I’ve been thinking of doing this for a long time, mostly because I would find it useful for my own reading habits. (Or maybe it’s already been done, in which case, I need this book.)
I love short horror fiction. Anthologies, that sort of thing–I collect them and keep them and gloat over them and read them over and over.
Lately I’ve been considering compiling a sort of…concordance would be the best word, I guess, of short horror fiction. It would be an incredibly boring read, but oh! how useful it would be. Consider this scenario:
Short Horror Fiction Afficianado: Once I read a story by…oh, I don’t know who it was. There were some angels in it, though, and a farm, and when the angels came they caused fires. Sound familiar?
Book Store Owner Guy: Hmm. Nope. But hey! Here’s this handy-dandy concordance thingy, let’s look in it!
They look up “Angels” in the concordance, and find a list of short horror stories that involve angels. Each entry, of course, includes the vital stats: author, title, where-to-find-it info, even a short summary. And the mystery is solved. (Sadly, I don’t know which story it is, because I have myself forgotten and lost the book that contained it.)
What do you think? Would that be cool or what?
(If nothing else, it would give me a very good reason to buy a lot of books and do a LOT of “research,” yes?)
I think it’s a great idea. Something similar has been done at least once with science fiction, but I’m not aware of a “concordance” of horror stories.
Good luck!
Is it “The Seraph and the Zambesi,” by Muriel Spark?
Darn! If only there were some sort of…concordance to horror stories…we could look it up.
Sadly, you honestly don’t have the faintest idea of how impossibly much work this would be, or how impossibly difficult it would be to gather even a tiny fraction of the material in the first place.
And since it would be out of date the moment you published or posted it, continuing to add to it - after you were so entirely sick to death that you had ever started the project in the first place - would be a nightmare that would haunt you forever.
Good luck!
Oh, please. I’m not an idiot. I know how much work it would be, I know it would be impossible to be completely thorough and include every short story written since the dawn of time, I know it would become outdated quickly. But you know, it is entirely within the realm of possibilty to put some limits and structures in place to deal with these issues.
And…it would be FUN. Think of it…the perfect excuse to spend too much money on books! The perfect reason to skip boring events! The perfect excuse to buy more office supplies!
I’m not seeing a downside to the project in itself. Publishing, selling, all that stuff, bah. I don’t care if I ever make a dime from ANYthing I publish, or if anything I write ever gets published, for that matter. (Now that I think of it, I haven’t made a dime from anything I’ve published. Well, maybe $200 total, my whole life. Poetry doesn’t pay much.)
Ike, now I have to go look up that story. If only I had a concordance type thingy, I’d know where to find it…
I don’t think it’s ever been anthologized…I first read it here.
And don’t let ol’ Exapno dissuade you. He’s always harping about something.
[winky smiley]
Yeah, and Ike is too picky about everything. :smack:
The thing is that I’ve done compilations of info that nobody else had ever done. It’s fun and exciting at first, tedious after a time, and nightmarish getting the last necessary bits found and included. And then everybody wants you to keep it going. That’s why you don’t see this stuff done by others. Until you get into it, you just don’t understand what it involves. And doing a half-assed job is almost worse than not doing anything at all.
If you want to do it, don’t ask others what they think. Just go do it. But a word of hard-won advice: don’t spend any money up front. Try doing this just with the material you have available and then use that to determine whether it’s sane to go out and spend the money to make the project feasible.
Nah, I won’t spend big bucks on any undertaking, mostly because I don’t have big bucks (or small ones, for that matter) to spend on much of anything.
Except books, of course, but I buy those anyway. Research, y’know.
I appreciate your input. Luckily, I think this particular project would be so oddball and, quite frankly, boring to most people, that I don’t imagine anyone will be knocking down my door demanding that I finish it immediately.