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The Twelve Frights of Christmas
HAVE YOURSELF A SCARY LITTLE CHRISTMAS
We wish you a macabre Christmas with thirteen of the best horror tales of the season. Hang your stocking with very special care by “The Chimney,” a chiller about what really comes down from the roof on Christmas Eve. Or join Robert Bloch on “The Night Before Christmas” by trimming the tree…in a shocking fashion. It’s hardly a silent night even in outer space, where Arthur C. Clarke makes our blood run cold with the truth about Bethlehem’s star.
So curl up by those chestnuts roasting on an open fire…as these masters leave you screaming on a white Christmas
RAMSEY CAMPBELL • ROBERT BLOCH • H.P. LOVECRAFT • H.G. WELLS • ARTHUR C. CLARKE • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON • MRS. GASKELL • S. BARING-GOULD • RON GOULART • GRANT ALLEN • JAMES McCONNELL • J.T. McINTOSH
We wish you a macabre Christmas with thirteen of the best horror tales of the season. Hang your stocking with very special care by “The Chimney,” a chiller about what really comes down from the roof on Christmas Eve. Or join Robert Bloch on “The Night Before Christmas” by trimming the tree…in a shocking fashion. It’s hardly a silent night even in outer space, where Arthur C. Clarke makes our blood run cold with the truth about Bethlehem’s star.
So curl up by those chestnuts roasting on an open fire…as these masters leave you screaming on a white Christmas
RAMSEY CAMPBELL • ROBERT BLOCH • H.P. LOVECRAFT • H.G. WELLS • ARTHUR C. CLARKE • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON • MRS. GASKELL • S. BARING-GOULD • RON GOULART • GRANT ALLEN • JAMES McCONNELL • J.T. McINTOSH
263 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1986
8 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
About the author
Isaac Asimov
4,341 books27.7k followersWorks of prolific Russian-American writer Isaac Asimov include popular explanations of scientific principles,
The Foundation Trilogy
(1951-1953), and other volumes of fiction.
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...
Isaac Asimov, a professor of biochemistry, wrote as a highly successful author, best known for his books.
Asimov, professor, generally considered of all time, edited more than five hundred books and ninety thousand letters and postcards. He published in nine of the ten major categories of the Dewey decimal classification but lacked only an entry in the category of philosophy (100).
People widely considered Asimov, a master of the genre alongside Robert Anson Heinlein and Arthur Charles Clarke as the "big three" during his lifetime. He later tied Galactic Empire and the Robot into the same universe as his most famous series to create a unified "future history" for his stories much like those that Heinlein pioneered and Cordwainer Smith and Poul Anderson previously produced. He penned "Nightfall," voted in 1964 as the best short story of all time; many persons still honor this title. He also produced well mysteries, fantasy, and a great quantity of nonfiction. Asimov used Paul French, the pen name, for the Lucky Starr, series of juvenile novels.
Most books of Asimov in a historical way go as far back to a time with possible question or concept at its simplest stage. He often provides and mentions well nationalities, birth, and death dates for persons and etymologies and pronunciation guides for technical terms. Guide to Science, the tripartite set Understanding Physics, and Chronology of Science and Discovery exemplify these books.
Asimov, a long-time member, reluctantly served as vice president of Mensa international and described some members of that organization as "brain-proud and aggressive about their IQs." He took more pleasure as president of the humanist association. The asteroid 5020 Asimov, the magazine Asimov's Science Fiction, an elementary school in Brooklyn in New York, and two different awards honor his name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_As...
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 20, 2024
The thirteen stories here are a very mixed bag to be sure; some excellent and some real stinkers. The standouts were "The Chimney" by Ramsey Campbell, Lovecraft's "The Festival," and "Life Sentence" by James McConnell. "Pollock and the Porroh Man" by H.G. Wells was good, as was Bloch's "The Night Before Christmas" and McIntosh's "Planet of Fakers." The rest, double meh. As Asimov mentioned in the intro, some of these only tangentially refer to Christmas, so do not expect only tales of Christmas by any means. Three stars as the good stories really shined, but with the stinkers I cannot go higher than that.
