England 'B': Ninety Minutes of Hell reviewed on The Vault of Evil

Franklin Marsh wrote a tongue-in-the-cheek yet perceptive review of Richard Staines' England 'B': Ninety Minutes of Hell on The Vault of Evil - and has kindly given us permission to reprint it here.

"Thanks to the insane generosity of the good Mr Riley on this young person's social media thingy (Facebook), I've managed to blag a copy - and, hurling a host of anthos, Goth compilation CDs and Shaun Hutson's The Skull to one side, hurtled through Mr Staines' first two soccer cautionary tales at high speed, being projected back in time to when attending a football match could be classed as an extreme sport (for fans and players alike), to when men weren't confused and women were glad of it, to when England still hadn't realised it was somewhere below the Third World in terms of significance, when a trilby was the height of sartorial elegance for one positioning themselves as a football manager and when Crystal Palace turned from The Glaziers into The Eagles (and released Hotel California to widespread acclaim and disgust in equal measure. The Sex Pistols had to happen.)

*SPOILERS*

No Such Thing as A Friendly was even better second time around, the psychotic Nigel-Green-In-Zulu Mad Mickey Clinch's all too soon demise had tears (of mirth) springing to my eyes.

A Game of Two Halves upped the ante with cartoon Russkies eclipsing Michael Moorcock's The Russian Intelligence and any spy film from the 1960s. The actual make up of the Soviet opposition was unprecedented and brilliant. Vince's match unfitness and desperate hip flask swigging was all too real.

Utter genius! You can almost smell the grease and burnt onions pre-match atmosphere, and am looking forward to fear...the fear of becoming lost in unfamiliar side streets...hearing a roar go up... is it us or is it them...? Or failing that, some Satanic Haunted House shenanigans.

The Ref's Decision Is Final - if the portrayal of Russians in the previous story was somewhat stereotypical, this is taken to the nth degree with Caledonians (although as an Englishman I found it very truthful) and perhaps proscribes sales of the book north of the border. But I don't think anyone will worry as The Smuggler's Arms is as good a den of iniquity as you could wish for, Class War is alive and well and once again Vince and his merry band of handy reprobates face a life and death struggle in pursuit of the not-so-beautiful game. However far from grass roots the Premier League, the Champions League and the obscene amounts of money now involved in football take us, Richard Staines can furnish a timely reminder of how it once was. And there's an axe-wielding psychopath and Moira Anderson.

Get Your Fritz Out For The Lads - There's only two ways this is going to go - women and Germany. Our rag, tag and bobtail hard-drinking, chain-smoking, skirt-chasing rogues have no sooner escaped death at the blade of a crazed Scotsman than their excessively air-conditioned coach has broken down in the grounds of a remote stately home in Northern England. If a blood-lusting pack of Doberman Pinschers aren't clue enough, the strangely Teutonic (not to mention vaguely feminine) Lord soon has the lads locked up in a cellar with unlimited Blue Nun and the real aristocrat, before releasing them to face a cloned team of Nazi Amazons. Will their nightmare never end? Not just yet. Arguably the greatest 70s signpost yet is the shoehorning in of the Bermuda Triangle. Some clues to the real identity of the man behind the Staines can be glimpsed via a (censored?) thesis on Catholicism and a disturbing familiarity with Leslie McManus' WWII melodrama Jackboot Girls.

Football's Dark Arts - America's on the receiving end this time. Glorious stuff, with Vince discovering that the wide-open spaces of Texas look just like a long episode of Rawhide (except in colour) and small town America can be a frightening place, but not as frightening as the Astral Plane where a most unique game of football takes place. Weird dreams, sinister monk-like apparitions and Jack Parsons namechecked. Huzzah!

They Think It's All Over - Sadly we come to the end of this odd but howlingly accurate glance at a different world. The transposition of homosexuality with vampirism skewers both targets (even though the dartboard keeps falling off the wall). Vince's puzzled assertion that gays didn't exist before 1967 apart from Oscar Wilde (who had the decency to get married and father a couple of kids) and the parody of the laborious Dracula AD 1972 anagram working out had me laughing out loud.

Nothing like this exists elsewhere. Thank goodness."

Read more: http://vaultofevil.proboards.com/thread/6198/richard-staines-england-minutes#ixzz4aonX6cko

Marked to Die - a tribute anthology to Mark Samuels

Paperback

Snuggly Books in the United States have published a paperback and limited edition hardback of stories in tribute to British writer Mark Samuels (who, under the pseudonym of Richard Staines wrote England 'B': Ninety Minutes of Hell, published by Parallel Universe Publications).

Marked To Die - A Tribute to Mark Samuels

Edited by Justin Isis

We are pleased to announce the publication of “Marked to Die, A Tribute to Mark Samuels”. The book is being put out in two formats, a royal octavo paperback and a limited edition hardcover. The hardcover is case laminated (i.e. no dustjacket) and has a completely different cover than the paperback—that is a nightblack cover with, in snow white gothic lettering, the word “MARKITTY” written up top. Only 100 copies of the hardcover will be printed, and of these only 75 offered for sale to the public.

About the Book

Mark Samuels—“the contemporary British master of visionary weirdness”, as Ramsey Campbell has called him—stands at the forefront of 21st century Horror, combining an unparalleled understanding of the Weird Fiction tradition with his own modern take on cosmic dread. An acknowledged influence on numerous writers in the field, his stories depict the isolation and despair of urban life giving way to vistas of universal alienation and, on occasion, spiritual transcendence.

Now, in this collection of original works inspired by Samuels’ writing, his characteristic themes are extended into previously undreamt-of settings: the hull of a Russian nuclear submarine headed to the heart of Chaos; the compound of a Japanese death cult with designs on the human race; a hospital run by the Men with Paper Faces; the Crying Rooms of London’s secret Reverse; the far reaches of the collapsed future and even the private thoughts of St. John of the Cross. Fed by the “strange tales” of the 19th and 20th centuries but firmly rooted in the present, Marked to Die is a digest of urban terror shot through with intimations of a monstrous Sublime.

Featuring contributions from: Mark Valentine, Reggie Oliver, Colin Insole, Daniel Mills, Adam Nevill, Justin Isis, DF Lewis, John Mundy, Kristine Ong Muslim, James Champagne, Brendan Connell, Quentin S. Crisp, Thana Niveau, Simon Clark, Stuart Young, John L. Probert, Ralph C. Doege, Yarrow Paisley, Jon Paul Rai and David Rix.

Table of Contents:

The Shadowy Companion, foreword by Mark Valentine

Rapture, Reggie Oliver

The Golden Dustmen, Colin Insole

Canticle, Daniel Mills

White Light, White Heat, Adam Nevill

The Black Mass, Justin Isis

The Big-Headed People, DF Lewis

Attraction, John Mundy

The Early Signs of Blight, Kristine Ong Muslim

Chaoskampf, James Champagne

A Bad Un to Beat vs. The High Gate Waterman:
It’s All About the Benjamins, Brendan Connell and Quentin S. Crisp

Language of the City, Thana Niveau

The Singular Quiddity of Merlin’s Ear, Simon Clark

The Carnivore of Monsters, Stuart Young

The Men With Paper Faces, John L. Probert

Empty Houses, Ralph C. Doege

Reinformation Theory, Yarrow Paisley

Prison Inquieta, Jon Paul Rai

Slag Glass Lachrimæ, David Rix

The Man Who Collected Machen

Received my copy of  Mark Samuels' latest collection in the post this morning from The Book Depository. And a very handsome looking paperback it is. I've already read the first two stories, Losenef Express and the title story. The first is a bizarrely nightmarish tale about an American horror writer who bears so many uncanny resemblances to the late, lovely Karl Edward Wagner. I'm sure he would have been tickled by this story, even though the writer has some unpleasant traits and a far from pleasant fate!  The Man Who Collected Machen isn't a bit like I expected, having already read Robert Bloch's The Man Who Collected Poe and Kim Newman's The Man Who Collected Barker. This is totally different to either, clever, witty and betraying an astonishing knowledge of Machen's literary output, particularly his scarcer, far less well know material - not surprising considering that Mark is Secretary of the Friends of Arthur Machen! I place this tale alongside The White Hands as my two favourite Samuels stories so far.

