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MetaHorror
An anthology of tales of horror featuring the works of Peter Straub, David Morrell, Whitley Streiber, Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Tessier, Joyce Carol Oates, and fifteen other writers.
Signed by all contributors except Joyce Carol Oates. (22 signatures)
Signed by all contributors except Joyce Carol Oates. (22 signatures)
318 pages, Hardcover
First published June 2, 1992
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232 people want to read
About the author
Dennis Etchison
180 books114 followersaka Jack Martin.
Dennis William Etchison was an American writer and editor of fantasy and horror fiction. He is a multi-award winner, having won the British Fantasy Award three times for fiction, and the World Fantasy Award for anthologies he edited.
Dennis William Etchison was an American writer and editor of fantasy and horror fiction. He is a multi-award winner, having won the British Fantasy Award three times for fiction, and the World Fantasy Award for anthologies he edited.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
September 9, 2023
Perhaps this anthology gets a solid 3-star review b/c I wanted to like it so much, but I came away with a feeling of familiar territories in the genre, angled up for something larger than the 'horror' label's restrictions. This is 'meta' to some degree, but as a whole, it really is the same-old-thing re-gifted, readable yet not quite enriching despite several stand-out stories.
Tried and true stalwarts of storytelling, Joyce Carol Oates and Peter Straub, show off their power and finesse with the tales 'Martyrdom' and 'The Ghost Village.' Oates really holds nothing back with this tale about degradation of the human form in tandem with the viscous survival cycle of a rat. It's lewd and powerful and not for the kindhearted reader. Straub powers his usual evocative skills in this ghost story, of course, set in his Koko-bound multiverse where Vietnam becomes a way station of sufferance and irredeemable spirit. Man, how I miss Straub.
Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Tessier, and M. John Harrison fare well with their usual tales of a lost individual fascinated with their own demise. We have a phone call center where Campbell doses up the comedy element, yet wraps the tale up with his usual shadow-sharp nightmare nebulations. Tessier's setting for his 'Praise of Folly' is a unique scavenger tale set in upstate NY, unexpectedly gruesome and unsettling. M. John Harrison's sense of urban paranoia takes precedent in his short story where secret groups work in tandem to rupture one's simple sense of living day-to-day. Toss in a very solid tale by Steve Rasnic Tem about an urban sinkhole eating its way through a city on the edge of being forgotten.
All the other tales tease expectations but ultimately are forgettable hours after reading. Mostly first-person drudgery about serial killers and their post-card thin madness, and silly, overwrought tales about Barbie and Ken in Hell and mass shootings akin to a Looney Toons rip-off.
Solid, Mediocre Horror, not quite Meta.
Tried and true stalwarts of storytelling, Joyce Carol Oates and Peter Straub, show off their power and finesse with the tales 'Martyrdom' and 'The Ghost Village.' Oates really holds nothing back with this tale about degradation of the human form in tandem with the viscous survival cycle of a rat. It's lewd and powerful and not for the kindhearted reader. Straub powers his usual evocative skills in this ghost story, of course, set in his Koko-bound multiverse where Vietnam becomes a way station of sufferance and irredeemable spirit. Man, how I miss Straub.
Ramsey Campbell, Thomas Tessier, and M. John Harrison fare well with their usual tales of a lost individual fascinated with their own demise. We have a phone call center where Campbell doses up the comedy element, yet wraps the tale up with his usual shadow-sharp nightmare nebulations. Tessier's setting for his 'Praise of Folly' is a unique scavenger tale set in upstate NY, unexpectedly gruesome and unsettling. M. John Harrison's sense of urban paranoia takes precedent in his short story where secret groups work in tandem to rupture one's simple sense of living day-to-day. Toss in a very solid tale by Steve Rasnic Tem about an urban sinkhole eating its way through a city on the edge of being forgotten.
All the other tales tease expectations but ultimately are forgettable hours after reading. Mostly first-person drudgery about serial killers and their post-card thin madness, and silly, overwrought tales about Barbie and Ken in Hell and mass shootings akin to a Looney Toons rip-off.