December 27, 2022
The twelve frights of Christmas actually has 13 stories and most of them only have a glimpse of Christmas in them. Not many are horror stories really, lots of science fiction in here as well. Most of the stories are bad but there is a few exceptions being; The Night Before Christmas, The Weird Woman, The Hellhound Project ( my faviroute ) and Planet of Fakers. So 4 out of 13 were pretty good.
Given the little Christmas feeling this book has I would suggest skipping this one next festive season if you were going to read it.
Given the little Christmas feeling this book has I would suggest skipping this one next festive season if you were going to read it.
December 10, 2021
This was a childhood favourite, a precious paperback given to me as a gift by my 5th grade "boyfriend" (you know, the "I like you so we'll walk home together" flavour of preteen "dating"). Obviously my predilection for dark and deranged reading was already clear.
My favourite story of the anthology and the one I make a point of reading every December is THE CHIMNEY by Ramsey Campbell. It scared the hell out of me as a kid, though now I'm a bit unclear about exactly what's happening in the end...but the imagery is unbeatable.
Not every story is a winner, but if you like any of the authors in the impressive list of contributors to this one, track down a copy. It's a fun distraction from the syrupy sweetness of Hallmark movies, that's for damn sure.
My favourite story of the anthology and the one I make a point of reading every December is THE CHIMNEY by Ramsey Campbell. It scared the hell out of me as a kid, though now I'm a bit unclear about exactly what's happening in the end...but the imagery is unbeatable.
Not every story is a winner, but if you like any of the authors in the impressive list of contributors to this one, track down a copy. It's a fun distraction from the syrupy sweetness of Hallmark movies, that's for damn sure.
January 1, 2020
As is usual with anthologies it's a mixed bag and I liked some stories better than others but overall it's a great mixture of mostly horror with some science fiction and speculative fiction. Perfect for the festive season!
My two stand-out favourites were:
The Chimney by Ramsey Campbell - a disturbing story about a young boy's fears of what might come out of the chimney.
Life Sentence by James McConnell - an unsettling horror/speculative fiction tale about a murderer's sentence.
A couple of other favourites were The Festival by H.P. Lovecraft and The Old Nurse's Story by Mrs Gaskell.
My two stand-out favourites were:
The Chimney by Ramsey Campbell - a disturbing story about a young boy's fears of what might come out of the chimney.
Life Sentence by James McConnell - an unsettling horror/speculative fiction tale about a murderer's sentence.
A couple of other favourites were The Festival by H.P. Lovecraft and The Old Nurse's Story by Mrs Gaskell.
December 23, 2020
Finally, my new video is up!
In this episode, I review the anthology "The 12 Frights of Christmas."
I receive some Christmas cookies.
Also, since I hit 500 subscribers, I have included is a recipe to help brighten your holiday.
https://youtu.be/IjrAPiMw2NU
In this episode, I review the anthology "The 12 Frights of Christmas."
I receive some Christmas cookies.
Also, since I hit 500 subscribers, I have included is a recipe to help brighten your holiday.
https://youtu.be/IjrAPiMw2NU
December 28, 2024
I’m very disappointed with Asimov in this one. He’s a great one for themed books, but he chose mostly to ignore the theme for this book, and justified it by implying that there are not very many “good, powerful” Christmas stories out there to choose from.
“Only glancingly” is overselling. You have to read very closely to get the Christmas reference in some of these stories. If they were in fact all “good, powerful stories” that might be forgivable (although it would, then, be better to simply title this as “good, powerful stories” rather than “Christmas” stories) but for the most part they are in fact mediocre.
Some of them are old, mediocre stories (H. G. Wells’s “Pollock and the Porroh Man” is not among his best works) and some new, but few are “frights”, “Christmas”, or “powerful”.
Probably the most intriguing is Grant Allen’s “Wolverden Tower”; it starts out as an old-school ghost story where it looks as though we’re supposed to be surprised at who is and isn’t a ghost even though it’s telegraphed right from the start. But then it slides into a weird, dreamy story about the necessity of old rituals in a modern age, and the life of those ancient ghosts who are attempting to maintain a safe place for the living despite a rejection of those rituals.
