Terrors

Richard A. Lupoff is a master of the pastiche and has a track record four decades long to prove it. I know that because I've recently collected most of his novels and short story collections and am in the middle of reading them. But I sheepishly admit that I've never read much by the authors he's pastiching. So my review is not like all the others, by long-time fans of Conan Doyle, Robert Howard, Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft or Robert Louis Stevenson. How do the stories stand up as actual stories rather than pastiches? Very well. Lupoff writes clearly and unambiguously and even when he's piling on the adjectives (Lovecraft?) or the adverbs (Verne?) the pictures he paints are vivid. The twists at the end of his stories are not O.Henry-pat, but leave the reader with a sense of satisfaction tempered with a curiosity about the 'rest of the story'. The main thing that comes through in Lupoff's pastiches -- even if you don't snap to who the pastiched author is -- is his love and respect for the original. He's probably already done it, but I look forward to his writing some pastiches of the authors that I DID read back when I probably should have been discovering Lovecraft and Howard: guys like Richard S. Prather, Fredric Brown and Philip Jose Farmer.

Richard Lupoff has been letting his readers in on his own fears for a good many years. After a lot of practice, he finally makes it perfect in his collection of stories, "Terrors". Besides fear, the book also displays love -- his love for the world of old pulp fiction magazines, and of comic books, and of old time radio drama. All these elements are featured, one at a time, in this pararama of stories. Is it only me who finds most of the TV shows, so homogenized with the same ethnically diverse characters that they are faceless and indistinguishable from one another? That will not be the case with these Lupoff tales. Each one is unique. You don't have to digest them all in one setting -- although that is permissible -- but you can read one whenever you can catch fifteen minutes between work or other activities. You could even buy a couple of copies to have one at home or in the office, or in the car or on the patio. Let's hope Lupoff can keep scaring the pants off us -- it is cooling -- chilling in fact -- in these summer days.

Richard Lupoff's shorter fiction has been collected before, but none of those prior volumes zeroed in on a single aspect of his fiction. As the liner notes for his CLAREMONT TALES states, "Richard A. Lupoff refuses to be restricted to any genre." As a result, while his work in these collections never disappoints it's often somewhat diffuse. Not so in TERRORS, where all the stories have in common an underlying element of fright. But they don't suffer from the humorless scariness of many of the writers whose work Lupoff pastiches here. Instead, they're lifted from the stygian depths of his literary influences by his light touch and unerringly appropriate humor. The lead story, "The Crimson Wizard," is a semi-autobiographical pulp yarn (Lupoff in his young kid years), and that delicious pulpiness carries over into the two stories that follow, "The Crimson Wizard and the Jewels of Lemuria" and "The Golden Saint Meets the Scorpion Queen." Another, "The Horror South of Red Hook," is a delightful Lovecraft-style send-up of what Lupoff felt when he accepted a position with IBM in Poughkeepsie, New York, and moved there with his family. There are other stories besides the first three that are pure pulp, others besides "Red Hook" that evoke HPL, and there's even one Sherlock Holmes/HPL combo. I'm hard-pressed to pick out a few favorites (I've just paused here for quite a while trying to do so) because they are all, each in its own unique way, great reads. Like several of the other reviewers, I stretched out the reading of the book in order to maximize the duration of my pleasure. And now I'm looking forward to VISIONS, the next up by Dick from this publisher.

I've always enjoyed Mr Lupoff's stories, although I never thought of him as a writer of horror or terror - too much warm humanity in his stories to do a Clive Barker (for all I understand Mr Barker, as a person, as distinct from the writer of his stories, is quite warm and human himself). So I got a copy of this book. Immediately I was set back by the Introduction which talked about the tradition of literary pastiche and August Derleth. With talk about culling from HP Lovecraft and Edgar Rice Burroughs and Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert E Howard. And I'm thinking "Come on - are these substandard comebacks that need such an arcane introduction. Can't they stand on their own?" Well, they do - and beautifully. And the fact that -- I will admit it here - I never read much Burroughs other than William, and - cardinal sin for a sci fi fan - I don't like HP Lovecraft, never did. So fine - string me up - hang my gibbous body from some dark leafless eldritch branches of a dead New England tree. Don't like him, never did, never felt there was enough of a discernible lack of horror in our world to want to read some writer of baroquely entangled humorless tales of doom from below. In the words of my late father - "Feh." That said, this is a collection of truly delightful stories. And sure - I could see some tips of the hat to other writers, but it doesn't matter because the stories work one-to-one, writer-to-reader, regardless of style. Example: In "At Vega's Taqueria" I, the reader felt reality shifting out from under me the way sand disappears under your toes at the beach as the water comes in and out. Not LIKE Fredric Brown, but as mind-playing as his stories were in the 50's. "Whisperers" has a reference to Lovecraft, but I really loved the story, so if he's doing a Lovecraft pastiche, I'd say he's a much better writer. And "The Secret of the Sahara" revives the old punchline story style, and like an O Henry OR that famous famous sci fi short "How To Serve Man," gives the reader a delightful "Ouch" enjoyment at the end. Shaggy dogs abound. This is a collection of stories written by a master at his peak, the sort of stories that can only be written by a writer after 70 or 80 or 90 years of perfecting his craft. (I can't remember a time in my life when there weren't Lupoff stories, and I'm in my 60's - so what is he? 100? 200?) Ok, that's supposed to be funny, but there is a playfulness to these stories that less accomplished writers just can never pull off (check out any popular network sitcom for an example). I have been having a grand old time reading these - haven't read all of them yet, just one every day or so - savoring them for quiet moments, not wanting to run through the book and run out of stories to read for the first time. This is an antidote for the press and nastiness of our daily world -- read a story on the bus or train to work, read on at lunch. More fun than I've had reading short stories in a long long time (maybe since my Fr

This is a great collection of stories, and they fit together like parts in a jigsaw puzzle. Terrors starts with an introduction by Fred Chappell. He examines the types of stories in Terrors and what makes them work. This was great because he explains the attraction many readers have to pulp and Lovecraftian pastishes. Right out of the gate, The Crimson Wizard, The Crimson Wizard and the Jewels of Lemuria, and The Golden Saint Meets the Scorpion Queen take the reader into the world of pulp. On one page you're reading about a character who is listening to a 1940's radio show, and in the next story you are INSIDE the radio show! There is also a feast of Lovecraftian tales in the mix too. The Horror South of Red Hook, Lights! Camera!! Shub-Niggurath!!! are some great reads. And there are other good Lovecraftian stories and pulp-ish adventures. There is even a Sherlock Holmes/Lovecraft combination! Overall this is a wonderful book. The cover is beautiful and in itself it is a story. I've spent much time looking for things in the background. The production quality of the book is superb as well. I ordered the paperback, but there appears to be a hardcover that was available at one time. I'm not sure what the differences are, so I can't talk about that. This is a fantastic collection of Richard Lupoff's stories and a great price for 360 pages.