Solid, Mediocre Horror, not quite Meta.
July 26, 2015
In this collection, Etchison set out to expand the definition and realm of horror beyond the usual squelch and eyeballs. Much of the material is refreshingly new (or was in 1992). Joyce Carol Oates (in her story-every-three-days phase) delivers an explosively vicious rant about rats and pregnancy in "Martyrdom," a tour de force slap across the verbal chops. Scott Edelman's "Are You Now?" eviscerates the McCarthy era. M. John Harrison's "GIFCO" probably has some meaning that totally eluded me.
Tomas Tessier's "In Praise of Folly" takes us on an architectural journey into primal terror that's both standard horror fare and something far more unnerving. "Ziggles," by Donald Burleson, is also standard fare but doesn't go farther. Steve Rasnic Tem, a master of distancing despair who's never, to my knowledge, written a bad story, excels with "Underground," as the subterranean ooze of New York seeps into the upper world.
Two stories by Barry Malzberg, a committed middle-of-the-road writer, are two too many. Lisa Tuttle's "Replacements" walks the perfect line between fantasy and fantastic reality, as peculiar, homely, damaged beastlets take the emotional place of lovers and friends. In Ramsey Campbell's "End of the Line," words lose meaning and meaning loses words. Whitley Strieber's "The Properties of the Beast" piles on the words and images, but...?
Lot of good stuff here.
Tomas Tessier's "In Praise of Folly" takes us on an architectural journey into primal terror that's both standard horror fare and something far more unnerving. "Ziggles," by Donald Burleson, is also standard fare but doesn't go farther. Steve Rasnic Tem, a master of distancing despair who's never, to my knowledge, written a bad story, excels with "Underground," as the subterranean ooze of New York seeps into the upper world.
Two stories by Barry Malzberg, a committed middle-of-the-road writer, are two too many. Lisa Tuttle's "Replacements" walks the perfect line between fantasy and fantastic reality, as peculiar, homely, damaged beastlets take the emotional place of lovers and friends. In Ramsey Campbell's "End of the Line," words lose meaning and meaning loses words. Whitley Strieber's "The Properties of the Beast" piles on the words and images, but...?
Lot of good stuff here.
November 1, 2014
You know that old adage "If it ain't broke don't fix it"? Yes, it's ridiculously cliche totally overused, but if it's gonna be applied anywhere, it should be to this anthology.
"Metahorror" tries to bill itself as a "New" horror that is "transcending" or "changed". It also says that horror should fill the reader with "Fear, panic, and shuttering". Well, it does none of these things. Oh, it has some pretty bizarre works of horror in it, but they are just that: bizarre. They aren't scary, they aren't fear or panic inducing, half of them don't even make sense. Really, out of the 21 shorts in this collection, I liked 4. And of those 4, only 2 ("Bucky Goes to Church" and Morrell's "Nothing Will Hurt you") are even worth mentioning. The rest of the stories are just meandering words that do nothing for the horror genre except make it confusing and boring.
I was very unimpressed with this anthology. Maybe Etchison is a horrible editor, but I don't know why King would even give a blurb saying the Abyss line is "Amazingly Satisfying". It isn't.
"Metahorror" tries to bill itself as a "New" horror that is "transcending" or "changed". It also says that horror should fill the reader with "Fear, panic, and shuttering". Well, it does none of these things. Oh, it has some pretty bizarre works of horror in it, but they are just that: bizarre. They aren't scary, they aren't fear or panic inducing, half of them don't even make sense. Really, out of the 21 shorts in this collection, I liked 4. And of those 4, only 2 ("Bucky Goes to Church" and Morrell's "Nothing Will Hurt you") are even worth mentioning. The rest of the stories are just meandering words that do nothing for the horror genre except make it confusing and boring.
I was very unimpressed with this anthology. Maybe Etchison is a horrible editor, but I don't know why King would even give a blurb saying the Abyss line is "Amazingly Satisfying". It isn't.
