I have been asked on several occasions why I cross genres. In fact
on one occasion I was asked why I "stagger" between them. But you
know, that's how it was when I was coming up. I was seeing the movies, reading
the comics, and I was into the pulp magazines; so that even before I knew
what a "genre" was, it seemed to me that everyone was crossing them.
Take a gander at those old EC Comics, you'll soon see what I'm getting at. The
Haunt of Fear and Tales from the Crypt were "horror"
horror, but a good many of the tales in Weird Fantasy were "fantasy"
horror, and many of those in Weird Science were horror "SF."
Even H. P. Lovecraft – the Old
Gent of Providence himself, known primarily for his superb horror stories – had
mixed his genres: The Shadow Out of Time and At the
Mountains of Madness in Astounding Science Fiction, for
example. And then there was Ray Bradbury's wonderful Martian Chronicles:
whimsical, yes, and written as only Bradbury can write them, but the horror
undertones were there. In fact those stories were quite literally literary miscegenation, hybrids of all three species of our favorite fictions: Horror,
Fantasy, and SF. And, I might add, classics at that.
It appears to my mind that a
large percentage of speculative and fantastic fiction benefits hugely from
this miscegenation, the incorporation of horror motifs, and I'm not at all
unhappy to admit that most of my weird fiction has at least an element of SF in
it, and often a lot more than just an element. "Hard Science Fiction"
it most certainly isn't; "weird science" it may well be – but so
what? I've always believed that it's my job to entertain, not to edify, though
I would like to believe that every so often along the way I may even have been "guilty"
of a little of that, too.
Anyway, here it is: a sampler of
my Screaming Science Fiction from across the years, a large handful of my Horrors
Out of Space.
– Brian Lumley
Screaming Science Fiction is a full-length collection by horror master Brian Lumley, and
includes a nearly 20,000 word novella ("Feasibility Study") appearing
for the first time anywhere.
Bob Eggleton has graced us with the pitch-perfect cover, as well as numerous
black and white interior illustrations.
Contents:
- Snarker's Son
- The Man Who Felt Pain
- The Strange Years
- No Way Home
- The Man Who Saw No Spiders
- Deja Viewer
- Feasibility Study
- Gaddy's Gloves
- The Big 'C'
