Now, the late 1960s, with the eight stories from Aickman’s original collection Sub Rosa published in 1968.
The ones I don’t care for very much are “Ravissante” and “The Houses of the Russians.” The former is even more opaque than usual, which wouldn’t be a problem at all if the story went anywhere beyond its numerous hints at, and traces of, psychoanalytic phenomena in the artistic imagination and the life of the artist. “The House of the Russians,” its efforts at dramatizing the stains in the final reveal notwithstanding, promises more than it eventually delivers and is bogged down by strings of events that would have to be more tightly connected to work, or be interesting.
The ones I like better are “The Inner Room,” “The Unsettled Dust,” and, from 1967, “Cicerones.” “The Inner Room” builds up a lot of suspense but strikes me as having more potential than what the dramatic arc ultimately presents, the more so as literary—not to speak of cinematographic—dollhouses are intrinsically eerie and already put a good wad of terror up-front on the table. Likewise, “The Unsettled Dust.” It’s a collection of imaginative motifs that peter out at the end in ways that are not ambiguous, which would be fine, but merely inconclusive. In “Cicerones,” the story lets the visitor of a cathedral fall through the thin fabric of reality into a place without time but plenty of ghosts to whom, presumably, something similar happened; and here the ending is well foreshadowed, conclusive, and satisfying (and somewhat reminiscent of M. R. James in good ways).
My favorites are “Never Visit Venice,” “No Stronger than a Flower” from 1966, and “Into the Wood,” all three for completely different reasons. “Never Visit Venice” not for its rather predictable ending but for its terrific atmosphere that is highly imaginative and superbly written and connects to my memories of the place in ways that ring true (I’ve been to Venice three times, for various purposes). Then, while I have some reservations about how Aickman handles the narrative perspective here, “No Stronger than a Flower” is a perfect horror story, all the way from its mundane premise to its alarming development to its surprising conclusion that still remains mysterious and open to all kinds of interpretations but in ways that perfectly fit the story. Finally, while “Into the Wood” does have its servings of horror (but not as many as the later “The Hospice” from the 1970s), it really shines as a terrific awakening story, so to speak, where the ending—and the protagonist—reaches out into the mysterious unknown in such compelling ways one would love to be able to follow.
Aickman, Robert. Sub Rosa. Gollancz, 1968. Reprint Tartarus Press, 2010.