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

Abyss’s breakout star was Poppy Z. Brite, whose Lost Souls was the line’s first hardcover book; it earned Brite a six-figure, three-book deal with Dell. His books revolve around the fictional town of Missing Mile, North Carolina, which is populated by sensitive psychic musicians, bisexual vampires, runaway waifs, serial killers, and cannibals. Dripping with graphic sex and violence, refusing to pay lip service to conventional tsk-tsking over runaway kids, Brite’s books are the R-rated, younger, sexier, more rebellious version of Anne Rice’s gothic vampire epics. His characters ditch the lives and families they’d been assigned at birth to build their own stronger, braver, more inclusive families on the margins. Brite had been associated with the splatterpunk movement, but he had something that eluded most of that gang, and he used it wisely: restraint.

For the next three years, Abyss published one new horror title every month. Financially, the line was moderately successful, but its books won awards and were unlike anything on the market. Dennis Etchison published with the line, as did Lisa Tuttle, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and even Michael McDowell. Their books didn’t set the world on fire, but they did set individual readers’ minds ablaze.

In July 1994, Jeanne Cavelos left Abyss to focus on her own writing and teaching. She was supposed to be replaced by a new editor, but never was. An editorial assistant took over and Dell lost confidence in the line, refusing to publish the third title on Brite’s contract, Exquisite Corpse, due to its “extreme” content. Abyss, with around forty-five titles on its list, withered and died shortly thereafter. And with it went the last echo of the horror boom.

EPILOGUE

The lesson horror teaches us is that everything dies. The horror fiction boom of the 1970s and ’80s became roadkill on the superhighway of the ’90s. Authors disappeared, cover artists found new outlets, and this publishing Titanic hit an iceberg, split apart, and released its cargo into the cold, dark waters to wash up on the shores of thrift stores and used paperback emporiums for years to come.

Things change, flesh rots, houses decay and fall into disrepair—there’s no point complaining. But the lost creativity makes you want to scream and pound on the inside of your coffin lid as it’s being nailed into place. If we forget about these books, where else will we find a town invaded by killer clowns (Dead White), Prometheus chained to a rock in an abandoned New York City subway station (Night Train), an army of killer jellyfish (Slime), a Satan who is obsessed with anal sex (The Nursery), an Alabama family welcoming a river monster into its ranks (The Blackwater series), an army of six-inch-tall Nazi leprechauns (our beloved classic The Little People)?

Darkness may have fallen over the hellscape these books once illuminated, but there are still some candles burning out there in the night, a handful of lonely bonfires kindled on windswept beaches along the coastline of the Internet. There aren’t many, but they’re enough to steer by if you care to explore this dark and fascinating world further. Reach out and you’ll find websites, some books, a few nerds and freaks like me and Will, some professors and academics, each one a lone lighthouse keeper for the legacy of these paperbacks.

We know we can’t make these authors famous again. We know we can’t give their titles another chance at the best-seller list. But for those who love these impossible, unpredictable books, it’s enough for us to imagine that somewhere out there, underneath the vast dome of the night, a few people are curled up on their couches, nestled in their beds, riding the bus or the train, holding a copy of When Darkness Loves Us. Or maybe The Voice of the Clown. Or Elizabeth. Or The Auctioneer. Or Feast. Or The Happy Man.

We can’t be certain that anyone is reading these books anymore. But we can hope. Because after all the monsters have flown away, hope is what’s left at the bottom of the box.

The sunken continent of horror paperbacks occasionally disgorges new treasures that float ashore like messages in a bottle. One of them is this never-before-published Les Edwards cover for the pigs-gone-wild classic The City, which was senselessly cropped back in 1986 for its mass-market release. Credit 179

SELECTED CREATOR AND PUBLISHER BIOGRAPHIES

Avon Books (founded 1941)