Goodbye, Dennis Etchison

One of the most important figures from my formative years as a horror reader was Dennis Etchison. I first heard of him, as I did so many others, from Stephen King's marvelous Danse Macabre. I devoured King's reading list from the book, and Etchison's The Dark Country was one of the ones that made the biggest impression upon me. I do not think it's an exaggeration to to say that Dennis Etchison was in the same league as King, Straub, Farris, or anyone else. What the hell am I saying? He was better than most of them.

I continued to read Etchison's stories. In books, magazines, and anywhere else I could find them. I loved collections like Red Scream and The Blood Kiss. Then there was his groundbreaking Cutting Edge anthology.

I also got a huge kick out of Etchison's novelizations. He did work that was far superior to the norm with this sort of thing in his Halloween, Halloween 2, Halloween 3: Season of the Witch, Videodrome, and The Fog books. His work was steeped in media awareness and passion for the movies permeated everything he did.

Dennis Etchison did write novels, yes, but his greatest strength as a writer was in the short form. I dutifully read all the novels, and I mostly liked them. One of the them I absolutely loved: Darkside.

Now Dennis Etchison is gone. The manner of his demise is unimportant. What is crucial is his legacy as a writer, an editor, a scholar of the horror genre. He should be read by all with even the slightest interest in the field.

Goodbye, Dennis Etchison. We are poorer with him gone, but we are infinitely richer for having had him among us.

Written by Mark Sieber