Jean Ray, known as the Belgian Poe, was born today in 1887. I have written about Ray before, particularly in my essay, The Weird Fiction of Jean Ray. This essay contains a short biography and reviews of Ray’s works that were available in English at the time. Since then Wakefield press has released two more works by Ray, The Great Nocturnal and Circles of Dread, and plans to release more.
Read MoreHorror author, Graham Masterton, turned seventy-five today. With nearly one hundred novels under his belt and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers' Association on his mantel, Mr. Masterton can look back on quite the career.
Read MoreKarl Edward Wagner was born on this date seventy-five years ago. By the age of thirty, he was making waves in both the genres of Horror and of Sword and Sorcery. At the time of his untimely death in 1994, he was already a legend.
Read MoreIn the second part of Matthew Ilseman’s exploration of horror stories set at sea, he reviews tales by H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, and Jean Ray.
Read MoreSince the beginning of time the sea has inspired fear. It covers most of the earth and what lies beneath it we may never truly know. Anything can reside beneath the waves. This series of posts will look at horror stories set on or around the sea by many authors.
Read More‘Tis the Witching Season and it seems apropos to run a post on Frank Frazetta’s macabre artwork here at the DMR Blog. Frank is, of course, known for his brawny barbarians and bodacious babes, but he had an iron in the horror fire starting in the early-mid 1960s, before he was doing actual Sword and Sorcery art.
Read MoreKarl Edward Wagner will probably be best remembered as the creator of the hero-villain Kane, but he always considered himself a horror writer. Even when he was writing heroic fantasy, Karl’s Kane tales were horror at heart.
Read MoreWhat is it about Edgar Allan Poe? A writer of morbid poems and tales of terror who died 170 years ago, Poe stands today virtually without equal in the canon of American literature. Only Mark Twain and perhaps Ernest Hemingway can lay claim to anything like a similar stature in both critical opinion and popularity. Why should he be so central to our imagination now, in the 21st century?
Read MoreAlgernon Blackwood was born one hundred and fifty years ago today in the English shire of Kent. Blessed with a name seemingly custom-made for an author of weird fiction, he went on to influence generations of horror and fantasy writers.
Read MoreThe reader is treated to a well-paced array of surprisingly sensational developments, including a ghost, a sorceress, a satanic rite, and the protean, unknowable Thing that rises from the pit to harass and slay the poor humans trapped in Deeping Hold.
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