The Man Who Collected Machen by Mark Samuels

There's an early online review for Mark's collection, shortly available from Chomu Press.

I've just pre-ordered a copy through The Book Depository for an amazing £6.75 with free delivery!

 

This collection was originally published by Ex Occidente. I'm glad it's now been made available in a much cheaper format. Congratulations to Chomu Press.

Self-Promotion - Does it sometimes go too far?

Mark Samuels has raised some interesting issues on his blog about the amount of self promotion that goes on these days amongst various writers.

Mark says: "I’m finding it increasingly difficult to drum up enthusiasm within myself for the horror/weird fiction genre right now. It’s not the literature itself that depresses me, it’s the insular self-obsessed promotional circus that surrounds it. I know there are good talented folk in there, but, by heaven, they’re not the ones making the most noise."

I must admit I do have a certain amount of sympathy for what he says. I've noticed on the BFS Forum (and elsewhere) that some people (a minority) only seem to find the energy to post something when it's about themselves and never say anything about other writers or about anything else in fact. A bit of self promotion is all very good - and these days writers do need to use their voice if they're to be noticed. But some do take this too far. Whether this ultimately does them any good or not, I'm unsure. When I see certain posts from some of the worst culprits, I must admit I avoid them like the plague.

Mark adds: "It used to be acceptable to hold the view that if you were talented enough, you didn’t have to talk about your work; others would do so."

Maybe, but there is a kind of quid pro quo attitude, and unless you are prepared to talk about others, I don't think many will talk about you either. Of course when that happens it's called back-slapping or cronyism which is perhaps regarded even worse than self-promotion!

I like to hope that Mark's attitude is the right one. But message boards aren't the place to find it. That's in reviews by people who don't have an axe to grind, like She Never Slept  or The Black Abyss or in journals like Prism.

Edited to add Weirdmonger too, the unique D. F. Lewis, whose reviews, especially his Real-Time ones, are so enjoyable if sometimes mystifying to read!

Small Presses and Wordsworth Books

There's an interesting thread just started on the Vault of Evil. Although it began as a discussion about the latest issue of Prism, it very soon moved on to that marvellous publisher, Wordsworth, who have brought out some of the very best collections of single-author ghost stories at unbelievably cheap rates. They specialise, of course, in publishing writers who have been dead so long their works are now out of copyright. This naturally saves them any royalty payments. It also means that we, the reader, can read some brilliant stories only available elsewhere in very expensive limited editions from speciality publishers.

Mark Samuels tried to interest them in moving on to publishing a single-author collection by him, even though he offered it to them "dirt cheap". In his own words, though, he was shot down in flames. That's a great pity as I believe there are a number of outstandingly good modern writers in the genre who would be prepared to have collections of their stories published by someone like Wordsworth with very little expectation of much in return, just so long as their stories were made available at reasonable rates to a wider audience. After all, what do any of us make out of the very limited print runs offered by the small presses most of us are published by? Little, if anything is the answer of course.

It would be nice if someone like Wordsworth could be enticed into experimentng down these lines. I am not optimistic, though. And the limited print runs in the low hundreds (or less) at high prices will remain the only option available to most of us for short story collections.

Awards - Part 2

It now appears that Chris Barker's comments on Horror Watch that Mark Samuels' blog is now private, blocking people accessing it, is wrong. It is open again, complete with Mark's entry about awards. Link

I have posted the response I wrote on my blog as a reply.

The White Hands by Mark Samuels

After all the acrimony on the RCMB Never Again thread I thought I would reread this story. It's in a beautifully produced book from Tartarus Press of the same title. It's an amazing story, elegantly written, with some sly plot twists that take the reader by surprise (but make sense) and an incredibly shocking scene when the protagonist is attacked. A true classic. And a good reminder, after all I have read over the past few days, just how accomplished a writer Mark Samuels really is. Which, when the dust has settled, is what will matter in the end.

As an aside, I love the irreverent descriptions one of the characters in the story gives of Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood.