The Best new Horror 4 Read online

  Horror also proved itself the mainstay of the midlists with such titles as Chiller by Randall Boyll, Dark Fortune and Dead Time by Richard Lee Byers, Boneman by Lisa Cantrell, Darkborn by Matthew J. Costello, The Hoodoo Man by Steve Harris, Dark Silence by Rick Hautala, Deathgrip by Brian Hodge, Succubi by Edward Lee, Chaingang by Rex Miller, Dark Time by Maxine O’Callaghan, Kiss of Death by Daniel Rhodes, Hell-O-Ween by David Robbins, Skeletons by Al Sarrantino, The Dead Man’s Kiss by Robert Weinberg and The Monastery by J. N. Williamson.

  Content to hide their lights under bushels were fantasy author Charles De Lint (From a Whisper to a Scream by “Samuel M. Key”), science fiction novelist John Brosnan (Bedlam by ‘Harry Adam Knight’) and crime writer Ed Gorman (The Long Midnight by “Daniel Ransom”).

  Of course, there were always those books which were kept a healthy distance from the horror shelf, despite their content: Robert R. McCammon continued his drift into the mainstream with Gone South, a Southern Gothic thriller. Christopher Moore’s Practical Demonkeeping: A Comedy of Horrors was somewhat predictably compared to Clive Barker’s work, while Emma Tennant’s Faustine was a contemporary retelling of the Faust legend and Augustus Rex by Clive Sinclair had Beelzebub as its narrator. The refined haunting of Jonathan Aycliffe’s Whispers in the Dark was amongst the best the field had to offer last year, and Susan Hill continued the theme in The Mist in the Mirror. At least Jonathan Carroll’s latest novel, After Silence, was as genuinely unclassifiable as usual.

  Although masquerading as a novel for marketing reasons, Thomas Ligotti’s Grimscribe: His Lives and Works was actually a series of interconnected narratives. Fifteen superior science fiction and horror stories lived up to the subtitle of Lisa Tuttle’s Memories of the Body: Tales of Desire and Transformation, while Christopher Fowler chronicled fourteen tales of urban horror in the aptly-titled Sharper Knives. Element of Doubt by A. L. Barker included thirteen ghost stories, several of which were broadcast by BBC Radio 4 over Hallowe’en, and Elizabeth Engstrom explored the darker side of human nature in the twenty stories collected in Nightmare Flower.

  Fearful Lovers and Other Stories by Robert Westall and The Burning Baby and Other Ghosts by John Gordon each contained five tales ostensibly aimed at younger audiences, but still powerful enough to resonate with an adult readership.

  More regional terrors were showcased in Aisling and Other Irish Tales of Terror by Peter Tremayne (Peter Beresford Ellis) and Whistling Past the Churchyard: Strange Tales from a Superstitious Welshman by Jon Manchip White. For those who preferred the classics, there were always Charles Dickens’ Christmas Ghost Stories edited by Peter Haining, and Richard Dalby’s not-quite-definitive The Collected Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson, which included fifty-four tales compiled from four earlier volumes.

  Given the popularity of vampires in 1992, it was not surprising that a number of editors were quick to jump upon the undead bandwagon. Chief among these was the always-prolific Martin H. Greenberg who, besides editing the all-new Dracula: Prince of Darkness, also teamed up with Robert Weinberg and Stefan R. Dziemianowicz to produce Weird Vampire Tales, a collection of thirty stories from the pulp magazines, and with Dziemianowicz alone for the somewhat similar A Taste of Blood. Reprints and original stories were combined for both The Mammoth Book of Vampires edited by Stephen Jones, and Richard Dalby’s Vampire Stories, the latter at least boasting an introduction by Peter Cushing.

  Probably the best original anthology of the year was Dennis Etchison’s MetaHorror, the long-awaited follow-up to his 1986 volume Cutting Edge. In Dreams, edited by Paul J. McAuley and Kim Newman, contained an eclectic mix of science fiction and horror stories celebrating the 7-inch single. It was certainly more ambitious than the year’s other music anthology, Jeff Gelb’s Shock Rock, despite the latter’s inclusion of a new novella by Stephen King and an introduction from Alice Cooper.

  Editors John Skipp and Craig Spector returned to the world of George Romero’s zombies for Still Dead: Book of the Dead 2, and F. Paul Wilson did a creditable job integrating the nineteen stories comprising the second Horror Writers of America anthology, Freak Show. The Midnight Rose collective of Neil Gaiman, Mary Gentle and Roz Kaveney mostly ingnored the horror potential of another shared-world anthology, The Weerde: Book 1, in which a race of shapechangers co-exist with humans.

