Terrifying kids novels from the 70s and 80s

[studpuppet]

I guess the idea is that in the '50s, their children's books (and culture in general) weren't allowed to mention the war, abuse, etc, they had to repress that and be jolly and upbeat, so they were making up for it by writing honest and open stuff for the next generation. But maybe they went a bit too far in the extreme once they got a taste for scaring us kids.

The Silver Sword?

[Registering to lurk]

I think I borrowed that from the library as a wee lad but never actually read it. Cover was enough to put the shits up you in any case.

There's also Fisk's book Trillions, in which trllions of tiny diamond-like objects drift down from the sky. It's not creepy in the way that Grinny is (or Fisk's other book A Rag, a Bone, and a Hank of Hair) but I remember it really unsettled me. There were repeated descriptions of the army using nuclear weapons against the Trillions, to no effect on them but birds began falling dead from the sky. I was too young to really understand the anti-war/pollution message but it made me feel unhappy in a way I just couldn't articulate.

Oh God that cover is stirring memories. I think that's the book which introduced me to the haunting of 50 Berkley Square. The author took great pleasure in describing the hideous clawed thing which drove men mad or killed them with fear, or both. There was a picture as well, obviously. It sits in my memory as some weird flaming Thing with mean eyes and claws coming towards the reader, and the memory still puts the wind up me.

[QDRPHNC]

Oh God that cover is stirring memories. I think that's the book which introduced me to the haunting of 50 Berkley Square. The author took great pleasure in describing the hideous clawed thing which drove men mad or killed them with fear, or both. There was a picture as well, obviously. It sits in my memory as some weird flaming Thing with mean eyes and claws coming towards the reader, and the memory still puts the wind up me.

There is a page on 50 Berkley Square, but the illustration is a window smashing in on two old men.



This one better matches the one you described:

[Glebe]

There's also Fisk's book Trillions, in which trllions of tiny diamond-like objects drift down from the sky. It's not creepy in the way that Grinny is (or Fisk's other book A Rag, a Bone, and a Hank of Hair) but I remember it really unsettled me. There were repeated descriptions of the army using nuclear weapons against the Trillions, to no effect on them but birds began falling dead from the sky. I was too young to really understand the anti-war/pollution message but it made me feel unhappy in a way I just couldn't articulate.

Not heard of that!

[Registering to lurk]

There is a page on 50 Berkley Square, but the illustration is a window smashing in on two old men.

This one better matches the one you described:

That's weird. In my memory the picture is a black and white line drawing but yours does oddly match what I described; mean eyes, hands reaching towards the reader, and the hair does look like flames.

Perhaps my black-and-white memory is a misfiled one from a Fighting Fantasy book.

And... I've just learned the cover picture for the Hamlyn Book of Ghosts was painted by Oliver Frey. I loved his work on Crash, and now here he is scaring me aged nine.

[willbo]

I'm sure I read the Silver Sword thinking it was one of the Narnia books. In fact, I probably stopped reading it once I realised it wasn't.

I remember one of those Charlie Brooker type "weird tv" shows once did a montage of gruesome scenes from "Farthing Wood", with small animals impaled on trees and stuff.

I remember liking TH White and Anthony Horowitz at school. I struggled with Sword in the Stone, but knowing the Disney film helped. I read a lot of film novelisations and Beano books too.

[Catalogue Trousers]

There's also Fisk's book Trillions, in which trllions of tiny diamond-like objects drift down from the sky. It's not creepy in the way that Grinny is (or Fisk's other book A Rag, a Bone, and a Hank of Hair) but I remember it really unsettled me.

'What are we supposed to do with you?'
'Hate us.'

Hell yeah, Trillions isn't as obviously creepy as Grinny, but that exchange really smacks you in the teeth. There's also that horrific scene where that poor old man gets surprised by the Trillions and suffers (IIRC) a fatal seizure or heart attack.

[Norton Canes]

Just downloaded and read the first few chapters of Brother in the Land. Holy shit it's bleak.

