Charles L. Grant

No, I said Grant and Foster, not Foster Grant.  As in Charles L. Grant and Alan Dean Foster.

Today, September 12, marks the birth of Charles L. Grant (1942-2006).  Grant was one of the major practitioners of what is known as quiet horror.  In addition to writing horror, Grant also wrote fantasy and bit of science fiction.  Much of this work was published under other names, the most common being Lionel Fenn.

Much of his fiction is set in the city of Oxrun Station.  These stories and novels are among Grant’s best.

I’ve always liked Grant’s work, although I must admit I’m not familiar with the work done under pen names.  In addition to novels, Grant wrote a number of short stories.  Many of these are collected in Scream Quietly:  The Best of Charles L. Grant, although there are a number that have never been reprinted since their first publications.

One of the stories I read last night for this review was “Recollections of Annie”.  In this one, a middle age woodworker becomes of obsessed with building a snowman like he and his late sister Annie used to do when they were children. When the man married, Annie and the new bride didn’t get along.  Annie moved off and eventually died of cancer.  Now the woodworker is trying to build a snowman, and it’s gotten to the point of obsession.  Or would that be possession?  You’ll have to read the story and decide.  Part of what makes the story so tragic and the ending so harrowing is the domestic drama playing out in the background as family relationships begin to deteriorate in the wake of the snowman’s construction.

What in many ways may be a more lasting legacy than his writing is Grant’s work as an editor.  He edited a number of anthologies, but the anthology series that has endured is Shadows.  I first read some of these anthologies in middle school and early high school. The public library in Paris (that would be Texas, not France) had some of them.  I devoured them and discovered a number of new and exciting writers, Grant among them.

Alan Dean Foster

And that’s where Alan Dean Foster comes in.  David J. West and I had a DM exchange on Twitter the other day about Dr. John Dee, astrologer to Queen Elizabeth.  I mentioned that Alan Dean Foster had at one time owned a chair once owned by Dee. Still does as far as I know.  Which led me to mention that Foster had written a story called “The Chair” based on Dee’s chair. I decided to reread the story.  I hadn’t read it since I was a teenager, but the story had stuck with me all those years.

I checked the ISFDB to see where story had been reprinted and discovered that it had originally appeared in Shadows 2 and had been coauthored by Jane Cozart.  If the name is unfamiliar to you, it’s because that’s her only publication credit.

The story concerns a young married couple who are stopping at an isolated antique store.  This is the wife’s idea.  The husband, a writer, is humoring her, when he sees the chair in a back room.  The owner agrees to sell it to him because he claims he’s going to die later that night.  They buy the chair, and the writer puts it in his office.  Soon things begin to happen in his life. A neighbor with barking dogs dies suddenly, and the writer can work in peace. Words flow off his typewriter, and his books become moderate bestsellers. Of course, there’s a price to be paid…

I think the story is one of Foster’s best.

If you haven’t read any of the Shadows anthologies, or any of Grant’s other anthologies, you should check them out.  And read some of his work, too.  You’ll be glad you did.

But wait! There’s one more Charles L. Grant connection today.  His wife, Kathryn Ptacek, who is thankfully still with us, was also born on September 12, only in 1952.  I’ve note read any of her work, but she has a collection out, Looking Backwards in Darkness.  It’s available in an inexpensive ebook edition, which I’ve bought.  I’ll try to read some of it in the next few days.