Robert Aickman

Aickman's 'strange stories' (his preferred term) are constructed immaculately, the neuroses of his characters painted in subtle shades. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream. Dark Entries was first published in 1964 and contains six curious and macabre stories of love, death and the supernatural, including the classic story 'Ringing the Changes'. Robert Aickman (1914-1981) was the grandson of Richard Marsh, a leading Victorian novelist of the occult. Though his chief occupation in life was first as a conservationist of England's canals he eventually turned his talents to writing what he called 'strange stories.' Dark Entries (1964) was his first full collection, the debut in a body of work that would inspire Peter Straub to hail Aickman as 'this century's most profound writer of what we call horror stories.'

In perhaps the most magnificent of what he called his 'strange stories', Robert Aickman blurs the lines between memory, premonition and the hallucinated life. Lene, a woman now recovering from the losses of the Second World War, recalls a gothic dolls' house of her childhood and the way in which its uncanny inhabitants entered her dreams. Most chillingly, the geometries of the house didn't add up; there had to be a secret room inside it. Years later, she comes across a life-size version in a wood not marked on any map . . .

Un viaje extraño y fantástico de una niña por la Rusia zarista con la esperanza de convertirse en bailarina clásica. Un obra maestra póstuma del gran escritor inglés.Este hipnótico relato, subtitulado una novela de lo fantastico, nos cuenta el extraño viaje de una niña a lo largo de la Rusia zarista. Guiada solo por sueños y promesas, Elena abandona su hogar y atraviesa paisajes y territorios habitados por extraordinarios personajes y creaturas, en la esperanza de convertirse en bailarina clasica.Simbolica, fantastica, mitica, El modelo fue elogiada como una obra maestra al publicarse postumamente.

For fans of Inside Number 9 and The League of Gentlemen -- with an introduction by Reece Shearsmith Aickmans strange stories (his preferred term) are constructed immaculately, the neuroses of his characters painted in subtle shades. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream. Cold Hand in Mine, first published in 1975, stands as one of Aickmans finest collections and contains eight tales including Pages from a Young Girls Journal which won the World Fantasy Award. He had the ability to invest the daylight world with all the terrors of the night, and specialised in subverting notions of safety and sunshine into something sinister and unforgiving. Christopher Fowler, Independent

For fans of the BBCs Inside Number 9 and The League of GentlemenAickmans strange stories (his preferred term) are constructed immaculately, the neuroses of his characters painted in subtle shades. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream. The Unsettled Dust was first published as a collection in 1990. Aickman received the British Fantasy Award for The Stains.We are all potential victims of the powers Aickman so skilfully conjures and commands. Robert Bloch

After Robert Aickmans death in 1981 the manuscript of The Model, a wintry rococo fable set in Czarist Russia, was located among his papers. Aickman had told a friend he considered this novella to be one of the best things I have ever written, if not the very best. It was duly published for the first time in 1987.The Model tells of Elena, a grave girl inclined to losing herself in dreams of becoming a student ballerina orcoryphee. Her dolour darkens further when she learns she is to be sold into marital slavery by her father so as to settle the familys debts. Refusing an unendurable future she sets out to the city of Smorevsk to pursue her dream. First, however, she must traverse a landscape crowded by highly curious characters and creatures.A must for Aickman fans... A model of eloquent elegant enchantment. Robert Bloch (Psycho)

Griselda de Reptonville did not know what love was until she joined one of Mrs. Hatchs famous house parties at Beams, and there met Leander...The Late Breakfasters (1964) was the sole novel Robert Aickman published in his lifetime. Its heroine Griselda is invited to a grand country house where a political gathering is to be addressed by the Prime Minister, followed by an All Party Dance. Expecting little, Griselda instead meets the love of her life. But their fledgling closeness is cruelly curtailed, and for Griselda life then becomes a quest to recapture the wholeness and happiness she felt all too briefly.Those, if any, who wish to know more about me - Aickman wrote in 1965 - should plunge beneath the frivolous surface of The Late Breakfasters. Opening as a comedy of manners, its playful seriousness slowly fades into an elegiac variation on the great Greek myth of thwarted love.

Completed by Robert Aickman in 1975; but never before published in the USA; Go Back at Once is a delicious; delirious comic fantasy about the joys and terrors experienced by two young women seeking to escape the degradations of our technological and conformist age by fleeing to a chaotic; poet-ruled utopia.

Faber Stories, a landmark series of individual volumes, presents masters of the short story form at work in a range of genres and styles. In perhaps the most magnificent of what he called his strange stories, Robert Aickman blurs the lines between memory, premonition and the hallucinated life.Lene, a woman now recovering from the losses of the Second World War, recalls a gothic dolls house of her childhood and the way in which its uncanny inhabitants entered her dreams. Most chillingly, the geometries of the house didnt add up; there had to be a secret room inside it.Years later, she comes across a life-size version in a wood not marked on any map . . .

