The Dark Country
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It was about time. I mean the award I presented to Dennis Etchison for "The Dark Country" — the British Fantasy Award for best short story of the year. Though the award should have been presented at the Birmingham fantasy convention, I was forbidden to do so by the committee, which had become estranged from the British Fantasy Society, whose award it was. All this is incidental and not very interesting, except that the way Dennis was denied his moment of glory in front of the audience which was waiting to hear who had won the awards seems frustratingly consistent. Etchison is still far less appreciated than he deserves to be, and it was certainly about time for this book.
And yet for a period in his twenty years of writing he was appearing alongside Stephen King, in alternate issues of Cavalier. What must the readers have made of the oblique and allusive Etchisons which appeared in (continued on page 90) fragments between the nude ladies primly covering their pubes and the body-brief ads, Big Flash, Scuttles and Sling Shot (. a tornado of perfection… big idea with brief action)? Perhaps they didn't know enough about the conventions to which horror fiction is expected to conform to be deterred by his unpredictability.