Let’s talk about horror.

Everyone has their preferences when it comes to genre, which makes sense; there are only so many hours in the day, and time plus one’s temperament equals a preference for literature that seeks to entrance, excite, and/or titillate. We also like to be scared sometimes, or at the very least uneased. I’ll be honest with you, when someone tells me they simply have no appetite for horror I’m tempted to give them the side-eye. As far as my own genre preferences go I would put horror only behind science fiction—and not by much. The key difference is that I can enjoy SF at really any length, whereas I very much believe horror is at its best at short story and novella lengths, which is an old-school belief not least because the novel has dominated horror since at least the ’80s.

The conventional narrative (and I do think this is more or less accurate) is that prior to the ’70s, horror had at most fleeting moments of mainstream recognition. There were exceptions, but they were exceptions that proved the rule. Maybe ever few years you got a horror novel that reached bestseller status. But then, in the ’70s, what had been a once-in-a-blue-moon thing became something of a trend, arguably started when William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist and Richard Matheson’s Hell House both came out in 1971. In the film world the influx of horror can be explained by the advent of the MPAA rating system combined with independent studios like New World Pictures pumping out exploitation cinema by the truckload, but in the literary world the rise of horror is harder to explain—except for one thing. Stephen King had been writing since the late ’60s, but his debut novel Carrie became a bestseller when it was published in 1974, and the crazy part is that noy only did King (a snotty 26-year-old at the time) gain overnight success, he managed to sustain it with more hits. The meteor shower that was King in the ’70s brought a change to horror that it had not seen before, and frankly will probably never see again. Many writers (some of whom are more elegant than King) would hop on the horror bandwagon, but none can be said to have reached King’s level.

While the horror novel was in, the short story was not so much. For most of the ’70s The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was the only genre magazine to publish horror with any regularity. Magazine of Horror did mostly reprints, and by 1972 was no more, while Weird Tales had a brief revival in the early ’70s, only to go dormant again. So it was up to F&SF to pick up the slack. For the magazine’s 75th anniversary, and in covering short stories from the ’70s, we’ll be focusing more on horror, dark fantasy, and spooky science fiction. These are mostly the usual suspects when it comes to horror, but there are one or two surprises.

For the short stories:

1. “Longtooth” by Edgar Pangborn. From the January 1970 issue. One of the most criminally overlooked SF writers of the ’50s through the ’70s, Pangborn wrote some pretty touching fiction that went against the rather hard-headed norm of the times. He would spend the last decade or so of his life on a post-apocalyptic continuity, but “Longtooth” is both a standalone and detour into horror.
2. “The Smell of Death” by Dennis Etchison. From the October 1971 issue. Etchison started writing in the ’60s, but he gained more prominence in the following decade as the horror boom for film and novels had kind of a trickle-down effect. He would also later become acclaimed as an editor, on top of writing, winning the World Fantasy Award multiple times for his horror-centered anthologies.
3. “In the Pines” by Karl Edward Wagner. From the August 1973 issue. Wagner debuted in 1970 and would remain a mainstay of horror and heroic fantasy until his untimely death in 1994. Last time we read Wagner it was one of his Kane stories, but “In the Pines” is an early example of his mastery of scares. I believe this also marks his only appearance in the pages of F&SF.
4. “The Same Dog” by Robert Aickman. From the December 1974 issue. Aickman has a reputation as a writer’s writer, with good reason, being your favorite horror writer’s favorite horror writer. He debuted in the early ’50s but remained a hidden gem in the UK until the ’70s. Aickman would appear in F&SF several times throughout this decade, with “The Same Dog” being an original publication.
5. “The Ghastly Priest Doth Reign” by Manly Wade Wellman. From the March 1975 issue. Wellman remained a presence in American fantasy writing for six decades, and especially in the latter half worked to evoke the rural mysteries of his adopted home state of North Carolina. For better or worse Wellman’s most authentic fiction is distinctly Southern in flavor, this story being one example.
6. “My Boat” by Joanna Russ. From the January 1976 issue. Known much more for her SF and criticism, a fair amount of Russ’s fiction (especially early on) was horror, such that even some of her SF oozes with a certain existential dread. She even wrote a few stories set in the Cthulhu Mythos, of which “My Boat” is one. I suspect this will be a Lovecraft pastiche with a Russ-type twist or two.
7. “Manatee Gal Ain’t You Coming Out Tonight” by Avram Davidson. From the April 1977 issue. This will be the first time we’ll be reading a story by one of F&SF‘s editors. Davidson was already a respected writer when he took over F&SF for a few years in the early ’60s, injecting the magazine with eccentricity. This story is actually the second in an episodic series starring Jack Limekiller.
8. “Hear Me Now, My Sweet Abbey Rose” by Charles L. Grant. From the March 1978 issue. Grant got his start in the ’60s and would soon become one of the moodier and more experimental horror writers of the following decade, winning awards for his efforts. Truth be told, I’ve not been keen on the Grant I’ve read, but as I’ve said before, I’m usually open to giving authors another chance.
9. “Red as Blood” by Tanith Lee. From the July 1979 issue. This is the third consecutive time Lee’s appearing on my October slate, although this won’t be the case next year for reasons I’ll give… in due time. But for now it’s safe to say I’ve warmed up to Lee, gradually, and can see how for decades she was a mainstay of horror and dark fantasy. “Red As Blood” marked her first appearance in F&SF.

Won’t you read with me?