Back in the 1980’s, when I was a starving young writer, there was a magazine called Twilight Zone, after the old Rod Serling TV Show. It had cheesy covers and a lot of shudder-making TZ fanboy stuff. But it also had a monthly selection of some of the best new and old fantasy/horror fiction available. (I first read Stephen King’s terrifying “The Raft” in TZ, though it may have been a reprint, I don’t know.) The magazine was edited by a guy named T.E.D. Klein.
I went in to the magazine offices once, looking for work. T.E.D. himself came out and sat with me in the lobby and spoke with me. He seemed a shy, intellectual type, five or ten years older than me. He was very kind and took a good deal of time with a dude who had literally walked in off the streets of Manhattan. I didn’t get a job, but I always appreciated his decency.
Klein went on to write several well-regarded horror stories of his own and a well-regarded novel called The Ceremonies, which came out around 1985. One of his spooky stories, The Events at Poroth Farm, is included in the American Library’s 2-volume anthology of Fantastic Tales edited by Peter Straub. I reread the story over the past weekend. It’s wonderful and scary as hell. (The pamphlet at the link costs over 200 bucks! but you can get the story in the H.P. Lovecraft mega-pack for .99 cents at the I-reader store.)
Klein was rumored to have another novel in the works but it never showed up. In fact, he wrote very little else after the ’80’s, as far as I can see. His Wikipedia entry says he suffered from writer’s block. He seems to still be alive. Does anyone know what he’s doing these days?
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