Randolph "Dilda" Carter

I had high hopes for this book, but there were a number of serious things wrong with it. The first 163 pages are encumbered by so-called "classic" body horror. Everyone who buys and reads this book has already read "The Fly," "Who Goes There?", "The Tell-Tale Heart" (body horror?), "Herbert West," etc. They are all good stories but they are basically unnecessary padding in what should be a book of "new" body horror fiction. The second problem with the book is that the rest of the stories are just not that good. This is caused by a few problems. The first tier authors seem to have mostly just tossed off their stories. They are not creepy or particularly well written. Also, there are too few stories that involve transformation or deformation and too many about infection. Next, there are just too many second and third tier authors (Barbie Wilde!) in the new stuff. Add to this there are just some truly awful (in bad) stories even by the top tier writers. "Dog Days" for example by the usually reliable Graham Masterton is just horrid, poorly written and so predictable and stupid. It starts out well but then goes nowhere. At least it was an actual transformation story.I just couldn't give this three stars since it was a huge 512 page waste of time.