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demonik
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John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Thread started on: Sep 27th, 2006, 1:36pm » |
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John Burke (ed.) - Tales of Unease (Pan, 1966)
D'Arcy Niland - The Sound and the Silence
R.A. Hall - The Other Woman
Andrea Newman - Such a Good Idea
Penelope Mortimer - The Skylight
John Christopher - Rendezvous
Christine Brooke-Rose - Red Rubber Gloves
Michael Cornish - Superstitious Ignorance
B.S. Johnson - Sheela-Na-Gig
Joan Fleming - Gone is Gone
Brian Aldiss - A Pleasure Shared
Jack Griffith - Black Goddess
John Kippax - Reflection of the Truth
Charles Eric Maine - Short Circuit
John Marsh - The Appointment
Cressida Lindsay - Watch Your Step
Paul Tabori - Janus
Marten Cumberland - The Voice
Kate Barlay - A Mistake of Creation
Jeffry Scott - Out of the Country
Alex Hamilton - End of the Road
Dell Shannon - The Practical Joke
Not the first book I've got rid of and later wondered what the Hell I was playing at. The first of Burke's three Unease collections. Here are a few tasters:
Brian Aldiss - A Pleasure Shared: "Public houses are the inventions of the devil, Mrs. Meacher". A Saint in his own mind, Mr. Cream is fastidious to a fault due to his strict upbringing and there's not a day goes by he doesn't thank his parents for instilling in him a strong streak of self-discipline. Indeed, loose women so annoy him that he invites them back to his lodgings for a damn good throttling. When Flossie Meacher stabs a fellow tenant after he makes drunken advances toward her, she turns to Cream to help her dispose of the body, pointing out that she's just seen Miss Colgrave's corpse propped up in his room.
John Marsh - The Appointment: After squandering his inheritance on gambling, a man on the verge of suicide receives tomorrow's newspaper from a mysterious figure at the tube station. Over the following months he accumulates a fortune but then, on the eve of his wedding to his long term girlfriend, he buys his customary newspaper from the stranger, only to be confronted with the screaming headline Bridegroom Dies In Sleep. He narrates his story while desperately trying to stay awake.
Jeffry Scott - Out of the Country: short-short in which Mr. Bullivant makes good his promise to smuggle a murderer across the sea - ground up in a hundred tins of dog food!
Alex Hamilton - End of the Road: Disorientated driver Henry winds up taking his nagging wife and sister through the windscreen.
Joan Fleming - Gone is Gone: The ghostly voice of Clowd over the telephone shortly after his funeral is too much for the scheming Comfort to take. For years he's hated the man who was his partner in the antique shop because he would always outsmart him. Now, just as he's about to cheat Clowd's wife out of her estate, Comfort is turned over again - by a gramophone record.
Michael Cornish - Superstitious Ignorance: Edward and Penny go to view their dream home on the outskirts of London. It is currently occupied by Mrs. Laristis and her brood of filthy, wide-eyed silent children and she does all she can to turn them off of buying the place. "This house not good. Not glad. Is evil presences. Is old evil thing, maybe murder, I don't know. Very evil things here. Not good for you." Edward dismisses her as a credulous retard and ignores her protestations. He and Penny step into the shunned room downstairs ....
A number of these stories have since appeared elsewhere: the Brian Aldiss and Joan Fleming in London Tales Of Terror, Superstitious Ignorance in Mary Danby's 65 Spinechillers and The Skylight in The Hamlyn Book Of Horror
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The inn sign ... was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone, and underneath this somewhat forbidding daub with grim irony, the legend 'Ye Journey's End' - Guy Preston, The Inn.
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PeterC
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #1 on: Oct 5th, 2006, 01:40am » |
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Dear demonik,
I've found a spare copy of Tales of Unease. If you'd like to give me an address I'll be happy to send it on to you.
Peter
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Calenture
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #2 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:24pm » |
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The 'Unease' books are on my growing "to be read" stack, but I read the Brian Aldiss story in his Saliva Tree collection - which came out the same year. Its first appearance was in Rogue magazine.
The curious thing about Burke's choices is the number of writers he's used who are not normally known as horror writers.
I believe there are two Penelope Mortimers, both mainstream.
Charles Eric Maine and John Kippax are both better known in the SF field, I think. Paul Tabori has written at least two SF novels, The Green Rain and The Cleft.
Andrea Newman wrote the Bouquet of Barbed Wire novels, seriialised on TV in the '70s, I think, to huge success, and starring Frank Finlay.
All this from memory, so probably someone will want to challenge some of it. 
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| « Last Edit: Oct 14th, 2006, 2:25pm by Calenture » |
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demonik
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #3 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 4:36pm » |
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Hey Cal, if you've the contents to More Tales Of Unease could you post 'em when you have a chance? I always thought the cover to that one was just about as creepy as they come. In their own way, the Tales Of Unease books are the New Terrors of their day. There's an experimental feel to many of the stories and some don't work (for me) at all, but when they do - Elizabeth Walter, Miles Tripp, Aldiss and Jeffry Scott, etc. - they're very good indeed.
Paul Tabori also wrote the non-fiction Harry Price; Ghosthunter, as included in the Dennis Wheatley Library Of The Occult. The bride also has one of his true crime efforts, and I'm pretty sure he did an r & r novel for Nel, Song Of The Scorpions? Something of an all rounder.
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The inn sign ... was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone, and underneath this somewhat forbidding daub with grim irony, the legend 'Ye Journey's End' - Guy Preston, The Inn.
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Calenture
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #4 on: Oct 14th, 2006, 6:47pm » |
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on Oct 14th, 2006, 4:36pm, demonik wrote:| Hey Cal, if you've the contents to More Tales Of Unease could you post 'em when you have a chance? |
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Sorry if I misled you, Dem'; I only have the first volume and New Tales of Unease on that stack. But PeterC should be able to help you out. You just forgot this thread, didn't you? The Big Uneasy.
Before I found that, I did a bit of Googling, and I have a small bit of information to add to the Tales of Unease TV Series.
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| « Last Edit: Oct 14th, 2006, 6:49pm by Calenture » |
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blackmonk
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #5 on: Oct 15th, 2006, 10:44am » |
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The contents of More Tales of Unease (Pan 1969) are as follows:
Andrea Newman – She’ll be Company for You
Herbert Harris – The Escort
Virginia Ironside – The Young Squire
Miles Tripp - Snow
John Christopher – A Cry of Children
Arnost Lustig - The Beginning and the End
Jeffry Scott - He Said I Could
John Brummer – Speech is Silver
Stewart Farrar – The Girl in Question
Christine Hickman – So Dark the Rose
Alexander Walton – Clegson’s Folly
Elizabeth Lemarchand – Time to be Going
Penelope Wallace – Tell David…
Alex Hamilton – The Flies on the Wall
Victor Lucas – Here Comes a Candle
R. Andrew Hall – Split Image
E. C. Tubb – Little Girl Lost
Michael Cornish – They’ll Have to Go
Alan C. Jenkins – The Blind Man
Stephen Meadows – Frances
Arthur Sellings – Jukebox
John Burke – Be our Guest
I recall being entranced by the book’s disturbing cover way back when it was first published. I was just a wee lad on holiday in Wales with my parents and I sneakily bought the book for five shillings. After reading the blurb on the back cover – which describes the stories as “destroyers of tranquility… they tell of murder, witchcraft, madness, incest and the supernatural…” - I naively asked my mum what incest was. The book soon mysteriously disappeared! I picked up another copy a couple of years ago – and for me the cover still remains there at the top of the ‘most scary cover’ charts!
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demonik
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Welcome, blackmonk
« Reply #6 on: Oct 18th, 2006, 01:33am » |
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Thanks very much for taking the time to post the details, blackmonk, much appreciated.
The cover's terrific, isn't it? Its not the best of scans, but this will give those who've not seen it some idea of how strikingly weird the thing is:
More Tales Of Unease
The Andrea Newman story reappears in Fontana Horror #15, but the rest aren't at all familiar to me. I hadn't realised Stewart Farrar had written any fiction, although I suppose that depends on your opinion of his hagiography of Alex Sanders ...
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The inn sign ... was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone, and underneath this somewhat forbidding daub with grim irony, the legend 'Ye Journey's End' - Guy Preston, The Inn.
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demonik
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #7 on: Oct 18th, 2006, 2:24pm » |
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... and thanks to Peter for the copy of the first book. I'm certainly not gonna get rid of this one!
