SOURCE: Winter, Douglas E. “Nowhere Land: The Damnation Game (1985).” In Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic. 2001. Reprint, pp. 172-87. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2002.

In the following essay, Winter analyzes the Faustian influence in Barker's first novel, The Damnation Game.

Now Faustus must thou needs be damned, And canst thou not be saved. What boots it then to think on God or heaven? 

—Christopher Marlowe, The Tragicall Historie of Doctor Faustus

Soon after his first meeting with Barbara Boote and Nan du Sautoy, Clive Barker realized how ‘inappropriate it was to write short stories’. Given commercial publishing's disfavour for anthologies and story collections, it is rare for writers of any stature to see a book of stories in print, and virtually miraculous for a writer's first book to take this form; certainly it was a publishing first for a writer's initial three books, all story collections, to be issued simultaneously...