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Oxrun Station #11
Dialing the Wind
Mass Market Paperback.
210 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1988
5 people are currently reading
240 people want to read
About the author
Charles L. Grant
309 books262 followersCharles Lewis Grant was a novelist and short story writer specializing in what he called "dark fantasy" and "quiet horror." He also wrote under the pseudonyms of Geoffrey Marsh, Lionel Fenn, Simon Lake, Felicia Andrews, and Deborah Lewis.
Grant won a World Fantasy Award for his novella collection Nightmare Seasons, a Nebula Award in 1976 for his short story "A Crowd of Shadows", and another Nebula Award in 1978 for his novella "A Glow of Candles, a Unicorn's Eye," the latter telling of an actor's dilemma in a post-literate future. Grant also edited the award winning Shadows anthology, running eleven volumes from 1978-1991. Contributors include Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, R.A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, and Steve Rasnic and Melanie Tem. Grant was a former Executive Secretary and Eastern Regional Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and president of the Horror Writers Association.
Grant won a World Fantasy Award for his novella collection Nightmare Seasons, a Nebula Award in 1976 for his short story "A Crowd of Shadows", and another Nebula Award in 1978 for his novella "A Glow of Candles, a Unicorn's Eye," the latter telling of an actor's dilemma in a post-literate future. Grant also edited the award winning Shadows anthology, running eleven volumes from 1978-1991. Contributors include Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, R.A. Lafferty, Avram Davidson, and Steve Rasnic and Melanie Tem. Grant was a former Executive Secretary and Eastern Regional Director of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and president of the Horror Writers Association.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 8, 2014
I will never, ever be this good. Of course, that won't stop me from trying. As always, Grant's brand of quiet horror is built on human emotions and wants and needs and desires, and failings, too. And I'm a sucker for little universes like Oxrun Station. Just makes me wish more and more that I could've met Charles.
July 29, 2016
The next volume in Grant's Oxrun Station novellas series is Dialing the Wind, a collection with an inscrutable title. The first story in the collection is also called "Dialing the Wind", and after reading it, you'll understand the title, but whoever selected this as the title of the book must not have been thinking straight. It doesn't really tell you anything about the book, and it's about as evocative as dry toast.
Each of these collections has had a central theme: Nightmare Seasons was about obsession; The Orchard was about madness; and Dialing the Wind is about alienation. Each theme is common in the horror genre, and they work well as a framing point for the entire collection. Each collection also has a framing vignette that bookends the four novellas, each one suggesting that Grant himself lives in Oxrun Station, and is just there to tell the stories. In a way, I suppose that's actually true.
The story "Dialing the Wind" is an odd story of a woman whose isolation leads her to receive a radio preacher show on her radio that's not accessible from other radios. She runs into another woman who is also receiving the show, and she has let it drive her a little off kilter. I'm quite sure of the point of this story, to be honest.
The next story, "The Sweetest Kiss", is about a man who is married with children, but suddenly becomes obsessed with an old girlfriend of his. His daydreaming conjures her up, and he starts to pursue her again, but in true Grant fashion, she's not what she appears. In this story, the alienation is self-prescribed by the main character, but when he chooses to be unfaithful to his wife, he becomes unsympathetic. I'm not sure if that was Grant's intent, but the story didn't engage me because of that.
"As We Promise, Side by Side", the third story, is about a woman and her house. She's a divorcée who received the house in lieu of any alimony, and over the last four years, she's taken care of it and made it her own. When her ex-husband threatens to return, the house decides to protect her, but at a cost higher than she expected. It's a neat idea, but I felt like the execution was a little lacking, simply due to the lengths the ex-husband went in his revenge; it didn't feel believable to me. Plus, the story echoes "The Last and Dreadful Hour", from The Orchard, only it's not quite as interesting.