The worst may be the one most tied to Christmas, Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star”. Clarke seems to think that he’s presenting a wholly new and frightful view of the Christmas story, but he makes no mention of the story of the Holy Innocents. The latter is a frightful and unsettling part of the Christian Christmas, and both its immediacy and the innocence of its victims dwarfs Clarke’s own more natural and more all-encompassing catastrophe.
That his narrator was a Jesuit makes his complete ignorance of the relevance of Herod’s massacre to the man’s crisis of faith even more inexcusable.
The most enjoyable story is probably the one that most touches on the horror of the holiday, H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Festival”. This story contains one of Lovecraft’s many famous quotes, that “happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain.” It deserves to be quoted in full context, for the entire paragraph is a wonderful one. While it isn’t technically a spoiler, it does come at the very end, so I’m not going to quote it in full here; read that hideous chapter in full!
Unlike this collection, it is best not forgotten.
One more point, and then I’m through. Our primary aim in preparing a “theme anthology” (one in which all the stories revolve around a particular theme) is to bring you good, powerful stories. If we are forced to choose between a mediocre story that represents the theme closely and a very good one that deals with it only glancingly, we must choose the latter.
“Only glancingly” is overselling. You have to read very closely to get the Christmas reference in some of these stories. If they were in fact all “good, powerful stories” that might be forgivable (although it would, then, be better to simply title this as “good, powerful stories” rather than “Christmas” stories) but for the most part they are in fact mediocre.
Some of them are old, mediocre stories (H. G. Wells’s “Pollock and the Porroh Man” is not among his best works) and some new, but few are “frights”, “Christmas”, or “powerful”.
Probably the most intriguing is Grant Allen’s “Wolverden Tower”; it starts out as an old-school ghost story where it looks as though we’re supposed to be surprised at who is and isn’t a ghost even though it’s telegraphed right from the start. But then it slides into a weird, dreamy story about the necessity of old rituals in a modern age, and the life of those ancient ghosts who are attempting to maintain a safe place for the living despite a rejection of those rituals.
The worst may be the one most tied to Christmas, Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Star”. Clarke seems to think that he’s presenting a wholly new and frightful view of the Christmas story, but he makes no mention of the story of the Holy Innocents. The latter is a frightful and unsettling part of the Christian Christmas, and both its immediacy and the innocence of its victims dwarfs Clarke’s own more natural and more all-encompassing catastrophe.
That his narrator was a Jesuit makes his complete ignorance of the relevance of Herod’s massacre to the man’s crisis of faith even more inexcusable.
The most enjoyable story is probably the one that most touches on the horror of the holiday, H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Festival”. This story contains one of Lovecraft’s many famous quotes, that “happy is the tomb where no wizard hath lain.” It deserves to be quoted in full context, for the entire paragraph is a wonderful one. While it isn’t technically a spoiler, it does come at the very end, so I’m not going to quote it in full here; read that hideous chapter in full!
Unlike this collection, it is best not forgotten.
…things have learned to walk that ought to crawl.
May 9, 2019
I don’t enjoy anthologies but I wanted to read this book particularly because I love the idea of combining Christmas with horror.
As is usually the problem with anthology books, I found that I only liked four stories out of thirteen.
So why such an average rating?
The stories that were bad required every mental discipline to get through (aka reading one page and then putting the book down.) However, the stories that were really well-done, were... really well-done. And deserving of more stars than three.
“Planet of Fakers” by J.T McIntosh was my absolute favorite. Then “The Hellhound Project” by Ron Goulart and, of course, the stories by Robert Bloch and H.G. Wells.
Overall, this book had a “take it or leave it” feel to it in terms of whether I’d recommend it or not.
As is usually the problem with anthology books, I found that I only liked four stories out of thirteen.
So why such an average rating?
The stories that were bad required every mental discipline to get through (aka reading one page and then putting the book down.) However, the stories that were really well-done, were... really well-done. And deserving of more stars than three.
“Planet of Fakers” by J.T McIntosh was my absolute favorite. Then “The Hellhound Project” by Ron Goulart and, of course, the stories by Robert Bloch and H.G. Wells.
