Alvin Fox 03-03-2008, 06:11 AM
I don't know if anyone else knew this but the Horror Writers of America did some other themed books in the vein of Freak Show. There was Whitley Stieber's Aliens, Peter Straub's Ghosts, Robert Bloch's Psychos and Robert McCammon's Under the Fang. I was just reading about Robert McCammon's experience in writing Under the Fang and, well...
"Without talking out of school too much, suffice it to say that the job ended up being a disappointment for him. Several big-name authors declined to participate (even though the project was done to benefit the HWA and big names would have helped sell more books), and some of those who did apparently didn't bother to read the shared-world definition that McCammon wrote (which shows when you read the book, I think---while it's a good anthology, overall, few of the stories seem to be written to the shared-world McCammon had envisioned)."
I must admit that while certain stories out of the other collections were great, the overall best book of the lot was Freak Show. (Even though I have the disappointing paperback. Sorry, FPW.) Freak Show was great because it really stuck to the shared-world theme. I don't know if the other books were also intended to be shared-world or not but it really added to the pleasure of reading Freak Show. I know Bloch died before he finished editing Psychos and it was decided to let the stories stand by themselves. Then again, the other books it seems as though someone went, "Whitley, you've written books about aliens (or visitors), how about editing an anthology?"
That was my musing for the night. To sum up: Freak Show was good.