As part of the content-rich Resource Guide at the end of my supernatural horror short story, "It's Your Funeral," I offer five short essays on the masters of modern supernatural horror fiction—Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Aickman, Clark Ashton Smith, and Ambrose Bierce.
Edward Gorey's memorable cover of Painted Devils
Here are my insights on the astonishing Robert Aickman, whom I first discovered when I was living in Japan in 1995. His masterpiece “Ringing the Changes” was featured in a Roald Dahl ghost story anthology, and I knew immediately I had encountered Lovecraft’s only possible successor.
Another Gorey cover: what a brilliant title!
Aickman is certainly an influence on my short story "It's Your Funeral," which is about a certain famed Hollywood superstar who is alleged to secretly practice Santería—to further her career.
You can order it as an ebook here on Amazon for only $.99.
Aickman walking the towpath of St. Helens Canal with his dog
In the second half of the twentieth century, Robert Aickman became Lovecraft’s only worthy successor as the undisputed master of supernatural fiction of his age. Not by imitating Lovecraft (like so many luckless souls did), but by doing something completely different.
As a result of his mysterious “strange stories,” he’s been called the master of inconclusive ghost story and the lord of ambiguity, but he understood that when something strange, terrifying, and inexplicable happens to us (whether it’s the death of a loved one, a world war, or the ascension of a raging tyrant to national power), we don’t always get a full explanation; all we know is, our universe has been shattered.
He admitted his amazing story Ringing the Changes has an echo of inspiration from The Shadow Over Innsmouth, but for that matter, so does Koji Suzuki’s stunning Japanese horror novel Ring, yet the influence is so oblique, I challenge you to tell me where Lovecraft touched them; the authors had to point them out to me explicitly in printed interviews.
Aickman with his first wife and collaborator, the writer Elizabeth Jane Howard
Again, thanks to Tartarus Press to keeping his works in print, and now Faber & Faber is bringing him out in paperback to a wider audience.
Peter Straub called him “this century's most profound writer of what we call horror stories.” I agree with him. Like Machen’s, Aickman’s stories are works of art—authentic literature—but they’re so deeply disturbing, you can only read one at a time. His tales reverberate with Freudian and Jungian overtones—and reek of the void of the unknown.
Watch the first-rate 1987 British TV adaptation of Aickman's creepy and profound classic The Hospice, starring the beautiful Marte Keller
Aickman's brilliant tale The Swords was adapted for the 1997 Showtime horror anthology series The Hunger, starring Balthazar Getty; the Freudian aspects are unmistakable
