Book Review: Between Time and Terror (1995)

An anthology of 17 science fiction stories with a dark fantasy slant. Horror stories from leaders in the field, with H.P. Lovecraft to lead off the parade of the scientifically macabre.

Horror knows no single theme, just because we associate it with dark fantasy. There are, after all, many stories that are absolutely true and blanketed in horror. In this volume, each story roots its horror in the speculative view of reality that is the basis of science fiction.

The assortment of topics is broad, but all depends on the chill that they tap into.

H.P. Lovecraft writes of a blighted countryside suffering from the effects of a mysterious meteorite. Not recommended reading when you're having a mortality attack as I did when I first read this in my 20s. Isaac Asimov writes of the ultimate paranoiad in "They." In "Who Goes There?", John W. Campbell, Jr., writes of a handful of men in the unique position of saving the world in their isolated Antarctic camp when they find that there is a malevolent alien hidden among...and in...them. Made into two movies, both classics and both titled "The Thing." Philip K. Dick writes of a young child who realizes that it's not really his father who came back from the garage in "The Father Thing." In "Orange is For Anguish, Blue for Intensity", a young artist searches for the source of a French artist's genius and madness...and discovers it in an incredibly unlikely place. In "A Walk in the Dark," Arthur C. Clarke takes a classic science fiction setting and draws from it horror as a stranded astronaut struggles mightily to find his way across the lunar landscape to safety. Clive Barker tells of an attempt to find an authentic laboratory-made aphrodisiac and a deadly, premature experiment on a human subject. Dean Koontz writes about a gang of bikers whose leader is the least likely of them, but possesses a power to enforce his rules, one of which is that everbody dies soon. In "Metastasis," a man recovering from an auto accident realizes he can see the cause of cancer...and it is nothing like anyone suspects. Robert Bloch writes of the final revolt of the machines against humanity. And there's more.

The stories certainly start out spooky enough. Actually, they seem to get rougher as you go through the book, until your left with Clive Barker to bring us happily to the end. Some of these stories will stick with you.

Definitely a good, chilling read.