In 1975, Robert Aickman received the World Fantasy Award for short fiction,
for his vampire story, “Pages from a Young Girl's Journal”:
| “I found that I was thinking many deep thoughts. And then I noticed that a small tear was slowly falling down the Contessa's face. Without thinking, I sprang up; but then the Contessa smiled, and I sat down. One of my deep thoughts was that it is not so much particular disasters that make people cry, but something always there in life itself, something that a light falls on when we are trying to enjoy ourselves in the company of others.” |  |
In case you missed it, this site has an entry
page with a short excerpt from "An Essay", by Robert
Aickman.
Robert Aickman: A Pictorial Bibliography
Tartarus Press Publications
The Collected Strange Stories
The Attempted Rescue
The Gothic Press
Robert Aickman: An Introduction
CONTENTS
*New Items*
Sound Recordings and Dramatisations
Original Aickman Articles
rbadac and alt.books.ghost-fiction
The Inland Waterways Association
Some Aickman Excerpts
Related Links
Other Websites
Other Reviews Online
The Aickman Archives in Bowling Green
Sort of Related Link
Antidote Link
Contact
| "Life is not fact but poetry. It was by
steady adherence to that truth that the waterways battle was so considerably
won. To be able to say this, is for me the most important prize from
all the victories gained. I now do not merely believe but know that
a quality of the imagination is all that matters in life. I can proclaim
it from the heart."
--THE RIVER RUNS UPHILL |
*New Items*
September 23, 2007:
Here's some good news! Gary W. Crawford is starting Robert Aickman: A Database. Gary has already been doing the same for J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
August 10, 2006:
One of the valued contributors to this website is starting a new website of his own. Please check out Adam Walter's new homepage. We're going there right now.
July 8, 2006:
Our
little website is enriched yet again by a new voice. We are
most pleased to be able to offer you a new article on Robert Aickman's "Wood" - an appreciation of absurdity, by Joey Warwick. This was first offered, in a shortened version, on the newsgroup: alt.books.ghost-fiction.
June 4, 2006:
PHILIP CHALLINOR’S “A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH”
Critic Philip Challinor has written in recent years several excellent analyses of Robert Aickman’s work, and his latest one on Barb Yanney’s Aickman website is no exception. Not least of all, he points out a few misreadings of the story in my book on Aickman. I am very glad that Challinor pointed these out.
However, he does seem to agree with me that the tale is one of Aickman’s “enigma” pieces at the same time that he attempts to ascribe meaning to Aickman’s narrative techniques. At the conclusion of his essay, he is just as puzzled by the tale as I and most readers are, even though he attempts to say that it is a “death-in-life” tale that is related to similar ideas in Aickman’s works. Yet he can say this, as he admits, with no certainty, as he uses the term “Perhaps” to say what really happened in the tale. Challinor has done an excellent job of providing a close reading of the story (not least of all its possibly biographical elements), but he, like me and many other readers, can only come away from the story squirming with questions and uncertainties that have no absolute resolution. Challinor then does agree with me in my book when I say that Aickman’s tales are poetic expressions of Mystery.
May 29, 2006:
Once again, we are pleased to be able to offer you an article by Philip Challinor: "A Fate Worse Than Death: On Robert Aickman's 'The Same Dog'".
By the way, if anyone has failed to
receive a reply to an email, please resend. We are getting very
cavalier in our deletion of email spams, and occasionally delete, by
mistake, real ones!!
November 24, 2005:
Peter Coady tells us about a new (well, previously unpublished) story by Robert Aickman. The Pictorial Bibliography site has the scoop. Thanks, Peter. Y'all know there are three unpublished plays, a novel, and more, available to be perused at the Aickman Archives, right?
October 6, 2005:
Gary William Crawford tells us about Rick Kennett's bibliographies now on-line at Tabula Rasa, pertaining to The "Ghost Book" Series, and Fontana's "Great Ghost Stories" Series. Now, there's a great source for a reading list.
September 12, 2005:
Philip Challinor sends us a new article: Outstaring Time: On Robert Aickman's "Le Miroir". We thank him and repeat our invitation for y'all to participate in this here website.
June 29, 2005:
Look what we found! A new angle on Robert Aickman. (Profile, that is.)
