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

For decades, readers had been weaned on a steady diet of Armageddon, whether it was the environmental collapse predicted in Rachel Carson’s 1962 best seller Silent Spring or the end times in 1970’s best seller The Late Great Planet Earth. The greatest threat to humanity in the ’80s was nuclear war, of course, which hung over the planet like the sword of Damocles. Men’s adventure paperbacks of the era were full of tough warriors striding through postnuclear wastelands, leading a resistance against the invading Soviet army (C.A.D.S., 1985), fighting horrible mutants (Phoenix, 1987), or battling an oppressive American government (the thirty-four-volume Ashes series, starting in 1983). But, oddly, the closest thing we get to nuclear apocalypse in horror paperbacks are Native American curses.

Capable of massive destruction, dreaming peacefully beneath the earth’s surface until they’re disturbed, these curses are depicted as forces that modern man cannot control and that he unleashes at his peril. At the end of Chumash, when the Malibu coastline is destroyed by an Indian curse, 30,000 people wind up dead and a massive “blast zone,” unsafe for human occupation, is established. It resembles nothing so much as the irradiated wasteland left in the wake of a dirty bomb.

The endings of these books often occur in some kind of underground tomb or chamber where the forces of aboriginal destruction are contained, but never destroyed, usually at great sacrifice on the part of the Anglo heroes. And so, like underground silos containing weapons of mass destruction, Native American curses are sealed away to lie dormant for now, resting uneasily in the darkness, capable of awakening at any moment and destroying us all.

What do vengeful native spirits want? Maybe some company (Skeleton Dancers), maybe an apocalypse (Chumash). Credit 142

Credit 143

Stories of North America’s homegrown inhumanoids offer madness-inducing hallucinations (Bearwalk), shapeshifting spirits (The Chindi), half-melted giants (The Shaman), dream-dolls (Kachina), golden-eyed mini-killers (Shadoweyes), Aztec alchemists (The Silver Skull), cannibal dwarves (Ten Little Indians), and silver-coated rabbit gods (When Spirits Walk). Credit 144

The Man behind the Manitou

Seventeen-year-old Graham Masterton started out as a newspaper reporter in his native Scotland. He soon became the editor of Mayfair, a men’s magazine, and then moved over to Penthouse. At the tender age of twenty-five he wrote the sex instruction book Acts of Love; since then he has written close to thirty more lovemaking manuals. In 1975 he took a break from nookie advice to write The Manitou, the novel that launched his fiction career. He has written more than seventy books, including historical sagas, humor collections, and movie novelizations.

Critics write reviews of Masterton’s books in a stunned, slack-jawed daze. “Be warned,” a still-reeling reviewer for Kirkus wrote of Master of Lies in 1992, “Masterton’s newest…opens with what may be the single most sadistic scene in horror history….The excruciating detail here seemingly acknowledges no bounds and culminates in a soul-draining depiction of a giant mutilating the penis of a renowned psychic.”