The Best New Horror 6

by Stephen Jones

  Jeff Gelb’s Shock Rock II featured twenty-one rock ’n’ roll horror stories, including a collaboration by Lost in Space’s Bill Mumy and a foreword by RIP’s Lonn Friend. Gelb also teamed up with Michael Garrett to edit The Hot Blood Series: Deadly After Dark, the fourth in the erotic horror series featuring fourteen stories and a somewhat surprising introduction by Forrest J. Ackerman. Young Blood edited by Mike Baker contained twenty-nine mostly original stories written when the authors were less than thirty years old, including the young-at-heart Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch and Edgar Allan Poe.

  Nicholas Royle’s British Fantasy Award-winning Darklands Two, originally published in a small press edition, received a welcome mass-market paperback printing with a new introduction by the editor and a new story by Ramsey Campbell. The Mammoth Book of Werewolves was a mostly original collection of stories and one poem edited by Stephen Jones, as was Jones’s The Mammoth of Frankenstein which, like Peter Haining’s The Frankenstein Omnibus, coincided with the release of Kenneth Branagh’s big-budget movie. Jones also teamed up with David Sutton to edit the annual Dark Voices 6: The Pan Book of Horror.

  Bizarre Dreams, edited by Caro Soles and Stanislaus Tal, featured eighteen gay erotic stories and one poem and was published by Masquerade/Richard Kasak Books, as was Bizarre Sex and Other Crimes of Passion, which included twenty-one erotic stories edited by Tal alone.

  Also worth noting was the fourth (and possibly last in this incarnation) edition of New Worlds edited by David Garnett, who did a remarkable job of reinventing the series for the 1990s.

  Well-known poet D.J. Enright edited The Oxford Book of the Supernatural, a miscellany of fact and fiction from the Oxford University Press. The Norton Book of Ghost Stories edited by Brad Leithauser featured twenty-eight classic ghost stories ranging from M.R. James to A.S. Byatt, while The Chatto Book of Ghosts edited by Jenny Uglow was another miscellany of stories, anecdotes, verse, songs and excerpts ranging from the Greek myths to Terry Pratchett. Leonard Wolf’s Complete Book of Terror included thirty-six classic tales, and The Dedalus Book of German Decadence: Voices from the Abyss edited by Ray Furness included obscure tales by Hanns Heinz Ewers, Georg Heym and Thomas Mann, amongst others.

  Stephen Jones and David Sutton teamed up again to edit The Anthology of Fantasy & the Supernatural for the instant remainder market – it was a bumper Fantasy Tales volume of forty stories illustrated by various artists. H.P. Lovecraft’s Book of Horror edited by Jones and Dave Carson for Barnes & Noble included twenty-one stories recommended by Lovecraft in his essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature”, illustrated by Carson. Also published for the bargain section by Barnes & Noble was Sea-Cursed, thirty nautical horror stories edited by T. Liam McDonald, Stefan Dziemianowicz and Martin H. Greenberg, and Dziemianowicz and Greenberg teamed up with Robert Weinberg for 100 Wild Little Weird Tales and 100 Creepy Little Creatures.

  As usual, The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventh Annual Collection edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling was a bumper volume of the best featuring fifty stories and four poems. With his untimely death, Karl Edward Wagner’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories XXII became the last volume in that ground-breaking series. The Best New Horror Volume Five edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell got a new look on both sides of the Atlantic, and an omnibus of stories from volumes 3 and 4 was published as The Giant Book of Terror with a new introduction.

  One of the first and best small press imprints, Donald M. Grant, published The Totem (Complete and Unaltered) by David Morrell. This significantly longer version of the novel, with illustrations by Thomas Canty, finally appeared as the author intended after fifteen years. Meanwhile, Gauntlet Publications celebrated the 35th anniversary of Robert Bloch’s classic Psycho with a signed, slipcased, limited hardcover edition, boasting an introduction by Richard Matheson, an afterword by Ray Bradbury and a special preface by Bloch. The Guide was a bilingual German/English hardcover edition of Ramsey Campbell’s short story, published by Edition Phantasia. It featured new illustrations by J.K. Potter and Herbert Brandmeier and was limited to 250 signed copies.

