Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One

by Henry Kuttner, Stephen Haffner (Editor), Garyn G. Roberts (Introduction)

Before his marriage to (and subsequent collaborations with) Catherine L. Moore, Henry Kuttner was a frequent contributor to the pulp magazines that specialized in the weird, supernatural, horror, and science fiction genre. Beginning in 1936, with the minor classic "The Graveyard Rats," Kuttner launched a steady stream of short stories aimed at Weird Tales, Mystery Tales, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and others. Writing for Weird Tales brought Kuttner into direct correspondence with that magazine's premier contributor. H. P. Lovecraft. Kuttner set several stories in Lovecraft's "Cthulhu Mythos" and several are presented in TERROR IN THE HOUSE "The Secret of Kralitz," "The Eater of Souls," "The Salem Horror," "The Jest of Droom-Avista," "The Frog," "The Invaders," and "The Bells of Horror." Given the short lengths of Kuttner's stories, he had to be prolific and he contributed reams of copy to the weird-menace (a sub-genre of horror where a seemingly supernatural plot is resolved with a pedestrian ending) pulps, Thrilling Mystery and Spice Mystery. It was his specialization for "spicy" or sexed-up stories that led Kuttner to write most (two stories and one novelette) of the first issue of Marvel Science Stories, arguably the first "spicy" science fiction pulp. TERROR IN THE HOUSE is the first volume in a set collecting many of Kuttner's earliest stories, most of which have never been reprinted.

Table of Contents
Preface by Richard Matheson
Introduction by Garyn G. Roberts, Ph.D.
The Graveyard Rats, Weird Tales Mar 36
Bamboo Death, Thrilling Mystery Jun 36
The Devil Rides, Thrilling Mystery Sep 36
The Secret of Kralitz, Weird Tales Oct 36
Power of the Snake, Thrilling Mystery Nov 36
Coffins for Six, Thrilling Mystery Dec 36
It Walks by Night, Weird Tales Dec 36
Laughter of the Dead, Thrilling Mystery Dec 36
The Eater of Souls, Weird Tales Jan 37
Terror in the House, Thrilling Mystery Jan 37
The Faceless Fiend, Thrilling Mystery Jan 37
The Dweller in the Tomb, Thrilling Mystery Feb 37
I, the Vampire, Weird Tales Feb 37
Nightmare Woman, Thrilling Mystery Mar 37
The Salem Horror, Weird Tales May 37
My Brother, The Ghoul, Thrilling Mystery Jun 37
I Am the Wolf, Thrilling Mystery Jul 37
The Jest of Droom-Avista, Weird Tales Aug 37
Four Frightful Men, Thrilling Mystery Sep 37
When the Earth Lived, Thrilling Wonder Stories Oct 37
Terror on the Stage, Thrilling Mystery Sep 37
Lord of the Lions, Thrilling Mystery Nov 37
The Bloodless Peril, Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec 37
Invasion from the Fourth Dimension, Thrilling Mystery Jan 38
Messer Orsini's Hands, Spicy Mystery Jan 38
Worlds' End, Weird Tales Feb '38
The Graveyard Curse, Spicy Mystery Mar 38
The Unresting Dead, Thrilling Mystery Mar 38
The Shadow on the Screen, Weird Tales Mar 38
Hell s Archangel, Spicy Mystery Apr 38
My Name Is Death, Spicy Mystery May 38
Devil s Masquerade, Mystery Tales Jun 38
The Dark Heritage, Marvel Science Stories Aug 38
Dictator of the Americas, Marvel Science Stories Aug 38
The Disinherited, Astounding Science Fiction Aug 38
Hands Across the Void, Thrilling Wonder Stories Dec 38
The Frog, Strange Stories Feb 39
The Invaders, Strange Stories Feb 39
The Bells of Horror, Strange Stories Apr 39
Beyond Annihilation, Thrilling Wonder Stories Apr 39

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction

712 pages, Hardcover

First published November 28, 2010

About the author

Henry Kuttner was, alone and in collaboration with his wife, the great science fiction and fantasy writer C.L. Moore, one of the four or five most important writers of the 1940s, the writer whose work went furthest in its sociological and psychological insight to making science fiction a human as well as technological literature. He was an important influence upon every contemporary and every science fiction writer who succeeded him. In the early 1940s and under many pseudonyms, Kuttner and Moore published very widely through the range of the science fiction and fantasy pulp markets.

Their fantasy novels, all of them for the lower grade markets like Future, Thrilling Wonder, and Planet Stories, are forgotten now; their science fiction novels, Fury and Mutant, are however well regarded. There is no question but that Kuttner's talent lay primarily in the shorter form; Mutant is an amalgamation of five novelettes and Fury, his only true science fiction novel, is considered as secondary material. There are, however, 40 or 50 shorter works which are among the most significant achievements in the field and they remain consistently in print. The critic James Blish, quoting a passage from Mutant about the telepathic perception of the little blank, silvery minds of goldfish, noted that writing of this quality was not only rare in science fiction but rare throughout literature: "The Kuttners learned a few thing writing for the pulp magazines, however, that one doesn't learn reading Henry James."

