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City Fishing
City fishing is the long out of print short fiction collection by award-winning author Steve Rasnic Tem. This book collects 38 short stories drawn from the deep recesses of a very creative mind.Nominated for the Bram Stoker AwardWinner, International Horror Guild Award, 2000"The major collection his work has long deserved." -- The Denver Post"You're in for a treat!" -- Douglas Clegg"No critical analysis seems adequate to describe the twisted realities and unexpected terrors summoned by his fiction." -- William P. Simmons, Horrorfind"City Fishing constitutes a major work both in content and in sheer mass . . . While a master of nuance, Tem also knows when to achieve his desired effect through sheer, raw, power. There are moments when it's tempting to submit this author might be the world's most softspoken splatterpunk." -- Ed Bryant, Locus"These are new myths for the weird and dislocated times we live in . . . all [the stories] are excellent, and the best of them stand comparison with the best of any writer working in the field." -- Steve Duffy, All Hallows
- GenresHorrorShort Stories
340 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Steve Rasnic Tem
468 books311 followersSteve Rasnic Tem was born in Lee County Virginia in the heart of Appalachia. He is the author of over 350 published short stories and is a past winner of the Bram Stoker, International Horror Guild, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy Awards. His story collections include City Fishing, The Far Side of the Lake, In Concert (with wife Melanie Tem), Ugly Behavior, Celestial Inventories, and Onion Songs. An audio collection, Invisible, is also available. His novels include Excavation, The Book of Days, Daughters, The Man In The Ceiling (with Melanie Tem), and the recent Deadfall Hotel.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 3, 2022
Having been thoroughly impressed recently by Steve Rasnic Tem's seven entries in the Alan Ryan-edited Night Visions: In the Blood, I decided to go through all of my old horror anthologies and read (or re-read) some more of his stuff. I was somewhat surprised to find that he was featured in so many of them, including almost all the major ones: Cutting Edge, Hot Blood's 1, 3 & 4, The Best of Masques, Whispers V & VI, New Terrors, Borderlands 3, Masters of Darkness, Metahorror, six or seven in the Shadows series, and loads more. The late great Karl Wagner, however, must not have been a fan, as Tem was in none of the volumes of Year's Best Horror Stories.
After devouring several of his tales (both solo and collaborations with his wife Melanie Tem) from the various anthos, many of which I remembered liking a lot back in the day, I couldn't believe I hadn't actively sought out more of his early horror work before now. But I guess when you're always crammed in with a dozen entries from other writers, it's easy to get lost in the mix, especially if that author doesn't have any major collections of their own at the time for the reader to delve into. Of course, now Tem has plenty of collections to his name, so I decided to start with what seemed to be a sort-of "greatest-hits" of his 80s and early 90s horror work and, although I found I’d read nearly half of these 39 stories over the years, that in no way diluted their impact.
City Fishing really shows off the full range of his capabilities as a writer. He can do in-your-face horror, disquieting, atmospheric horror, erotic horror, surrealistic horror, and disturbing conte cruels (which I have to admit are not really my thing) with equal ease, and all with beautifully poetic prose. Of course, as with any collection as large and wide-ranging as this, not every entry was to my taste, but overall this was quite possibly the best collection I've read in years.
Highlights include:
"Father's Day," about a seemingly good father who's dreadfully afraid he will one day lose control and hurt or even murder his young son;
"The Battering," which is somewhat the opposite of "Father's Day," in which a father has to take drastic measures to protect his little girl, since everyone, including strangers, schoolmates, and the girl's own mother, is stricken with revulsion at the site of her and wants to hurt her;
"Little Cruelties," a sad, frightening, beautifully-told tale concerning the seemingly little cruelties we visit upon one another every day, how modern cities are possibly an incubator for such acts, and the consequences when one visits these "little" cruelties upon their children;
"Preparations for the Game," one of the most disturbing things I've ever read, I didn't care for this surreal, nightmarish story about a deranged frat boy til I realized, days later, that I couldn't stop thinking about it (I'm still trying to figure it out);
"Hungry," about a mother who's visited only by the ghosts of her unborn children, until one day her one actual child, who she hasn't seen in years, comes home to visit (and there's something very wrong with him);
"The Overcoat," about a man who keeps seeing an old overcoat in an alley, propped up against the wall, every night as he passes the alley, and it reminds him of his late father's. Very creepy, and not what I expected at all.
