Into the Silence

by Basil Copper

Genres: Horror

243 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Basil Copper was an English writer and former journalist and newspaper editor. He has written over 50 books and scripts. In addition to fantasy and horror, Copper is known for his series of Solar Pons stories continuing the character created by August Derleth.

Copper edited a 1982 two-volume omnibus collection of Derleth's stories of the 'Pontine' canon, published by Arkham House, a publishing firm founded by Derleth himself and chiefly publishing weird fiction (such as Cthulhu Mythos tales); in that edition, Copper "edited" most of the tales in ways that many Pontine aficionados found objectionable[citation needed]. A later omnibus, The Original Text Solar Pons Omnibus Edition, was issued in 2000 under the imprint of Mycroft & Moran (a name which is itself a Holmesian jest).

He also wrote the long-running hard-boiled detective stories of "Mike Faraday" (58 novels from 1966 to 1988).

Copper has received many honours in recent years. In 1979, the Mark Twain Society of America elected him a Knight of Mark Twain for his outstanding "contribution to modern fiction", while the Praed Street Irregulars have twice honoured him for his work on the Solar Pons series. He has been a member of the Crime Writer's Association for over thirty years, serving as chairman in 1981/82 and on its committee for a total of seven years.

In early 2008, a bio-bibliography was published on him: Basil Copper: A Life in Books, compiled and edited by Stephen Jones.

In March 2010, Darkness, Mist and Shadow: The Collected Macabre Tales of Basil Copper was launched at the Brighton World Horror Convention as a two-volume set by PS Publishing.

Reviews

[Chris Browning · Rating 4 out of 5]

Where to even start with this madness. Copper seems to have had some sort of Rarebit Fiend style nightmare involving bits of Quatermass, some of Plague of the Zombies and a little Arthurian legend thrown in for good measure. He then throws them all together in one of the daftest plots I have ever, ever read. There are a million easier way the evil intelligence in this could have approached their dominance of humanity. Literally millions.

Instead they go for, and I do not joke for a moment, making an entrepreneur believe there’s a cave under the Cornish coast where Camelot *literally* fell during a landslide. And then, for shits and giggles, they decide to impersonate various Arthurian artefacts such as Excalibur and the Round Table so that when they are returned to the surface they can invade. Except, some of them are already up there anyway so why the rest of them don’t come up that route is beyond me. Similarly, why not pretend to be… I don’t know… gold or something. But no, let’s do a mythical table. That’ll fool the bastards. God knows how they even got into Arthurian mythology from all that level under the earth

Anyway

All this happens. And as the final kicker, the final absolute out of nowhere shocker of them all, it’s written brilliantly. It’s tense, it’s pacy, it’s engaging and creepy and full of genuinely scary moments. It is also very literally the work of an insane man. Astonishing

[Greg Gbur · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks to a busy workload over the past few months, I’m way behind in my blogging on a variety of topics! I thought I’d start catching up first on my backlog of weird fiction, as I’ve been reading an immense amount in my evenings.

A few months ago I blogged about The Great White Space (1974), a novel by author Basil Copper, recently reprinted by Valancourt Books. Basil Copper (1924-2013) was a stunningly prolific writer who penned a variety of novels and short stories in both detective and horror fiction. The Great White Space is Copper’s take on Lovecraftian cosmic horror, and I really enjoyed it; this, of course, led me to wonder if the rest of his work is just as good.

Fortunately, Valancourt Books has also released another of Copper’s novels, the compellingly-titled detective story Necropolis (1980).

But I didn’t stop there — I also scared up one of Copper’s out-of-print books, the horror novel Into the Silence (1983).

Read the whole review.

[Mark Bromley]

An under appreciated horror tale in similar vein to The Great White Space. Good read.