Marvin Kaye (1938=2021) was born on this date, March 10. In observance, I’m going to look at some (but not all) of his anthologies. I’ll not be discussing his tenure as editor of H. P. Lovecraft’s Magazine of Horror or Weird Tales. I’m furthermore going to limit most of my remarks to mostly the anthologies that had Science Fiction Book Club editions in the 1980s and 1990s.
Kaye’s first anthology was a paperback book with the title of Fiends and Creatures in 1975. It was quickly followed by a second paperback anthology entitled Brother Theodore’s Chamber of Horrors, also in 1975.
Then nothing until 1981, when Ghosts was published.
I came across a copy a few years later in I think it was a garage sale or junk shop at the end of the road past a trailer park on the north side of town. This would have been the early to mid 1980s, no earlier than 1983 and no later than 1986. It was probably not later than 85, but I’ll include the next year just to be sure.
How I found the place, I don’t recall. Ghosts was the only book I bought there. But what a treasure.
I took it home and devoured it. It was full of stories, over six hundred pages. It was in this volume that I furst encountered A. M. Burrage, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, H. Russell Wakefield, and Amelia B. Edwards.
Then I realized there were others in this series. Ghosts was but the first. They were offered through the Science Fiction Book Club. I had a membershsip three different times, and this was during my second membership.
I didn’t get all of them that werer available at that time. I’d missed a few, and there were one or two more the club offered after I ended my membership for the second time. When I rejoined for the final time, Kaye was still doing anthologies, but they were orginal anthologies, not reprints.
These are hefty volumes, running to over five or six hundred pages. While there might be one or two new stories in them, for the most part they were reprints. There were always unknown gems to discover within. For example, a story that has stuck in my mind for decades, “Daddy” by Earl Godwin. It’s one of the mnsot disturbing stories I’ve ever read about a creature that takes teh form of a beautiful woman but whose lifecycle is only about twenty-four hours long. It’s similar to Kate Wilhelm’s Naming the Flowers, except the timeline is much shorter. The story appeared in Devils and Demons.
That was the first book I found that contained Henry Kuttner’s “The Graveyard Rats”, a story I had been trying to get a copy of for years. Keep in mind that was in the 1980s, before the internet and before some of the specialty presses, such as Haffner or NESFA, began focusing on reprinting authors who had died and whose works had gone out of print.
This is what made those anthologies so special. Kaye had an encyclopedic knowledge of short fiction, and he used it to his advantage in making his selections. Those anthologies were one of the few places outside of DAW’s Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF that you could find older fiction.
I’ve got the full set, and I’ll be keeping them where I can easily get to them.
Once I figure out which box they are in.
Hi
I love these, the Gorey covers are wonderful. And there are a ton of great stories.
All the best
Guy
Thank you. Yes, the Gorey covers were fantastic.
Anytime I go on holiday, I troll the used bookstores for certain names, and Marvin Kaye is one that I always look for. I may have even bought copies I know I already had just to read while on holiday.
(I know that it was not edited by Mr. Kaye, but If you frequent Myrtle Beach, SC and have never found a copy of ‘Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural’, I might be the reason why; I have at least four copies of various printings that I had gotten from the beach over the years. To be fair, they have been well-read)
Like from the original post, I too was introduced to the world of these anthologies back in the mid 80’s from the book clubs, and I have since repurchased almost all of the ones I had as a young lad. Both of the pictured books, Masterpieces and Devils, were in my original collection and are now in my current collection. I will eventually find Ghosts (even though I question how he didn’t include any M.R. James.), but I think I have just about everything else.
(an even deeper tangent, I have been trying to recollect all of the Glen Cook Garret File books that I used to have.)
I don’t think anyone can speak highly enough for what these editors did in reprinting stories from the past and introducing them to a new generation of fans.
But now to my complaint. I still troll new bookstores, and their current anthologies quite frankly suck. Their current anthologies often have the same limited list of reprints that I have already read, but they now include too many new stories that glaringly stick out as crap. Someone please put out a ghost story anthology, for example entitled, ‘Stories You Might Not Have Read Yet’, and reprint some backlist material from all these awesome authors from the 19th and early 20th century. You know like Mr. Kaye did. I have literally scores of reprint books (Dover stands out) for individual authors like J.S. Le Fanu, but I can only seem to take so much of the same author in one sitting. So I would love to find new anthologies that showcase the stories from the variety of authors I prefer to read. It’s getting annoying to format and print out the good stuff from gutenberg.org!
But then again, I am the kind of clown that reformats the old pulp magazines that I download from the archive into greyscale, page-by-page, and then prints them out to read. Ads and all. It’s nice that since the old pulps were generally 6×9 or 7×10, printing them out on full size paper makes them easier to read than they would have been if I could get a hold of older copies now. I am such a nerd.
Within the past two years, I have only purchased one newish anthology book of note. It is from Arcturus and is entitled, ‘The Classic HORROR Collection’ [ed. underlining is just not possible here so stop asking]. It is the only anthology I’ve purchased in recent memory that hasn’t sucked; it only reprints classic stories! But it is a great representation of the classical authors of the horror and supernatural of the 19th and early 20th century. It even includes multiple stories by M.P. Shiel. But unfortunately it does not have his ‘Purple Cloud’ story. It clocks in at 938 pages! I love this thing and read stories from it to my daughter every once in a while.
I have been looking for something, anything that could be its companion. And since Marvin has passed, please Obi-wan, you’re my only hope. Someone make this.
Hi, Jasper.
I’ve never been to Myrtle Beach, so I’m not affected by your book buying there.
I also agree with you about most modern anthologies. The same stories repackaged. It’s like anthologists cull from the selections of previous anthologists.
Are you familiar with Ash-Tree Press? They closed their doors years ago, and finding print copies of their books is pretty hard these days. Not to mention quite expensive. But some of their titles may still be available electronically. They published some anthologies that had more obscure stories in them.