They are more polished than McNally’s earlier
novels but less interesting.
McNally returned to ghosts with Stage Fright
(1995), her strongest story. The protagonist, a man
who has been stalked by an obsessed man for years,
discovers that the death of his tormentor brings no
relief, because now he is pursued by the man’s still
determined spirit. When she joins an acting
troupe, the ghostly admirer begins killing off her
companions. Good Night, Sweet Angel(1996) has a
very similar plot and is nearly as good. This time a
woman and her daughter are menaced by the
angry, twisted spirit of her dead husband. Unfortu-
nately, just as McNally was becoming a writer
worth following, she abandoned horror fiction and
has written nothing new within the genre for al-
most a decade.
McNaughton, Brian(1935–2004)
Brian McNaughton’s writing career can be split
into two distinct periods. During the late 1970s
and early 1980s he wrote several moderately inter-
esting mainstream horror novels, then paused for
almost a decade before turning to shorter works,
which were much more accomplished. A collec-
tion of his later work, The Throne of Bones(1997),
a blend of horror and fantasy occasionally reminis-
cent of Clark Ashton SMITH, won the World Fan-
tasy Award.
The first of his novels was Satan’s Love Child
(1977, revised in 2000 as Gemini Rising), a standard
story of the evil influence of a satanic cult active in
a small town. Although competently written, the
story fails to generate much suspense. Satan’s Mis-
tress(1978, revised in 2000 as Downward to Dark-
ness) is considerably better. The protagonist finds a
book of arcane lore that he uses in an attempt to
raise the spirit of one of his ancestors. Unfortu-
nately, he is inept and instead conjures a supernatu-
ral creature that appears in the guise of a beautiful
woman. Although not a conventional entry in the
Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. LOVECRAFTand others,
the story clearly shows that McNaughton was influ-
enced by that circle of writers.
There are also Lovecraftian references in
Satan’s Seductress(1978, revised in 2000 as Worse
Things Waiting), but the story is actually a deal-
with-the-devil plot with some mildly surprising
twists. McNaughton’s last novel was Satan’s Surro-
gate(1982), similar in tone to the previous ones. A
series of songs generate an occult force, which is
accompanied by a plague of vampirism and canni-
balism. Although all four novels are quite readable,
they are not nearly as impressive as his later work.
McNaughton reinvented himself during the
1980s and began turning out stories of dark sor-
cery in imaginary lands or at the end of time,
peopled with bizarre characters and dark gods.
Most of the better ones, such as “Vendriel and
Vendreela” (1988), are fantasy rather than hor-
ror, although they often involve ghastly events.
He also proved to be remarkably adept at the
very short horror story, producing more than a
dozen of them in the course of a single year. “The
Retrograde Necromancer” (1993) and “Many
Happy Returns” (1998) are particularly effective,
as are several Lovecraftian pastiches. Much of his
short fiction has been collected in Nasty Stories
(2000) and Even More Nasty Stories(2002). Mc-
Naughton is also the author of two mainstream
thrillers.Merritt, A.(1884–1943)
Abraham Merritt was an American journalist and
writer who produced comparatively little fiction,
but who was one of the most popular of the pulp
writers during his lifetime and who is now regarded
as one of the pioneers of fantasy fiction. Many of
his novels are actually rewritten versions of shorter
works, not always with Merritt’s permission, so the
text may vary considerable from one edition to the
next.
Merritt’s first short fantasy appeared in 1917,
but his first significant story was “The Moon Pool”
(1918), eventually followed by a sequel, “The Con-
quest of the Moon Pool” (1919). Both were later
combined and rewritten as his first novel, The
Moon Pool(1919). Four adventurers stumble into
an underground civilization where humans live in
consort with the survivors of an antediluvian race
of intelligent reptiles. Although Merritt makes an
effort to rationalize events, which technically
makes this science fiction, the atmosphere is over-
whelmingly that of a fantasy novel. The sequel,238 McNaughton, Brian