Pluto In Furs 2 edited by Scott Dwyer
Plutonian Press (January 2022)
228 pages; $14.99 paperback
Reviewed by Daniel Braum
Pluto In Furs 2 is the follow up volume to the 2019 anthology Pluto In Furs: Tales of Diseased Desires and Seductive Horrors edited by Scott Dwyer from his Plutonian Press. It is an anthology of themed short stories with the theme of erotic horror.
In the essay “An Abysmal Masochism” the introduction to the 2019 volume editor Scott Dwyer begins with:
The erotic and the horrific. Both are intimately tied to the body.
He goes on to ask “What is erotic horror?”, and he writes:
It is the mix of desire for terrible insights, in the obsessive perverting over and over again of the human form, and the pleasure derived from nightmare.
The first volume contains stories from 14 authors who present their take on the nightmare-fueled body horror Dwyer envisions. Included are “It’s Hard to Be Me” by John Claude Smith, a tale of childhood friends reuniting for a funeral, and “The Silvering” by Thana Niveau where in a strange event in Houston a silver substance falls from the sky like ash.
Pluto In Furs 2 opens with the following quote from Dwyer:
On a black and barren landscape, far from the dim light of a sun barely seen, who knows what strange desires bloom or fester? In the dark we find our bodies and our minds: ravished, contaminated, penetrated, taken over, and transformed, over and over and over. A delirious masochism holds sway. And we desire more.
While there is plenty of body horror to be found among the sixteen stories in the book I found the tales where “minds are ravished” (as per Dwyer’s opening quote) to be the ones most of interest.
Brian Evenson and Liliana Carstea deliver two standout stories, both distinct and unique takes on transformation and desire.
Liliana Carstea’s “One of the Whores” is set in Romania in our here and now. The young narrator wrestles with identity and power in the face of chauvinism and abuse and is forever changed by the strange encounters and happenings that entail.
Brian Evenson’s “Gyr” is set on a distant planet and opens with familiar science fiction tropes. Evenson deftly steers us into the terrain of horror presenting an original take on the anthology’s premise with a tale involving a mysterious ritual that leaves the participants both physically and psychologically changed forever.
Pluto In Furs is available in both trade paperback and e-book while Pluto In Furs 2 is available in trade paperback only. A total of thirty short stories can be found between the two volumes.
What is erotic horror? The answers await for the curious in Pluto in Furs and Pluto in Furs 2 available now.
