Subtitled "Two Tales of Cosmic Horror," this volume contains William Sloane's only published novels, "To Walk the Night" (1937) and "The Edge of Running Water" (1939). Both books are beautifully written combinations of science fiction, horror and mystery story, and both generate a palpable sense of dread and uneasiness. They each feel remarkably contemporary, certainly not nearly 90 years old, even though they also provide a glimpse into a time when people relied on train travel and a grown woman wearing pants resulted in negative comments from her friends.

"To Walk the Night" deals with two lifelong friends and roommates who return to their college for a football game and a visit to a favorite professor of astronomy in his observatory. But instead of a happy reunion, they discover their professor engulfed in a mysterious fire that burns only his body and nothing else. This leads them to an almost as strange discovery: the professor, a socially backward bachelor completely devoted to his work, leaves behind a young and beautiful widow who seems to have no past before she met and married the professor. The mystery of the locked room death and the widow are the focus of the rest of the book.

"The Edge of Water" is a little more gothic and formal in style. Julian Blair, a brilliant college professor has isolated himself in an old house in Maine, causing suspicion among the conservative townsfolk. He is assisted in his work on a strange electrical device by the mysterious Mrs. Walters, a woman imposing in both will and size. Enter Richard Sayles, a younger professor and friend who has been summoned for some information crucial to Blair's efforts. Blair's lovely niece Anne, visiting for the summer, confides that Blair suffers greatly from the death of his wife five years ago and she fears Blair's device is insanely meant to provide a means to communicate with his lost beloved. When the housekeeper from the town dies mysteriously, the story takes off to solve her death and uncover what Blair has created in his locked lab upstairs.

Both these novels have the cosmic horror theme that the universe is cold and indifferent to us and the more we try to uncover its essential mysteries, the more damage we bring unto ourselves. In addition, both are compulsive and enjoyable reads. ( )

Highly recommend. Fans of The Invention of Morel will likely love this one as well. ( )

Two rather obscure sf novellas by William Sloane. To Walk the Night is the better of the two. We're never sure who or what Selena is and Sloane wisely leaves things vague. There are hints but never any surety. The creepiness relies heavily on this ambiguity and it works for the most part. The main thing that holds the piece back is some clumsy plotting as if Sloane had this good idea but wasn't quite sure how to completely flesh it out. Sloane wastes opportunities to layer the eeriness more completely and the whole thing just doesn't move forward like it should. Sloane does leave some room for sympathy with the Selena-being which gives the story a complexity that most of these kind of stories of otherworldly possession don't have.

The Edge of Running Water has some potential but Sloane wastes it in a plodding middle meant to gradually increase the suspense but is really only treading water most of the time. There is a clumsy romance between an older man and a younger woman that seems to partake of some fantasy Sloane wanted to include but it just distracts and is embarrassing at times. It does nothing for the story.

The creepy medium, Mrs. Walters, is the only three dimensional character and the author relies mostly on some clunky stereotypes to flesh out the rest of the cast. The "mad scientist" Julian, obsessed with speaking to his dead wife, isn't even interesting and consists mostly of stock mannerisms.

The most notable feature of the story is Julian's stumbling onto a black hole generator in his efforts to contact his dead wife, which is way ahead of its time for 1936. I suspect that this was the seed of the novella but Sloane just uses a formula to flesh the rest out. The most compelling moment is certainly when the protagonist stares into the "nothingness" that is the black hole itself.

Both novellas have their moments but are just too full of mediocrity otherwise to stand out in the end. ( )

Classic horror - it's refreshing to read how old-fashioned horror used to take its time building a haunting tone, in lieu of jump-out-to-scare-you moments and gore. The tone in the first book - To Walk the Night - builds slowly but interestingly. The baddy in this one is a woman who carries a creepy aura, but whom no one can explain. By all accounts, she's beautiful and graceful. And has a cold, if dangerously sharp, persona. The men who are drawn to her never last long, dying by their own hand or in inexplicable fashion. A parlor-type tale, suitable for a large fire in the grate and a brandy in the hand to ward off the chill created in the read. This edition has a very nice introduction by Stephen King - follow his advice and read it after you read the stories. ( )

The two novels contained in The Rim of Morning: Two Tales of Cosmic Horror by William Sloane are surprisingly satisfying. Well-written and displaying a strong command both of style and the standards of the scifi horror genre, these works present an interesting look into the early history of such work.

They function well as science fiction and even better as mysteries and tales of horror.

These novels make me wonder how much influence Mr. Sloane might have had on the genre if he'd continued his career as an author. Instead, he turned away from writing and spent most of his life as an editor and publisher.

In his introduction, Stephen King lauds Mr. Sloane's work as cross-genre, mashing up scifi and horror decades before cross-genre was all the rage, as it is today. I think Mr. King is wrong about this.

Science fiction has a long history of finding terror in the territory it explores. Scifi horror stories were incredibly popular in the late '30s. Look also at the mass market pulp magazines of the Golden Age and prior, or the scifi movies on the '40s, '50s, and '60s—there are innumerable tales of monsters and creeping fear in the scifi canon. The fear of technology and aliens, mutated monsters and doomsday weapons, is deeply rooted.

Science pushes us beyond the limits of what we know. It stands to reason that science has long been a focal point for our fear of the unknown. Science has always presented as much threat as opportunity, and scifi has had the pulse of that from the beginning.

Mr. Sloane wasn't creating ahead-of-his-time genre mash-ups with these novels. Rather, his goal was to take the popular scifi horror tales of his time and elevate them to a higher level of literature.

In this, he largely succeeded.

Both novels are well-conceived and plotted, letting the suspense simmer just the right amount of time before the crisis comes to a boil. The Edge of Running Water is notably superior to To Walk the Night, being more confident and commanding in tone and style.

If I'm disappointed by anything in these novels, it's that the climax of The Edge of Running Water strikes me as too small and somewhat anticlimactic. I expected mass destruction and got small-scale ruin, instead. I must keep in mind, though, that my expectations have been conditioned by giant SF movie spectaculars and this novel was written in 1939. The ending was probably sufficiently shocking for its time.

Beyond that, I'm surprised most of all by how well these stories hold up to modern expectations. It's to be expected that the characters occasionally speak and behave in ways that seem dated, and the technology on display is closer to the Steam Age than the Digital Age.

But the works still feel fresh and vibrant. The central themes still resonate. They don't feel stale.

I'm particularly impressed by how Mr. Sloane wrote his female characters. Being works from the late '30s, one expects a certain pre-feminist depiction of women. Instead, he presents women who are smart, strong, and capable. Women who are very much the equal of the men. Women who have personalities as varied as the men. In short—women who are believable people and not just femmes to compliment the men.

Compared to much of the scifi from this era, it puts Mr. Sloane far ahead of his contemporaries.

The Rim of Morning is worth reading for the glimpse it provides into the history of the scifi horror genre.

More importantly, it's worth reading because these novels are good. ( )