OSJ Brings the Horror/Weird Author of the Week

[OSJ]

So we don't get all mixed up, I'll do a new thread for these every week on Saturday, (unless Rippa tells me not to). Apparently Anthony Rud didn't make much of an impression, and that's kind of understandable as the best I'm able to do with the guy is reprint two novels and add four short stories to each book. You get those, that's all the Anthony Rud you will ever need unless you dig straight up adventure stuff and westerns (of which he wrote tons). Anyway, enough of Mr. Rud.

 

This week I bring you SIR CHARLES BIRKIN

 

 

For those who have never heard the name, Charles Birkin single-handedly brought back the short story as the preferred form of the horror tale in the UK. (Yes, he predates my buddy Ramsey Campbell by decades). The 1960s and early 1970s were a veritable explosion of Birkin titles. For the most part he eschewed the supernatural and concentrated on man's inhumanity to man. The cool thing about his work is the authorial voice is cool, refined, understated; everything that you would expect from a member of the peerage. However, the stuff he is describing is Grand Guignol excess at the very least. Sir Charles was Splatterpunk, before Splatterpunk was cool. Old ladies are set fire in their wheelchairs, babies are surgically modified for the sideshow circuit, war prisoners are tortured in ways I don't even want to get into. Pretty grim stuff. However, the man was hardly a one-note writer, he could also pen a ghost story that would bring tears to your eyes ("A Haunting Beauty"). So how does a British child of privilege become a horror writer?

 

Turn the clock back to the 1930s, Birkin is in his twenties and like most of his class, he is sent out to the business world for a few years to learn how the other half lives. Publishing was considered "gentleman's work" and like several others, (Mark Hansom for one) Birkin went to work as an editor for Philip Allan. While there he did several things of note. He established and edited the famous "Creeps" series which included a number of anthologies highlighting writers in the Philip Allan stable such as Tod Robbins, H.R. Wakefield, L.A. Lewis and others as well as some indy Brit authors who are (sadly) forgotten today such as Phillip Murray. The Creeps series was a huge success and Birkin usually had a story or two of his own in each anthology (this is why I always write something special for most anthologies that I do, Birkin is sort of my literary idol). He also had a collection published under the name "Charles Lloyd", Devil's Spawn is an impossibly rare book today, but fortunately the stories are not lost as Sir Charles rewrote all but two (and to be fair, those two kind of sucked).

 

 

WWII came and like most of his countrymen Birkin went off to fight the Nazis. This led to a rather rabid hatred of Germans which is present in several stories such as "Green Fingers" and "A Lovely Bunch of Coconuts", the latter being about as disturbing as Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door. After the war, Birkin came home to manage the family affairs and no more was heard from him for twenty years.

 

Fast forward to the 1960s, author/editor Dennis Wheatley is preparing an anthology and thinks about the guys that he read as a kid, realizing that Birkin is still alive and that they are members of some of the same clubs he rings up the great man and asks him if he's at all interested in writing something new. He might as well have waved a red cape at a bull or asked Hulk Hogan if he wanted an 8-ball. Birkin not only came through with a new story, he started writing fiction again. Eight volumes of short stories appeared between 1964 and 1971 as well as two anthologies. When the genre turned back to novels as the preferred form thanks to a young man in Maine who shall remain nameless, Birkin retired again.

 

Thirty years later, British anthologist and all-around good guy Mike Ashley knew his pal in Seattle had just started a publishing company called Midnight House. He dropped me line to let me know he had something I might find interesting... Turns out that before he died, Birkin and Mike put together a collection of Birkin's favorite stories. This was published in 2000 as A Haunting Beauty. Two  years later I put out a collection of MY favorite Birkin stories that were not in AHB, the result was entitled The Harlem Horror, (I still have handful of copies, they are forty bucks postpaid, PM me if you want one.)

 

 

Birkin's collections from the sixties can be found cheap or very expensive depending on where you look. May I suggest (as always) abebooks.com is your friend. Now I shall try and had some pics (which I suck at, but we'll see what happens.)

 

Damn it, every pic I try says I'm not allowed to use that extension.  There are pics of all his books at Vault of Evil.

[DEAN]

I posted a couple of images for you, including the awesome photo of him- as he was Ian Curtis before Ian Curtis was Ian Curtis.

[OSJ]

You RAWK, good sirrah, you RAWK! Thanks, too for the Marvel Legends pics.