June 18, 2005:
Here's a blog entry about Robert Aickman's The River Runs Uphill.
June 12, 2005:
Those of you who've made a point of reading a few of those obscure works that rbadac wrote reviews for, might like to know that Stella Benson's Living Alone is now available online at Gutenberg.org.
June 7, 2005:
Well, some of us only think about it, and some of us go out there and do it! We are very pleased to be able to announce that one of the contributors to this website, Jim Rockhill, has just had a work of fiction published in the esteemed Supernatural Tales. He will also have 11 entries in the new Encyclopedia of Supernatural Literature of the World, edited by S. T. Joshi and Stefan Dziemianowicz, to be published by Greenwood Press. Please see Jim's Bibliography for details of his other work in print.
May 1, 2005:
We are very pleased to be able to offer you How Deep It Goes: On Robert Aickman's "No Stronger Than a Flower" by Philip Challinor. You may remember Philip from his article on "Ravissante" in the last issue of Studies in Weird Fiction (see note below). He writes "That story is a slippery one, I think; I remembered it as much more straightforward (woman has beauty treatment, develops claws, leaves husband) and got into something of a tangle when I found it wasn't."
April 13, 2005:
The final volume of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's supernatural fiction has just been published by Ash-Tree Press: Mr Justice Harbottle and Others. This is edited by Jim Rockhill and, as always, includes a lengthy introduction, which Ash-Tree claims "reveals the truth behind the author's death." Also note that Gary William Crawford is continuing to add to his online Database of Le Fanu.
April 2, 2005:
Gary Crawford tells us that Philip Challinor has an essay in the March 2005 issue of Studies in Weird Fiction titled "Ravishing Art: Robert Aickman's 'Ravissante'.
November 3, 2004:
Carfax knew that he was once more in bondage, irrevocably. A wild, bitter misery at his utter loss descended upon him and clung like the shroud about a man who has been hanged. Never afterwards would he for one waking moment be free from the desperate devouring damned memory [...] and wake to resume his life among strangers. He was past tears, past hope, past appetite, past all but bitter despair at his unequalled loss.
As we attempt to avoid sinking into that state of 'motionless misery', we would like to herald a (fairly) new Aickman website: A Pictorial Bibliography. We apologize to Huw Lines (from Taiwan), who sent us many scans of book covers long ago, and invite you to send all bibliographic information that way. This is a fine and professional-looking site, and Robert Aickman must feel himself to be well represented at last on the web.
August 11, 2003:
Richard Romeo writes us about an Aickman essay online: Postscript to Harry Price, paranormal investigator. It's scanned in from the London Mystery Magazine, of August/September, 1950. It may be difficult reading for some eyes. There's more information on the essay here, in the bibliographic entry for Mystery: An Anthology of the Mysterious in Fact and Fiction (1952, London: Hulton Press), in which it was reprinted.
May 29, 2003:
Huw Lines (from Taiwan) has sent scans of a letter he has acquired that Robert Aickman wrote to the book dealer George Locke, in 1978. We invite you to attempt to decipher RA's handwriting on side one, and side two. Give up? Here's a transcription we have puzzled out, (and thanks to Adam Walter for deciphering the mystery word):
I see that you describe a book about The Lyons Mail case (96 in latest list) as "evidently" based upon an historical event. It is perhaps worth saying that it was a very famous case indeed; mainly in England and America, upon the strength of the play, "The Lyons Mail", in which Sir Henry Irving had one of his greatest successes, and, later, Sir John Martin Harvey (whom I saw in it). Sir Charles Oman, the famous historian, wrote a book upon what actually happened, published by Methuen in 1945. It was a case of physical resemblance: in real life, the wrong man was executed; in the play, he is saved at the fifty-ninth second.
Robert AickmanP.S. A fascinating list.
5/7/78
October 21, 2002:
Peter Coady has written an account of his home town, Leamington Spa, from the point of view of what might have attracted the notice of a certain esteemed author of the macabre.
August 14, 2002:
Peter Coady (from the UK) writes re: The Man Who Wasn't There:
"I think any Aickman admirer would enjoy this Coen Brothers film, an intensely atmospheric film noir. Presented in luminously beautiful black and white cinematography, its plot involves blackmail, murder, dry cleaning and flying saucers. It's years since I've seen a film so dark, so mysterious, and so knowing as this. More than a film - a fantastic experience that contains a true lesson for every feeling person.".
Original Aickman Articles
Adam Walter has written
Robert Aickman's "The Visiting Star" and Leni Riefenstahl's "The Blue Light"
The Attempted Rescue: Robert Aickman's Early Years
Sweeney Todd, Chaucer and "Mark Ingestre: A Customer's Tale" When we admitted that we didn't like this story very much, Adam wrote that other people had said the same thing, "and I agree! It's one story that seems to try rather hard NOT to be likeable."
Encountering the Unknown in Aickman's "The Next Glade". This one (we mean the story!) is a puzzler. Here are some comments on the story from alt.books.ghost-fiction, from before and after the posting of Adam's article.
Adam Walter wrote down these thoughts for the newsgroup alt.books.ghost-fiction: Aickman, CS Lewis, & the Tao.
Jim Rockhill has written
Robert Aickman's "The Inner Room": A Personal Response. Jim writes in an email: "I am not sure if the piece will work or seem too self-indulgent for you to use..., but bits of it have been occurring to me late at night and early in the morning for the past few days, demanding that I put them down on paper."
This review has generated some interesting responses from the newsgroup: alt.books.ghost-fiction.
Richard Romeo has written
The Attempted Rescue - Impressions. In response to some comments of ours, Richard wrote:
"Aickman gets criticized for being not scary enough (which is untrue) on the one hand and too cold on the other (which is a more valid critique than the former), but it is misleading.
it's not like he belongs with other horror writers - he's truly sui generis. lovecraft, ligotti, barker don't have compassion as an element in their work, and they can't write as good prose as does our hero. just my humble opinion."The Late Breakfasters - Impressions. This is a book we have previously not heard much about.
Your
review could be here.
.
alt.books.ghost-fiction and rbadac
[We've started a page devoted to rbadac, but we also want to keep this section here, with the specifically Aickman material.]
The first post we have been able to find for rbadac on alt.books.ghost-fiction is for March 27, 1998. As you will see below, it took all of six days for him to become the ringleader of a discussion of "The Trains". The newsgroup was blessed with his presence and his joyful devotion for the rest of his life, which lasted almost through December 2000.
Here are the archived Aickman story discussions which owe so much to rbadac's wit, intelligence, and charm:
Re: “The Hospice”
Re: “The Visiting Star”
Re: “Wood”
Re: “The Trains”
Re: Putting On “The Same Dog”
We were also pleased to be able to preserve this little gem: The Ninth Fontana: Second-Guessing Aickman. In rbadac's words, this is “the imagined correspondence dealing with Aickman's involvement as anthologist for Fontana's Great Ghost Stories.”
The Unappreciated Aickman. Well, that's what happened one Christmas when rbadac gave some friends The Wine-Dark Sea.
Here is a wonderful exchange between rbadac and Robert Kunath, comparing E. V. Lucas' "The One Left" with RA's "Your Tiny Hand is Frozen". As rbadac titles it, it is Lucas and Aickman On The Telephone.
An Aspect of Houses was inspired by Jim Rockhill's comment about "The Houses of the Russians".
Aickman's Three Bears was written by Robert Suggs and rbadac, and has been published in All Hallows, as well. NEWLY ADDED: An excerpt from "The Real Road to Grandma's".
Here rbadac waxes lyrical with a little ditty about "Aickman's Army".
William Allison ( The Haunted Bibliophile ) was largely responsible for creating this newsgroup (in September 1997), and writing the FAQ for it. You can find current or long-past posts (from 1981-on!) at Google.com.
Here's a post to abg-f (May 13, 1998) from Robert Kunath, well worth your time: Aickman and the Female Protagonist.
.
Some Aickman Excerpts
Robert Aickman wrote two books and three plays that remain unpublished. His fantasy novel, The Model,is not widely available. There are also uncollected critical articles, essays, and reviews. Could these works be put up on the Web if no one cares to publish them in any other form?
