Today, September 12, is the birthday of Charles L. Grant (1942-2006). He passed away on September 15, just three days after sixty-fourth birthday.
I never got the chance to meet him, but he is to my mind one of the central figures of the second half of the Twentieth Century.
Grant left a legacy to the fields of dark fantasy and suspense in two ways. With his writing and with his editing.
Let’s take a look at both, shall we? Continue reading
Charles L. Grant
September 12, AKA today, is the birthday of Charles L. Grant (1942-2006). Grant was a practitioner of what is known as quiet horror. It’s the type of horror I prefer. In addition to being an amazing writer, he was one of the most influential anthology editors of the late 1970s and 80s.
I first became aware of Shadows, the groundbreaking anthology series he edited when I was in the 8th grade. We had recently moved to Paris, TX. The public library had a good selection of anthologies for a library of that size in those days, including at least one, and probably more, titles from the Shadows series. The first volume I read was Shadows 3. I was hooked. I hunted down the others, especially Shadows 2, which had “The Chair” by Jane Cozart and Alan Dean Foster, Foster being my favorite writer at the time. This was about a year before I discovered Kuttner and Brackett. Continue reading
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.