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Books of Blood, Vols. 1-3 (Books of Blood #1-3)

4.13 of 5 stars 4.13 · rating details · 11,864 ratings · 239 reviews

"Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red." For those who only know Clive Barker through his long multigenre novels, this one-volume edition of the Books of Blood is a welcome chance to acquire the 16 remarkable horror short stories with which he kicked off his career. For those who already know these tales, the poignant introduction is a window on th...more

Paperback, 507 pages

Published October 1st 1998 by Berkley Books (first published 1984)

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Nov 12, 2012 mark monday rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: new-dimensions, horrortime

based upon the evidence of Books of Blood 1-3, Clive Barker sprung into the literary horror world fully-formed, a writer all grown up, already past the awkward growing pains of an adolescent period that other writers of his stature and widespread appeal suffered through before reaching their full powers. his ability to construct and sustain an intriguing narrative, his resonant themes, his stylistic flourishes, his use of irony and dread and gore and comedy, his strength at detailing truly real...more

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Oct 01, 2010 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2010, age-adult, horror

So I got this movie "Dread" from Netflix, mostly because Jackson Rathbone (Jasper in the Twilight movies) was in it. And during the credits it mentioned that it was based on the short story by Clive Barker. Since I kind of spaced during the first part of the movie which I thought was a little boring but I loved the ending, I thought I might have missed something I would find in the story. A library catalog search found The Books of Blood, which also contains a few other stories made into movies,...more So I got this movie "Dread" from Netflix, mostly because Jackson Rathbone (Jasper in the Twilight movies) was in it. And during the credits it mentioned that it was based on the short story by Clive Barker. Since I kind of spaced during the first part of the movie which I thought was a little boring but I loved the ending, I thought I might have missed something I would find in the story. A library catalog search found The Books of Blood, which also contains a few other stories made into movies, namely "Midnight Meat Train" and "Book of Blood" (saw the first, saw at least part of the second).

There is a loose framework; the opening is about a fake psychic who sits in a haunted house that is a crossroads for the highways of souls, who ends up getting written on by ghosts - the Book of Blood is his skin, from which the stories contained in The Books of Blood are taken.

And the stories. Good horror, lots of gore, sex, violence, crazy weird things. There are quite a few stories (this being an omnibus edition of the first 3 volumes). Some that stand out: "Pig Blood Blues" about mysterious happenings at a prison-type camp for boys... let's just say pigs are creepy. "In the Hills, In the Cities" is sort of hard to define without giving it away, it's just so bizarre that it stuck with me. "The Skins of the Fathers" had a very Lovecraftian feel to it. "Scape-Goats" did as well, and I found it very effectively built up a sense of dread before anything truly "scary" happened.

As for those that became movies: "Midnight Meat Train" was a bit disappointing... The main character was not as deep as the movie's protagonist (nor as hot as Bradley Cooper), although there was further explanation of the world of the Butcher. "Dread" didn't actually fill much in from the movie, and in fact I liked the way the movie wove the storylines together better. Not that I didn't like the stories; I guess I'm used to being able to read the work a movie is based on and get MORE, but since these were short stories, the movies actually added to the original.

There were certainly some interesting themes, especially around women as in "Jacqueline Ess," "Rawhead Rex," and "The Skins of the Fathers."

I'm not having any luck finding a library that has volumes 4-6, and volumes 1-3 ended with the postscript "On Jerusalem Street" that Wikipedia lists as ending volume 6. Hmmm...(less)

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Nov 07, 2007 Tommy rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror

A horror classic. Clive Barker hit the ground running with this amazing collection of unique dark fiction. This was the book that made Stephen King call Barker 'the future of Horror.'

I really wish Barker would write some horror again, as his Abarat series does little for me story wise (though the paintings are beautiful) Honestly I've had my fill of sweeping fantasy from this author, especially since with each series I have to learn a whole new complex mythology.

Really I'm just dying for Barker...more

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Aug 13, 2008 Jessica Lynne Gardner rated it 5 of 5 stars

Completely blew me away- the very introduction I found to be enthralling. This was a very different kind of horror, one that didn't lose its sense of identity and roots in mysticism.

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Aug 03, 2008 Brenton rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: horror fans and all writers of the dark arts

Product details

· Paperback: 512 pages

· Publisher: Time Warner Paperbacks; New Ed edition (1 Feb 1988)

· Language English

· ISBN-10: 075151022X

· ISBN-13: 978-0751510225

Gritty would be a great single word to use in explaining this work. Barker is a hell of a writer, with an amazing imagination and a thoroughly gifted ability in using the written form of the language, but it is extremely different to what one could consider mainstream horror fiction. It is a little off centre to be considered st...more Product details

· Paperback: 512 pages

· Publisher: Time Warner Paperbacks; New Ed edition (1 Feb 1988)

· Language English

· ISBN-10: 075151022X

· ISBN-13: 978-0751510225

Gritty would be a great single word to use in explaining this work. Barker is a hell of a writer, with an amazing imagination and a thoroughly gifted ability in using the written form of the language, but it is extremely different to what one could consider mainstream horror fiction. It is a little off centre to be considered straight dark fiction, although the stories do indeed belong in both defined genres. But there is a lot more that begs for further definition, further analysis. His stories linger, disgust and yet allure. They completely turn the reader around.

They somehow how have an older world charm. They seem to capture an age of writing I thought had passed us by and yet he continually thrusts today back into the readers face with use of the language at well chosen points. (By today, I reveal my past as a child of the eighties, which is when these stories first enjoyed their first print run.) And sex...it is definitely an underlying theme in the work of Clive Barker. If graphic tales of men loving men, of prostitution or free love give you pause, then barker’s work may not be to your liking. Even so, if you love horror, your disgust and revulsion must be set aside as you are drawn into places you dared never to tread—even in your own imagination.

Every new writer who wishes to dabble in the dark art needs to read these stories. King maybe the modern master but, as King said himself, Barker is the future.

The stories cast their tales over a wide net, touching on a multitude of settings, and invoking a multitude of fears. Simply awe inspiringly brilliant.

I’ll not go into the individual premise and plotlines used. This is simply my poor attempt to pay homage to a master of the dark arts. I decline to sully that supplication with inept words of description. Go buy the book, steal it if you have to, but read it. Read it and be left in total wonder at the genius you have held in your hand.
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Feb 26, 2009 Dreadlocksmile rated it 5 of 5 stars

Back in 1984, Clive Barker made his name within the deeply competitive world of horror with the publication of the first three volumes of the macabre short stories `The Books Of Blood'. Written in his spare time, he admits that he was not expecting them to sell really at all, let alone predict the public response that followed. The release exploded within the horror literature genre, hailing Barker as an exciting and imaginative newcomer. Stephen King, already known as a master in the genre, wen...more

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Apr 11, 2013 Andrew Pickard rated it 4 of 5 stars

Let me first off state by saying that these collections of shorts stories are NOT for the faint of heart. If one has any particularly strong revulsion to graphic depictions of pretty much anything, this will be a tricky read. And while Clive Barker is indeed writing, as usual, within the confines of horror, he tends to trend more on the gruesome side, as Opposed to H.P. Lovecraft or other such writers of horror fiction.

That said, I have so far found his works to be quite enjoyable, in both th...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Steven rated it 4 of 5 stars

I eagerly snapped up these stories when they first appeared in the 1980s as three paperback volumes, and I find the best of them stand up quite well. There is some filler, and a couple of stories (notably "New Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament") should have been left out, but the wild imagery and free-flowing gore of the best stories can only be described as the literary equivalent of a Salvador Dali painting. Take a look at Dali's "Premonition of Civil War,"...more

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Sep 16, 2012 David Stephens rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror

Early on in Clive Barker’s Books of Blood, a collection of short horror yarns, a character describes his fellow New Yorkers’ reactions to a series of grizzly murders as being in “a state somewhere between hysteria and ecstasy.” The killings are brutal and reprehensible, yet there is something morbidly intriguing about them that gives the citizens a perverse pleasure. As is the case with many of the stories, the violence is tempered by the erotic in such a way that what should clearly be painful...more Early on in Clive Barker’s Books of Blood, a collection of short horror yarns, a character describes his fellow New Yorkers’ reactions to a series of grizzly murders as being in “a state somewhere between hysteria and ecstasy.” The killings are brutal and reprehensible, yet there is something morbidly intriguing about them that gives the citizens a perverse pleasure. As is the case with many of the stories, the violence is tempered by the erotic in such a way that what should clearly be painful is conflated with pleasure. This intersection of intimacy and violence—a modern day Hieronymus Bosch painting—is where Barker sets his tales. Just as Halloween has become a release from the confines of the socially acceptable, Barker has created worlds that allow people to explore and experience things bizarre and macabre that are normally off limits.

The opening story follows a fraudulent psychic who angers the dead enough for them to brutally inscribe their stories on his skin; these bloody scratches become the subsequent tales. The spirits leave out no intimate details and neither does Barker in describing the torments this young cheat endures to preserve these reminiscences for the living. The stories range in quality and subject. Some are dark comedies, some metaphysical horrors, some outrageous tales of the supernatural, some become far too silly for their own good, and a couple are just flat out dull. Highlights include the following: “The Midnight Meat Train” depicts an encounter with a killer who uses the subway as his own slaughterhouse. “The Yattering and Jack” uses pitch black comedy to describe a demon who is on a mission to drive his victim crazy. A bit more of a toned down and sentimental story, “Sex, Death, and Starshine” deals with a theater company’s struggles with pure art and the commercial realities of the world. The more philosophical “Dread” follows a man’s obsession with uncovering the fears that underlie people’s thoughts.

Many of the stories seem to owe something to H.P. Lovecraft, as Barker often delves into realities and mysteries that would be better left unknown. Characters stumble onto cosmic secrets of pre-civilization and other monstrosities and are either driven insane or mercilessly slaughtered by indifferent forces. However, while Lovecraft typically only gives miniscule glimpses of his “cosmic horrors,” Barker describes every twitch and spasm with graphic detail. Cats explode, bodies are internally rearranged, monsters devour children, and people are eviscerated in a myriad of ways.

But, ultimately, it is the bloody depictions and lack of subtlety that deprive some of the stories from achieving their potential and cause them to become tedious. Showing everything, as Barker often does, usually kills the terror. Mutilations can only be interesting for so long, and readers don’t need to hear the numerous instances of characters losing control of their bowels or getting aroused during horrific situations. The stories often begin with creative premises that promise to explore some aspect of fear or desire only to descend into a depraved bloodbath that mostly neglects these explorations of human nature. This is a shame because Barker is clearly an imaginative writer and one I feel is capable of examining the darker parts of the human psyche in more depth. Perhaps, I’m too critical of him; If I am, though, it’s only because I believe he can do better.(less)

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May 09, 2012 Riju Ganguly rated it 1 of 5 stars

In many ways, this book has come to define American horror (or at least the way Hollywood perceives it), and has influenced countless others to look at horror from a different angle. It ensured the sharpest & bloodiest break that one can imagine, with the images of horror invoked by Fontana Book of Ghost Stories, while also veering away from the increasingly contemplative style of Stephen King & Peter Straub. So, in a sense, this book was epoch-making. But as far as my opinion is concern...more

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Feb 01, 2012 Donovan rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: horror

This is the original Clive Barker. There are 6 books in all that encompass eighteen stories. The collection is often found broken down in to two collections. This is books 1-3.

Some of the short stories have been made in to movies such as Candyman, Rawhead Rex, Midnight Meat Train, Lord of Illusions.

Not for the squeamish!!!

Plot ***Spoilers***
Volume One

The Book of Blood

This is the frame story for the entire Books of Blood series. A psychic researcher, Mary Florescu, has employed a quack medium nam...more

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Jul 10, 2009 Jenna marked it as to-read

(not my review): "A friend of mine, years ago, gave me this, and I read the first two stories and was like, “I can’t handle this.” Then I read an interview with Alan Moore, and he was talking about how “Books of Blood” is one of the greatest collections of short stories ever. So I took another look, and it was so hilarious. “The Yattering and Jack” is about a demon from hell sent to make this man go mad – the demon makes his pets explode, and he just shrugs it off. So the demon says to Beelzebub...more

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Nov 06, 2010 Michael rated it 3 of 5 stars

A particularly cringe-worthy memory of my childhood involves Clive Barker. I took a date to see Hellraiser. Yes, Hellraiser, where Pinhead in all his infernal glory was revealed to the public. I'm surprised I wasn't reviled by my date, afterward. But in my defense, I was too paralyzed by the idea of the date in the first place to give any thought to film choice.

Since then, I've read and enjoyed other Barker books. In my late teens/early 20s I read and very much enjoyed The Great and Secret Show...more

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Oct 27, 2010 Lisa (Harmonybites) rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: No One

Recommended to Lisa (Harmonybites) by: The Complete Idiot's Guide to the Ultimate Reading List

Shelves: contemporary, fantasy, horror, short-stories, ultimate-reading-list, fiction

This is an anthology of 16 horror short stories and novellas, ranging from around 4,000 to 17,000 words. Such anthologies generally sell poorly, but I'm a fan of the well-turned short story, and in fact feel there are several authors out there whose short pieces are more impressive than their novels--Stephen King for one. You have to really have talent though to make an anthology solely of one author's stories worthwhile. There has to be something that shines in terms of style, voice, or really...more This is an anthology of 16 horror short stories and novellas, ranging from around 4,000 to 17,000 words. Such anthologies generally sell poorly, but I'm a fan of the well-turned short story, and in fact feel there are several authors out there whose short pieces are more impressive than their novels--Stephen King for one. You have to really have talent though to make an anthology solely of one author's stories worthwhile. There has to be something that shines in terms of style, voice, or really memorable twists. Stephen King has that--try Everything's Eventual. Gerri Leen has that. Try her Life Without Crows. Barker doesn't.

I tried all the shorts in the first volume of Books of Blood and didn't want to read more. Anthologies open with their strongest story usually, but the short that opens and gives the title to this book, "The Book of Blood" is an unremarkable haunted house story.

I outright disliked the second story, "The Midnight Meat Train," set in the subways of New York City surrounding a serial killer. I'm a native and resident of New York and it didn't evoke my city for me. For one thing, there is no "Avenue of the Americas" subway line--"Avenue of the Americas is Sixth Avenue--there's a 7th Avenue line. Also, hiding under a subway seat? Maybe if you're a very small child. This one also contained a huge pet peeve. I hate it when a character is identified as Puerto Rican based on looks. I'm of Puerto Rican extraction--with cousins who are blond and blue-eyed and others who are black. You can't tell someone is Puerto Rican, rather than say Dominican, Cuban, Argentinian or that matter Italian by looking. And for more points on offensive stereotypes front, the Puerto Rican has a fancy knife in his possession, cuz you know, we're all supposed to carry them...

The story "The Yattering and Jack," about a demon trying to gain a soul, did strike a welcome note of humor, but didn't strike me as all that clever. Ditto the grotesque "Pig Blood Blues" with its sow, the predictable "Sex, Death and Sunshine" centered on a theater company and the rather silly "In the Hills, the Cities" set in Yugoslavia.

Lots of gratuitous and graphic sex and gore here as befits the author and director of Hellraiser if that's your sort of thing. It's not mine.(less)

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Mar 04, 2011 Patrick rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-series, reviewed

After hearing critical acclaim, I finally decided to sit down and read Clive Barker’s Books of Blood 1-3. This is an omnibus of short horror stories. (If you want each story reviewed individually, you can look at my reviews for the first three books) At best, his stories are unique and quite unexpected. At worst, they are bland, predictable or too long. Like I’ve said many times before, Clive Barker has some sort of strange fixation on sex, private parts and excrement. It’s hard to pinpoint the...more

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Jun 27, 2007 Sonanova rated it 3 of 5 stars Recommends it for: those who like short story horror fiction

There are a couple of stories that stick with me, while others in this collection are utterly passable. My obsession with Nightbreed/Cabal drove me to this one. It's very obvious that these stories are his first, but Rawhead Rex and In the Hills, the Cities...gah! A good read because I could pace myself, read a story or two a night, and not obsess about finishing it. Pick it up, keep a book or two like this in your nightstand, that's the kind of book this is.

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Jun 11, 2012 Fabian rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Wow, wow and wow. Barker is undeniably unique, a few steps above King in the whisical world of the macabre. All 15 of these tales are incredible--and incredibly wicked--anecdotes, all wonderful drafts for damn-good horror flicks (bettering "Hellraiser," surely) that could become classics as quintessential as Carrie, Pet Semetary or The Shining. Barker has indeed a romantic, and visceral, and uber-gross view of things, foremost a fantastic infatuation with the human body, and with the traffic of...more

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Apr 08, 2013 Uncapped Pen rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is not a book for the faint of heart (or stomach).
Before reading this novel, I was pretty sure I had a top-notch imagination. In my opinion, my imagination was rivaled by very few people out there. Then came the collection of short stories by Clive Barker called The Books of Blood. While some of the stories did draw on older fables, many of Barker’s stories are incredibly original.
Barker’s writing style is immaculate. I am personally a lover of horror. In my opinion, a bit of suspense and...more

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Jan 18, 2013 Elizabeth Reuter rated it 5 of 5 stars

I always start Barker reviews by saying he's hit or miss for me. The hits are among my favorites; the misses, I can rarely get through the first fifty pages of. As this is a collection, I assumed it would be a mix.

Nope. Pretty much all hits.

These stories are united only by being extraordinarily creative. Everything else is unique; one story features an evil cannibalistic pig haunting an abusive youth home, while another is about a a giant walking monster made of bound humans. Many are grotesque,...more

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Sep 26, 2012 Patrick Greene rated it 4 of 5 stars

This is how I discovered my favorite author as a teenager--through the brutally beautiful worlds of dark wonder Barker paints herein. "Paints" is an accurate metaphor, I think. Barker is also a painter and his prose sweeps across the page and the reader's mind like landscapes, portraits and collages of tragedy, horror and black humor with a brush/voice that is lively and surreal.

Hell's Event is rife with suspense and urgency; sure to get your blood pumping.

Midnight Meat Train, filmed under the...more

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Oct 27, 2009 DJ TweakyClean rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: i-love-it-get-your-own-damn-copy

I actually read Books 1 and 2 last year around this time to get into the Halloween spirit, but saved Book 3 until now. I honestly wasn't sure after finishing the eleven stories in Books 1 & 2, if Barker could finish off the collection with the same audacious mix of terror, eroticism, gore and wit that made me understand how he deservedly became one of the most praised writers of horror literature (including the famously used quote from Stephen King, "I have seen the future of horror.."). It...more

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May 31, 2012 Jan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Clive Barker is quite simply the best Horror writer I have come across so far -although I have to admit my experience is limited. His short stories are at least as good as short stories written by stephen king.
This book contains some most excellent stories, in my oppinion the best are:

'The Yattering and Jack', 'The midnight meat train', 'Hell's event', 'Skins of the fathers', 'New murders in the rue morgue', 'Rawhead rex', 'Jaqueline Ess; Her will and testament' and 'Confessions of a pornographe...more

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Apr 07, 2009 Evan rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror, read-in-2009

It pains me to say this, but this book sucked. I couldn't even finish the last batch of stories in volume 3 because I found almost everything in volumes 1 and 2 so damn intolerable. How could the guy who wrote Imajica, Weaveworld, and The Great and Secret Show have come up with some of the absolute garbage found in the Books of Blood?

Keep in mind I am a huge Clive Barker fan, but most of these stories were just terrible. The first two, Book of Blood and Midnight Meat Train were not bad. In the H...more

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Jan 29, 2010 Brian Steele rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: horror

No collection of Horror has had any greater influence on me than Barker's "Books Of Blood 1-3." Is it bad to say I only bought the first one at the tender age of twelve or thirteen? That I was so blown away by what I had read, that I actually stole the other two books from my local bookstore? Ah, youth...

Perhaps it is the lingering guilt from that act almost two decades ago that compels me to push this collection upon anyone and everyone who has even the slightest taste for Horror Fiction. I fin...more

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May 12, 2012 Eren Cain rated it 4 of 5 stars

I discovered CLIVE BARKER through his film adaptations, which is strange, considering it's kind of backwards in the land of storytelling. For it is the novels and stories that often birth the films...or at least provide the limbs and brains for some form of prometheus or Frankenstein.

Barker was announced by Stephen King into the land of popular culture, but all you had to really do was watch HELLRAISER (which he directed) and see how fully formed this dark vision was.

And these stories are no dif...more

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Apr 05, 2012 Sean rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: thrown-in-the-furnace

couldn't finish it. i'm starting to think that Clive Barker is not the great author i once thought he was. the first 4 stories are good, a little bland but tolerable but the last story of book one just killed what ever momentum might have been built.

it started poorly and just went nowhere. i had no idea where the terror was or where it was even beginning. character development is important in a story but the relationship troubles of two gay men (one of which made me think of a gay republican wh...more

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Feb 10, 2011 Nash rated it 5 of 5 stars

The best short story book I have ever read. No story is alike. Every story seems to be written differently, with different themes and concepts, sharing very little to each other. There are no "filler" reads — absolutely every read in this book is at the least, "great." Almost every single short story is beyond and above exceptional. I absolutely understand how Stephen King was shocked upon reading this book; it's absolutely worthy of that happening.

One of my favorite books, or omnibus, ever. If...more

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Nov 28, 2008 Andrew rated it 5 of 5 stars

I've heard all my life that Stephen King's genius as a horror writer is making the familiar terrifying. Clive Barker's genius as a horror writer is making the terrifying familiar. This collection of short stories, tenuously held together by the precept that they are the stories carved into the flesh of a fake medium by vengeful ghosts, has no part of King's familiarity. Instead, it plunges the reader headlong into the multiple worlds of the unfamiliar and horrific, but brings the unspeakably evi...more

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Oct 21, 2012 Sara rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, horror, current-fiction, library-book, suspence, series, short-stories

Clive Barker wrote 6 volumes of short stories and this is the first 3 volumes. These horror stories have such imagination and creativity behind them, it really feels like art. My favorite stories are- The Midnight meat Train, Dread, Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament, The Skins of the Fathers, Rawhead Rex, Scape-Goats, and Human Remains. Yes, there is some really nasty stuff that happens in these stories, but it's so easy to just keep reading one after the other. I think it's a real testamen...more

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Mar 31, 2013 John Orman rated it 4 of 5 stars

A collection of books published in 1984, these disturbing tales are loaded with terror and bizarre imagery.

"Everyone is a book of blood. Wherever we're opened, we're red."
And very well-read indeed!