[cosmic-hearse]

As a child I would often end up at car boot sales, church fêtes & whatnot with my folks. It was the 80s & books were rarely more than 10p so I would end up with all sorts of things, including books that were clearly too old for a primary school child (perhaps this was the literary equivalent of buying bigger clothes that you could grow into).

One of these was a SF paperback showing a spaceman / astronaut being impaled by a giant wasp. This petrified me & I never even attempted to read the thing. By the time I got to my teens I no longer cared & disposed of it, but today I think about that book as I've no idea what it's called nor who the author was. I may as well have imagined it (the only killer wasp SF book I've located is 'The Furies' by Keith Roberts, but none of the covers I've seen match my memory).

[cosmic-hearse]

Don't think it's 'Wasp' by Eric Frank Russell either

[Norton Canes]

?

[cosmic-hearse]

That's very close, but the one I remember definitely had a stinger in his guts

[Famous Mortimer]

There's a Brian Aldiss novel called "Hothouse" where there's a bloke and a wasp on the front, and there's a bunch of different versions of the cover too. Maybe it'll spark the correct answer from someone?

[willbo]

hothouse is about a tiny tribe of primitive people i think, no spacemen IIRC.

[Ambient Sheep]

One of these was a SF paperback showing a spaceman / astronaut being impaled by a giant wasp. This petrified me & I never even attempted to read the thing. By the time I got to my teens I no longer cared & disposed of it, but today I think about that book as I've no idea what it's called nor who the author was. I may as well have imagined it (the only killer wasp SF book I've located is 'The Furies' by Keith Roberts, but none of the covers I've seen match my memory).

Nope, I saw it too!  Think I might even own it.  Buggered if I can remember what it was called though, and all my books are in storage.

Thought it might be one of the New Writings in SF series, but just checked online and it doesn't look like it.  Besides, it occurs to me that such an image would probably be too pulpy for them.

That's very close, but the one I remember definitely had a stinger in his guts

Also proper yellow and black, with a fat body?

[Ambient Sheep]

Arrrggghhh this is driving me crazy now.  Just spent 90m scrolling through old SF book covers, including a Pinterest page of 900+ covers, with no joy.

Am now wondering if you've implanted a false memory in my head!  (Not your fault if so.)


On the plus side, seeing all those old covers has reminded me how much I used to love reading SF, and that I should get back into it.

[Ambient Sheep]

OK, having slept on it now (yes, fucked-up sleep pattern), I'm not only 99% convinced that it's real, but the cover image has come into much clearer focus in my head, even down to the title font and possibly even the title itself.  I think I now know exactly what to search for...

...an hour later, nope.  For what little it's worth, my brain was imagining the chunky font used on all those late-70s / early-80s Panther SF paperbacks.

It's so frustrating: if my books were still on shelves I'd find it in minutes.

OK, I give up now.  Sorry.

[cosmic-hearse]

There's a Brian Aldiss novel called "Hothouse" where there's a bloke and a wasp on the front, and there's a bunch of different versions of the cover too. Maybe it'll spark the correct answer from someone?

Don't think it's that either!

[cosmic-hearse]

OK, having slept on it now (yes, fucked-up sleep pattern), I'm not only 99% convinced that it's real, but the cover image has come into much clearer focus in my head, even down to the title font and possibly even the title itself.  I think I now know exactly what to search for...

...an hour later, nope.  For what little it's worth, my brain was imagining the chunky font used on all those late-70s / early-80s Panther SF paperbacks.

It's so frustrating: if my books were still on shelves I'd find it in minutes.

OK, I give up now.  Sorry.

If you ever find out I'll be a very happy man. Surely we can't both have imagined it?

[cosmic-hearse]

Another book I've forgotten both the author & the title:

It was a horror novel set in Blackheath - I forget the exact details but it involved one of the ponds on the heath & a haunted nunnery (?). It was quite gory in places so probably published in the 1980s.

I don't remember it being that great (there were an awful lot of paragraphs in italics ending with an exclamation mark that all pulp horror books had at that time!) but I live near Blackheath now & would like to revisit it.