That bring us to the last story, "The Chariot Dark and Low", where instead of focusing on how alienation brings horror, it uses the theme as the horror. A young man finds himself suddenly alone in the same town that has always been populated, and it traces how that sudden isolation affects him, and why it happened at all. It's a well-told tale, and highlights what makes Grant's stuff so good when it works.
So, the entire collection is a bit of a mixed bag, but at least one of the stories here is definitely worth reading. "As We Promise, Side by Side" is an effective story, even if Grant doesn't quite stick the landing, but "The Chariot Dark and Low" is the real winner here. Fans of horror -- quiet or otherwise -- should definitely make an effort to read that one.
Each of these collections has had a central theme: Nightmare Seasons was about obsession; The Orchard was about madness; and Dialing the Wind is about alienation. Each theme is common in the horror genre, and they work well as a framing point for the entire collection. Each collection also has a framing vignette that bookends the four novellas, each one suggesting that Grant himself lives in Oxrun Station, and is just there to tell the stories. In a way, I suppose that's actually true.
The story "Dialing the Wind" is an odd story of a woman whose isolation leads her to receive a radio preacher show on her radio that's not accessible from other radios. She runs into another woman who is also receiving the show, and she has let it drive her a little off kilter. I'm quite sure of the point of this story, to be honest.
The next story, "The Sweetest Kiss", is about a man who is married with children, but suddenly becomes obsessed with an old girlfriend of his. His daydreaming conjures her up, and he starts to pursue her again, but in true Grant fashion, she's not what she appears. In this story, the alienation is self-prescribed by the main character, but when he chooses to be unfaithful to his wife, he becomes unsympathetic. I'm not sure if that was Grant's intent, but the story didn't engage me because of that.
"As We Promise, Side by Side", the third story, is about a woman and her house. She's a divorcée who received the house in lieu of any alimony, and over the last four years, she's taken care of it and made it her own. When her ex-husband threatens to return, the house decides to protect her, but at a cost higher than she expected. It's a neat idea, but I felt like the execution was a little lacking, simply due to the lengths the ex-husband went in his revenge; it didn't feel believable to me. Plus, the story echoes "The Last and Dreadful Hour", from The Orchard, only it's not quite as interesting.
That bring us to the last story, "The Chariot Dark and Low", where instead of focusing on how alienation brings horror, it uses the theme as the horror. A young man finds himself suddenly alone in the same town that has always been populated, and it traces how that sudden isolation affects him, and why it happened at all. It's a well-told tale, and highlights what makes Grant's stuff so good when it works.
So, the entire collection is a bit of a mixed bag, but at least one of the stories here is definitely worth reading. "As We Promise, Side by Side" is an effective story, even if Grant doesn't quite stick the landing, but "The Chariot Dark and Low" is the real winner here. Fans of horror -- quiet or otherwise -- should definitely make an effort to read that one.
March 28, 2021
I found this used paperback deep in the stacks of a marvelous bookshop in Havre de Grace, Maryland. Charles Grant was a prolific writer (30 novels in 15 years, not to mention hundreds of short stories). Widely known as a master of what's called "quiet horror", what drew me (and many others) to him is the deep and genuine humanity of his writing. Stephen King once said, "I write believable characters and make you care about them, then I put them in trouble." That's what Grant does very well in almost everything I've ever read by him. He establishes the social and emotional world of his characters SO FAST that before you know it, you fall into the story and are deeply, deeply hooked.
Grant is known for his Oxrun Station stories, which are all set in the fictional town of Oxrun. There's more than a whiff of Bradbury's Greentown in Oxrun, although it's a somewhat seedier, sadder Greentown, where the passionate, imaginative young boys have grown into sadder, anxious and disappointed adults.