With titles like "Midnight Meat Train" and "Pig Blood Blues," you are forewarned that the literary ride on the Barker Train will be a wild and bloody one--and each story is just that way!

"Skins of the Fathers" was the story that affected me the most--pray that you never end up like the characters at th...more

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About Clive Barker

Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Joan Rubie (née Revill), a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker, a personnel director for an industrial relations firm. Educated at Dovedale Primary School and Quarry Bank High School, he studied English and Philosophy at Liverpool University and his picture now hangs in the entrance hallway to the Philosophy Department. It...more Clive Barker was born in Liverpool, England, the son of Joan Rubie (née Revill), a painter and school welfare officer, and Leonard Barker, a personnel director for an industrial relations firm. Educated at Dovedale Primary School and Quarry Bank High School, he studied English and Philosophy at Liverpool University and his picture now hangs in the entrance hallway to the Philosophy Department. It was in Liverpool in 1975 that he met his first partner, John Gregson, with whom he lived until 1986. Barker's second long-term relationship with photographer David Armstrong, ended in 2009.

In 2003, Clive Barker received The Davidson/Valentini Award at the 15th GLAAD Media Awards. This award is presented "to an openly lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender individual who has made a significant difference in promoting equal rights for any of those communities". While Barker is critical of organized religion, he has stated that he is a believer in both God and the afterlife, and that the Bible influences his work.

Fans have noticed of late that Barker's voice has become gravelly and coarse. He says in a December 2008 online interview that this is due to polyps in his throat which were so severe that a doctor told him he was taking in ten percent of the air he was supposed to have been getting. He has had two surgeries to remove them and believes his resultant voice is an improvement over how it was prior to the surgeries. He said he did not have cancer and has given up cigars. On August 27, 2010, Barker underwent surgery yet again to remove new polyp growths from his throat. In early February 2012 Barker fell into a coma after a dentist visit led to blood poisoning. Barker remained in a coma for eleven days but eventually came out of it. Fans were notified on his Twitter page about some of the experience and that Barker was recovering after the ordeal, but left with many strange visions.

Barker is one of the leading authors of contemporary horror/fantasy, writing in the horror genre early in his career, mostly in the form of short stories (collected in Books of Blood 1 – 6), and the Faustian novel The Damnation Game (1985). Later he moved towards modern-day fantasy and urban fantasy with horror elements in Weaveworld (1987), The Great and Secret Show (1989), the world-spanning Imajica (1991) and Sacrament (1996), bringing in the deeper, richer concepts of reality, the nature of the mind and dreams, and the power of words and memories.

Barker has a keen interest in movie production, although his films have received mixed receptions. He wrote the screenplays for Underworld (aka Transmutations – 1985) and Rawhead Rex (1986), both directed by George Pavlou. Displeased by how his material was handled, he moved to directing with Hellraiser (1987), based on his novella The Hellbound Heart. His early movies, the shorts The Forbidden and Salome, are experimental art movies with surrealist elements, which have been re-released together to moderate critical acclaim. After his film Nightbreed (Cabal), which was widely considered to be a flop, Barker returned to write and direct Lord of Illusions. Barker was an executive producer of the film Gods and Monsters, which received major critical acclaim.

Barker is a prolific visual artist working in a variety of media, often illustrating his own books. His paintings have been seen first on the covers of his official fan club magazine, Dread, published by Fantaco in the early Nineties, as well on the covers of the collections of his plays, Incarnations (1995) and Forms of Heaven (1996), as well as on the second printing of the original UK publications of his Books of Blood series.

A longtime comics fan, Barker achieved his dream of publishing his own superhero books when Marvel Comics launched the Razorline imprint in 1993. Based on detailed premises, titles and lead characters he created specifically for this, the four interrelated titles — set outside the Marvel universe — were Ectokid, (less)

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“Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red.” — 204 people liked it

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Books of Blood, Vols. 1-3 (Books of Blood #1-3)

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