Beyond the Veil by Mark Morris (Editor)

​      What scares you?  Present day offers more than enough to fear even before supernatural enters the equation.  Horror is a genre solely devoted to finding out the buttons and pushing them, often to cathartic ends. It allows a certain kind of release,  conquering imagined terrors  makes it easier to deal with the real ones. I recently read a study demonstrating that people who are horror fans, survivalists, preppers, etc. have fared nicer during the sh*tshow of 2020 than those who are not.  The miracles of properly tweaked mentality and all that.
     And with that in mind what is scarier than death? The awareness or our mortality is, after all, what (allegedly) separates us from other species.  What a perfectly readymade subject for a horror anthology.  Enter this book.
     A collection of short stories seemingly born directly out of 2020 with several well known names and many  perfectly worthy contributions from lesser known ones.  Which is to say I never heard of the majority of the authors but about 5 or 6 very well known names to genre fans and this didn’t really affect the overall quality very much either. In fact,  Malerman’s (a recognizable name for sure,) contribution was pretty underwhelming., as opposed to  the first story by Christopher Golden (another genre luminary) who absolutely nailed it with a gut whammy of a story.
     And most of these assorted tales are about death . Different styles, different approaches, but it’s always there. With a notable exception of a wildly incongruous random ditty about fairies.
     I can’t say all of these  stories were equally good, that’s seldom the case with such a variety, but the overall quality was very good indeed. The middle sagged some, which is sometimes the case with anthologies and old mattresses, but there was a good number of stories that did shine brightly all around.  Or maybe shine isn’t quite the right verb for something so thematically bleak and depressing, but you know…
     My favorite was the one about a mystery  robot.  Stories 1 and 19 were good too.  There was a strictly literary quality bar here that even  John Everson with his traditionally lowbrow erotica didn’t manage to bring down.
      Beyond the Veil takes you beyond the pale of everyday world. It scares all too well with nightmares contained within its pages. This is proper literary horror at its best. Read it if you dare. Recommended. Thanks Netgalley.