Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts

From the front flap of the Golden Gryphon Press first edition: "Into darkness - George Zebrowski's first collection of horror stories includes the title novella written especially for this volume. Gathered from his entire career, these thirteen tales divide into Personal, Political, and Metaphysical terrors - to scare you individually, societally, and when you ask "What's it all about?" "Part of the beauty of this book," writes Howard Waldrop in his introduction, "is that Zebrowski can write about people who are not like him (or you and me). Many are not as intelligent, nice, thoughtful, or as sensitive as their author. What is really is writing about someone just a little less, or a little more intelligent, sensitive, caring, etc. than you. His deft use of character is such that you forget that most horror stories just fill time before the protagonist is eaten or impaled or gets their comeuppence somehow." Zebrowski pulls horrifying situations out of the flaws in his people, not from ancient evils or from the cliche of inexplicable serial killers. "Zebrowski is writing a new kind of horror story." Waldrop concludes, "- as new as Fritz Leiber's 'Smoke Ghost' was in its time," in the legendary magazine Unknown Worlds."