Paperbacks from Hell [N.F. - Literature, Art]

Meanwhile Allison’s Baby is, oddly enough, about Allison’s doctor, Jason Fielding, M.D. He’s researching memory, meaning that he takes hobos and the elderly, cuts out pieces of their brains, and sees if they remember anything afterward. Most don’t, so he locks them up in a rapidly overflowing mental asylum. Why is Dr. Fielding conducting this stupid experiment? Because when he discovers what makes memory work, he’s going to win the Nobel prize, and if he wins “the highest reward of his profession,” he is certain to “finally prove to his father that he wasn’t a failure.” A noble goal, but Allison and her baby keep screwing it up.

What danger signs should patients watch for when selecting a skeleton doctor? Well, if the doctor refers to patients as “poor unlucky bastards,” be careful. Also, doctors who turn abandoned mental institutions into their own private research facilities are probably up to no good. Especially when the entrance to said clinic is “an underground passageway behind the morgue.” Most important, just remember that whenever a skeleton does science, innocent people wind up getting hurt.

The Party Decade

Welcome to the ’80s, where life was a bitchin’ ride in a sweet Porsche! Manufacturing was dead! We were a service and technology economy now! Everyone get rich! America is number one! Let’s kill a commie for mommy and head for the mall!

Science may have been running amok in horror fiction, but in the real world it was making books more eye-catching. Greeting card technology was repurposed for the book business as Kluge embossers and Bobst stampers worked overtime to coat covers in foil, raised monsters, and die-cut windows showing swank stepback art. Coming soon: hologram covers! Strachan Henshaw printing presses ran hot, spitting out 450 new paperback titles each month and 200 new horror titles every year.

Paperbacks of the ’70s had been shaped by grim, sober novels like The Exorcist and Rosemary’s Baby. By contrast, horror fiction of the ’80s was warped by the gaudy delights of Stephen King and V. C. Andrews. The Dead Zone (1979) became King’s first book to debut on the New York Times Best-Seller List; by 1983 an estimated 40 million copies of King’s books were in print. The Exorcist was for squares, and Rosemary’s Baby smelled like grandma. If you wanted to do serious business, you needed an endorsement from King.

Anne Rice’s 1976 Interview with the Vampire birthed a slew of sequels in the ’80s, transforming Rice into a brand name and spawning an arterial gush of vampire novels. Besides King, Rice, and V. C. Andrews (more about Rice and Andrews next chapter), a second tier of writers turned out doorstop-sized books that quickly moved to bookstore racks in malls and airports everywhere. Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, John Saul, Dean Koontz, and John Farris bounced up and down the best-seller lists, earning much of their profit from paperback sales. Superagent Kirby McCauley and his Pimlico Agency represented all the big names in horror and sci-fi. McCauley had two pieces of advice for writers: write novels—the fatter the better—and sell paperback originals (hardcovers did a lot for authorial egos but little for sales). As everyone knows, an author is only as good as the last sales report.

Small horror imprints had flourished in the ’70s, but in the ’80s the big publishers gobbled them up. Penguin acquired Grosset & Dunlap and Playboy Press, setting off a trend that snowballed into an extinction-level event by decade’s end. Once they had eaten the little guys, big publishers flooded the market with their own paperback original imprints, like Spectra, Onyx, Pinnacle, and Overlook.

The ’70s saw horror get serious, but the ’80s were party time. And the guest of honor at that party was Time magazine’s 1982 “Man of the Year,” fresh out of the lab and ready to rock and roll: the personal computer!

Horror paperback covers reflected their decade, full of big hair (Hot Blood), lurid neon color schemes (Nocturnal), shopping malls (The Mall), and the Cold War (Black Magic). Credit 110

Horror Goes High Tech

The seeds of a computer revolution were planted in the ’70s, when humanity was betrayed by the twin engines of government and commerce. Politicians lied about nuclear war, scientists lied about pollution, NASA lied about aliens. Private companies were poisoning the oceans with toxic waste and acid rain. But a technological counterculture was brewing in garages and spare bedrooms all over the country. Channels like the Whole Earth Catalogue and science-fiction movies seeded receptive minds with the idea that technology could be turned to more human needs.