Lovers and Other Monsters, an anthology edited by Marvin Kaye presents suspense and horror stories centered on the theme of love, in particular, eros love. Kaye is well known for putting together unique and interesting anthologies, and he’s collected some of Weird Tale’s best stories in his other anthologies. This offering consists of approximately forty-five short stories (it’s how you count them, one is contained in another), six poems, and one play. Most of the stories are short, including a handful of flash fiction, which is surprising when one considers the author had to set up a “love/lust” story as well as a horror story. The anthology is arranged in clever sections: Odd Couples (mismatched characters), Worldly Love (non-supernatural, often suspenseful, relationships), Not of this World (supernatural creatures/themes), Out of this World (often, scifi), and Fatal Attractions (often femme or homme fatale). As Marvin Kaye writes in his introduction, this is not an anthology for the romantic as a vast majority of the stories have a tragic ending.
So what can you expect? Kaye’s selection of authors varies from the expected (Edgar Allan Poe, Ray Bradbury) to the surprising (Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett, Mary Higgins Clark). Unlike some anthologies, you’ll find some gems here like a rare short story by Anne Rice; a short story by Ray Bradbury from his Dark Carnival collection, long out of print; a lust story by Isaac Asimov; an original, unedited poem by Christina Rossetti; and a translated erotic story by Guillaume Apollinaire. There’s even a story that Kaye had collected but lost a few of the pages. The backstory was he tracked down the author, Dan Potter. Mr. Potter also did not have the original or a copy, so he rewrote the pages strictly for the anthology (“Tripping the Light Fantastic”). In this last case, this background is more interesting than the resulting narrative.
You’ll also find authors who are the staples of suspense and horror here, but not perhaps their best known work, including Edgar Allan Poe, Theodore Sturgeon, and H.P. Lovecraft.
The anthology works best as a collection of widely varying stories. You must have an eclectic taste in genres to truly enjoy it. If you are strictly a horror aficionado, you’ll have trouble with the more literature-based contemporary stories. On the other hand, those who love Alfred Hitchcock but could care less about monster tales will find themselves skipping many sections.
Rating each story 1-10, I have stories on either end of the scale. Ironically, my favorite remains that most underrated Poe tale, “Berenice.” I believe this is one of his best. Every time I read it, I get a thrill, and it remains just as chilling without the gore and relativism that dominates modern horror.
The other standouts include “Teacher” by C. H. Sherman. In the Odd Couples category, the story teases a “Legend of Sleepy Hollow” narrative but shifts gears suddenly. Well-written and suspenseful, it was my favorite discovery. “The Fiend” by Frederik Pohl was a surprising sci-fi story that fit the theme of the anthology perfectly. Intensely creepy but with definite science fiction overtones, this one won me over. And “The Maiden” by Ray Bradbury was a guilty choice. Likely written in under an hour and dismissed by Bradbury later (he didn’t re-publish it in his October Country collection of Dark Carnival tales), it’s a rare insight into a younger, more vicious Ray that people don’t often read.
The majority of stories are worth reading. A rock star’s fan is a winged creature (Songs of my Young), a love story between an adventurer and a female minotaur (Minotauress), a woman driving her car while dragging her husband’s corpse around (The Woman Who Dragged Her Husband’s Corpse), an astronaut discovers a flower on Europa with horrific results (Moonflower), a being that lurks in your dreams and uses seduction to kill you (Let No Man Dream), the perfect match upsets the reality of a man’s life (The Deadly Ratio), an updated lady-and-the-tiger story set at the time of Jesus (“The Lady and the Tiger”).
Overall, an interesting anthology. I have many similar ones on my bookshelf, but none so creatively themed. Recommended.