Nobody in Aickman’s stories tends to come off as entirely sympathetic, though we certainly see ourselves (or at least someone we know) in the immediacy of the wants and needs of the various characters. While the subject matter and casts of characters vary wildly from story to story, much of it feels like the thought-out criticisms of “modern (read: mid-to-late-’70s) culture” by a man for whom time was passing too quickly. Mostly, this is to his credit, for while his self-described “strange stories” may contain elements of the supernatural, they tend to function as allegory for the most unremarkable situations our lives can offer.Ĭompulsory Games is a collection of Aickman’s later-period work, originally published in the late ’70s and early ’80s, much of it after his death in 1981. His meter does not change whether he is relaying the mundane or the supernatural even as his characters start to panic, even as the skies turn red and the walls close in, Aickman’s relationship with his readers is that of a mildly disinterested third party relaying an anecdote at a business meeting. His tone, no matter the events he might be relaying, is relentlessly matter-of-fact. Here is the reason such advice might be necessary: Aickman’s prose is dry, often oppressively so. There are passing thoughts on which to dwell, at least a little bit. You have to revel in the freedom that opening a story with the sentence “The situation at home had left Robin Breeze entirely free to choose what he did with his life” (from “Letters to the Postman”) offers in terms of past, present, and future. You have to wonder, when he describes the complexion of an unknown party as “rubicund or umber” (as he does in the claustrophobic “No Time Is Passing”), why he has chosen such specific and unusual terms. You have to let it sit with you, you have to absorb it, you have to let its words twist their way through your brain and around your tongue.

“Sometimes I would look up at the end of a story, feeling that the whole thing had just twisted itself inside out and turned into smoke – I had blinked, and missed it all.”

Compulsory games robert aickman