He was published by Arkham House in 1962. His first collection came out in 1964. We devoured his Cold Print collection in 1985. He’s been called many things (as well as Mr Campbell Sir) – “Perhaps the finest living exponent of the British weird fiction tradition” and “The leading horror writer of our generation”. And he’s still at it. Not only writing, but turning up at meetings or adding his musings to Facebook groups, as if Pharaoh himself had suddenly turned up to point out that your mud-bricks are a bit sloppy.
So we felt that we had to draw your attention to the release of The Booking by Ramsey Campbell, from Dark Regions Press. It would have been wrong not to.
Just as compelling, this new novella is illustrated by one of our favourite artists, Santiago Caruso, whose fantastic work we’ve shown here many times.
And we’ll get to it in a moment, really we will, but you know us – we have to ramble our way into things…
As loyal listeners know, we sometimes ponder here on the whole Post-Lovecraftian, New Lovecraftian scene (Disloyal listeners get sent a black-edged card and a marked calendar. Never ask where they went). So it’s worth a brief mention of Campbell’s role in this.
Cambell’s first collection was The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants which contained his early Lovecraftian pastiches. By 1969 he began to distance himself from Lovecraft and in his collection Demons by Daylight (1973) he was ploughing an independent furrow. He did in fact say at one point that he was looking more to Vladimir Nabokov (1899 – 1977) in terms of style when he wrote Demons. And you can’t go far wrong with Nabokov.
Then in 1980, when he had a body of work behind him, Campbell edited New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos for Arkham.
We have a dog-chewed copy of it from when it first came out (the dog-chewing came later). And in that book he said, in his capacity as editor:
“In this anthology I have tended to favor less familiar treatments or uses of the Mythos…. They contain few erudite occultists, decaying towns, or stylistic pastiches…. Indeed, one of our tales hints at the ultimate event of the Mythos without ever referring to the traditional names.”
Incidentally, if you’ve never read New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, the contents are rather interesting:
- “Crouch End” by Stephen King
- “The Star Pools” by A. A. Attanasio
- “The Second Wish” by Brian Lumley
- “Dark Awakening” by Frank Belknap Long
- “Shaft Number 247” by Basil Copper
- “Black Man with a Horn” by T. E. D. Klein
- “The Black Tome of Alsophocus” by H. P. Lovecraft & Martin S. Warnes
- “Than Curse the Darkness” by David Drake
- “The Faces at Pine Dunes” by Ramsey Campbell
By 1985 and the publication of Cold Print, Campbell had softened on HPL, explaining in the introduction to that collection that he had had doubts about “the overpopulation and overexplanation” of the Mythos. He also pointed out that some of his frustration had been about wanting to break free of Lovecraft’s structural framework. In a 1985 interview he said:
“Only when I became impatient with the Lovecraftian structure, and began to write about the sort of awkward adolescent figure that I was until my mid-twenties, did I begin to get on to dealing with things that were a good more personal.”
Interview with Douglas E Winter
Campbell therefore deserves considerable recognition for developing the Dynastic process of moving on from H P Lovecraft whilst retaining key elements embodied in HPL’s better work.
“If some of Lovecraft’s sense of wonder remains in my work, so much the better”
Cold Print, 1985
In terms of his own distinctive voice, Campbell kept the promise of his early work, and built on it in leaps and bounds. His stories became known for their disturbing questions, their explorations of personal horrors, but in a way which readers could ‘get it’. We see his Pharaonic status as a writer who stood between obscure high-brow work and the slashy underbelly of UK horror, showing that horror literature could be of the highest quality and seriously worrying, but that it could still be acessible. Which is not as easy as you think.
The other reason for this post is that a couple of days ago we covered some of Fritz Leiber’s work, particularly The Pale Brown Thing and its ‘companion’, Our Lady of Darkness. In a 2011 interview, Campbell referred to Leiber’s influence:
“…Leiber… took the tale of urban supernatural terror forward with a leap of imagination; whereas previously the everyday environment was invaded by the supernatural, now (in “Smoke Ghost” and others) it became its source. Of these three, Fritz was most crucial in showing me where I wanted to take the field – into areas where urban psychology and the spectral meet and merge.”
Weird Fiction Review
So, on to the book we mentioned at the start, The Booking. It comes from Dark Regions Press, under their Black Labyrinth imprint. This is a line of ten new psychological horror novels and novellas from the living masters of horror and dark fiction illustrated by Santiago Caruso edited by Chris Morey.
The series so far:
- Book I: The Walls of the Castle by Tom Piccirilli.
- Book II: Prisoner 489 by Joe R. Lansdale.
- Book III: The Booking by Ramsey Campbell.
The Booking is described as a frightening new psychological horror novella:
“Kiefer is desperate for a job when he comes upon an opening at a curious bookstore in England, BOOKS ARE LIFE. He approaches the owner for a job and gets it, learning quickly that the owner is stranger than the books that he sells in the shop. As he continues to help the bookstore’s transition to the internet, he discovers oddities in the shop and has increasingly strange visions and encounters.
“This bookstore is very unique, like its owner, and it will bring to Kiefer the most intense and revealing era of his life. From master storyteller Ramsey Campbell comes this brooding and frightening psychological horror novella accompanied by five original color illustrations by Santiago Caruso.”
“As the dread builds, the effect is dizzying, claustrophobic, and very scary. Prescribing to his own rule of ‘avoiding what’s been done to death’, The Booking shows Campbell in top form with a strange and creepy tale that lingers long after the last page is turned.”
This is Horror
We always find it awkward promoting quality, limited editions, because although they are beautiful (and nice just to hold and stroke) we can’t usually afford them ourselves. However, we checked, and other formats will be coming along, so you have choices. From the Dark Regions info release:
Available for preorder in three signed limited hardcover editions. Ebook available for instant download for all preorder customers (details in EBOOK INSTRUCTIONS tab). Ebook and trade paperback will be sold separately when a good share of signed limited editions are sold in preorder phase. Signed limited edition hardcovers feature pages from Ramsey Campbell’s handwritten first draft of The Booking as exclusive bonus content.
You can go for it here:
It’s fair to say that Dark Regions Press do a lot of good stuff in our general area, so we’re happy to nudge people their way. Have a browse of their list.
Next time – Django only knows. We thank you for your kind attention, and we’re out of here. See you shortly…