The Nightside Codex

by Justin A. Burnett, Brian Evenson, Stephen Jones

Editor's IntroductionThere’s something fascinating about a book that was never written. It resists, for one, all the imperfections that inherently arise in language, all those insufficiently rendered thoughts and images that famously leave writers exasperated with their own work. Exasperated enough to inspire some, like Kafka, to advocate the wholesale burning of their oeuvre. Sometimes it’s worse. Imagine how many books out there never made it to print thanks to the gap between direct experience and these tiny scratches of ink we’re expected to render it by. A damned shame. One of the benefits of avoiding this insufficiency is that an unwritten book achieves exactly what it’s supposed to. Robert W. Chambers’ two-act play, “The King in Yellow,” drives its reader to madness. There’s no question of its power to do so. What horror writer wouldn’t want a taste of that? Luckily, the actual text is never allowed to interfere with Chambers’ unwritten masterpiece. That’s what makes it so fascinating—the burden of creation is thrown back into our own imaginations, letting us fill in the gaps with our own hidden madness. Barring the invention of some kind of live neuron mapping tech in the world of entertainment (you laugh, but just wait), nothing comes closer to a truly individualized media experience. No wonder writers as diverse and inventive as H.P. Lovecraft, Stanislaw Lem, and Jorge Luis Borges, to name a few better-known examples, are drawn to the unwritten manuscript. But that’s not entirely what this book is about. You’ll find more here than just the (un)written word in the classic sense—there’s musical scores, ancient glyphs, an autograph, and even an eBook. Worse, each extracts a terrible price from its reader. With the exception of Richard Thomas’ “In His House,” these stories aren’t additions to the lore of unwritten staples of horror and weird fiction. They are wholly fabricated media artifacts of each writer’s imagination, horrific in their nonexistence, dark heirs to the great and unreal Sutter Cane. We hope your imagination is a secure place since it’s there where the conjurations are soon to begin. We bid you luck on your descent into The Nightside Codex

Genres: Horror, Short Stories

314 pages, Paperback

First published August 24, 2020

About the author

Justin A. Burnett is the author of The Puppet King and Other Atonements. He’s also the Executive Editor of Silent Motorist Media, a weird fiction press responsible for the publication of the anthologies Mannequin: Tales of Wood Made Flesh, which was named best horror anthology of 2019 by Rue Morgue magazine, The Nightside Codex, and Hymns of Abomination, a tribute to the work of Matthew M. Bartlett. He currently lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife and children.

Reviews

[Bill Hsu · Rating 2 out of 5]

The anthology pulls out its big guns right away. After a short poem, we get a light but entertaining piece by Richard Thomas, a quietly humorous treatment of well-worn Cthulhu tropes. Brian Evenson's piece is unsurprising to us fans, but I'm always up for more paranoia, (possible) doppelgangers, misbehaving notebooks, and general anxiety and confusion.

I enjoyed Nadia Bulkin's story, though I thought it rambled, and is not among her best. And I couldn't finish the next story, with prose like:

Regret bubbles up in me like a science fair volcano, but I gulp it back.

Gulp.

I'm not a fan of Alistair Rey's story, about pianists and (ARGH) a fugue that summons the devil. Really. But maybe I'm being even more picky than usual, having spent my share of hours hacking away at selections from the Well-Tempered Clavier. I don't know if the Michael Fassbender who wrote the next story is the actor. But "Schattenlenker's Hidden Treasure" is great fun, complete with an M.R. James namecheck. I certainly have fond memories of checking out rare books from my old university libraries. No fatal traffic accident afterwards, fortunately.

I like the idea of Philip Fracassi's "As I Sit to Write This Story", with the unreliable Nabakov-ian narrator interpreting a mysterious diary. But it's a tricky piece to pull off, and I'm not sure he succeeded consistently.

I'm not a fan of the most of the rest, though the anthology does end with a pretty funny story by Stephen Graham Jones. I'm sure most of us who use mobile devices on flights (back when we took flights!) can relate.

[David Busboom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of these stories are quite good, though a couple of them just didn't do it for me, and the unifying theme made reading some of them back-to-back feel just a tad samey/repetitive. My personal favorite, I think, might be "Monster of the Mind" by Scott J. Couturier, but other standouts include Richard Thomas's "In His House," Brian Evenson's "I Cannot Remember," Jessica McHugh's "Pulpit Fiction," and the final two stories by Austin James and Stephen Graham Jones, respectively. I think this is a solid anthology from an exciting newer press, and I look forward to seeing what they do next.

[Joe Sherman · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, excellent read. The story that stood out to me was Sarah walkers ouroboros. Very good read. I have read several of her other works and I have yet to find one that I didn't like. Hopefully she will release a full book soon. The rest of the book was good but ouroboros was a definite stand out.

[Jon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a mostly enjoyable, mostly on-topic collection of short stories about books, e-readers, and the like, all of which have some variety of unexpected consequences or purpose, often extremely negatively. Most pf the stories within are enjoyable and well written, with a few landing pretty flat for me and some not being on topic at all. More were good and topical than not, with some bringing Lovecraft, Carpenter, Ligotti and the like to mind. Check it out if that mix of folks intrigued you!

[Joshua · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hit and miss anthology with more hits than misses. Compelling theme that was done real justice by a few of the contributors, with Nadia Bulkin, Selene de Packh, and SE Casey. They were my personal high notes. Overall a very readable antho, though it really bogs down in a few places. As with most of these collections, if it bogs too much just skip on to the next one. They can't all be winners.

[Erin · Rating 2 out of 5]

The premise, that these are short stories about books never written, isn’t exactly what these stories are about, but it’s rather hard to say exactly what they ARE about. Some are about stories, at least one is about haunted music…but one thing they have in common? Sadly, none of them are very good. It’s too bad, because I wish they were better. I wish even a few of the authors could have pulled off something really good . Boo.