[Bently Sheds]

Slightly before the thread's timeframe, but John Gordon's 1968 book The Giant Under The Snow properly spooked me up when I read it in junior school in the 70s. It's probably going to be a right load of old hippie shite upon rereading.

[elliszeroed]

The Wave was also made into a movie: Here

I have to find the Sweet Valley High version!

For some reason, I remember Conrads War being about a war happening at the same time, not a time slip.

Robert Cormier was an awesome writer, we had to read I Am The Cheese as a class, and very few of us understood the ending.

All the kids at my school were into Point Horror- the Babysitter series.

I remember reading a book called The Maggot, a horror story about a guy whose brain is controlled by a maggot. I can't find it anywhere online. I only ever get Paul Jennings or John Fowles.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

The creepy stories I remember from childhood were short stories rather than novels.  There was one about a skeleton that becomes animated when stuff that has come to surround it at its point of rest comes to life.  This included something about a knot showing an old breakage in the arm bone identifying the skeleton's as someone's who went missing.  I remember another about a black, slime-like substance that moves in from swampland and engulfs people at night.  There was a third about a man who takes up snail-breeding, goes away for a while, then comes back to find the snails have bred so much that his inner walls and ceilings are crawling with them.  They start falling off the wall and ceiling and engulf and suffocate him.  A fourth I remember is a boy who goes to a boarding school at night, meets three supposed fellow pupils who end up trying to sacrifice him to the Devil and then escapes, only to learn that the three boys died years ago.

[Norton Canes]

Slightly before the thread's timeframe, but John Gordon's 1968 book The Giant Under The Snow properly spooked me up when I read it in junior school in the 70s. It's probably going to be a right load of old hippie shite upon rereading

The Giant Under The Snow is one of my favour ite kids' books. Haven't re-read it for a while but every time I do it stands up.

[greencalx]

Interesting that Westall should come up as that's immediately who I thought of when I saw the thread title. I don't remember much about the books now, other than that I managed to develop a bit of a crush on one of the characters in The Wind Eye who, if memory served, ended up doing some near-naked rock-climbing during the denouement. I suspect I still have my copy somewhere.

[cosmic-hearse]

Another book I've forgotten both the author & the title:

It was a horror novel set in Blackheath - I forget the exact details but it involved one of the ponds on the heath & a haunted nunnery (?). It was quite gory in places so probably published in the 1980s.

I don't remember it being that great (there were an awful lot of paragraphs in italics ending with an exclamation mark that all pulp horror books had at that time!) but I live near Blackheath now & would like to revisit it.

Found it!

[Ron Maels Moustache]

We used to borrow a lot of books on tape from the library, and one of the ones we had out several times was a short story collection called "Ghostly Companions" by Vivien Alcock. It was all supernaturally themed stories, most of them were fairly tame, but the story that gave the book it's title, "The Ghostly Companion," really got under my skin in a major way. It's about a bloke who breaks a mirror in a drunken rage, and from then on is followed everywhere by an eerie doppelganger that doesn't speak and can only imitate everything he does. It's implied he eventually kills himself but this doesn't stop the reflected man, who is still walking the streets looking for his double.

I think I had a bit of a phobia about mirrors for some time after hearing it, especially since not long after we stayed in a holiday place somewhere, where some lunatic had covered every wall in the bathroom in mirrored glass, so from whichever way you looked you ended up staring into an infinity of reflections. I used to have to get in there and do my business as quickly as humanly possible so I could get out before the mirror fucker got me.

[Solid Jim]

I remember reading a book called The Maggot, a horror story about a guy whose brain is controlled by a maggot. I can't find it anywhere online. I only ever get Paul Jennings or John Fowles.

It's not the Paul Jennings one? I remember such a book which was published as part of a series called Spirals. It began with the protagonist finding a dead mouse inside his light switch, or something similar.

[Phoenix Lazarus]

a boy who goes to a boarding school at night, meets three supposed fellow pupils who end up trying to sacrifice him to the Devil and then escapes, only to learn that the three boys died years ago.

This was in one of the Armada Ghost Stories collections.

[willbo]

What about the short story Bobo's Star, about a boy who's "make your own star" kit turns into a black hole? That always chilled me.