Overall, this book had a “take it or leave it” feel to it in terms of whether I’d recommend it or not.
December 11, 2020
I've owned this book for many decades and though I've taken a dip into one of the stories here and there, this year I decided to read it straight through. Well... it's a terrible collection of Christmas stories. Which isn't to say all the stories are bad, but most of the stories have almost nothing to do with Christmas. The holiday plays some small role or a background element that's completely insignificant. In that sense, the title is quite misleading.
Ironically, two of my favorite stories in the collection are pure SF and have so little to do with Christmas, they shouldn't be here, but I'm glad I was able to read them.
I found many of the stories, even those written by authors I like, to be rather dull. Sadly, it was a chore to get through the entire anthology.
Ironically, two of my favorite stories in the collection are pure SF and have so little to do with Christmas, they shouldn't be here, but I'm glad I was able to read them.
I found many of the stories, even those written by authors I like, to be rather dull. Sadly, it was a chore to get through the entire anthology.
December 19, 2019
I just couldn't finish this, I bought this book a thousand years ago, have moved with it twice and really thought I had better get it read this Christmas. I had a feeling it wasn't going to be a good one though. The first handful of stories were good but they go down hill from there. A few of them are 'from another time' meaning 'very racist' and I couldn't take any more racial slurs frankly. Some of them, like the Stevenson story are inaccessible to me, the language is flowery and irritating. The Bloch, Gaskell, Campbell and Lovecraft stories are all solid but some of the others are terrible and I couldn't wade through the trash any longer to get to the treasure. A very mixed bag.
November 16, 2016
An interesting and varied collection of stories from a wide range of authors including H. G. Wells, H. P. Lovecraft, Ramsey Campbell and others. Each brief story was able to capture my interest and keep it until the end. I'm not sure I would classify them all as Frights but, they were entertaining.
January 21, 2024
Thank You to the Authors in this Book and Books of Horror. I won this book from Books of Horror.
This is a Collection of 13 Christmas themed Horror and Science Fiction stories. Some stories I enjoyed better then others. Some i was wondering where the Christmas theme was. I enjoyed the Haunted House stories and the James Bond vibe story.
Horror
Science fiction
This is a Collection of 13 Christmas themed Horror and Science Fiction stories. Some stories I enjoyed better then others. Some i was wondering where the Christmas theme was. I enjoyed the Haunted House stories and the James Bond vibe story.
Horror
Science fiction
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 18, 2018
Doing some house cleaning and stumbled on this.
I remember I've read it multiple times, and really loved it.
Also just got to know HP Lovecraft was here too, so I should probably stop reading that chthulu story of his I'm struggling to read on Scribd, sigh.
I remember I've read it multiple times, and really loved it.
Also just got to know HP Lovecraft was here too, so I should probably stop reading that chthulu story of his I'm struggling to read on Scribd, sigh.
March 7, 2018
Some great stories in here, and some not so great. I seemed to like the more SciFiy ones, which doesn't surprise me.
December 20, 2020
Much like other reviewers have stated, the stories in this collection are hit or miss. They all have the Christmas holiday as a theme in each story (but it usually is not the central theme). I tend to pack this away with the Christmas decorations each year and pull it out the next year the decorations are going up and give my favorites another read. My favorites were:
The Chimney - Ramsey Campbell
The Festival - H.P. Lovecraft
The Night Before Christmas - Robert Bloch
Plant of Fakers - J.T. McIntosh
Life Sentence - James M. Connell
The Chimney - Ramsey Campbell
The Festival - H.P. Lovecraft
The Night Before Christmas - Robert Bloch
Plant of Fakers - J.T. McIntosh
Life Sentence - James M. Connell
January 26, 2016
The first 7 stories or so were not to my liking, and I was just trying to get through the book at that point. But some of the stories near the back were quite good. I enjoyed The Hellhound Project, Planet of Fakers, Life Sentence, and of course the Arthur C. Clarke story.
June 21, 2009
Anthology,Horror
dnf
September 15, 2018With only 12 short stories present, they should all be high quality.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews