published in 1890, the completed
work of which was published in 1894. The story tells of an experiment conducted
by a scientist on a feeble-minded young woman in an effort to open her “inner
eye” to the world which lay hidden beyond the ordinary. The result is that the
girl experiences the forest deity Pan, goes insane and dies. The result of her
brief coupling with Pan, however, is the creation of a supernatural femme
fatale who matures to terrorize London’s male population. The story was
denounced in some circles upon its initial appearance as it was accused of
representing the excesses of the decadent movement in literature. The excerpts
of the story are from the opening section, “The Experiment.”
-“The
Inmost Light” is the story of a scientist who extracts the soul of his wife and
places it into a gem. The wife, no longer human without a soul, must be killed
and the scientist dies a broken man. The story first appeared in 1894.
-“The
White People” is perhaps Machen’s most highly-regarded story. It is the tale of
a young innocent girl’s indoctrination into the wonders and horrors of the
occult. The story is told in the girl’s voice in the form of a notebook. The
story first appeared in 1904 though it was written in 1899. This is the longest
excerpt in the sampler.
-“The
Happy Children” was first published in 1925 and tells of a man who’s witness to
a procession of ghostly children who bear the stigmata on Childermas Eve.
-Far Off Things is the first volume of Machen’s autobiography, published in 1922. The
excerpt presents a passage in which Machen recalls his life in London as a
young man of twenty.
-The Hill of Dreams (1907) is a somewhat autobiographical novel about a young artist who
indoctrinates himself into the occult in his native Wales before moving to
London and dying after a night of debauchery. The novel is celebrated for its
prose and the power of its narrative.
-“A
Fragment of Life” (1904) concerns a suburban London couple’s transition to a
life open to the ecstasies of transcendental experience.
--Show-By-Show
Guide: TV’s Twilight Zone: Part Eighteen by Marc Scott Zicree
-Marc
Scott Zicree, author of The Twilight
Zone Companion, now in its third edition,
continues his early guide to the series with listings for the cast and crew,
summaries, and Rod Serling’s narrations for the following fifth season
episodes: “A Kind of Stopwatch,” “The Last Night of a Jockey,” “Living Doll,”
“The Old Man in the Cave,” and “Uncle Simon.”
--TZ
Discovery: “A Machine to Answer the Question” by Rod Serling
Illustrated by Julie Hechtlinger
“Broadcast live three decades ago, this
doomsday play demonstrates that, even at the start of his career, Serling’s
imagination was turned toward The
Twilight Zone.”
-This
radio script (from an earlier television script) by Rod Serling is prefaced by “A
word from the publisher about the following script . . .” in which Carol
Serling describes going through Rod Serling’s old scripts in an effort to find
interesting early work, especially early work which reflected Serling’s
interest in the type of subject matter which later became the focus of The Twilight Zone. Carol
Serling also calls for entries in the magazine’s Second Annual Short Story
contest.
-“A
Machine to Answer the Question” begins with the discovery of a dead scientist,
his head bashed in, with his assistant dead beside him from an apparent
suicide. A machine nearby is repeating a statement: “The answer is tonight. . .”
-A
flashback tells the story. It concerns a scientist, Dr. Bukoff, who creates a
machine which can solve any equation. His impetuous assistant, Dr. Chesney, is
prepared to ask the machine very difficult questions against the wishes of
Bukoff, who fears the machine is not ready for complex equations. When Chesney
asks the machine the nature of the unidentified flying objects seen in the sky,
the machine answers that these are alien spaceships. When asked from where, the
machine answers from Mars. When asked for what purpose, the machine states to
destroy Earth. The next inevitable question is when this attack from Mars will
happen. Bukoff attempts to stop Chesney from asking this question and Chesney
responds with violence, bashing Bukoff’s head in. Then he gets his answer: “The
answer is tonight . . .” A detective and a coroner are left to puzzle why
Chesney would kill Bukoff and take his own life.
-According
to Rod Serling: His Life, Work, and
Imagination by Nick Parisi (2018), “A
Machine to Answer the Question” was first dramatized in 1952 for Cincinnati
television station WKRC-TV’s dramatic anthology series The Storm, which was a showcase for Rod Serling’s early
scripts. The play was later dramatized
on the radio series It Happens to You, which
added an evocative opening narration hinting at things to come with its use of “the
twilight land of the unknown.”
--Looking
Ahead: In October’s TZ
-Next
time we’ll take a look at an issue which includes a new “Other Dimensions”
feature on spoken records by Ronald Smith, a new quiz, “The ‘So saying, he
vanished’ Quiz” by Chet Williamson focused on final lines from famous works of
fantasy, an interview with novelist and director Nicholas Meyer, features on Star Trek and
ruined Irish mansions, Rod Serling’s script for “In Praise of Pip,” and a
clutch of tales from such notable names as Avram Davidson, Robert Sheckley, Al
Sarrantonio, Melissa Mia Hall, and Gary Brandner. See you next time!
-JP
