The Paperback Fantastic v.3: Horror

Justin Marriott is a machine. I can't explain how he manages to get so many magazines published every year that doesn't involve some kind of Heath Robinson set up with mechanical writing arms and conveyor belts feeding typed pages through to design and printing mechanisms.

His latest publication is the third volume of The Paperback Fantastic, a collection of reviews concentrating on horror novels from the 1970s and 1980s, but not restricted to those decades (The Beetle dates from 1897). There are plenty of paperback covers on display, many of which I remember seeing in Clarke's bookshop, Smith's and at the Thursday market where a very nice lady sold me second hand copies of Richard Allan's Skinhead novels for 10p. Ah, those were the days!

I preferred SF to horror, but I still have a few from those days by the likes of Guy N. Smith, Errol Lecale and Robert Lory.

I can answer one question Justin raises... what happened to Cyril Donson, author of Draco the Dragon Man? After writing westerns in the 1980s, the trail goes cold because Donson died in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, in November 1986.

I should also point out that another one of Justin's 1-star reviews (The Homunculus by Kenneth Rayner Johnson) led me to this article on Johnson which confirms that the book is "pure shit". Weirdly, that makes me want to look out for it all the more to see if there really are "several passages which if quoted in isolation might give the impression that this book is some uber-sleazy and outrageously bad-taste classic." But, adds Justin, they are few and far between.

The magazine also covers plenty of books that are worth reading by the likes of Stephen King and Clive Barker, but I have to confess that it's the take-downs of the worst books that often make the most fun when reading reviews. At the same time, I'm inspired to  look out for recommended books by Charles Birkin and  Simon Raven, which  is just what you want from a collection of reviews.

The Paperback Fantastic, ed. Justin Marriott.
Justin Marriott ISBN 979-884365436-8, 9 August 2022, 72pp, £7.50. Available via Amazon.