![]() ![]() I just wasn't able to get into a whole lot of the authors, the styles or the story lines of the novels themselves. You may very well lose all respect for me after I admit to this Will, but I wasn't a big fan of the line. But, for various industry reasons, Abyss folded later in the '90s and my love of current horror pretty much went with it. What they all had in common was a desire to do something new with horror fiction. Brite - and guys like Brian Hodge and Rick R. ![]() Women writers were plentiful - the most successful was easily Poppy Z. Most of the authors were first-time novelists, or at least writers with only a few books under their belts, but in the case of MetaHorror (July 1992), an anthology edited by ever-present '80s author Dennis Etchison, the line also featured well-known horror masters. Launched in February 1991 with Kathe Koja's stunningly bleak and unsettling The Cipher, Abyss published one title a month, ending up with more than 40 titles overall. The icon on the spine of its books was a mark of distinction indeed, Abyss even had a mission statement: The Abyss paperback originals used striking cover design - haunting, creepy, anguished faces and tormented bodies, albeit perhaps sometimes a tad clumsy - to separate themselves from the anonymous bloody skulls, graveyards, and evil babies then on horror covers. This kind of horror was interiorized, found not in a Gothic mansion or small town overrun by vampires but in the blasted landscape of the human mind. The appropriately-named Abyss was intent on publishing works that plumbed dark depths of psychology and the supernatural not for cheap, exploitative, escapists thrills but for more disturbing and revelatory chills. ![]() This imprint from Dell Publishing was spearheaded by Bantam Doubleday editor Jeanne Cavelos in an attempt to give the paperback horror genre a boost of originality and conviction - and, of course, a boost in sales - as it had long been plagued by tired cliches and half-hearted imitations of better books and writers. ![]() But no one is in control, and their experiments lead to obsession, violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.It was 20 years ago this month that the Dell/Abyss line of contemporary horror fiction began publication. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive." When a strange hole materializes in a storage room, would-be poet Nicholas and his feral lover Nakota allow their curiosity to lead them into the depths of terror. Dick Award, and named one of io9.com's "Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm." With a new afterword by Maryse Meijer, author of Heartbreaker and Rag. Winner of the Bram Stoker Award and Locus Awards, finalist for the Philip K. ![]()
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