  Peter Crowther’s Narrow Houses included all the requisite Big Names, while Dark at Heart edited by Joe and Karen Lansdale featured twenty crime and suspense stories by many writers better known for their horror work. The Pan Book of Horror reached its thiry-third year of publication with Dark Voices 4, edited by David Sutton and Stephen Jones.

  David G. Hartwell’s Foundations of Fear was a hefty 660-page follow-up to his other excellent reprint anthology, The Dark Descent. Fedogan & Bremer continued their bid to take on the Arkham House mantle with Tales of the Lovecraft Mythos edited by Robert M. Price, which featured twenty classic Cthulhu Mythos tales. Ramsey Campbell’s Uncanny Banquet included a new story by the editor and Adrian Ross’ rare 1914 novel The Hole of the Pit.

  Only book club members were given the opportunity to see Marvin Kaye’s Lovers and Other Monsters, while other seasoned anthologists fared somewhat better with Terror by Gaslight: An Anthology of Rare Tales of Terror, the second book with that title edited by Hugh Lamb, Great Irish Stories of the Supernatural, edited by Peter Haining, and Richard Dalby’s Horror for Christmas.

  The Oxford Book of Gothic Tales edited by Chris Baldick contained thirty-seven stories dating from the eighteenth century to the present, and Brian Stableford unearthed some equally obscure finds for The Second Dedalus Book of Decadence: The Black Feast and The Dedalus Book of Femmes Fatales, which mixed in new material as well. Midnight Graffiti, edited by Jessica Horsting and James Van Hise, contained reprints from the glossy small press magazine along with original stories, while David B. Silva’s The Definitive Best of The Horror Show was exactly what the title suggested. Reel Terror: The Stories that Inspired the Great Horror Movies was an uninspired selection by Sebastian Wolfe, but the same editor showed more originality with The Little Book of Horrors: Tiny Tales of Terror, which managed to squeeze in seventy short-short stories, poems and cartoons.

  As always, Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Fifth Annual Collection was the most substantial of the year’s prime volumes, containing forty-four stories and six poems. Karl Edward Wagner’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories celebrated its twentieth anniversary with volume XX, Robert Morrish and Peter Enfantino’s Quick Chills II collected twenty-five stories which appeared in the small presses during 1989–91 and, as usual, our own Best New Horror 3 was the only annual showcase to appear on both sides of the Atlantic.

  The inevitable collapse of the Pulphouse publishing pyramid, supported by multifarious magazines and overpriced “collector’s editions”, proved that you still can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

  Otherwise, in America horror fiction continued to flourish in the small press magazines with John L. Herron’s Aberrations: Adult Horror, Science Fiction and Dark Fantasy, four issues of the World Fantasy Award-winning Cemetery Dance, edited by Richard T. Chizmar (including a new Stephen King story), two issues each of Mark Rainey’s Deathrealm, Crispin Burnham’s Eldritch Tales and Gretta M. Anderson’s 2AM. There was just one new issue each of Peggy Nadramia’s WFA-winning Grue and Jon B. Cooke’s Tekeli-li!, although the latter weighed in at an impressive 128 pages.

  Jeff VanderMeer’s Jabberwocky grandly billed itself as ‘The Magazine of Speculative Writing’, and the first issue of Rachel Drummond’s Sequitar suffered from the same pretentious tone. The Scream Factory devoted an issue to listing the worst horror fiction, including short stories which one editor thought insulted his intelligence, clearly an achievement.

  After an absence, Midnight Graffiti published a new issue featuring fiction by Rex Miller, Ray Garton and David J. Schow, while W. Paul Ganley’s long-running Weirdbook (another WFA-winner) al
so managed a single issue with stories by Brian Lumley and Scott Edelman, and poetry by the late Joseph Payne Brennan.

  Darrell Schweitzer’s revived Weird Tales produced a pulp-sized issue showcasing John Brunner’s fiction, but the somewhat delayed F. Paul Wilson special marked an unattractive change of format. The anti-censorship periodical Gauntlet: Exploring the Limits of Free Expression published two volumes which included fiction and articles by Ramsey Campbell, Robert Bloch, Steve Rasnic Tem, Richard Christian Matheson, Poppy Z. Brite, Harlan Ellison and a comic strip adaptation of a F. Paul Wilson story.

  Shivers was a new British horror film magazine launched by the publishers of Starburst. A bit on the thin side, it at least had the distinction of being edited by one of the field’s premier critics, Alan Jones. Also worth a look was David J. Schow’s “Raving & Drooling” column in the American horror movie magazine Fangoria, in which the creator of the “Splatterpunk” appellation vented his spleen in an often forthright and funny manner.

