Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre - Edited by Tim Lieder

Eleven tales of fear, obsession, and killer clowns.  (According to the title page, that is.)

On its web page Dybbuk Press states that its intended goal is to publish "strange and innovative" fiction, with emphasis placed on horror (that'd be the "strange" side, I'd wager) and experimental writing (being the "innovative" side, naturally).  Dybbuk's premiere effort is an anthology entitled Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre and while the stories collected within are certainly strange (and entertaining, for the most part), they are also far from innovative.

In a previous review I commented about my issue with reading theme anthologies.  How reading one short story after another about the same subject gets old to me, and fast.  Oddly enough, I had the opposite problem with Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre, because the anthology is a collection of short stories put together with no editorial comment whatsoever, not even contributors bios.  This made the book a somewhat uneven read at first, because I could not understand what kind of anthology it was I was reading.  Horror?  Humor?  Both?  Neither?  I wish editor Tim Lieder would have given me some sort of clue as to what to expect in an introduction, at least.

But what about the stories?  They are the usual mix of classics and clunkers.  On the classic side, there are Cameron Hill's Hermetic Crab (about a novice magician and his hermit crab familiar), Rob Steussi's Head Drippers (a sane man's intellectual exercise at an asylum leads to an insane discovery about the place), and Michael Stone's Clob (wherein a shy man's "imaginary friend" gives some much needed assist in the girl meeting department).  All three are more than worth the price of book.  The clunkers are C.C. Parker's Formaldehyde (a hodgepodge of slackers, murder and corpse play), Trina Shealy Orton's Brilliant Suspension (an anonymous character undergoes a magical, albeit torturous, transformation) and Rats, Wrong Alley by Tim Johnson (mutant guess whats).  These three stories, while not "bad," really needed to spend a little more time cooking in the idea oven.  The middle range stories are Paul Haines Doof Doof Doof (one of those post-modern twists on the Fairy Tale characters we grew up reading about), Roberta Rogow's Peppercorn Rent (a playful yarn about a strange rental agreement and a young woman's rather animalistic monthly visitor), Brian Rosenberger's Something Funny Is Going On (the killer you know what story), and William Brock's Berries Under Snow (a somber examination of frustrated and/or spurned love - and a perfect closer for the anthology).  Jenifer Jourdanne's modestly amusing non-fiction ramblings, Blue Elephants, is the only writing that does not have some sort of connection to horror, science-fiction or fantasy and, while reading it, I could only wonder what the hell it was doing in this anthology, because it doesn't belong.

Teddy Bear Cannibal Massacre gets Dybbuk Press off to a somewhat promising start.  Each of the contributing writers shows promise and I'm pretty sure, if they stick to it, their work will start showing up in more widely distributed magazines and anthologies.  If they already have, then clearly I need to diversify my reading.  I'm missing some good stuff.