Pleased to mee-choo. Yeah, I said it. And no, this isn’t a collection of stories about The Rolling Stones, try again. Yep, it’s all Lucifer, all the time in this collection. Editor Tim Pratt collects some of his favorite stories of His Infernal Majesty (again, we’re talking Satan, not rock-n-roll) and delivers an anthology that combines classic, modern and just plain weird for a hell-blazin’ good time.
Besides the usual spooky short-story heroes — Stephen King, Robert Bloch, Neil Gaiman — there are authors that are close to my heart, like Holly Black and China Miéville, as well as perennial GMR favorites Elizabeth Bear, Charles de Lint and Kage Baker. The old-timers are here too, with Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stephenson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Dante Alighieri putting in appearances. That means this collection doesn’t focus entirely on horror per se; it transcends genres and makes for a richer reading experience than if it was the same type of story over and over. In the introduction, Pratt says that he grouped a few stories together based on a common link, “like putting Stephen King’s ‘The Man in the Black Suit’ next to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s ‘Young Goodman Brown,’ the story King says inspired the piece.” This gives the stories a smooth flow, each story leading nicely to the next. The vast majority of stories here are winners, from “The Price,” one of my all-time favorite Neil Gaiman short stories, about a black cat that may be much more than he appears to be at first, to “Thus I Refute Beelzy,” a hellish payback story that shows a tale can be shockingly horrific even if you know exactly what’s gonna happen up those stairs.
If you don’t recognize one or two of these stories here, you aren’t reading enough. So why pick up this collection if it includes stories that are so well known, or old enough to be picked up on the interwebs? In between these well-known bookends are stories that are more than worth your time, like Andy Duncan’s “hell is like home” story, “Beluthahatchie,” Holly Black’s competition tale “A Reversal of Fortune” and Jan Wildt’s “Like Riding a Bike,” a story about a Screwtape-like demon and the old woman he decides to . . . experiment with. “With By Good Intentions” by Carrie Richardson is a fun story despite the hell of a deadline her characters are under. Charles de Lint’s “Ten for the Devil” draws readers into his forest world, where a girl has to fiddle to get herself out of one hell of a predicament. Yep, there’s a lot of Hell going around in these stories, but considering that’s where you’ll end up if you’re not careful with your dealings with the Angel of Darkness, what else would you expect?
Two stories bear special mention. First there’s Kage Baker’s “Two Old Men,” for taking the Devil out of his usual environment and putting him in a story that’s almost historical fiction. With Jesus and the Devil at their perpetual baiting game, who wins? Certainly not the human race, but Baker’s story could explain a big mystery that has baffled historians for decades. And what did we all do but prove the Devil right? (Sure hope there’s no statute of limitations on switching up our game. . . .) The post-apocalyptic tale “And The Deep Blue Sea,” by Elizabeth Bear, gets the highest praise I can give: it left me wanting more. Take “The Postman” and, well, make it worth your time. Really, really worth your time. Bear’s protagonist Harrie could easily carry a longer piece, and her world is one that is so well fleshed out I found myself wanting to read more about how things got so very bad. I’d hunt down a sequel to this piece like it was my job. Oh wait. . . .
It’s tempting to list just about each and every story in this collection as a favorite, but I’ll leave the classics out; they’re classics for a reason, and the reason is they’re damn good. A few more best-of-the-best stories are Elizabeth M. Glover’s damnation story, “Metaphysics”; Scott Westerfeld’s hellish “Non-Disclosure Agreement”; China Miéville’s “Details,” which now has me worried about zoning out (always a favorite pastime of mine, ’til now) and “Nine Sundays in a Row” by Kris Dikeman, a story about how the Devil makes his deals, from the point of view of His Own Good Dog.
Do all the stories work? Well, no. With anthologies that’s to be expected; an editor picks what he or she finds interesting, so every story may not be to everyone’s taste. You can’t always get what you want, after all. Stories that didn’t burn my particular brimstone was the Marx Brothers “Horse Feathers” parody “Faustfeathers,” a story that went on long past the joke, as well as “Snowball’s Chance” and “Bible Stories for Adults, no. 31: The Covenant,” stories that have great promise but limp toward their endings. “King of the Djinn” disappointed me too, but not because it’s a bad story; the hopelessness of the ending was too heartbreaking for me to enjoy, though the story itself is impressive and the main character is someone you sincerely hope overcomes his situation.
Finishing things up is Canto XXIV from Dante’s Inferno, where Dante gazes upon Satan himself, and then emerges from Hell. It’s a perfect way to end this collection, since the readers too are climbing up out of Hell and back into the world.
It’s summertime, and around here it’s hot as blazes. Why not go all the way and pick up Sympathy for the Devil? Can’t get any hotter, can it? Well, unless you talk to that stranger that wants to make a deal. But that’s probably a bad idea.
(Night Shade Books, 2010)