  Possibly one of the most prolific publishers of horror material, much of it devoted to the so-called “Lovecraft Circle”, was Necronomicon Press. As well as producing a multitude of chapbooks devoted to HPL and his colleagues, they also published three issues of Robert M. Price’s Crypt of Cthulhu, two issues of S. T. Joshi’s Lovecraft Studies and a single issue of Studies in Weird Fiction, also edited by Joshi. Three issues of Necrofile, the premier critical review of horror fiction, edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, S. T. Joshi and Michael A. Morrison, also appeared.

  The third issue of Leigh Blackmore’s Terror Australis was a “Jack the Ripper Special”. In Britain, David Pringle’s Interzone continued to publish some of the most interesting short fiction around, and the second paperback volume of David Garnett’s revived New Worlds also included some offbeat material.

  Interzone’s companion title, Million, the Magazine About Popular Fiction, included features on Robert Bloch, Stephen Gallagher, James Herbert and Robert Aickman, and The New York Review of Science Fiction also published the occasional piece of interest to horror fans. For straight news and reviews, American readers could pick from either Locus or Science Fiction Chronicle, while in UK the choice was Critical Wave and The British Fantasy Newsletter.

  In fact, the British Fantasy Society’s irregular Newsletter finally found a new editor and a new identity, and was supplemented by the sixth issue of Peter Coleborn’s Chills, Dark Horizons No. 33, edited by Phil Williams, the fourth Mystique from Mike Chinn and Mark Morris’ short story chapbook Birthday. Rosemary Pardoe produced another welcome volume of Ghosts & Scholars, and Peeping Tom put out four issues edited by Stuart Hughes. The 80th issue of Gordon Linzner and Jani Anderson’s long-running Space & Time was going to be the last, but it might continue under a new publisher.

  Despite the proliferation of professional anthologies and collections and small press magazines, one of the expanding outlets for short horror fiction in 1992 was signed, numbered or illustrated limited edition chapbooks and paperbacks.

  Colorado’s Little Bookshop of Horrors put out a number of titles under the Roadkill Press imprint, including For You, The Living by Wayne Allen Sallee, Beautiful Strangers by Melanie and Steve Rasnic Tem, Cannibal Dwight’s Special Purpose by Nancy Holder, Steppin’ Out, Summer ‘68 by Joe R. Lansdale, the fiction double Kill Shot/Cuttings by Roger Zasuly and Pamela J. Jessen, and the collections Mr. Fox and Other Feral Tales by Norman Partridge and Darker Passions by Edward Bryant.

  The Wildside Press reprinted F. Paul Wilson’s story The Barrens as a chapbook, then moved into collections with Courting Disasters and Other Strange Affinities by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Rosemary’s Brain and Other Tales of Weird Wonder by Martha Soukup, and a trio of cat stories by Fritz Leiber entitled Kreativity for Kats and Other Feline Fantasies. From TAL Publications came Lucy Taylor’s impressive collection Unnatural Acts, Edward Lee’s Quest for Sex, Truth and Reality by Edward Lee, and Elizabeth Massie’s Bram Stoker Award-winning short story Stephen. Joe R. Lansdale’s God of the Razor was reprinted by Crossroads Press, who followed it with Cold Turkey by Nancy A. Collins, a new novella featuring her vampire Sonja Blue from the novels Sunglasses After Dark and In the Blood.

  In Britain, author/illustrator A. F. Kidd published a chapbook collection of six ghost stories under the title Bells Rung Backwards. Crimson Altar Press produced David G. Rowlands’ The Living & the Dead, a collection of seven ghost stories featuring E. G. Swain’s protagonist the Rev. Roland Batchel, while from The Ghost Story Society came No. 472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki: The Untold Stories by A. F. Kidd & Rick Kennett, featuring four new stories about William Hope Hodgson’s famed ghost-finder. Two tales featuring John Whitbourn’s psychic detective Admiral Slovo appeared in the Haunted Library publication Popes & Phantoms, and Haunted Pavilions included nine ghost stories about cricket, edited by Mark Valentine.

  Also in the UK, editor Nicholas Royle followed his British Fantasy Award-winning anthology with twenty-three new stories in Darklands 2, Jack Hunter edited Red Stains for Creation Press, and Chris Kenworthy included seven science fiction and horror stories with a political slant in Barrington Books’ The Sun Rises Red. On the other side of the Atlantic, George Hatch’s Horror’s Head Press offered thirteen “adult” stories in Souls in Pawn, Stanislaus Tal’s Bizarre Bazaar ’92 was subtitled “A Magazine Anthology”, and Michael Brown’s Demons and Deviants was a slim volume published by Phantom Press/Fantaco Enterprises which included new fiction by Clive Barker, Peter Atkins, Dan Chichester and Steve Niles. In Australia, Bill Congreve’s anthology Intimate Armageddons appeared from Five Islands Press.

