Weirdmonger
D.F. Lewis
Rated: 4.00 of 5 stars
4.00
· 1 ratings · 400 pages · Published: 10 May 2003
DF Lewis is a legend among readers of fantasy and horror fiction. These days he devotes his creative energies to editing his annual magazine Nemonymous, in which authors identities are revealed only in the subsequent issue. Now Lewis has a big collection of his own heteromorphic short fiction in print: Weirdmonger is a substantial volume of often insubstantial pieces. Insubstantial only in terms of length, that is. Lewis writes some of the shortest short stories around and still makes them work. The long ones work, too. Its possible to detect the influence of English horror writer Ramsey Campbell, especially in the puns and wordplay, while the spirit of the American short story writer H P Lovecraft infuses every paragraph. The Scar Museum finds the curator of that establishment arriving in a seaside spa town where he is confronted with more cicatrices than he can handle. He is enjoying a drink in a hotel bar when he notices a young woman sat opposite, her scars like tug-of-war teams competing for the bridge of her nose. The consequences of the ensuing meeting, as ever with Lewis, are both horrible and wonderful.