For fans of the BBCs Inside Number 9 and The League of Gentlemen Aickmans strange stories (his preferred term) are constructed immaculately, the neuroses of his characters painted in subtle shades. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream. Dark Entrieswas first published in 1964 and contains six curious and macabre stories of love, death and the supernatural, including the classic story Ringing the Changes. Robert Aickman (1914-1981) was the grandson of Richard Marsh, a leading Victorian novelist of the occult. Though his chief occupation in life was first as a conservationist of Englands canals he eventually turned his talents to writing what he called strange stories.Dark Entries (1964) was his first full collection, the debut in a body of work that would inspire Peter Straub to hail Aickman as this centurys most profound writer of what we call horror stories.

Reading Robert Aickman is like watching a magician work, and very often Im not even sure what the trick was. All I know is that he did it beautifully. Neil GaimanFor fans of the BBCs Inside Number 9 and The League of Gentlemen Aickmans strange stories (his preferred term) are constructed immaculately, the neuroses of his characters painted in subtle shades. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream.First published in 1988, The Wine-Dark Sea contains eight stories that build towards disturbing yet enigmatic endings, including the classic story Your Tiny Hand is Frozen.Of all the authors of uncanny tales, Aickman is the best ever . . . His tales literally haunt me; his plots and his turns of phrase run through my head at the most unlikely moments. Russell Kirk

Las autodenominadas «historias extrañas» de Robert Aickman son desconcertantemente únicas. Su prosa soberbia no sólo infunde terror a través del suspenso convencional y el gore, sino también por medi

The best and most interesting stories by Robert Aickman, a master of the supernatural tale, the uncanny, and the truly weird.Robert Aickmans self-described strange stories are confoundingly and uniquely his own. These superbly written tales terrify not with standard thrills and gore but through a radical overturning of the laws of nature and everyday life. His territory of the strange, of the void behind the face of order, is a surreal region that grotesquely mimics the quotidian: Is that river the Thames, or is it even a river? What does it mean when a prospective lover removes one dress, and then anotherand then another? Does a herd of cows in a peaceful churchyard contain the souls of jilted women preparing to trample a cruel lover to death? Published for the first time under one cover, the stories in this collection offer an unequaled introduction to a profoundly original modern master of the uncanny.

El extraño y fantástico viaje de una niña a lo largo de la Rusia zarista con la esperanza de convertirse en bailarina clásica. Este hipnótico relato, subtitulado ?una novela de lo fantástico?, nos cuenta el extraño viaje de una niña a lo largo de la Rusia zarista. Guiada solo por sueños y promesas, Elena abandona su hogar y atraviesa paisajes y territorios habitados por extraordinarios personajes y creaturas, en la esperanza de convertirse en bailarina clasica. Simbolica, fantastica, mitica, El modelo fue elogiada como una pequeña obra maestra al publicarse postumamente. Por primera vez publicada en castellano, traducida por Marcelo Cohen.

Robert Aickman, considerado por muchos uno de los más destacados escritores ingleses de literatura fantástica de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, siempre sostuvo que no escribía cuentos de terror, sino historias de lo extraño -asi le gustaba definirlas-, historias que tienen la rara virtud de sumergirnos en una tensa atmosfera envolvente tan inquietante como poetica.El primer cuento se introduce con naturalidad en el corazon mismo del mito femenino. Las tres mujeres que habitan la misteriosa ciudad abandonada de una isla, a la que nadie puede llegar, son las unicas supervivientes de una era remota del mundo en la que la tierra estaba viva (como la roca donde habitan) y se vivia con los ritmos naturales, bajo el gobierno de la mujer.Los trenes, Che gelida manina y Nunca vayas a Venecia son historias fantasmales, pero no de las que dejan caer un espectro en cada esquina o lugar sombrio, sino de aquellas que nos sumergen sutilmente en un concierto de sentimientos -extrañamiento, terror, desesperanza, erotismo, anhelo- que se vuelven turbadores. El centro argumental de La habitacion interior gira en torno a una suntuosa casa de muñecas cuya vida secreta vamos poco a poco conociendo a traves de insinuaciones.

Las casas de los rusosConsiderado por muchos uno de los más destacados autores ingleses de literatura fantástica de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, el londinense Robert Aickman siempre sostuvo que no escribia cuentos de terror, sino historias de lo extraño asi le gustaba definirlas, relatos que tienen la rara virtud de sumergirnos en una tensa e inquietante atmosfera. Esta nueva entrega de su obra vuelve a constatar, como Cuentos de lo extraño (Atalanta, n.º 53), su gran talento para lo fantastico narrativo.Aickman es un escritor refinado, inteligente, sensible y culto, y en sus paginas resuenan los ecos de muchas lecturas, cuya variedad podemos rastrear por las referencias halladas en el texto: Renan (un autor hoy olvidado), Arthur Machen, Celine, Daudet, Strindberg pero tambien Walter de la Mare, Algernon Blackwood, M. R. James [].En el extenso articulo dedicado a Aickman en The Encyclopedia of Fantasy de John Clute y John Grant, leemos que en las historias de nuestro autor los personajes no son capaces de entender al fantasma con el que se enfrentan debido a que dicho fantasma [] es una manifestacion, un retrato psiquico, de su incapacidad para comprender sus propias vidas. No se puede decir mejor, ni con mas elegancia.Andres IbañezEn sus mejores momentos, fue el escritor de relatos de terror ...