In the early 1950s, Kuttner and Moore, both citing weariness with writing, even creative exhaustion, turned away from science fiction; both obtained undergraduate degrees in psychology from the University of Southern California and Henry Kuttner, enrolled in an MA program, planned to be a clinical psychologist. A few science fiction short stories and novelettes appeared (Humpty Dumpty finished the Baldy series in 1953). Those stories -- Home There Is No Returning, Home Is the Hunter, Two-Handed Engine, and Rite of Passage -- were at the highest level of Kuttner's work. He also published three mystery novels with Harper & Row (of which only the first is certainly his; the other two, apparently, were farmed out by Kuttner to other writers when he found himself incapable of finishing them).

Henry Kuttner died suddenly in his sleep, probably from a stroke, in February 1958; Catherine Moore remarried a physician and survived him by almost three decades but she never published again. She remained in touch with the science fiction community, however, and was Guest of Honor at the World Convention in Denver in 198l. She died of complications of Alzheimer's Disease in 1987.

His pseudonyms include:

Edward J. Bellin
Paul Edmonds
Noel Gardner
Will Garth
James Hall
Keith Hammond
Hudson Hastings
Peter Horn
Kelvin Kent
Robert O. Kenyon
C. H. Liddell
Hugh Maepenn
Scott Morgan
Lawrence O'Donnell
Lewis Padgett
Woodrow Wilson Smith
Charles Stoddard

Reviews

[Michael]

Entwurf

TERROR IN THE HOUSE sammelt vierzig Erzählungen des jungen Henry Kuttner aus der Pre-Moore-Ära, die zunächst im legendären Weird Tales Magazin und später in anderen Pulp-Magazinen 1936 - 1939 veröffentlicht wurden.
Einigen der Horrorstories, die mit dem Adjektiv "spicy" gut beschrieben sind, ist der Einfluß von Lovecraft anzumerken, mit dem Kuttner kurz vor dessen Tod in Briefkontakt stand (andere Bekannte und Freunde waren Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch und Richard Matheson, um nur drei Householdnames zu nennen). Neben den Horror-Stories finden sich auch Kuttners erste SF-Erzählungen in diesem Band wieder.

Das Buch selbst ist hochwertig aufgemacht. Zunächst sticht der Schutzumschlag ins Auge, den stilgerecht ein Pulp-Cover von Harry V. Parkhurst ziert. Der hochwertige Einband, Papier und Druck komplettieren den hervorragenden Eindruck. Ein kurzes Vorwort von Richard Matheson und eine verständige Einleitung von Garyn G. Roberts sind den Erzählungen vorangestellt.

Um einen Eindruck von Kuttners Stil zu vermitteln, hier der jeweils erste Satz der ersten drei Erzählungen:

1. The Graveyard Rats (März 1936)
"Old Masson, the caretaker of one of Salem´s oldest and most neglected cemeteries, had a feud with the rats."
2. Bamboo Death (Juni 1936)
"Joan clutched at the am of the broad-shouldered young man beside her as sthe scream came again, shrill with agony, lancing through the lush vegetation that fringed the narrow trail."
3. The Devil Rides (September 1936)
"If Fred Malone had known of the nightmare horror that was dragging itself through the underbrush toward the clearing where he sat with Janet Cooper, he wouldn´t have been quietly watching Janet´s hair turn bronze in the glow of the sunset."

Kuttner kommt sofort zur Sache und schafft es auch beim heutigen Leser umstandslos, heftigste Gänsehaut zu erzeugen. Für mich erstaunlich, in welchemm Maße perverse Ideen in den Pulps veröffentlicht wurden, die oft einen eindeutig sexuellen Hintergrund haben. "The Devil Rides" könnte auch in einem Stephen King-Erzählband auftauchen, angestaubt sind Kuttners Erzählungen nicht, wenn auch typisch Pulp. Die späteren Genregrenzen Horror / SciFi / Adventure / Spicy Pulp waren in den 30er Jahren noch nicht festgezurrt, und was als Horrorgeschichte beginnt, kann mit einer handfesten Schläger- und Schießerei als Adventure enden.

[Kurt Reichenbaugh]

I picked this up some months ago and have read only about 4 stories so far. Entertaining pulp and weird menace stories from the 1930's. I still have a lot of stories left, so no rating yet.

[Michael Moe · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fans of Kuttner or pulp adventure should enjoy these stories--even in his early days, Kuttner knew how to spin entertaining yarns that would keep readers turning the pages (and he could do this in just about any genre). He was also prolific--this collection includes 40 stories published over roughly 3 years. These two facts have led some to classify Kuttner as a hack. However, I've always thought of him as a solid pro who sometimes rose to brilliance (especially in his collaborations with his wife C.L. Moore).

Fair warning: Much of Kuttner's early writing was for the "spicy" and weird menace pulps (a fact of which I was not aware before reading this book), so there are some problematic elements in these stories--women getting their clothes ripped off, bondage, torture, and one overt "yellow peril" story. However, these elements are relatively mild by modern standards and even compared to some of his contemporary pulp writers.

[Rich · Rating 2 out of 5]

Kuttner has written several classics of science fiction, often in collaboration with his wife, Catherine L. Moore. These are not the classics but very early stories mostly written formulaically for the “weird menace” market. They get very repetitive. A few stories do stand out - usually the straight horror tales published in Weird Tales. Definitely for hardcore Kuttner fans only.