‘On Call’ by Dennis Etchison originally appeared in Fantasy Newsletter #22 March 1980. Fantasy Newsletter ran from 1978 to 1987. Over the years it was largely focused on reviews, interviews, and publishing news with the occasional piece of fiction. Paul C. Allen the editor at the time of ‘On Call’ says fiction “will receive a very low priority in terms of space. But it will receive a high priority with regard to quality–when I use it, it will be “different” and well written”. (FN 22, p.1)
Karl Edward Wagner was very familiar with Fantasy Newsletter. He wrote a semi-regular column called ‘On Fantasy’ sharing writing duties with Fritz Leiber from 1980-1984 then the column became infrequent and Wagner traded writing duties with Ramsey Campbell from 1984-1987. The column covered trends, authors they were reading, conventions and various other musings. I would love a nice collection of these writings someday.
So it was in the pages of this periodical that ‘On Call’ first appeared. Drastically different from the other offerings in the book so far in its, to use a buzzword, nightmarish Dreamtime logic. Wagner had this to say when talking about where ideas come from in his introduction to the story “Occasionally, however, an author will experience some particularly vivid dream (or, if you will, nightmare) and will incorporate this into a story. Such is the case with Dennis Etchison’s disturbing Kafkaesque nightmare, ‘On Call.'” And what a nightmare it is.
Very simply put ‘On Call’ is the story of a man who is picking up his wife after dropping her off so she can receive her x-ray results. This is merely a framework on which Etchison hangs the nightmare. As a reader, I find this style hard to approach because so much of the story is under the surface of any narrative I’m often not sure if I ‘got’ the story or not. Wagner has his own experiments in this dreamlike style with stories like ‘Cedar Lane’, ‘Shrapnel’ and ‘Endless Night’. Etchison opens his story with “‘Read it now,” called the blind newspaper vendor. “Many are dying and many are dead!”‘ This phrase is packed with the bizarre. The juxtaposition of the blind man selling a visual news source and proclaiming that ‘many are dying’ when in fact we are all dying; or are at least headed that way. Could it be that we are living our lives blind to our impending doom? The story then proceeds in a realistic manner for a good page or two before the hints of nightmare start appearing. There is a motif of waiting from the inhabitants in the world Etchison created and our protagonist keeps taking action to find his wife. Ultimately, waiting or taking action, they all end up in the same place.
I should have realized:
A) this story is from Etchison a master of this style
and
B) this story is included in a best of the year
I shouldn’t have been too concerned whether I would ‘get’ it. At least I found that it means something to me personally and ultimately that’s all that matters.
Next: ‘The Catacomb’ by Peter Shilston
More Dennis Etchison: YBHS VIII: ‘The Dead Line’
This story is a great example of the variety of sources Wagner scoured to create his collections. This one almost slipped through his fingers, it comes from A Touch of Paris an English language magazine marketed to tourists in Paris. Wagner credits the writer Tim Sullivan as the person who brought this story to his attention.
‘The Gap’ by Ramsey Campbell was originally published in the Fantasy Readers Guide issue two. To my understanding, this guide worked as a great source of bibliography for the author featured in the issue pre-internet. In addition to the bibliography, it also included essays on Campbell’s work as well as this new story ‘The Gap’.
‘The Monkey’ was originally published in the November 1980 issue of Gallery magazine as a detachable insert. It was later expanded and included in the short story collection of King’s entitled Skeleton Crew. Gallery was a “skin” magazine started in 1972 in imitation of the lucrative Playboy. Because of Hugh Heffner’s love of Sci-Fi and horror, he was a card-carrying member of the ‘Weird Tales Club’ after all, Playboy often included very good genre fiction. Gallery, I imagine in imitation of Playboy, published their own genre fiction. In addition to Stephen King, Gallery hired some of the same authors including Harlan Ellison, Ray Bradbury, and Isaac Asimov. What intrigues me about this story in the collection is that it is early career King. It’s safe to say he had exploded on the scene six years earlier with Carrie in 1974 then followed it up with several bestsellers. King’s status can be seen in his prominent billing on the magazine cover, sandwiched below “‘Girl Next Door’ Winner of the Year” and above “Can We Survive the Next President?” However, at the same time this story was published, he was still publishing under
