Aickman's Heirs, Edited by Simon Strantzas, Undertow Publications

To embrace the work as a whole... I respect Strantzas for wanting to avoid the obvious tribute collection, as he concedes from the outset, so adding to the countless roster of second-rate fan-fiction titles; but his alternative reasoning for the title feels tenuous in the extreme.

  For those anticipating a tribute collection, written-in-the-style, you may be disappointed. The narrative voices are mainly the authors'; which is just as well since the majority, expressed in the modern American-English vernacular, would only further distance us from Aickman's own English RP style.

  While Strantzas warns against this very assumption in his intro, his alternative reasoning for the title seems equally vague – that, while RA's work was idiosyncratic, the way he worked is shared by our generation, influenced by him. i.e. by “mining their own personal psychology” and “tapping into their own subconsciousness, much as Aickman had.” Aickman, yes, and also every other writer on the planet, which fails to justify or explain precisely what set him apart.

  On reading, I remain puzzled as to how these tales – taken in unity – even begin to justify the book's title, if the way Aickman worked is a raison d'etre shared by this generation. Strantzas claims this is through being“open to exploring new avenues of the subtly bizarre.” Then could you not say that about any idiosyncratic author in recent history? Which then was Aickman's avenue? This isn't defined. The approach of each contributor is so much a contrast to its predecessor as to have been lifted from disparate sources. This is less a complaint, though, than a mild word of warning to an Aickman completist going by the title alone. I'd suggest its appeal would lie more with the convert to the uncanny, at large, rather than the seasoned specialist on the author. Strantzas also claims that attempting to write like Aickman is “impossible.” Difficult, certainly, but not insurmountable.

  The best of the work here defies this claim, showing the necessary cool impassivity and psychological insight. Praise then to Richard Gavin, John Howard, D.P. Watt, Michael Cisco, Lynda Rucker, Michael Wehunt, Helen Marshall and Malcolm Devlin. Their entries at least feel influenced by Aickman, without, in any way, aping him, as Strantzas wanted to avoid. Were that the whole collection was so pitched.

  But it is fortunate, for us all today, that we live in an era where the short tale has blossomed in popularity, regularity and quality, in the face of nay-saying publisher agents; one of whom – as recently as 2008 – confidently predicted its demise. Undertow's growing list remains welcome confirmation of that untruth.