{"id":7082,"date":"2026-05-31T17:37:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:37:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/?p=7082"},"modified":"2026-05-31T17:44:24","modified_gmt":"2026-05-31T15:44:24","slug":"night-voices-by-robert-aickman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/2026\/05\/31\/night-voices-by-robert-aickman\/","title":{"rendered":"Night Voices<\/em> by Robert Aickman"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is Aickman\u2019s final original collection, posthumously published in 1985, four years after his death in 1981.<\/p>\n

To start with, it contains the novelette \u201cThe Trains,\u201d published in the original collection We Are for the Dark<\/em> in 1951, which I already mentioned<\/a> in this context.<\/p>\n

Then, there are the short story \u201cMark Ingestre: The Customer\u2019s Tale,\u201d first published in 1980, and the novelette \u201cRosamund\u2019s Bower,\u201d probably written in the late 1970s, both of which are badly written, badly edited or not edited at all, and in different ways a waste of time.<\/p>\n

Next, there are the short stories \u201cJust a Song at Twilight,\u201d first published in 1965, and \u201cLaura,\u201d first published in 1977. Both are full of striking motifs, superbly written passages, and absolute knockout sentences, but neither of the two comes together as a structurally and thematically rounded story\u2014they remind me of that kind of fried country potatoes often served in France which taste really good but are completely hollow inside. (As a friend of mine put it, \u201cguess they heat up some air and wrap a fry around it.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Finally, there\u2019s the novella \u201cThe Stains,\u201d originally published in 1980, a perfect blend of psychological horror and folk horror with a terrific dramatic structure. Like in many of his best works, it\u2019s not about the ending but the journey, and it is, as I see it, one of Aickman\u2019s most accomplished stories.<\/p>\n

This should be my next-to-last post on Aickman\u2019s oeuvre; there are only some uncollected stories left, mostly juvenilia, half of which I don\u2019t have access to in any case. (It\u2019s become spotty<\/a>, as indicated.)<\/p>\n

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<\/div>\n

As an aside, The Stains<\/em> won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction in 1981, which would impress me more if Aickman hadn\u2019t been given the same award for the novelette \u201cPages from a Young Girl\u2019s Journal\u201d in 1975, which I mentioned in my post on Cold Hand in Mine<\/em><\/a>. (Then again, by that time the award was still called the August Derleth<\/a> Fantasy Award, which might explain things.)<\/span><\/p>\n

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As another aside, I found this terrific quote from an introduction to Aickman by Victoria Nelson<\/a>: \u201c[Aickman] loves oblique, corner-of-the-eye effects, throwaway asides that don\u2019t bear directly on the narrative, and the fact that the uncanny lurks in the margins instead of being front and center makes it doubly unsettling.\u201d Perfectly nails it.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Aickman, Robert. Night Voices: Strange Stories<\/em>. Golancz, 1980. Reprinted with extra stuff as Night Voices<\/em> in Tartarus Press<\/a>, 2013<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\ud83d\udcda Uneven, to put it mildly.<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-archive","h-entry","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7082"}],"version-history":[{"count":55,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7082\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7138,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7082\/revisions\/7138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/betweendrafts.com\/justdrafts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}