Aaron's Book of the Week :: The House That Fear Built by Cassandra Knye

Completing our tribute to the late Thomas Disch, the Book of Last Week is the gothic romance The House That Fear Built by Thomas Disch and fellow SF author John Sladek, collaborating under the pseudonym Cassandra Knye. This is a paperback original, printed in 1966, and very difficult to find today because fans of Disch and Sladek have snatched up all the surviving copies.

Cassandra Knye is my favorite of Thomas Disch's several pseudonyms. Disch and Sladek used the name early in their careers to enable them to sneak into the gothic genre for a paycheck. Gothic romance was a popular genre at the time but has largely disappeared since, although today's paranormal romance subgenre bears some similarities.

Crossing genre boundaries is also the theme of next week's Book of the Week, honoring the winner of this year's Hugo Award for Best Novel.