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The inn sign ... was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone, and underneath this somewhat forbidding daub with grim irony, the legend 'Ye Journey's End' - Guy Preston, The Inn.
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blackmonk
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #8 on: Oct 29th, 2006, 06:51am » |
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and here's the cover that's haunted me since I was a kid...
More Tales of Unease
John Burke
Pan 1969
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marksamuels
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #9 on: Oct 29th, 2006, 07:14am » |
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That is such a cool cover!
The only other thing I can say about it is 
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #10 on: Apr 15th, 2007, 01:16am » |
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I've been dipping into this one over the last couple of weeks. The story that impressed me the most (so far) is 'Red Rubber Gloves' by Christine Brooke-Rose. It's a very obvious take on 'Rear Window' - invalided narrator spies on his neighbours - but there's one small paragraph that totally turned this on it's head. Don't want to spoil it but for some reason I was impressed with this...
I found 'Black Goddess' by Jack Griffith way too long, it never delivered on it's promise of an evil entity down in the mine. Disappointing. 'Out of the Country' was very short but cheerfully grisly. There's a similar light hearted grimness to 'A Pleasure Shared'. 'The Appointment' didn't really engage me that much, interesting but nothing to linger over. 'End of the Road' - poor Henry, seems like his idea of hell, in the car with his wife and sister...but a bit like the car this doesn't seem to go anywhere...
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demonik
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #11 on: Apr 15th, 2007, 2:41pm » |
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Very odd collections these and the Tales Of Unease title seems apt as some of them read like horror stories minus the horror. How does this measure up against Splinters? Although I've not read the latter, something tells me they're similar.
I don't remember anything about Red Rubber Gloves, so I might give that a go later.
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The inn sign ... was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone, and underneath this somewhat forbidding daub with grim irony, the legend 'Ye Journey's End' - Guy Preston, The Inn.
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demonik
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #12 on: Apr 24th, 2007, 04:45am » |
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on Apr 15th, 2007, 01:16am, nightreader wrote:I've been dipping into this one over the last couple of weeks. The story that impressed me the most (so far) is 'Red Rubber Gloves' by Christine Brooke-Rose. It's a very obvious take on 'Rear Window' - invalided narrator spies on his neighbours - but there's one small paragraph that totally turned this on it's head. Don't want to spoil it but for some reason I was impressed with this...
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Yes, I'm sure I know the small paragraph you refer to! There's a clever build-up of tension, too. Another I enjoyed is Andrea Newman's Such A Good Idea. The narrator locks her husband in his study on a whim, wondering how long it will take him to realise. The situation escalates from the moment he does ....
I read her She'll Be Company For You (from More Tales Of Unease) in Mary Danby's Fontana Horror #15 recently, and that was another stormer. I'm not quite ready to tackle A Bouquet Of Barbed Wire just yet, though ...
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The inn sign ... was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone, and underneath this somewhat forbidding daub with grim irony, the legend 'Ye Journey's End' - Guy Preston, The Inn.
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #13 on: Apr 25th, 2007, 12:27pm » |
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I think I preferred Andrea Newman's Such A Good Idea, I've read She'll Be Company For You too, but if you're a cat lover it's hard to get too worked up about a kitty in the house  I felt more sympathy for Henry at the start of the story, by the end he was irritating and probably should have been cat food a couple of pages sooner...
Interesting to compare Splinters to these, very similar in tone but I think these Unease stories have more of an edge...
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demonik
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Re: John Burke - Tales of Unease
« Reply #14 on: Apr 25th, 2007, 1:15pm » |
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I tend to rope the two in together because, from what little I've read from the Hamilton books, they both seem to consciously dispense with the Gothic props and concentrate on contemporary horrors which gives them a very 'sixties feel
Another I enjoyed from the first book is Dell Shannon - The Practical Joke: Griffith's has written a book scoffing at all things supernatural, and his friends decide to put his scepticism to the test. When the quiet Welshman takes a holiday cottage in a remote Somerset village, they rope in some locals to give him the full Blair Witch Project experience, unaware that the place is only empty in the first place due to its previous owner being an old creep who got his kicks from torturing small animals.
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The inn sign ... was in the nature of a coffin supported by six headless bearers goose-stepping towards a white headstone, and underneath this somewhat forbidding daub with grim irony, the legend 'Ye Journey's End' - Guy Preston, The Inn.
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