# Dennis Etchison

Dennis William Etchison (March 30, 1943 – May 29, 2019) was an American writer and editor of fantasy and horror fiction. Etchison referred to his own work as "rather dark, depressing, almost pathologically inward fiction about the individual in relation to the world". Stephen King has called Dennis Etchison "one hell of a fiction writer" and he has been called "the most original living horror writer in America" (The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural).
While he has achieved some acclaim as a novelist, it is Etchison's work in the short story format that is especially well-regarded by critics and genre fans, as with his debut collection The Dark Country (1982), selected as one of the 100 best horror books. He was President of the Horror Writers Association from 1992 to 1994. He was a multi-award winner, having won the British Fantasy Award three times for fiction, and the World Fantasy Award, once for short fiction and twice for anthologies he edited.

## Early years

Etchison was born in Stockton, California. An only child, the earliest years of his life were spent growing up in a household devoid of men (World War II was still raging across the globe). Etchison has remarked that he was greatly spoiled during his early years and largely isolated from other children. This sense of isolation and need to interact with society would later form the themes to many of his works.
In his early years, Etchison also became an avid wrestling fan. Fascinated by the interplay between good and evil, he would regularly attend shows at the Olympic Auditorium with his father. His passion for the sport continued to the end of his life, and he often wrote under the pen name "The Pro" for the wrestling publication Rampage.
In junior high and high school, Etchison wrote for the school paper and won numerous essay contests. He discovered Ray Bradbury during this time and emulated him before developing his own style. On the last day of his junior year in high school, Etchison began writing his first short story. Entitled "Odd Boy Out," it involved a group of teenagers in the woods. He began submitting it to numerous science-fiction magazines but received rejection slips each time.
He then remembered Ray Bradbury once suggesting that a writer should start by submitting their work to the least likely market. So he submitted his short story to a gentlemen's magazine called Escapade, and, a few weeks later, he received their acceptance and a check for $125.

## Film studies and screen work

Etchison has written professionally in many genres since 1960. He attended UCLA film school in the 1960s and has written many screenplays as yet unproduced, from his own works as well as those of Ray Bradbury ("The Fox and the Forest") and Stephen King ("The Mist"). He rewrote a Colin Wilson script, The Ogre, and completed a screenplay based on his own short story "The Late Shift". He co-wrote a story for the Logan's Run TV series, "The Thunder Gods" (printed in The Circuit 2, No 3).
In 1983, Etchison was asked by Stephen King to be the film consultant/historian on the paperback edition of King's 1981 book on the horror genre, Danse Macabre.
In 1984, ZBS Media produced a 90-minute radio version of Stephen King's The Mist, based on Etchison's script. A film, "Killing Time", was made by Patrick Aumont and Damian Harris (Graymatter Productions) from Etchison's story "The Late Shift".
In 1985, Etchison served as staff writer for the HBO TV series The Hitchhiker.
On December 2nd, 1986, John Carpenter teamed up with Etchison to write a script to Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers. The script would have primarily focused on Tommy and Lindsey (the kids from the first Halloween movie) who were teenagers. Halloween is banned in Haddonfield. Dr. Loomis and Michael Myers both died in the explosion, but Michael returned as a spirit and he grew 12 feet tall at the climax in the Lost River Drive in theater. Dennis wanted a poster of Halloween 4 depicting Michael Myers bursting from a patch of pumpkins which match the scene where Michael killed D'Arcy at a pumpkin patch.
However, franchise producer Moustapha Akkad rejected the Etchison script, calling it "too cerebral" and insisting that any new Halloween sequel must feature Myers as a flesh and blood killer. In an interview, Etchison explained how he received the phone call informing him of the rejection of his script. Etchison said, "I received a call from Debra Hill and she said, 'Dennis, I just wanted you to know that John and I have sold our interest in the title 'Halloween' and unfortunately, your script was not part of the deal."
Carpenter and Hill had signed all of their rights away to Akkad, who gained ownership. Akkad says, "I just went back to the basics of Halloween on Halloween 4 and it was the most successful." As Carpenter refused to continue his involvement with the series, a new director was sought out. Dwight H. Little, a native of Ohio, replaced Carpenter.

## Fiction writing

Etchison's fiction has appeared regularly since 1961 in a wide range of publications including Cavalier, The Oneota Review, Rogue, Seventeen, Statement, Fantastic Stories, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Mystery Monthly, Escapade, Adelina, Comet (Germany), Fiction (France), Universe (France), Fantasy Tales, Weirdbook, Whispers, Fantasy Book and in such anthologies as Orbit, New Writings in SF, Rod Serling's Other Worlds, Prize Stories from Seventeen, The Pseudo-People, and The Future is Now. His stories can also be found in many of the major horror and dark fantasy anthologies including Frights, Dark Forces, Terrors, New Terrors, Horrors, Fears, Nightmares, Shadows, Whispers, Night Chills, Death, World Fantasy Awards, Mad Scientists, Year's Best Horror Stories, The Dodd, Mead Gallery of Horror, Midnight and others.
His first short story collection, The Dark Country, was published in 1982. Its title story received the World Fantasy Award (tied with Stephen King), as well as the British Fantasy Award for Best Collection of that year – the first time one writer received both major awards for a single work.
Etchison nearly had his first short story collection appear eleven years earlier. In 1971 he sold Powell Books, a low-budget Los Angeles based publisher who published Karl Edward Wagner's Darkness Weaves, a collection of his science fiction and fantasy under the title The Night of the Eye. The book went into galley proofs and beyond – Etchison received a cover proof, and ISBN 0-8427-1014-0 was assigned. On the eve of its publication, Powell Publications went bankrupt. Etchison would wait over a decade before his actual first collection The Dark Country would appear, to critical acclaim.
Several more collections have been published since, including a career retrospective, Talking in the Dark (2001), which consists of stories personally selected by the author. He was nominated for the British Fantasy Award for "The Late Shift" (1981), and as well as winning the ward in 1982 for "The Dark Country", has won it since for Best Short Story, for "The Olympic Runner" (1986) and "The Dog Park" (1994).
Etchison's first novel (discounting two pseudonymous erotic novels), The Shudder, was slated for publication in 1980; he finally withdrew it when the editor demanded what he felt were unreasonable changes in the manuscript. A portion of the novel appeared as one selection in A Fantasy Reader, the book of the Seventh World Fantasy Convention in 1981; the full novel remains unpublished.
Writing under the pseudonym of "Jack Martin", he published popular novelizations of the films Halloween II (1981), Halloween III: Season of the Witch (1982), and Videodrome (1983). Under his own name, Etchison's novels include Darkside (1986), Shadowman (1993), and California Gothic (1995), as well as the novelization of John Carpenter's The Fog (1980).
Etchison periodically taught classes in creative writing at UCLA.

## Editorial work

As editor, Etchison has received two World Fantasy Awards for Best Anthology, for MetaHorror (1993) and The Museum of Horrors (2002). His other anthologies include the critically acclaimed Cutting Edge (1986), Gathering The Bones (2003) (edited with Ramsey Campbell and Jack Dann), and the Masters of Darkness series (three volumes).

## Radio work

In 2002, Etchison adapted nearly 100 episodes of the original The Twilight Zone TV series for a CBS radio series hosted by Stacy Keach. The programmes were commercially released on audio CDs. Etchison was one of the writers on the audio series Fangoria's Dreadtime Stories hosted by Malcolm McDowell. These horrific stories are available on CD and via digital download at iTunes, Audible and through other outlets.

## Essays and other works

* The Book of Lists: Horror – 2008 (contributor)
* Etchison contributed a Foreword to George Clayton Johnson's All of Us Are Dying and Other Stories (Subterranean Press, 1999).

## Death

A message posted to Etchison's Facebook page reported that the author had died on May 28, 2019; no cause of death was given. Locus magazine published Etchison's obituary on May 29, 2019. He was survived by his wife Kristina.

## Critical reception

The late Karl Edward Wagner proclaimed him "the finest writer of psychological horror this genre has ever produced." Charles L. Grant called Etchison "the best short story writer in the field today, bar none."
Critical studies of Etchison's work can be found in Darrell Schweitzer's Discovering Modern Horror Fiction, Richard Bleiler's Supernatural Fiction Writers and "Dennis Etchison: Spanning the Genres" in S. T. Joshi's book The Evolution of the Weird Tale (2004), 178–89.