The collector’s edition of TerrorTome continues the misadventures of cult comic figure Garth Marenghi. This is achieved both through the content of its pages, and also in the way this special edition has been crafted.
Since Matthew Holness first put on the aviator specs and leather jacket of the self-aggrandizing horror author, each appearance has expanded the mythos of the fictitious writer who infamously penned more books than he has in fact read.
Explore the collector's edition of TerrorTome
The terrifying tales of TerrorTome
TerrorTome is a welcome return to the world of Darkplace. It contains a sequence of short horror stories, the first of which is TYPE-FACE, an homage to Clive Barker’s Hellraiser. Here, Marenghi’s self-inserted hero Nick Steen is seduced into a BDSM hellscape by a cursed typewriter.
It's a pitch-perfect mix of hamfisted dialogue, overburdened dramatic formatting, and authorial asides. This is instantly recognisable to anyone who has picked up a pulp horror paperback and started to wonder what was going on in the author's brain. But it’s also written with love. Horror and comedy hew close together, and there’s something immediately compelling in the high-camp absurdity of this pulp horror story.
Part of the enjoyment of diving into TerrorTome is that the reader becomes part of the canonical world of Marenghi. Here you are: finally reading the stories that Marenghi’s been praising in his past appearances. Now you can judge the works of the self-titled Archduke of Darkdom on their own peculiar merits.
While Marenghi-as-writer may be wonderfully eccentric, it’s clear that Holness is in his element. The stories feature “fright breaks” in which passages have been expunged from the main text on the grounds of poor taste. These can, in a choose-your-own-adventure style, be flicked to in the back pages of the volume.
This isn't only a fun extension of the ongoing feud between Garth Marenghi ego and his long-suffering editors; first, it's a nod to the 1961 horror-thriller Homicidal which used a similar device. It also serves to separate the comedy-first stories from several sequences which, while no less absurd, appeal to horror readers through effective stomach-turning gore. Holness is of course an accomplished writer of straight horror - his 2018 film Possum stands out as one of the most discomfiting British horror films of recent years.
The story behind the story
The conceit of the Collector’s Edition is that its creation draws from a typical Marenghi-style feud in which there were actually supposed to be four stories in TerrorTome. As the story goes, the publisher thought the fourth tale in such poor taste that all the stock was set to be destroyed.
Naturally Garth Marenghi managed to steal a crate of the surviving copies, and that’s how they’ve ended up on the Special Editions website. You even get a ‘TO BE PULPED’ sticker with the edition! Which means that we're now part of the Marenghi canon too. That's a fun thought.
The fourth story in the collection is THROTTLE AND BRIBES, which continues the trials of horror novelist Nick Steen, now haunted by two murderous men-monkeys (named Throttle and Bribes, hence the title) intent on peeling their victims apart like massive human bananas. It's a characteristically wild romp, and a must-read for Marenghi fans.
When I first penned my Sunday Times Bestselling horror novel in three parts, Garth Marenghi's TerrorTome, Hodder and Stoughton (mainly Hodder, if I'm honest) refused to publish one of the stories, 'Throttle & Bribes', accusing it of being cruel, exploitative and potentially offensive to human life, as well as supposedly wrecking the magical 'rule of three'. "A trilogy can't be a trilogy if there are four stories included, Garth," they said. "It can," I counter-said, "and it will." - Garth Marenghi
You can order this limited edition title exclusively available through the Special Edition Books website.