Thursday, March 8, 2012

The Mammoth Book of Body Horror

In his introduction to The Mammoth Book of Body Horror (edited by Paul Kane & Marie O’Regan [Robinson £7.99]), Stuart Gordon reminds us that “Body Horror” is not about the dead, it’s about your body malfunctioning, becoming different. Your body rebels against itself. See this in movies such as Shivers, The Human Centipede and The Fly.

But we’re in Literature Land here. We’re dealing with prose, short stories. The MBO Body Horror collects 25 tales by folk ranging from Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe and H P Lovecraft through to Clive Barker, Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Neil Gaiman, Nancy A Collins, Brian Lumley and Michael Marshall Smith (and more).

It does as it says on the cover: “25 horrific tales of transformation, mutation and contagion.”

No comments: