Strange Things and Stranger Places

Contains two suspenseful novellas, "Needing Ghosts" and "Medusa," along with eight shorter works of horror fiction about such places as forbidden castle ruins where children's games become chilling reality. By the author of The Count of Eleven.

From Publishers Weekly

The previously published stories in this collection, which also includes a new novella, seem to have languished in obscurity until now for a reason: very few stand out, and none achieve the resonance of Campbell's best horror novels, such as The Count of Eleven. The collection does frequently display his remarkable talent for twisting the ordinary into the darkly surreal, but some of these early efforts lack the taut construction which shapes his later flights of fancy. In "Cat and Mouse" (1972), the narrator decides his new house is "hunting" him before much has happened to convince the reader of this odd conceit. Other stories seem like throwaway attempts at well-worn genres: "Wrapped Up" and "Rising Generation," both written in 1974, respectively run through the usual mummy and zombie shtick. The new novella, "Needing Ghosts," occupies a category of its own, depicting a nightmarish odyssey through a strangely distorted suburban landscape, as a novelist desperately tries to reassure himself that he hasn't simply imagined his entire career. The images are disturbingly inventive, but in the end the novella's harrowing, delusionary pointlessness is so like a bad dream that the reader just wishes it would end. Campbell's fans, however, will admire his venture into even weirder territory and should welcome the collection as a whole. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A middle-drawer miscellany--eight stories and two novellas- -that spans the 20-year career of British horror-writer Campbell. At his best (as in Midnight Sun, 1991), Campbell writes elegant, soul-sucking horror that rivals the genre's finest--but there's none of his best here. To his credit, Campbell admits as much in his introduction, although he does preen about the most recent entry here--the previously unpublished novella ``Needing Ghosts.'' Before reaching it, the reader encounters, first, one of the author's earliest tales, ``Cat and Mouse,'' a lackluster bit of feline terror that does, however, flow smoothly. Next up is the once privately published ``Medusa,'' a true Campbell oddity since it's a science-fiction novella, an unsettling tale of alien encounter. Campbell says it's his strongest work of sf, since ``here and there imagination surfaces,'' and that's about right. Next come four stories inspired by the ghoulish E.C. comics of the 50's: one deals with zombies, a second with mummies, both obviously; ``A New Life'' is a wrenching take on Frankenstein from the monster's point of view, while ``Run Through'' is the collection's only truly scary tale--an eerie mosaic of flashbacks revealing a man pursued by a monster. Three mid-80's stories follow, two of them climaxing with the sort of predictable twist favored by their original publisher, TZ (Twilight Zone) Publications. And then there's ``Needing Ghosts,'' in which a writer takes a dreamlike odyssey through a threatening town and into the mystery of his own life, and perhaps death. It's Campbell at his most surreal--and most self-indulgent: a lament for the writer's lot that mixes horror and black humor as awkwardly as did his most recent novel, The Count of Eleven (1992)--not a happy augury for future Campbell work. With so much Campbell to read or reread, only die-hard fans will want to bother with these scrappy leavings. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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