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Out of His Mind
Twenty-two stories and novella-length works, mixing imagination with suspense in the kind of tale that can slide into the back of your mind and then stay there for the rest of your life. . . well-known as a novelist and screenwriter, the author of Valley of Lights and Oktober has assembled a signature collection from over two decades' worth of his lesser-known short fiction. A telephone chat line where not all of the respondents can be found amongst the living. . . the terrified flight of a hit-and-run driver whose fate was sealed at the moment of his deed. . . the seduction and harrowing education of a young artist in nineteenth-century France. . . the unholy alliance of an honest psychic and a skeptical conjurer. . . All brought together in one volume for the first time anywhere, with an introduction by award-winning author and editor Charles L Grant and an afterword filled with background insights and dashes of autobiography. As an example of the storyteller's art, Out of his Mind is about as good as it gets.
- GenresCollectionsHorror
412 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2004
3 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Gallagher
154 books135 followersStoker and World Fantasy Award nominee, winner of British Fantasy and International Horror Guild Awards for his short fiction, Stephen Gallagher has a career both as a novelist and as a creator of primetime miniseries and episodic television. His fifteen novels include Chimera, Oktober, Valley of Lights and Nightmare, with Angel. He's the creator of Sebastian Becker, Special Investigator to the Lord Chancellor's Visitor in Lunacy, in a series of novels that includes The Kingdom of Bones, The Bedlam Detective, and The Authentic William James. In his native England he's adapted and created hour-long and feature-length thrillers and crime dramas. In the US he was lead writer on NBC's Crusoe, creator of CBS Television's Eleventh Hour, and Co-Executive Producer on ABC's The Forgotten. Recent screen credits include an award-winning Silent Witness and Stan Lee's Lucky Man.
He began his TV career as a writer on two seasons of Doctor Who, and wrote two novelizations of his stories under the pseudonym John Lydecker.
** Photo by Lisa Bowerman **
He began his TV career as a writer on two seasons of Doctor Who, and wrote two novelizations of his stories under the pseudonym John Lydecker.
** Photo by Lisa Bowerman **
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
September 12, 2011
This book is a limited edition collection of 18 short-stories, 3 novelletes, and 1 vignette, written by one of the most accomplished practitioners of "quiet horror", who also happens to be a simply brilliant story-teller. PS Publishing had done their ususal hig-quality job while bringing out this volume, and I had received this book from Realms of Fantasy Books in perfect condition. There, the plumbing is done, and now I can move in, i.e. get on with the actual stuff.
The contents of this book are:
(*) Introduction, by Brian Clements
Stories:
1) Magpie: wish-fulfilment mixed with childhood memories (of almost all of us who had gone to school), with a dark ending.
2) Not Here, Not Now: ever thought about what happens to those drivers who run away from the spot after killing someone with their rash driving?
3) BY THE RIVER, FONTAINEBLEAU: the grimmest story that I have read in some time, maybe except Peter Crowther's 'Bedfordshire'.
4) Driving Force: a car-thief getting his hands over a most 'unusual' car.
5) THE VISITOR'S BOOK: this is an actual horror story that scared me, and would scare you as well, if you happen to have a small child.
6) LITTLE ANGELS: a lean piece of nastiness & revenge, set against the awesome backdrop of Alps.
Novelette:
(A) The Drain: rundown parks can harbour dark secrets, and darker things.
Stories:
7) Old, Red Shoes: a story of shocking violence.
8) THE HORN: a spell-binding gothic story of blizzards covering the world in merciless snow, and of the dead coming back for revenge.
9) Modus Operandi: a small piece about our misguided preference for petty & baser things, at the expense of real treasures that we never even acknowledge.
10) THE JIGSAW GIRL: a brilliant story involving childhood, loss, and what the future may hold.
11) Fancy That: a nasty piece set against Christmas.
12) LIFE LINE: love, loss, obsession, and death, all coming together in a neat little story around something as mundane as phone chats.
13) Like Shadows in the Dark: a suspenseful fast-paced story about two Soviet citizens trying to run away through Finland.
Novelette:
(B) No Life for me Without You, Vodyanoi: I am still unable to classify the theme of this story, it can be horror, love, and even, allegory.
Stories:
14) God's Bright Little Engine: a sad story, with a haunting ending.
15) O, Virginia: not horror, rather macabre.
16) The Sluice: another sad story about loss, retardation, and death.
17) Poisoned: can a landscape get so toxic underneath, that it starts affecting even the minds of the venturers?
18) Casey, Where He Lies: another sad story of music, love, and death.
Novelette:
(C) IN GETHSEMENE: the best piece of this collection delving with the issue of loss, and about how far are you ready to go to prove yourself right?
Vignette:
Afterward: In There: recounting an actual incident which might have been outre.
(*) End Notes, and Acknowledgements
Once again, quantitatively speaking, out of the total 21 fictional pieces, I would be coming back to only 7 (those whose titels are written in CAPITAL), then why 4 stars? Because even if I don't like the rest of them as horror of the kind that I prefer (more Jamesian), they are absolute "stunners" as short stories. If you can, get hold of this book. If you can, and still like to drift away to some other page, you are, .... well, the title says all!
The contents of this book are:
(*) Introduction, by Brian Clements
Stories:
1) Magpie: wish-fulfilment mixed with childhood memories (of almost all of us who had gone to school), with a dark ending.
2) Not Here, Not Now: ever thought about what happens to those drivers who run away from the spot after killing someone with their rash driving?
3) BY THE RIVER, FONTAINEBLEAU: the grimmest story that I have read in some time, maybe except Peter Crowther's 'Bedfordshire'.
4) Driving Force: a car-thief getting his hands over a most 'unusual' car.
5) THE VISITOR'S BOOK: this is an actual horror story that scared me, and would scare you as well, if you happen to have a small child.
6) LITTLE ANGELS: a lean piece of nastiness & revenge, set against the awesome backdrop of Alps.
Novelette:
(A) The Drain: rundown parks can harbour dark secrets, and darker things.
Stories:
7) Old, Red Shoes: a story of shocking violence.
8) THE HORN: a spell-binding gothic story of blizzards covering the world in merciless snow, and of the dead coming back for revenge.
9) Modus Operandi: a small piece about our misguided preference for petty & baser things, at the expense of real treasures that we never even acknowledge.
10) THE JIGSAW GIRL: a brilliant story involving childhood, loss, and what the future may hold.
11) Fancy That: a nasty piece set against Christmas.
12) LIFE LINE: love, loss, obsession, and death, all coming together in a neat little story around something as mundane as phone chats.
13) Like Shadows in the Dark: a suspenseful fast-paced story about two Soviet citizens trying to run away through Finland.
Novelette:
(B) No Life for me Without You, Vodyanoi: I am still unable to classify the theme of this story, it can be horror, love, and even, allegory.
Stories:
14) God's Bright Little Engine: a sad story, with a haunting ending.
15) O, Virginia: not horror, rather macabre.
16) The Sluice: another sad story about loss, retardation, and death.
17) Poisoned: can a landscape get so toxic underneath, that it starts affecting even the minds of the venturers?
18) Casey, Where He Lies: another sad story of music, love, and death.
Novelette:
(C) IN GETHSEMENE: the best piece of this collection delving with the issue of loss, and about how far are you ready to go to prove yourself right?
Vignette:
Afterward: In There: recounting an actual incident which might have been outre.
(*) End Notes, and Acknowledgements
Once again, quantitatively speaking, out of the total 21 fictional pieces, I would be coming back to only 7 (those whose titels are written in CAPITAL), then why 4 stars? Because even if I don't like the rest of them as horror of the kind that I prefer (more Jamesian), they are absolute "stunners" as short stories. If you can, get hold of this book. If you can, and still like to drift away to some other page, you are, .... well, the title says all!
March 2, 2010
I've lost more sleep to Steve Gallagher's thrillers than I care to think about, but I think this may be the first time I've read any of his short stories; it's apparently his only collection, and he says at the back that most of the stories he writes are in response to specific invitations from editors, so I guess this explains it. It was on my mind that we shared an anthology ToC, but when I finally ran it down I discovered it was the Gaiman/Jones verse compilation Now We Are Sick (1991).
Whatever.
This is a big (just over 400pp), meaty collection -- 21 stories in all, plus a short nonfiction piece and a generous section of endnotes about the stories. Not everything worked for me, but I still enjoyed the actual reading of the ones that left me dissatisfied. A couple were remarkable all the way until the last paragraph, when it seemed Gallagher couldn't think of how to end them: the comic piece "Oh, Virginia" was one of these, and the other, "The Jigsaw Girl", was so wonderful, and so movingly told, that it'd certainly have been my favourite piece in the book had it not sported an absolute copout of a denouement.