  From W. Paul Ganley came the first hardcover edition of The Clock of Dreams by Brian Lumley, the third in the “Titus Crow” series, illustrated by Dave Carson. Vampire Junkies was a novella by Norman Spinrad, illustrated by Allen Koszowski and published by Gryphon Books. Deus-X by Joseph Citro, subtitled “A Novel of Spiritual Terror”, appeared from Twilight Publishing. The Ragbone Man by Charlotte Lawrence was a New Age occult mystery, the first in a projected trilogy from Llywellyn Publications. Dorrance Publishing’s Heart of Stone by Ann G. Lukaszewski was about a town where people were turned to stone, while The Serpent Slayers by Adam Niswander was the second book in the Shaman Cycle of Southwestern horror from Integra Press. The Risen: A Holographic Novel by underground filmmaker Peter Whitehead was published by Hathor Publishing.

  Nicholas Royle’s Egerton Press produced a beautiful trade paperback collection of Joel Lane’s tales of sex and despair, The Earth Wire and Other Stories. Barrington Books once again published another excellent anthology of so-called “Slipstream” fiction, The Science of Sadness edited by Chris Kenworthy, and Voices of the Night edited by John Maclay included twenty-seven original stories of horror and suspense from Maclay & Associates. Another of the best small press books of the year was South from Midnight, a handsome hardcover anthology from Southern Fried Press, edited by Richard Gilliam, Martin H. Greenberg and Thomas R. Hanlon. Given away to members of the 1994 World Fantasy Convention in New Orleans, this hefty volume contained a very impressive mix of fantasy and horror fiction.

  Continuing its bid to become the Arkham House of the 1990s, Fedogan & Bremer published The Early Fears by Robert Bloch, an omnibus of the author’s first two collections, The Opener of the Way and Pleasant Dreams, plus three more recent stories. Smoke of the Snake by Carl Jacobi included fifteen stories edited by the author and R. Dixon Smith, illustrated by Roger Gerberding, and Shadows Over Innsmouth edited by Stephen Jones presented sixteen British writers who contributed to the history of H.P. Lovecraft’s fear-haunted town, illustrated by Dave Carson, Jim Pitts and Martin McKenna.

  J.G. Ballard, William S. Burroughs, Alan Moore and Grant Morrison were among some of the more unusual contributors to The Starry Wisdom: A Tribute to H.P. Lovecraft. It was a Creation Books anthology, edited by D.M. Mitchell with an introduction by Ramsey Campbell. From Chaosium, publishers of the Cthulhu role-playing game, came the anthologies The Shub Niggurath Cycle edited by Robert M. Price and Cthulhu’s Heirs edited by Thomas M.K. Stratman, with the latter somewhat bizarrely claiming to be the first new collection of Cthulhu Mythos fiction in many years.

  P.H. Cannon’s Scream for Jeeves was a delightful parody of P.G. Wodehouse, H.P. Lovecraft and Arthur Conan Doyle. Published by Wodecraft Press and nicely illustrated by J.C. Eckhardt, it featured three stories, “Cats, Rats and Bertie Wooster”, “Something Foetid” and “The Rummy Affair of Young Charlie”, plus a fascinating afterword by the author. The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein and Other Gothic Tales by Thomas Ligotti was a hardcover collection from Silver Salamander Press, with an introduction in the form of a poem by Michael Shea.

  Robert Eighteen-Bisang’s Transylvania Press, as the title implies, is devoted to vampire fiction. It made an impressive début with a handsome 500-copy slipcased edition of Dracula: The Rare Text of 1901 abridged by Bram Stoker, and followed it up with the collection The Vampire Stories of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, introduced by Gahan Wilson, and a 300-copy hardcover edition of Sherry Gottlieb’s novel Love Bite.

  Containing twenty tales of ecological horror by Dan Simmons, Charles De Lint, Richard Laymon and others, The Earth Strikes Back was edited by Richard Chizmar for Mark V. Ziesing Books. David Schow’s latest collection Black Leather Required also appeared from the same publisher, with an introduction by John Farris.

  Joe R. Lansdale’s most recent collection, Writer of the Purple Rag
e, appeared from CD Publications along with a signed, limited hardcover of Lansdale’s new novel Mucho Mojo. Fred Olen Ray’s Weird Menace was edited by the low-budget movie director for American Independent Press. It included thirteen pastiches of the weird menace pulps of the 1930s, and featured Hugh B. Cave amongst the contributors.

  Ghost Story Press published Fear Walks the Night: The Complete Ghost Stories of Frederick Cowles, an omnibus of three previous collections in a limited edition of 250 hardcovers; Tales of the Grotesque by L.A. Lewis, a reprint of a 1934 collection plus one new story in a 300-copy edition; and Those Whom the Gods Love by Harvey Peter Sucksmith, a collection of ten stories, as a 200-copy hardcover.

  Streamline Pictures used artwork by William Stout, Dave Stevens, Simon Bisley and others to illustrate the stories and poems of R. Payne Cabeen for the collection Tainted Treats. From Alun Books of Wales came Cold Cuts II, twenty more tales of terror edited by Paul Lewis and Steve Lockley. Although nicely illustrated by Martin McKenna, Jim Pitts and Bryan Talbot, Kimota’s thin anthology Northern Chills, edited by Graeme Hurry, included only reprint stories by Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Gallagher, Stephen Laws and David Riley. The fifth volume of Palace Corbie, billed as an anthology of “personal terror”, appeared in trade paperback format from Merrimack Books, edited by Wayne Edwards. A Crimson Kind of Evil edited by S.G. Johnson appeared from Obelesk Books, the San Diego Writers’ Monthly Press released The Small Dark Room of the Soul and Other Stories by Matthew J. Pallamary, while Deeds of Doom edited by A. Markidis was an Australian anthology containing stories by nineteen new Australian writers. Following the first World Fantasy Award-nominated volume, Canada’s Mosaic Press published Northern Frights 2, again edited by Don Hutchinson and containing eighteen stories set in Canada or written by Canadians.

  New chapbooks from Roadkill Press included Not Broken, Not Belonging by Randy Fox, limited to 300 signed copies and based on six paintings and a number of sketches by Alan M. Clark, and Geckos by Carrie Richardson, also illustrated by Clark.

  The Flesh Artist by Lucy Taylor contained six original erotic horror stories with an introduction by Norman Partridge, and was the author’s second collection from Silver Salamander Press. From One Eyed Dog came Douglas E. Winter’s homage to Italian westerns, Black Sun, a futuristic horror story illustrated by Stephen R. Bissette and available in a signed and numbered edition. Another critic who turned his hand to fiction was Stanley Wiater, whose Lovecraftian short story Mysteries of the Word was published by Crossroads Press with illustrations by Gahan Wilson and an introduction by Jack Ketchum.

  Three Stones Publications published S. Darnbrook Colson’s collection of three interrelated stories, People of the Night, with a brief introduction by Wayne Allen Sallee. The Greater Arcana by Ron Weighell, containing three occult stories, appeared from The Haunted Library. Morrigan Publications/The Dog Factory published We Murder by Tim Ferret, a surreal story illustrated by the author. Gardenias Where There Are None by Molleen Zanger was a lesbian ghost story published by Naiad Press.

