Frontiers of Terror

by David B. Silva

A dynamic collection of eighteen short stories that take you to the cutting edge of dark fantasy. Writers include Trey R. Barker, Tom Piccirilli, Richard Lee Byers, Brian McNaughton, David B. Silva, C.J. Henderson, Gregory Nicoll, A.R. Morlan, Stephen Antczak, James Shimkus, Ralph Greco,Jr., Jeffrey Thomas, Del Stone,Jr., James S. Dorr, and Bruce Gehweiler. Cover art by Ben Fogletto.

Genres: Short Stories, Horror

380 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2002

Reviews

[Rick Vickers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the stories are really good, creepy, but some of them towards the end of the book we're.... Just bad

[James Bowman · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good selection of modern horror/dark fantasy tales. The standouts are the surprisingly chilling "Praying That You Feel Better Soon"; the two Cthulhu Mythos tales of Inspector Legrasse, "Patiently Waiting" and "Where Shadow Falls" (which feel more like Robert E. Howard than Lovecraft; the second tale is better done than the first, IMHO); and the nightmarish "The Arizona Underground." A few are less fantastic ("Black Velvet") or less horrific ("One Last Drag" and "Rest in Peace") or even tending towards other genres altogether ("Time of the Gr'nar"), but overall this is a nice collection, good casual reading.

[Mike Mclatchey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leaving a review on this anthology because I was a little surprised the overall average was as low as it was. Frontiers of Terror is sort of a (mostly) non-mythos follow up to the Bruce Gehweiler edited New Mythos Legends. It's a wide ranging horror anthology that largely seems anchored by C. J. Henderson's work both with and without Gehweiler joining him. Perhaps the two Inspector Legrasse stories are most central to the book, stories that follow the famous inspector from H. P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" and his ongoing fight against the old ones. In fact "Where Shadows Fall" may be the best of these stories, although I've a couple more to read in the anthology that collects all of them. Henderson moves the feel of these stories closer in his sort of detective/noir vein but also away from Lovecraft in that the stories allow their characters enough competence to get to the next story. Gehweiler joins Henderson on two stories, one, the "Tremors" in space weird western of "Time of the Gr'Nar" which was fun enough to find out there's a whole book of these stories with other writers, and then the almost Christian sword and sorcery of "Rest in Peace" which was somewhat daft but also kind of fun. The rest of the stories all range far away from these longer four, but contain many authors that appeared in "New Mythos Legends." I liked Del Stone Jr's offramp pocket universe in "I-10," James Shimkus' story of a young man's powerful medicine man and uncle and what the latter was holding at bay, David B. Silva's unethical science experiment at "Lake 313," Ralph Greco Jr's wealthy man with a weird obsession about mirrors (also including one of the collection's very few female protagonists) "'Acquired' Reflection," Steve Antczak and Gregory Nicoll's underground secret in the desert and Richard Lee Byers' Mexican folk story come to life "The Turning of the Wheel." While the collection pride of place goes to "Where Shadows Fall" I'd count about ten really solid stories in this with the rest being decent to fair. While everyone can write, the book is riddled with typos in nearly every story I could count, I don't usually complain about a few errors but many of these tripped me up. But only a couple of the stories came close to not liking and these were more because they weren't my style than any real issue with them. This is possibly not one of the really great horror anthologies but its absolutely enjoyable and solid for an ertswhile small press. It's really about a 3 1/2 but since the best work were all the longer stories I bumped it up.