Speaker for the Dead
Like most of the rest of the horror community, it would seem, I learned last night that Brian Lumley passed away earlier this month at the age of 86. Lumley’s is a name that never quite attained the same sheen as certain other writers who were his predecessors or contemporaries, but he is nonetheless one who was an important stepping stone for many of us, myself included.
My first exposure to Lumley’s work came from spotting a paperback copy of Necroscope in what was probably a Waldenbooks back in the early ’90s. Of course, it wasn’t the book itself, nor even its evocative title, which drew me in. It was the unforgettable cover art by Bob Eggleton, as inextricably associated with Necroscope as the illustrations of Stephen Gammell are with Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
That first cover, which featured a vampiric skull against a dark background, grabbed me immediately, as it had so many readers before and would so many after – so much so that it was carried on, in variation, throughout the entirety of the series, which spanned more than a dozen books.
I’m not sure how many of the Necroscope books I actually read, but it certainly wasn’t all of them. Reading that first one at a formative age, though, had a big impact on me. Here was pulp horror in a vein I had, at that time, rarely encountered, told with scope and ambition to spare, and crammed with big (and sometimes goofy) ideas.
Lumley’s conception of vampires also remains among my favorites in literature, having more in common with the alien from John Carpenter’s The Thing than with Bela Lugosi, though there’s more than a bit of Lugosi’s Count in there, too.
Over the years, I also read a few of Lumley’s other novels but – and this says more about me than it does about his writing – it was usually his short stories that I gravitated to more, and I probably read all of those that were in print at the time. When I heard about his passing, I pulled one of the five or so short story collections of his that I own down from the shelf, and read a random sampling, in this case, “The Man Who Photographed Beardsley,” which is not exactly a standout.
Lumley did have many standout stories, though. He wasn’t one of the best writers we’ve ever had. His stories were pulp throwbacks through and through but, like the best of the pulp writers, they were usually entertaining, quick to read, and full of ideas, even when the execution was sometimes lacking. And even then, it wasn’t always. Lumley could do atmosphere, when he set his mind to it, and he could describe monsters with the best of them.
He was also important to my development as I tried to feel forward what it was that I wanted to achieve with my own writing. He was one of the first I read to put into words the distinction between horror meant strictly to horrify, and horror meant to entertain. What he calls, in his introduction to the 1993 release of Fruiting Bodies & Other Fungi, “that old black magic, that frisson, that shudder of delight.” Someone who unabashedly puts entertainment as his primary objective when writing. All this, before I had ever encountered the term M.R. James liked to employ, “pleasing terror.”
So, what stories do I recommend, in memory of Lumley’s raconteur spirit? “Fruiting Bodies” is certainly one of his best, and as you might be able to guess from the title, it’s about a subject that is particularly near and dear to my heart. It also won the British Fantasy Award in 1989, so it’s not like you have to take my word for it.
“The Thin People” is another one from that same volume that shows what Lumley was capable of when he was working to his best effect. There are others, but that’s the book I have here next to me as I type this.
Ultimately, Lumley wasn’t my favorite author. Probably not even when I first discovered him, certainly not by the end. But he was an important step in my development, as a reader and a writer, and one that I still return to time and again for some wonderful comfort reading. So, it seems only fair to mark his passing.