Grant takes his time setting up these real human lives on the page before unleashing the monsters. (This, I believe, is what earned Grant the label "quiet horror"––a term my own writing has been labeled with, and one I'm proud to claim.) When the monstrous or the supernatural finally shows its face, it's almost never what you expect, and certainly not what the characters expect––a riderless chariot without a horse that follows a man through the snowy streets, a house that seals people inside to protect them from an outside threat where their inner fears destroy them. Like all great horror writers, Grant knows that the most powerful thing about a horror story is not the fearful monstrosity or apparition, but the fear itself, real human fear and the things a human mind will do to escape it. Grant also excels at showing us the mental lengths his characters go through in order to make sense of the strange and terrifying things that are happening to them.
Occasionally, when things start to unravel for the characters in the final pages of these stories, it feels as if the story starts to unravel as well. That may be because Grant's tendency to hold back for so long causes him to go for broke at the end of a story. After pages and pages of quiet, atmospheric subtlety and suggestion, he pulls out all the stops and occasionally overshoots the mark. But that's a small complaint to make about a collection that's so rich with things to admire. And emulate. Because in the end, that's what reading Charles Grant does for me. It makes me want to write. Somehow I think he'd like that.
Grant is known for his Oxrun Station stories, which are all set in the fictional town of Oxrun. There's more than a whiff of Bradbury's Greentown in Oxrun, although it's a somewhat seedier, sadder Greentown, where the passionate, imaginative young boys have grown into sadder, anxious and disappointed adults.
Grant takes his time setting up these real human lives on the page before unleashing the monsters. (This, I believe, is what earned Grant the label "quiet horror"––a term my own writing has been labeled with, and one I'm proud to claim.) When the monstrous or the supernatural finally shows its face, it's almost never what you expect, and certainly not what the characters expect––a riderless chariot without a horse that follows a man through the snowy streets, a house that seals people inside to protect them from an outside threat where their inner fears destroy them. Like all great horror writers, Grant knows that the most powerful thing about a horror story is not the fearful monstrosity or apparition, but the fear itself, real human fear and the things a human mind will do to escape it. Grant also excels at showing us the mental lengths his characters go through in order to make sense of the strange and terrifying things that are happening to them.
Occasionally, when things start to unravel for the characters in the final pages of these stories, it feels as if the story starts to unravel as well. That may be because Grant's tendency to hold back for so long causes him to go for broke at the end of a story. After pages and pages of quiet, atmospheric subtlety and suggestion, he pulls out all the stops and occasionally overshoots the mark. But that's a small complaint to make about a collection that's so rich with things to admire. And emulate. Because in the end, that's what reading Charles Grant does for me. It makes me want to write. Somehow I think he'd like that.
November 7, 2015
Doesn't really announce itself as a short story collection, but very good once you get into the rhythm.
March 22, 2024
Dialing The Wind is a late 1980s collection of four novellas. Each takes place in Charles L. Grant's Oxrun Station, a Connecticut suburb. Each story deals with a male or female protagonist having a midlife crisis, and being tipped toward the madness side of the scale. This expresses itself in daydreams that seem to come true, houses that seem to come to life, country music from nearby houses that seems to be the work of players long dead, and a preacher's voice offering life advice from a dead spot on the radio dial that normally carries a sound like rushing wind.
Tor originally published Dialing The Wind as though it were a novel. This was unfortunate, but typical of their carelessness. The four novellas in this collection are very well done and are worth the readers undivided attention.
Prologue
Dialing the Wind
The Sweetest Kiss
As We Promise, Side by Side
The Chariot Dark and Low
Epilogue
Tor originally published Dialing The Wind as though it were a novel. This was unfortunate, but typical of their carelessness. The four novellas in this collection are very well done and are worth the readers undivided attention.
Prologue
Dialing the Wind
The Sweetest Kiss
As We Promise, Side by Side
The Chariot Dark and Low
Epilogue
December 22, 2023
This was strange entry (even for Oxrun) in the series with four separate but interconnecting stories of more weird tales in this strange little town
The whole series kind of mixes Twin Peaks with a pinch of horror
The whole series kind of mixes Twin Peaks with a pinch of horror
April 23, 2021
Quiet nineteen-eighties horror.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews