Inferno – edited by Ellen Datlow
You know that feeling of happiness you get when someone passes you at Mach 8 on the interstate and then you see them pulled over by the State Patrol for speeding? That’s kind of how I felt when I read Inferno and thought about SciFi Channel’s decision to be stupid. I suppose it seemed like a “seemed like a good idea at the time” thing. Enough said about that.
Inferno is the utmost in genre goodness from the heart of the horror annals. Although there is no ‘theme’ to this anthology, there is an overarching sense of taking the best of every type of genre story, mix it with odd circumstance and then mashing it into a piece that cannot be put into a stereotype of horror fiction (zombies, cultists etc.) Instead, the anthology gives those of us who wish to send people to good examples of horror fiction a text book, of sorts, to learn from. There is something for every type of genre reader and can serve as a gateway to the dark fantasy/horror genre.
‘Riding Bitch’ by K.W. Jeter, sets the stage for the mind screw that’s about to come. I laughed to the point of tears during the first reading and people looked at me as if I was a lunatic. The story is fantastic: broken down biker dealing with his dead ex-girlfriend cuffed to him and his realization of how miserable his life really is. And no one notices because it’s Halloween.
‘Janus Tree’ by Glen Hirshberg mixes the classic coming of age tale with a great “bait ‘n switch” that provides the one of the best examples of character development in the short story medium I have ever read.
On the weaker side, ‘The Forest’ by Laird Barron, not because the style wasn’t fantastic, but because it jumped to the punch too quickly. The Uninvited by Christopher Fowler didn’t draw me in as much as ‘The Ease with Which We Freed the Beast’ by Lucius Shepard did.
Jeffrey Ford’s ‘The Bedroom Light’ is somewhere in the middle. I kind of felt like it was the best of 15 stories smashed into one story. Almost a mashup of classic horror stories. It is quite possible I didn’t understand it…well, it’s more probable than possible.
With all that being said, I can assure you that this is quite possibly the most literary of all anthologies I have ever read. Datlow brings together the very best of every type of classic horror stories. I cannot recommend this anthology highly enough and I appreciate horror being treated as fine as it has been in this anthology. Buy it, read it, share it.
FT Rating: 9.5