July 23, 2024
2024 Book #27:
Metahorror (1992), edited by Dennis Etchison
Etchison is a perfectly fine writer in his own right, but he’s clearly not a very good editor. Or maybe the issue with this short-story collection is its pretension to represent “the new thing” in horror fiction, to go “beyond” the conventional trappings of the genre. Such promise yields little reward, for Metahorror is ultimately a lackluster and misguided book. On the bright side, there are a few standout stories: a fantastically unsettling contribution by Lisa Tuttle, and a surprisingly moving story by the always reliable Karl Edward Wagner. But such moments of brilliance are suffocated by some of the most appallingly bad horror writing I’ve ever come across. The stories at the bottom of my ranking (below) are seriously embarrassing pieces of writing, flush with try-hard edgy bullshit serial-killer narratives that have aged like warm brie. Horror literature did go through something of an identity crisis in the early ‘90s, thanks to exhausted conventions and an aggressively consolidating publishing market. But this anthology does little to convince the reader that there was much newness coming out during this decade. Instead, we get lots of crazy killers and obnoxiously solipsistic psychological fiction: that is, old and tired tropes, and hardly an ounce of anything scary. If you still feel compelled to seek out this book, save yourself the suffering and only read the stories that are three stars or above:
***** Lisa Tuttle, “Replacements”
**** Karl Edward Wagner, “Did They Get You to Trade?”
**** Donald R. Burleson, “Ziggles”
**** Peter Straub, “The Ghost Village”
*** Thomas Tessier, “In Praise of Folly”
*** Ramsey Campbell, “End of the Line”
*** Steve Rasnic Tem, “Underground”
*** Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, “Novena”
*** M. John Harrison, “GIFCO”
*** Barry N. Malzberg, “Dumbarton Oaks”
*** David Morrell, “Nothing Will Hurt You”
*** Barry N. Malzberg & Jack Dann, “Blues and the Abstract Truth”
*** Joyce Carol Oates, “Martyrdom”
** Whitley Strieber, “The Properties of the Beast”
** Kim Antieau, “Briar Rose”
** Scott Edelman, “Are You Now?”
** Robert Devereaux, “Bucky Goes to Church”
* George Clayton Johnson, “The Ring of Truth”
* William F. Nolan, “The Visit”
* Lawrence Watt-Evans, “Stab”
* Richard Christian Matheson, “Mutilator”
Metahorror (1992), edited by Dennis Etchison
Etchison is a perfectly fine writer in his own right, but he’s clearly not a very good editor. Or maybe the issue with this short-story collection is its pretension to represent “the new thing” in horror fiction, to go “beyond” the conventional trappings of the genre. Such promise yields little reward, for Metahorror is ultimately a lackluster and misguided book. On the bright side, there are a few standout stories: a fantastically unsettling contribution by Lisa Tuttle, and a surprisingly moving story by the always reliable Karl Edward Wagner. But such moments of brilliance are suffocated by some of the most appallingly bad horror writing I’ve ever come across. The stories at the bottom of my ranking (below) are seriously embarrassing pieces of writing, flush with try-hard edgy bullshit serial-killer narratives that have aged like warm brie. Horror literature did go through something of an identity crisis in the early ‘90s, thanks to exhausted conventions and an aggressively consolidating publishing market. But this anthology does little to convince the reader that there was much newness coming out during this decade. Instead, we get lots of crazy killers and obnoxiously solipsistic psychological fiction: that is, old and tired tropes, and hardly an ounce of anything scary. If you still feel compelled to seek out this book, save yourself the suffering and only read the stories that are three stars or above:
***** Lisa Tuttle, “Replacements”
**** Karl Edward Wagner, “Did They Get You to Trade?”
**** Donald R. Burleson, “Ziggles”
**** Peter Straub, “The Ghost Village”
*** Thomas Tessier, “In Praise of Folly”
*** Ramsey Campbell, “End of the Line”
*** Steve Rasnic Tem, “Underground”
*** Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, “Novena”
*** M. John Harrison, “GIFCO”
*** Barry N. Malzberg, “Dumbarton Oaks”
*** David Morrell, “Nothing Will Hurt You”
*** Barry N. Malzberg & Jack Dann, “Blues and the Abstract Truth”
*** Joyce Carol Oates, “Martyrdom”
** Whitley Strieber, “The Properties of the Beast”
** Kim Antieau, “Briar Rose”
** Scott Edelman, “Are You Now?”
** Robert Devereaux, “Bucky Goes to Church”
* George Clayton Johnson, “The Ring of Truth”
* William F. Nolan, “The Visit”
* Lawrence Watt-Evans, “Stab”
* Richard Christian Matheson, “Mutilator”
October 27, 2021
Dell Abyss 19/43
uneven, but probably one of the more interesting anthologies ive read in recent memory, none of the stories here are what i would call terrible, if anything most are interesting and offer something different than usual horror fare especially for their time, but i think a big problem plaguing quite a few of these is they seem to be trying to be subversive for subversive’s sake, lacking a solid enough core concept or idea that would elevate them to actually being a good horror story instead of just different or shocking, or they meander to a point of just losing any punch (one that sticks out to me is Robert Devereaux’s “Bucky Goes To Church”, which i think would have been really interesting to read with a modern lens if the ending didnt trip all over the place)
still though, theres a few real good heavy hitters here, “Martyrdom” by Joyce Carol Oates is excellent and visceral really made me remember how great of a writer she is, and “Replacements” and “End of the Line” by Lisa Tuttle and Ramsey Campbell respectively stand out as two of the best stories ive read all year
additional ones I found interesting or fun were “Ziggles” by Donald Burleson, “Did they Get you to Trade” by Karl Edward Wagner, “Properties of the Beast” by Whitley Streiber, and “The Ghost Village” by Peter Straub (which has made me reconsider possibly checking out some of his works)
uneven, but probably one of the more interesting anthologies ive read in recent memory, none of the stories here are what i would call terrible, if anything most are interesting and offer something different than usual horror fare especially for their time, but i think a big problem plaguing quite a few of these is they seem to be trying to be subversive for subversive’s sake, lacking a solid enough core concept or idea that would elevate them to actually being a good horror story instead of just different or shocking, or they meander to a point of just losing any punch (one that sticks out to me is Robert Devereaux’s “Bucky Goes To Church”, which i think would have been really interesting to read with a modern lens if the ending didnt trip all over the place)
still though, theres a few real good heavy hitters here, “Martyrdom” by Joyce Carol Oates is excellent and visceral really made me remember how great of a writer she is, and “Replacements” and “End of the Line” by Lisa Tuttle and Ramsey Campbell respectively stand out as two of the best stories ive read all year
additional ones I found interesting or fun were “Ziggles” by Donald Burleson, “Did they Get you to Trade” by Karl Edward Wagner, “Properties of the Beast” by Whitley Streiber, and “The Ghost Village” by Peter Straub (which has made me reconsider possibly checking out some of his works)
Want to read
November 13, 2011Stephen King recommended author per Forenote to Paperback Edition from King's Berkley's 1983 paperback. (revised from original 1981 edition).
Stephen King endorsed the entire Dell Abyss Horror line. Here is his blurb:
"Thank you for introducing me to the remarkable line of novels currently being issued under Dell's Abyss imprint. I have given a great many blurbs over the last twelve years or so, but this one marks two firsts: first unsolicited blurb (I called you) and the first time I have blurbed a whole line of books. In terms of quality, production, and plain old story-telling reliability (that's the bottom line, isn't it), Dell's new line is amazingly satisfying...a rare and wonderful bargain for readers. I hope to be looking into the Abyss for a long time to come."
Stephen King endorsed the entire Dell Abyss Horror line. Here is his blurb:
"Thank you for introducing me to the remarkable line of novels currently being issued under Dell's Abyss imprint. I have given a great many blurbs over the last twelve years or so, but this one marks two firsts: first unsolicited blurb (I called you) and the first time I have blurbed a whole line of books. In terms of quality, production, and plain old story-telling reliability (that's the bottom line, isn't it), Dell's new line is amazingly satisfying...a rare and wonderful bargain for readers. I hope to be looking into the Abyss for a long time to come."
