Clinically Dead & Other Tales of the Supernatural

by David A. Sutton, Stephen Jones (Introduction), Joel Lane (Afterword)

David A. Sutton's horror and dark fantasy fiction has been published in Final Shadows, Skeleton Crew, Shadows Over Innsmouth, Best New Horror, The Mammoth Book of Zombies, The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, Beyond, The Merlin Chronicles and many other publications. In a career that spans almost 40 years, David A. Sutton has won a World Fantasy Award, an International Horror Guild Award, and the British Fantasy Awards 12 times. Clinically Dead is David A. Sutton's long-awaited debut collection and it contains previously published and unpublished stories dating from the early 1990s to 2005, including the masterly 30,000 word new novella - In The Land of The Rainbow Snake. Introduction from the multi-award winning Stephen Jones and an afterword by Joel Lane. Clinically Dead & Other Tales of the Supernateral deals with the walking dead, shape-shifters, precognition, dreams and spiritual journeys, subterranean creatures, possession, ancient survivals, and ghostly revenge. Culled from dark domains beyond the bosom of waking reality, these are ten weird tales of supernatural transformation, myth and obsession. Journey to an isolated island where ancient Etruscan rites are still practised to appease the inhabitant of a temple, and where the unwary tourist is ill advised to venture... Visit a hospital in which the living dead rise up... Is it the injections, the drugs, the fluids... or is it the trauma of intensive care that drives a mind to madness? Embark at your peril to Venice, city of black water, creepy imaginings and where ancient denizens lure their victims along the lost passageways of this sensuously eerie city. An expedition into the red heart of the Australian outback is perhaps all the escape needed for a grieving heart. But with terrible prophetic nightmares to contend with, the hallucinatory landscape of the desert and encounters with the Dreamtime conspire to make for a terrifying spiritual journey. Author David A. Sutton presents a macabre and gruesome selection of stories from magazines and anthologies published over the past fifteen years, and includes three previously unpublished stories, including his new novella.

Genres: Horror

272 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2006

About the author

David A. Sutton is the recipient of the World Fantasy Award, The International Horror Guild Award and twelve British Fantasy Awards for editing magazines and anthologies (Fantasy Tales, Dark Voices: The Pan Book Of Horror and Dark Terrors: The Gollancz Book Of Horror). Other anthologies include New Writings In Horror & The Supernatural, The Satyr’s Head & Other Tales Of Terror, Phantoms Of Venice, Haunts Of Horror and Darker Terrors. He has also been a genre fiction writer since the 1960s with stories appearing widely in anthologies and magazines, including in Best New Horror, Final Shadows, The Mammoth Book Of Merlin, Beneath The Ground, Shadows Over Innsmouth, The Black Book Of Horror, Subtle Edens, The Ghosts & Scholars Book Of Shadows, Psychomania, Second City Scares, Kitchen Sink Gothic, Phantasmagoria, Gruesome Grotesques, The Ghosts & Scholars Book Of Shadows and The Ghosts & Scholars Book Of Folk Horror. His short stories are collected in CLINICALLY DEAD & OTHER TALES OF THE SUPERNATURAL, DEAD WATER AND OTHER WEIRD TALES and EN VACANCES. He is also the proprietor of Shadow Publishing, a small press specialising in collections and anthologies.

Reviews

[Carrie · Rating 2 out of 5]

While the stories in this collection had some great premises, I found most of the endings anticlimactic. Sutton's prose and plot points felt old-fashioned, like Poe or Lovecraft (whom I enjoy in the context of their time), and I found myself often checking the copyright dates to verify that this was contemporary literature and not something written in the early 20th century.

Several of the short stories (and the one novella) have the exact same theme: travelers in a foreign country test some local superstitions to their detriment. I have to say, I did enjoy the short story "Clinically Dead." A current, and chilling, "expose" of the health-care system. "Monkey Business" would have been excellent, had Mr. Sutton chosen to end it about 4 paragraphs earlier (eliminating the unnecessary "moral to the story"). "How the Buckie was Saved" was a great little piece of writing - very Poe-esque.