Mind you, it'd have had some stern competition. Gallagher's particularly good when writing about children and childhood -- it's that element of "The Jigsaw Girl" which makes it an almost-winner -- and several of the stories here take the form of reminiscences. "The Drain" is an inordinately scary tale of three trespassing kids trying to escape The Man through a tunnel that's really too small for them and may contain live debris left over from WWII. "Magpie", which opens the book, is another in the recollected-childhood-adventure mode, but is more Dahlesque: a bullying school sporting hero gets his comeuppance. Also Dahlesque, with perhaps a dash of Saki, is "Modus Operandi"; it has a twist ending that's easy to predict but so nicely executed that this doesn't matter. "In Gethsemane" is an interesting historical piece about Spiritualiam; I suspect it'll keep popping up in my mind for some while to come. "Life Line" is an ingenious ghost story that's very moving -- as are a number of the other pieces here, most especially "The Sluice", which for my money is the collection's absolute standout: it's set around the time of Thatcher's obscene "Care in the Community" programme, whereby, to fund tax cuts, thousands of mental patients were turfed out of hospitals and residential facilities to live, almost always, as best they could on the streets. The narrator's a nurse at a facility that's being shut down in stages, and the tale is of a patient whose life is being likewise.
All in all, then, there's a lot to recommend here. Unfortunately, it was published as a limited edition (700 copies), and appears not to have been reprinted; to judge by a quick check of Amazon UK & US, copies are nowadays not cheap.
Whatever.
This is a big (just over 400pp), meaty collection -- 21 stories in all, plus a short nonfiction piece and a generous section of endnotes about the stories. Not everything worked for me, but I still enjoyed the actual reading of the ones that left me dissatisfied. A couple were remarkable all the way until the last paragraph, when it seemed Gallagher couldn't think of how to end them: the comic piece "Oh, Virginia" was one of these, and the other, "The Jigsaw Girl", was so wonderful, and so movingly told, that it'd certainly have been my favourite piece in the book had it not sported an absolute copout of a denouement.
Mind you, it'd have had some stern competition. Gallagher's particularly good when writing about children and childhood -- it's that element of "The Jigsaw Girl" which makes it an almost-winner -- and several of the stories here take the form of reminiscences. "The Drain" is an inordinately scary tale of three trespassing kids trying to escape The Man through a tunnel that's really too small for them and may contain live debris left over from WWII. "Magpie", which opens the book, is another in the recollected-childhood-adventure mode, but is more Dahlesque: a bullying school sporting hero gets his comeuppance. Also Dahlesque, with perhaps a dash of Saki, is "Modus Operandi"; it has a twist ending that's easy to predict but so nicely executed that this doesn't matter. "In Gethsemane" is an interesting historical piece about Spiritualiam; I suspect it'll keep popping up in my mind for some while to come. "Life Line" is an ingenious ghost story that's very moving -- as are a number of the other pieces here, most especially "The Sluice", which for my money is the collection's absolute standout: it's set around the time of Thatcher's obscene "Care in the Community" programme, whereby, to fund tax cuts, thousands of mental patients were turfed out of hospitals and residential facilities to live, almost always, as best they could on the streets. The narrator's a nurse at a facility that's being shut down in stages, and the tale is of a patient whose life is being likewise.
All in all, then, there's a lot to recommend here. Unfortunately, it was published as a limited edition (700 copies), and appears not to have been reprinted; to judge by a quick check of Amazon UK & US, copies are nowadays not cheap.
September 7, 2025
I've read a lot of Stephen Gallaghers stories in various anthologies. They're always one of the best.
This collection of his is of course different. They're all his stories and thus were great.
I particularly like the Magpie.
I was one of the not doing school run kids, no not fat, just ankle issues. But kids can be nasty for sure.
Other favourites:
Not Here, Not Now, , THE VISITOR'S BOOK, The Drain, Old, Red Shoes ,THE HORN, THE JIGSAW GIRL, Fancy That, God's Bright Little Engine, The Sluice
I liked the horrible kids get what they deserve ones and the sad Jigsaw girl most.
This collection of his is of course different. They're all his stories and thus were great.
I particularly like the Magpie.
I was one of the not doing school run kids, no not fat, just ankle issues. But kids can be nasty for sure.
Other favourites:
Not Here, Not Now, , THE VISITOR'S BOOK, The Drain, Old, Red Shoes ,THE HORN, THE JIGSAW GIRL, Fancy That, God's Bright Little Engine, The Sluice
I liked the horrible kids get what they deserve ones and the sad Jigsaw girl most.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews