The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy

This book is part of the Bison Frontiers of Imagination series. The entire line aims to bring early fantasy and science fiction stories, from the very beginning of the genres, to a mass audience. I absolutely love this series. I own about a dozen of them now, even though this is only my second review. The foreword to this book, titled "The Woman Who Invented Dark Fantasy", gives a quick overview of Frances Steven's works, as well as their place in the history pulp magazines. Since I didn't know anything about the author before I picked up the book, it was a very good introduction to her and her importance to the genre. The title story, "The Nightmare", is about a man who washes up on a tropical island with no memory of who he is. He gets caught up between two rival expeditions searching for a fabulous treasure, and along the way encounters the strange land's monstrous inhabitants. "The Labyrinth" is a strange amalgam of romance and mystery, with a dash of horror mixed in. It starts out with a kidnapping that eventually devolves into a love triangle between a beautiful secretary, her egomaniacal boss, and her estranged boyfriend. While the first half of the book is very maudlin, the second half (when they accidentally get lost in a sinister maze) is extremely well done. "Friend Island" is set in the near-future where gender roles have somehow been reversed. Women are now the ruling class, and the men are seen as the weaker sex. It tells the story of two very different shipwrecked sailors and the mysterious island they share. "Behind the Curtain" is a very short but atmospheric piece about a husband daydreaming of revenge on his cheating wife. There's also a mummy thrown in to increase the weirdness. In "Unseen-Unfeared" a man stumbles across a mad scientist who shows off his latest discovery of a microscopic world of horror. The description of the invisible creatures floating all around is very creepy. "The Elf Trap" is about a no-nonsense professor suffering from overwork who goes on a holiday in a small rural town. While staying there he has a strange encounter with a band of gypsies living in the nearby wood. This story closely echoes traditional tales of fairies from Ireland. "Serapion" follows a young man who is possessed by the spirit of his ancestor after an encounter with a spirit medium. The spirit constantly tempts and cajoles him into ever darker deeds, eventually leading the man to his own damnation. This is a very unique psychological take on the standard ghostly possession story. "Sunfire" is a standard adventure story about a misfit group of explorers who find a lost temple in South America, and are enchanted by its lovely guardian. There's nothing spectacular about this one, but all the arguing and bumbling around within the group is entertaining. The only major complaint I have with these stories, is that all too often Stevens' pulls the rug out from under the reader at the end of them. She does a wonderful job of bu

Francis Stevens was the pen name of Gertrude Bennett, an American writer of uncommon imagination whose work appeared in Argosy, Thrill Book and other early pulp magazines of the late teens and early twenties of the last century. Described as "the greatest woman writer of science fantasy" in the 100-plus years between Mary Shelley and Catherine Moore by science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz, Stevens is best known today for her longer works, The Heads of Cerberus, The Citadel of Fear, and Claimed, all of which have been reprinted within the past couple of decades. The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy is the first collection of her shorter work, most of which has not been reprinted in over 50 years. A young widow and a single mother, Francis Stevens earned very little as a pulp writer and eventually gave up her writing career to earn a more reliable living as a secretary. She was a writer of genuine verve and spirit who deserves to be better known today.