July 23, 2013
Although there were plenty of good writers in this collection, I didn't really find a lot of the stories memorable. Perhaps because it was "meta" horror, many of the stories seemed to go pretty much nowhere and wander around a while before getting to that non-stopping spot. All of it was well written but not quite my cup of tea.
July 13, 2024
Rating 5 stars for the Edelman story, which was original as hell and unlike anything I’ve read before
The Straub at the end is also good
The Straub at the end is also good
October 17, 2018
Like any collection of short stories, Metahorror was a mixed bag of stories for me. Dennis Etchison is well respected as an editor, and he has a different recognition of horror than other editors (he seems to avoid the splatterpunk for the more disturbing), but he's still not going to hit the 100% mark with me. The good stories here were good enough for me to give the anthology an overall positive rating, though.
Of particular interest to me were Joyce Carol Oates' "Martyrdom", Kim Antieau's "Briar Rose", and Lisa Tuttle's "Replacements", as their angle of horror came from relationships between men and women. Oates looked at toxic masculinity, Antieau examined women's strength through experience, and "Replacements" showed us the dangers of dependency. Not all women write stories where the horror comes through feminism, and not all men write stories that don't, but it's an interesting angle that I'm seeing more and more, at least in this era of horror writing. Male writers seem to be more fixated on brutality and excess, while female writers are more interested in subtlety and theme.
That being said, I also liked "End of the Line" by Ramsey Campbell (it's an elegant and effective look at insanity), as well as "The Ghost Village" by Peter Straub (even if it is a part of the Tim Underhill series, which I have yet to read), and neither writer focused on the aforementioned brutality and excess. They were more about the damage of internal struggles based on external events.
The rest of the stories felt forgettable, enough so that I wonder if this was a re-read for me. I don't remember anything from these stories, but I have it noted as a book I read before. That doesn't mean much (there have been several books I know I read, and didn't remember anything on my re-reads), but it doesn't do much to make me want to read many other anthologies. The good news is this is the last anthology in the Abyss line, so I should be done with them for a while.
Abyss Read Progress: 17
Of particular interest to me were Joyce Carol Oates' "Martyrdom", Kim Antieau's "Briar Rose", and Lisa Tuttle's "Replacements", as their angle of horror came from relationships between men and women. Oates looked at toxic masculinity, Antieau examined women's strength through experience, and "Replacements" showed us the dangers of dependency. Not all women write stories where the horror comes through feminism, and not all men write stories that don't, but it's an interesting angle that I'm seeing more and more, at least in this era of horror writing. Male writers seem to be more fixated on brutality and excess, while female writers are more interested in subtlety and theme.
That being said, I also liked "End of the Line" by Ramsey Campbell (it's an elegant and effective look at insanity), as well as "The Ghost Village" by Peter Straub (even if it is a part of the Tim Underhill series, which I have yet to read), and neither writer focused on the aforementioned brutality and excess. They were more about the damage of internal struggles based on external events.
The rest of the stories felt forgettable, enough so that I wonder if this was a re-read for me. I don't remember anything from these stories, but I have it noted as a book I read before. That doesn't mean much (there have been several books I know I read, and didn't remember anything on my re-reads), but it doesn't do much to make me want to read many other anthologies. The good news is this is the last anthology in the Abyss line, so I should be done with them for a while.
Abyss Read Progress: 17
October 15, 2016
The "meta" is apparent in these short stories, some of which on first glance may not appear to be classified as horror, but on a deeper read, get at the "fight or flight" part of the brain in different and subtle ways. Definitely one to return to, to keep extracting new meaning from.
December 26, 2013
Fabulous. All of these stories work, and twist and bend "horror" all over the places. If you want something different, intelligent...this is the thing.
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August 22, 2008Metahorror by Dennis Etchison (1992)
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