Books That Deserve Reprint: The Collected Strange Stories of Robert Aickman
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Owning all of Aickman has never been the easiest conquest. Today, readers will find most of his work in single out-of-print short story collections or scattered throughout random horror anthologies. There is one exception: The Collected Strange Stories, a two volume set by Tartarus Press printed in two limited editions in 1999 and 2000. Predictably, this full set of Aickman's fiction is long out-of-print, and good copies of both books are usually priced by online merchants at $400 or above.
Robert Aickman has always had a small cult following in weird fiction. This hasn't changed much, even with the advent of the internet, which occasionally helps propel established writers into a larger following. However, Aickman's output has lost none of its importance. The refined style and perplexing mysteries in his work have made him one of the most attention worthy authors in weird horror.
This makes it such a shame that The Collected Strange Stories--or a similar route to acquiring a full Aickman collection--is so difficult and expensive to find. He can be read, certainly, but not always studied or fully appreciated by this lack of a complete edition. Let us hope that Tartarus will consider reprinting a Decade Edition in the near future, or that another publisher will try herding his strange stories into one leafy corral.
-Grim Blogger
4 comments:
Currently Faber have the rights (at least in the UK) so a Tartarus reprint is unlikely. Faber has reprinted three of the collections so far, but from what I understand there are errors in the text.
Thanks for the tip, Simon. I actually have a paperback copy from Faber of Cold Hand in Mine. Not to knock them too hard, but there are indeed a number of typos and the format is not the most reader friendly. All the more reason I would like to see an Aickman collection reprinted by a different publisher.
God, yes, please. Either the collected, or each collection individually. It's bound to happen individually, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I was getting impatient.
It's a terrible strain when you "discover" a "new" writer who wrote about things, and in a way, that you never realized you cared about in quite that way, only to find the majority of his work nearly impossible to get your hands on.
I've just gotten my first Centipede Press book (Reggie Oliver's Dramas from the Depths); I would love to see Aickman get the same treatment.
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