On the other hand..., the question arises as to what Aickman would have thought of the Information Superhighway. RA had many thoughts about machines and what they are doing to humanity. None of those thoughts were good:
| “I believe that the key to the modern world lies
in Samuel Butler's suggestion that the machine is an evolutionary development,
and that it is in the process of reducing man from homo sapiens to homo
mechanicus; virtually to greenfly status. That machines have their
own purposes and intelligences though entirely different from the purposes
and intelligences of men, that they are rapidly taking over from men, seems
to me plain.”
--The River Runs Uphill |
Robert Aickman could be fairly depressing:
| “I wanted to love her and tousle her and all
the other, better things we want before the time comes when we know that
however much we want them, we're not going to get them.”
--The Swords |
| “We are most of us two people, your
Highness. There is something lacking in the man who is one man only,
and so, as he believes, at peace with the world and with himself...
And the two people within us seldom communicate. Even when both are
present together in consciousness, there is little communication.
Neither can confront the other without discomfort.”
“One of the two sometimes dies before the other,” observed Elmo. “Life is primarily directed to seeing that that happens, your Highness. Life, as we know it, could hardly continue if men did not soon slay the dreamer inside them...” --Niemandswasser |
So, why do we feel called upon to put up a tribute to Robert Aickman? Because we think he has written some of the most beautiful, evocative, haunting, and also disturbing works of fiction in the English language. Because he is gone, and we do not want him to be forgotten.
What we resonate with is the sensitive soul who was hurt by the lack of beauty in the world (and the prevalence of cruelty and crassness), who was so idealistic and lovingly inclined toward women and yet came to live most of his life alone, the man who found hopelessness the best approach to take toward life.
| “Robert Aickman has a gift for depicting
the eerie areas of inner space, the churning storms and silent overcasts
that engulf the minds of lonely and alienated people. He is a weatherman
of the subconscious.”
--Fritz Leiber |
“The Model reads like a gift from
some other, more magical literary tradition. It is astonishing, sometimes
unsettling, and often awfully funny.”
--Richard Grant |
“Robert Aickman is incomparable - a genuinely
authentic original and an absolute master of psychological fiction.”
--Dennis Etchison |
Robert Aickman could also be... well, here are some more examples.
| “The other pupils at the art school were either
complete babies, feeding from bottles containing cornflour; or, in certain
cases, motionless skeletons, also fed with cornflour, though not from bottles,
because they could not suck.”
--Le Miroir |
| ...upstairs in the bathroom, it
came to Millie, clearly and consciously for the first time, that the boys
were not merely too big to make messes: they were far, far too big in a
more absolute sense...
“I'm afraid we have to look to your family for that aspect of it. Consider your Uncle Nero, if I may venture to mention him.” “I don't like him being called that.” “But you can't deny he's bulky. There's no one of his build anywhere up my family tree, as far as I am aware. For better or worse, of course. There are more troublesome things than sturdiness, especially in growing boys.” Millie did not have to be told. She had often reflected that Phineas, seeping tiredly over the settee at the end of the day's absence, was like an immensely long anchovy, always with the same expression at the end of it; and in the next bed it was, of course, far worse. --Growing Boys |
[Yes, we actually like “Growing
Boys”.
This may partially explain
the otherwise inexplicable Antidote Link at the end.]
One of the main preoccupations of Robert Aickman was the intricacies and mysteries of the relationship and attractions between women and men:
| “Her sudden quick smile was possibly artificial
but certainly bewitching. For a second, various men in the room missed
the thread of their resumed conversations.”
--Bind Your Hair |
This all happens to fit in well with one of Showtime's preoccupations. In 1997, their series, The Hunger, aired an adaptation of Robert Aickman's story, "The Swords":
| “What I could have no doubt about at all was
the noise the sword made.”
--The Swords |
Another common theme was the fleeting of
youth and all the hopes and dreams that go with it. Here, Robert
Aickman, we think, is speaking, in his fictional way, about growing old.
--Le Miroir --The Clock Watcher
“She began cutting away the gangrene from her
limbs, or what she assumed to be gangrene. She was too scared to
use the sharpest knife she had, as no doubt she should have done.
She preferred the small, elegant fruit knifes, precisely because they were
rather blunt...”
“There are no beautiful clocks. Everything
to do with time is hideous.”
What is so telling about Robert Aickman's stories, is that examine them as you might, go through them word for word to see ‘how he did it’, and you will only dissect them to death. These works are real because they come from a place beyond the surface of things. They live because they poured through a suffering, feeling human being, poured through from a place, a being, a source, that Robert Aickman, and many writers, call the Muse. It has other names.
The man whose very name is evocative.
.
Related Links
The photograph above comes from The Haunted Bibliophile. This graceful site has a biographical note and bibliography of Robert Aickman's work, and the FAQ for alt.books.ghost-fiction (which has a core following of Aickman readers)..
On 13 October 1999, the Baltimore City Paper (Maryland, USA), published an article by Rupert Wondolowski on Robert Aickman: Somewhere in the Back of Beyond.
Did you know that Robert Aickman's literary archives are preserved at The Center for Archival Collections at Bowling Green State University, in northwest Ohio, U.S.A.? To find out why, read an account of an actual Visit, which sort of continues in Ramblings.
Scott Briggs has kindly (we like to think) offered us the use of his article: Robert Aickman: Sojourns Into the Unknown, originally published in Studies in Weird Fiction 12 (Spring 1993).
Robert Aickman's fiction may be discussed by The Ghost Story Society in British Columbia, Canada. Look for publishing news, fiction, and ghostly articles in their journal, All Hallows, edited by Barbara Roden. Issue No. 20, (February, 1999), featured a special section on Robert Aickman.
Rosemary Pardoe provides news and reviews in Ghosts and Scholars, now online only. David Rowlands reviewed the new Aickman collection.
Sort of Related Link
There are many fine websites devoted to a British television series of 1966-1967, which produced a total of seventeen episodes..
An excerpt from THE PRISONER: A Televisionary Masterpiece, written by Alain Carrazé and Hélène Oswald:“An ode to liberty, total nonsense, a defense of the individual threatened by a totalitarian society, a psychedelic trip, a voyage of initiation, a metaphysical parable, or religious allegory, The Prisoner - and herein lies its profound originality - gives rise to as many interpretations as there are individual viewers...”Here is Six Of One: The Prisoner Appreciation Society.
Trivia question: What movie was being filmed at the Borehamwood studios at the same time as The Prisoner? (Scroll down to the end of the page for the answer.)
Antidote Link
There's another underappreciated RA; writer of strange and unclassifiable stories, also born in 1914, who can provide a sort of antidote to those miasmic ties that bind. After exquisitely dwelling in the horrors this world has for any thinking or feeling soul (i.e., reading Robert Aickman), you've just got to Laff!***R. A. Lafferty has been awarded the second only Annual Cordwainer Smith "Rediscovery" Award for 2002.***
****R. A. Lafferty was the Memorial Guest of Honor at Readercon15 (July 11-13, 2003 in Burlington, Massachusetts, USA)****
An excerpt from Stephen Kimmel's (OK SF Writers) Aimless Musings:
“Just when we think we have a handle on this craft and we're getting the hang of it, Ray will bring something to read to the group. Something that violates every rule of fiction; every precept . . . in every way. There are only two reactions available. Stunned silence and applause . . . . My characters would never consider saying 'Ugh. Ugh. Does it always feel this icky to be a man?' ”
"Harry O'Donovan was sculpting something in lucite and chrome. It was primordial form made out of the primordial elements of fire and ice. It was almost the secret of life itself, it was almost the shape of destiny. It was probably good.” --from “Brain Fever Season” by R.A. Lafferty (Ringing Changes)
A review of OKLA HANNALI, with way too many excerpts.
An excerpt from "The Day After the World Ended", by R.A. Lafferty.
A tribute from Don Webb on RevolutionSF.com.
"Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial; the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade. But do not pity them overly, it is your own death and your soul's death that they work by their deception." --from The Flame is Green by R.A. Lafferty
.Coda
Parchment background courtesy of Melissa Snell at about.com.
Robert Aickman's “An Essay” is from The First World Fantasy Awards: An Anthology of the Fantastic: Stories Poems Essays, edited by Gahan Wilson and published by Doubleday in 1977. It also appears in the Tartarus edition of the short stories.
Writings that appear on this site, are, of course, Copyright © by the authors thereof, with all rights reserved thereunto.
Answer to The Prisoner Trivia Question: 2001 - A Space Odyssey
This website is proudly sponsored by The Tree Guy.
“As I had every kind of reason for going, I went.” --The Swords