  With so much vampire fiction around, it was no surprise that Vampire: The Complete Guide to the World of the Undead by Manuela Dunn Mascetti failed to live up to the promise of its title. John L. Flynn’s Cinematic Vampires was also a disappointment, despite coming from the usually reliable McFarland & Company.

  Tony Magistrale managed to wring a few more facts out of his subject in both The Dark Descent: Essays Defining Stephen King’s Horrorscope and Stephen King, The Second Decade: Danse Macabre to The Dark Half (the latter including an interview with King). These might even have helped with the answers in The Second Stephen King Quiz Book by Stephen Spignesi.

  Britain’s own bestselling horror writer was profiled in the multi-faceted James Herbert: By Horror Haunted, edited by Stephen Jones, which collected together articles, interviews and Herbert’s short fiction. From the University Press of Mississippi came Mary R. Reichardt’s A Web of Relationship: Women in the Short Fiction of Mary Wilkins Freeman and the companion volume, The Uncollected Stories of Mary Wilkins Freeman. Wandering Ghosts: The Odyssey of Lafcadio Hearn, by Jonathan Cott, and Lafcadio Hearn and the Vision of Japan, by Carl Dawson were both biographies of the American writer who retold the myths and legends of his adopted homeland. After Kenneth Silverman’s ground-breaking 1991 biography Edgar Allan Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance, Jeffrey Meyers attempted the same feat with Edgar Allan Poe: His Life and Legacy.

  New English Library published an updated and revised edition of the Bram Stoker Award-winning Horror: 100 Best Books edited by Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, Darrell Schweitzer’s Discovering Classic Horror contained eleven essays on the subject, and Cosette Kies’ Supernatural Fiction for Teens appeared in an updated second edition recommending 1300 annotated titles. In Starmont House’s Fear to the World, Kevin Proulx interviewed eleven horror writers, including Clive Barker, Ramsey Campbell, John Farris, F. Paul Wilson and Richard Christian Matheson, while more dedicated scholars may have wanted to track down the comprehensive Reference Guide to Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror by Michael Burgess (Robert Reginald).

  Gordon Sander’s Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television’s Last Angry Man was a biography of Rod Serling, creator of TV’s The Twilight Zone. Editor Peter Goodrich’s Cut! Horror Writers on Horror Film included interviews with Clive Barker and Anne Rice, and The Video Watchdog Book reprinted Tim Lucas’ invaluable articles
in a single volume with a new foreward by director Joe Dante.

  Certainly the most attractive art book of 1992 was Graven Images: The Best of Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction Film Art from the collection of Ronald V. Borst, which reprinted more than 500 vintage posters and lobby cards in full colour, boasted an introduction by Stephen King, and included essays by Forrest J Ackerman, Clive Barker, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison and Peter Straub.

  Probably the bestselling illustrated book of last year was James Gurney’s Dinotopia, set in a lost world populated by sentient dinosaurs, while Underwood-Miller’s Virgil Finlay’s Women of the Ages beautifully showcased the delicate stipple work of the late pulp illustrator.

  For fans of the Cenobites, The Hellraiser Chronicles edited by Stephen Jones contained full colour photographic portraits from all three movies, supplemented with text by screenwriters Clive Barker and Peter Atkins. Along the same lines, Bram Stoker’s Dracula: The Film and the Legend by Francis Ford Coppola and James V. Hart included the script for the most expensive vampire movie ever made, profusely illustrated with colour stills from the film. Capitalising on the Count’s renewed popularity, Dracula: A Symphony in Moonlight and Nightmares was a collection of watercolours by Jon J. Muth based on Bram Stoker’s novel.

  Vampires also meant big business in comics, as the phenomenal sales of Malibu’s adaptation of Brian Lumley’s Necroscope series proved, with each issue featuring a distinctive cover painting by Bob Eggleton. Inevitably, Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula also received the graphic novel treatment, scripted by veteran comics writer Roy Thomas.

  Revelations was the latest in Eclipse’s series of Clive Barker adaptations, scripted by Steve Niles from Barker’s short story, with art by Lionel Talaro. Bantam Spectra published three volumes of The Ray Bradbury Chronicles which collected new and reprint graphic adaptations of Bradbury’s stories with new introductions and notes by the author.