Shocking Body Horror in "Body Shocks" - Another Sublime Anthology Edited by Ellen Datlow

Not for the squeamish or faint of the heart, but oh, so cathartic.

While all horror fiction gets my unconditional love, things get a little tricky when it comes to body horror, not to mention extreme horror. These are subgenres that at times I can react to a little too intensely and although that itself is a desired effect, and as Ellen Datlow puts it, oh so cathartic, it is also something I struggle with. Hence it is important to me to feel that I am in the hands of someone who knows what they’re doing, someone who deals with the subject in a respectful manner. There is a lot of writing out there produced for shock value only, violence for violence's sake, but a few of them can do more and move you on a different, deeper level. I am convinced that Datlow can find exactly those writings for her collection and that is the reason why I went into this book with the confidence of trust. And wasn’t disappointed at all.

Surely Body Shocks is a mixed bag – that is a given for any anthology. But it is also a given that in any Datlow anthology there will be a great deal of exceptional stories and most importantly new authors to discover. Here are the stories which stood out for me in Body Shocks and authors I'll be keeping an eye on in the future.

“Painlessness” by Kirstyn McDermott features one of the most remarkable leads I have recently read about; Mara. Not being able to feel physical pain, she offers her body to men who like to inflict pain as a way to earn her bread, but maybe this one time she took more on her plate than she is able to handle. This is an impressing piece of writing that explores appearances and what we deem acceptable and has a nice surprise ending.

Since my mother, my niece and I have the same rare blood type, we sometimes warn each other jokingly not to travel too far for too long just in case any of us needs a blood transfusion. Kaaron Warren’s “A Positive” is the story of a poor boy who was given birth for exactly that reason of being a blood bank for his terminally sick father. I love the way this story goes in the end, starting pure body horror but gradually and recklessly tackling more philosophical questions about life, family ties, what we owe to our parents and how they can be paid back.

I am steadily discovering and greatly savoring the wonderful writings of Pat Cadigan through Datlow anthologies. I don’t know how to exactly describe it but I feel so at home reading her, with her relatable and slightly funny female characters so enjoyable! In “It Was the Heat” we follow a woman who travels to New Orleans for business purposes and ends in a sexual escapade with an interesting partner.

For many years I have been and today I still am waiting for Cody Goodfellow’s literary breakthrough, but nothing ever happens in that regard. It’s a puzzle to me how a writer as talented, smart and original as him isn’t a household name yet, any publishers listening in? And “Atwater” is one of the best stories I’ve read in any anthology to this day. We follow a guy who, each time when he gets lost, ends up in Atwater, an extremely psychedelic, nightmarish-dreamy parallel universe/dreamverse place. Has a surprise ending too.

Carmen Maria Machado does it again in “The Old Women Who Were Skinned”! In this superb modern fairy tale with the gloom and doom of Hans Christian Andersen, Machado asserts her usual feminist touch into body horror. The titular two old sisters learn the hard way that a young skin isn’t everything in life.

“A True Friend” by Brian Evenson is a short, sweet and shocking piece of writing on betrayal, cruelty, control over your body and it is exquisite. But we already know that because everything Evenson writes is.

A little longer than the other stories in this anthology, Priya Sharma’s “Fabulous Beasts” handles body horror in a delicate way, a way especially women authors like McDermott and Tananarive Due also follow here, a way that sees women embracing the transformation and monstrification of their bodies in order to escape patriarchal violence and oppression. Amazing!

The final story of the collection, “Tissue Ablation and Various Regeneration: A Case Report” by practicing doctor and author Michael Blumlein, is a legendary pillar of body horror from 1986 and I’m really glad it has been re-published here where it belongs. The story is written in a highly medical language and describes a surgery. It doesn’t take the reader long to realize the patient is Ronald Reagan and the team of doctors operating on him all bear the names of political activists who in their time have fought on the fronts of left-wing causes; anti-apartheid, anti-colonialism or Marxism. What is the surgery about? That’s for you to discover and it will surely give you a chuckle but also the chills. Chuckle chills if you like.

I have preferred and focused on the milder writings here but among the unmentioned stories there are also some hardcore splatter works, if that’s what you like: in “Welcome to Mengele’s” Simon Bestwick describes a brothel where anything’s allowed and the sex workers can even be surgically modified according to your tastes; Alyssa Wong imagines a world you can sell skin or organs and dreadfully not only your own skin and organs; a country-folk duo who love and depend on each other so much they most literally become inseparable in Matheson's “I’m Always Here”; Nathan Ballingrud and his obsession with severed faces; Kij Johnson telling us about sex with aliens and finally two stories about the fashion industry’s fixation on certain body types and cruel modification possibilities to attain those body types.

The bottom line is that Body Shocks has something for each taste and it is yet another grant anthology by Meister Datlow – definitely recommended to aficionados!