  Edgar Allan Poe and Arthur Machen, an anthology limited to 100 copies and edited by an uncredited Ray B. Russell, appeared from Tartarus Press, as did Xélucha and The Primate of the Rose by M.P. Shiel, also in a 100-copy edition. From TAL Publications came Shrines & Desecrations by Brian Hodge, three stories introduced by Poppy Z. Brite, and Sex & the Single Vampire by Nancy Kilpatrick, a trio of erotic tales introduced by Nancy Holder.

  James Lees-Milne’s Ruthenshaw was a short ghost story booklet printed in hot-metal type by Robinson Publishing and illustrated with wood engravings by Ian Stephens. The Gothic Society reprinted H.P. Lovecraft’s essay Supernatural Horror in Literature in an illustrated edition. Voices from Shadow was a welcome collection of critical articles and essays, revised and updated from Shadow: Fantasy Literature Review, edited by David Sutton for Shadow Publishing.

  After producing a single issue in 1994, Weird Tales changed its title to Worlds of Fantasy & Horror when the publisher lost the license to the name, once again plunging the world’s oldest genre magazine back into limbo. Contributors to both incarnations included Tanith Lee, Hugh B. Cave, David J. Schow, William F. Nolan, Ramsey Campbell, Joyce Carol Oates and Lord Dunsany.

  Although it didn’t feature much horror or dark fantasy in 1994, Interzone continued to publish some of the best short fiction around on a monthly basis, and issues included interviews with Poppy Z. Brite, Peter Atkins, Alan Moore and an article by Brian Stableford on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Having previously incorporated its sister publication Million, in October the magazine also absorbed Paul Brazier’s semi-prozine Nexus, but resulting attempts by editor and publisher David Pringle to improve the design of the magazine met with mixed results. One of Interzone’s reviewers also managed to upset a number of readers by describing the small press magazine Peeping Tom as “Bad Shit for sad little Horror wankers” and refusing to publish the subscription address.

  The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, under the editorship of Kristine Kathryn Rusch, continued to publish a wide range of fiction. Some fine writers turned up in Omni as well, including Kathe Koja, Edward Bryant and Michael Marshall Smith. David Bischoff took a look behind the scenes at TV’s cult series The X Files, and Robert Bloch contributed a memorable and moving essay on living and dying to the October issue.

  At more than 100 pages, the third annual issue of Expressions of Dread, edited by Spencer Lamm and others out of New York, was a handsome, perfect-bound magazine featuring artwork, interviews and fiction by Marshall Arisman, Clive Barker, Poppy Z. Brite, Bruce Campbell, John Wayne Gacy, Richard Laymon, Elizabeth Massie, Richard Christian Matheson, Harry O. Morris, J.K. Potter and many others.

  Richard T. Chizmar’s Cemetery Dance remained the closest title America has to a professional horror magazine. It only managed three issues in 1994 because of publisher/editor Chizmar’s illness, but these included fiction by Gary Raisor, Douglas Clegg, Richard Laymon, Joe R. Lansdale, William F. Nolan and Norman Partridge. Mark Rainey’s Deathrealm also published three issues, with columns by Karl Edward Wagner and Jeanne Cavelos. The four issues of The Scream Factory edited by Bob Morrish, Peter Enfantino and John Scoleri included some excellent articles, and No. 15 was a special werewolf issue.

  J.F. Gonzalez, one of the editors behind the late and lamented Iniquities magazine, teamed up with writer Debbie Smith to publish a new horror fiction title, Phantasm. Although a lot less flashy than its predecessor, the first two issues included fiction by Hugh B. Cave, Mick Garris, Norman Partridge, Ramsey Campbell, William F. Nolan, Brian Hodge and others. Mike Baker’s Skull: The Magazine of Dark Fiction was a new bi-monthly magazine that included stories by Graham Masterton, Peter Atkins, Roberta Lannes and D.F. Lewis. For Goths there was the premiere issue of Heliophobe, billed as “The only health and beauty journal devoted exclusively to pale-skinned women”. Edited by Forrest Jackson, the premiere issue included a reprint of Poppy Z. Brite’s story “The Sixth Sentinel”.

  The Third Alternative edited by Andy Cox was a new literary small press magazine exploring “Slipstream” fiction and poetry. It published four issues in 1994, with stories by Nicholas Royle, Joel Lane, Conrad Williams, Peter Crowther and Paul Di Filippo, amongst others. The Preston SF Group published the first issue of Kimota, edited by Graeme Hurry and billed as a magazine of SF, Horror, Comics and Fantasy. Contributors included Stephen Laws, Stephen Gallagher, Conrad Williams, Jim Pitts, Martin McKenna and Bryan Talbot. The first issue of editor Kirk S. King’s Night Dreams, subtitled “Tales of the Weird, the Frightening, the Gruesome”, also included the inescapable D.F. Lewis and Conrad Williams, while the début issue of David G. Barnett’s Into the Darkness came complete with a parental warning on the cover.

  Pulphouse: A Fiction Magazine was revived and announced a new monthly schedule, although they only managed to publish one issue in 1994 under Dean Wesley Smith’s editorship. Dead of Night edited by Lin Stein was also back, apparently on a new quarterly schedule with two
issues that featured fiction by John Maclay and J.N. Williamson and novel excerpts from Nancy Kilpatrick and Jeanne Kalogridis. Thunder’s Shadow Collector’s Magazine, edited and published by Erik Secker, included fiction by Joseph A. Citro and Norman Partridge. The fourth issue of The Urbanite was billed as “The Strange Pets Issue”; edited by Mark McLaughlin it featured fiction by Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Hugh B. Cave and M.R. Scofidio, amongst others. The eleventh issue of Ann Kennedy’s The Silver Web continued the usual mix of surreal fiction, poetry and features.

  The British Fantasy Award-winning Peeping Tom published its usual four issues. Despite the ugly layout and cover design, editor Stuart Hughes still managed to attract stories by Brian Stableford, Nancy Kilpatrick, Conrad Williams, Mark Chadbourn, D.F. Lewis, Ben Leech, Jessica Palmer, Michael Marshall Smith and others.

  There were also new issues of Peggy Nadramia’s Grue, Crispin Burnham’s Eldrich Tales, Gordon Linzner’s Space & Time, Adam Bradley’s Black Tears (with fiction by Guy N. Smith), Chris Reed’s Back Brain Recluse, and Margaret L. Carter’s The Vampire’s Crypt (featuring interviews with Nancy Kilpatrick and Elaine Bergstrom). Charles Overbeck’s Forbidden Lines ceased publication with its sixteenth issue.

  The British Fantasy Society continued to turn out a regular bi-monthly Newsletter, ably edited by David J. Howe. There was an eighth issue of Peter Coleborn and Simon MacCulloch’s Chills (including stories by Joel Lane, Norman Partridge, and the ubiquitous Conrad Williams and D.F. Lewis), and Dark Horizons reached No. 35, edited by Phil Williams. The BFS also launched a new series of paperbacks with the attractively designed Clive Barker: Mythmaker for the Millennium, Suzanne J. Barbieri’s reappraisal of Barker’s work, with an introduction by Peter Atkins.

  Necronomicon Press continued its prolific output of booklets and magazines with four more excellent issues of Necrofile: The Review of Horror Fiction edited by Stefan Dziemianowicz, S.T. Joshi and Michael A. Morrison. Two new issues of Studies in Weird Fiction edited by Joshi included articles on Clive Barker, Richard Matheson, Shirley Jackson, Poppy Z. Brite, M.R. James, H.P. Lovecraft, Dennis Etchison and contemporary vampire fiction. The second issue of Stefan Dziemianowicz’s journal of multimedia horror, Other Dimensions, included contributions by Douglas E. Winter and Brian Stableford. The three new issues of Necronomicon’s Crypt of Cthulhu edited by Robert M. Price included a Richard L. Tierney special.