My two absolute favorites, however, are "Trickster" (THE highlight for me of the Alan Ryan-edited Halloween Horrors), a terrifying tale about one Halloween night in which a man keeps glimpsing his prankster brother among all the dressed-up revelers, even though his brother was murdered the previous Halloween, and the eerie, unsettling "The Men and Women of Rivendale," about a married couple who visit an isolated resort in which the guests and staff are "off" in some way.
Both of these affected me in ways that -- as an avid horror reader since 10 year-old me discovered King and Barker in 1989 -- stories rarely achieve for me anymore. "Trickster" straight-up freaked me out, and moved me, while slowly creeping, atmospheric "Rivendale" evoked in me more of a dreamlike, otherworldly sense of wrongness that Ligotti and Aickman pull(ed) off so often and so well.
Overall, an indispensable collection from an underappreciated master of short horror fiction.
5 Stars.
After devouring several of his tales (both solo and collaborations with his wife Melanie Tem) from the various anthos, many of which I remembered liking a lot back in the day, I couldn't believe I hadn't actively sought out more of his early horror work before now. But I guess when you're always crammed in with a dozen entries from other writers, it's easy to get lost in the mix, especially if that author doesn't have any major collections of their own at the time for the reader to delve into. Of course, now Tem has plenty of collections to his name, so I decided to start with what seemed to be a sort-of "greatest-hits" of his 80s and early 90s horror work and, although I found I’d read nearly half of these 39 stories over the years, that in no way diluted their impact.
City Fishing really shows off the full range of his capabilities as a writer. He can do in-your-face horror, disquieting, atmospheric horror, erotic horror, surrealistic horror, and disturbing conte cruels (which I have to admit are not really my thing) with equal ease, and all with beautifully poetic prose. Of course, as with any collection as large and wide-ranging as this, not every entry was to my taste, but overall this was quite possibly the best collection I've read in years.
Highlights include:
"Father's Day," about a seemingly good father who's dreadfully afraid he will one day lose control and hurt or even murder his young son;
"The Battering," which is somewhat the opposite of "Father's Day," in which a father has to take drastic measures to protect his little girl, since everyone, including strangers, schoolmates, and the girl's own mother, is stricken with revulsion at the site of her and wants to hurt her;
"Little Cruelties," a sad, frightening, beautifully-told tale concerning the seemingly little cruelties we visit upon one another every day, how modern cities are possibly an incubator for such acts, and the consequences when one visits these "little" cruelties upon their children;
"Preparations for the Game," one of the most disturbing things I've ever read, I didn't care for this surreal, nightmarish story about a deranged frat boy til I realized, days later, that I couldn't stop thinking about it (I'm still trying to figure it out);
"Hungry," about a mother who's visited only by the ghosts of her unborn children, until one day her one actual child, who she hasn't seen in years, comes home to visit (and there's something very wrong with him);
"The Overcoat," about a man who keeps seeing an old overcoat in an alley, propped up against the wall, every night as he passes the alley, and it reminds him of his late father's. Very creepy, and not what I expected at all.
My two absolute favorites, however, are "Trickster" (THE highlight for me of the Alan Ryan-edited Halloween Horrors), a terrifying tale about one Halloween night in which a man keeps glimpsing his prankster brother among all the dressed-up revelers, even though his brother was murdered the previous Halloween, and the eerie, unsettling "The Men and Women of Rivendale," about a married couple who visit an isolated resort in which the guests and staff are "off" in some way.
Both of these affected me in ways that -- as an avid horror reader since 10 year-old me discovered King and Barker in 1989 -- stories rarely achieve for me anymore. "Trickster" straight-up freaked me out, and moved me, while slowly creeping, atmospheric "Rivendale" evoked in me more of a dreamlike, otherworldly sense of wrongness that Ligotti and Aickman pull(ed) off so often and so well.
Overall, an indispensable collection from an underappreciated master of short horror fiction.
5 Stars.
January 22, 2013
It pains me that I didn't discover Steve Rasnic Tem's excellent short fiction earlier in my life. In some respects, these seems like a brilliant dystopian Bradbury going very, very dark. The best, I think, is "The Battering," but "The Painters Come Today" and "City Fishing" are brilliant in their own ways. A wonderful writer, a sylist with a poetic twist in some of these tales, and a dark mirror of human life in several. I could go on and on. If you love short fiction (and I'm on a campaign to get people reading more short stories), pick up City Fishing by Tem. Spend some time with it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews