The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  David Nordhaus’s print-on-demand DarkTales Publications closed operations in the autumn but continued selling backlist titles through its website at a 70 per cent discount. Along with two The Asylum anthologies edited by Victor Heck, authors published by the imprint included Mort Castle, Yvonne Navarro, Sèphera Girón, Michael J. Straczynski, Robert Weinberg, Nancy Kilpatrick, Edo van Belkom, J.F. Gonzalez and Steve Savile.

  Before the imprint went under, DarkTales published Dead But Dreaming: Fifteen Tales of Cosmic Horror, a collection of Cthulhu Mythos fiction by Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Mark Rainey, Darrell Schweitzer, Adam Niswander and others, edited by Kevin Ross and Keith Herber. From the same publisher, True Tales of the Scarlet Sponge by Wayne Allen Sallee was a gory autobiographical memoir that included details of the author’s 1989 encounter with a moving automobile.

  Warner dropped its proposed iPublish.com line of print-on-demand and electronic books, while iUniverse fired thirty-six employers and moved its headquarters from California to Nebraska in an effort to cut costs and concentrate on publishing first-time authors for a fee. The imprint’s print-on-demand titles included Grimoire de Solace, Vol.1: Lost Runes and Sorrows, a collection of twenty-one stories by Christopher Heath.

  Britain’s print-on-demand publisher House of Stratus obtained further funding and resumed operating from a new address after apparently collapsing in 2001. Although mostly concentrating on crime and mainstream fiction, they had more than thirty Brian Aldiss titles, forty H.G. Wells books and five volumes by Algernon Blackwood available.

  Teenage horror fan Tony Dickens discovered that he had powers that invoked a plague from the pages of Weird Tales in The H.P. Lovecraft Institute, a print-on-demand novel by David Bischoff.

  A young woman’s village was destroyed by demons and zombies in Richard V. Mullenax, Jr’s The Four Warriors from iUniverse/Writers Club Press, and a girl searching for her missing godmother discovered dark magic in Coincidissonance by John Dimes, available from AmErica House.

  Reflections of a Vampire by Damion Kirk was available from RahuBooks, while C.G. McGovern-Bowen’s Evil Seed from 1stBooks pitted the Earth itself against a cosmic psychic vampire. Slayer: Black Miracles was an omnibus of two vampire novellas by Karen Koehler about a tormented vampire hunter, from KHP Industries/Black Death Books. From the same author and imprint, a demon turned on those who created him in Scarabus.

  Published by Cosmos Books, Qinmeartha and the Girl Child Lochi/The Tomb of the Old Ones contained the title stories by John Grant and Colin Wilson, respectively.

  Edited by the redoubtable Philip Harbottle, the first two issues of Fantasy Adventures (formerly Fantasy Quarterly) included new stories by Andrew Darlington, Tony Glynn and “David Somers”.

  Cosmos also produced two 100,000-word collections of stories, essays and interviews by L.H. Maynard and M.P.N. Sims, Selling Dark Miracles and The Secret Geography of Nightmare, with Introductions by Hugh Lamb and Stephen Jones, respectively. The ever-expanding Wildside Press imprint also published a volume combining Maynard and Sims’ novella Moths with In the Mirror by Sarah Singleton.

  Maynard and Sims had another collection out from Sean Wallace’s Prime Books, Incantations, containing fifteen stories (eight original), and the busy duo also edited Darkness Rising Volume Three: Secrets of Shadows for Cosmos and Volume Four: Caress of Nightmare from Prime. These entertaining original anthologies, containing seventeen and twenty stories respectively, included fiction from Chico Kidd, Monica J. O’Rourke, Paul Finch, D.F. Lewis and others, plus some classic reprints introduced by Hugh Lamb and Rhys Hughes.

  Also from Prime, Nowhere Near Milkwood was a collection of more than thirty stories by Rhys Hughes, All Too Surreal featured eighteen tales (two original) by Tim Waggoner, and Old Ghosts and Other Revenants contained twelve stories (two original) by J.F. Gonzalez. Tourniquet Heart edited by Christopher Teague contained thirty-six stories and three poems by such writers as Ramsey Campbell, Christopher Fowler, Steve Rasnic Tem, Paul Finch, Rhys Hughes, John B. Ford, Carol Anne Davis and others.

  Prime Books also announced that it had acquired Jeff VanderMeer’s idiosyncratic Ministry of Whimsy Press, which would become a print-on-demand publisher.

  Stalking the Demon: Tales of Sex and Insanity was a collection of eighteen dark-fantasy stories (thirteen original) by Bryce Stevens, published by Australia’s on-demand imprint Jacobyte Books. The author also illustrated the front and back covers of the nice-looking trade paperback.

  Marietta Publishing was launched over the Labor Day weekend with three trade paperback anthologies. Edited by Bruce Gehweiler, Frontiers of Terror included stories by Brian McNaughton, Tom Piccirilli, David B. Silva, Trey R. Barker, Gregory Nicoll, C.J. Henderson and others. Lin Carter’s Anton Zarnak, Supernatural Sleuth was the subject of Robert M. Price’s anthology, which collected all of Carter’s tales of the master of the mystic arts, along with new adventures by Joseph S. Pulver Sr., C.J. Henderson, and the editor himself. Finally, New Mythos Legends edited by Bruce Gehweiler was a collection of Lovecraftian stories by Norman Partridge, Hugh B. Cave, Tom Piccirilli, Don D’Ammassa, Stephen Mark Rainey, James S. Dorr and C. J. Henderson, among others.

  Warfear: A Collection of Strange War Tales was an anthology of thirteen stories from Marietta, edited by James Shimkus, Byron White and Allen Tower and featuring fiction from Don D’Ammassa, Peter Garratt, Jeffrey Thomas, Mark McLaughlin and others, including the omnipresent C. J. Henderson.

  Deborah Layne and Jay Lake’s Polyphony was a “slipstream” anthology from Wheatland Press containing twelve stories (one reprint) by Lucius Shepard, James Van Pelt, Andy Duncan, Ray Vukcevich, Bruce Holland Rogers, Carol Emshwiller and others. It was the first in a planned biannual series.

  Stealth Press let all its genre staff go and suspended its 2002 publishing schedule, having gone through $1.3 million in venture capital in just over two years. The final title to appear from the classy small-press imprint was They Have Not Seen the Stars: The Collected Poems of Ray Bradbury.

  At the end of the year, Monica O’Rourke’s Catalyst Press announced that it was placing all its 2003 titles on hold for six months while the company went through a reorganization process.

  Meanwhile, Michael Marshall Smith’s 1994 debut novel, Only Forward, received its first official world hardcover publication from Subterranean Press in a signed edition of 750 numbered copies and twenty-six lettered copies.

  Also from Subterranean, From Weird and Distant Shores was a collection of thirteen stories by Caitlín R. Kiernan (one an original co-written with Poppy Z. Brite) set in other writers’ universes. Along with interesting Afterwords to each story, the author also included an excellent Preface in which she argued both for and against writing media-related work. Nicely illustrated by Richard Kirk, the signed hardcover was limited to 600 numbered copies and twenty-six lettered copies.

  From the same author and imprint, In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers was a hardcover novella, illustrated by Dame Darcy, featuring Kiernan’s character Dancy Flammarion from Threshold. It was available in both a trade edition and a 300-copy signed, limited edition with the extra chapbook On the Road to Jefferson.

  Limited to 1,000 signed and numbered copies and a fifty-two-copy lettered edition, For a Few Stories More: The Lost Lansdale Volume Four contained twenty-one stories (seven reprints) by Joe R. Lansdale, including a previously unpublished mystery novel entitled “The Long Fall” plus a film proposal. Six of the tales were collaborations with other authors. Lansdale’s A Fine Dark Line was a restored edition containing 30,000 words of extra material, including two unused Prologues and an Afterword by the author.

  Sex and Violence in Hollywood was a non-supernatural horror novel by Ray Garton, and Charles de Lint’s Wolf Moon was a twist on the werewolf myth, also limited to 1,000 signed and numbered copies from Subterranean.

  Worlds Enough & Time contained five novellas (one original) by Dan Simmons, along with a new Introduction by the author. The William Ashbless
Memorial Cookbook by James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers collected a number of recipes by the late fictional poet. It was available in a signed, limited edition of 750 copies and a 150-copy de luxe slip cased edition with an additional chapbook.

  J.K. Potter’s Embrace the Mutation was a handsome-looking anthology from Subterranean Press. Edited by William Schafer and Bill Sheehan, it contained thirteen stories written around Potter’s distinctive photo-collages. Contributors included Michael Marshall Smith, Graham Joyce, Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Elizabeth Hand, Poppy Z. Brite, Kim Newman, Peter Crowther and Norman Partridge, and there was an Introduction by the artist.

  Nicely produced by Night Shade Books in hardcover, trade paperback and a signed slip cased edition of 150 copies containing a bonus compact disc of music composed by the author, Brian Hodge’s Lies & Ugliness collected twenty-one superior tales (two original) with story notes by the author.

  Besides adding Ramsey Campbell to its roster of authors, Peter Crowther became the sole owner of PS Publishing and also issued Keep Out the Night edited by Stephen Jones and illustrated by Randy Broecker. The first in a series of new hardcover anthologies inspired by Christine Campbell Thomson’s “Not at Night” series of the 1920s and 1930s, Hugh B. Cave, Brian Lumley, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Sydney J. Bounds, Neil Gaiman, Poppy Z. Brite, Tim Lebbon, Dennis Etchison, Kim Newman, Michael Marshall Smith, Basil Copper and Ramsey Campbell were the authors who chose their own favourite stories and novellas. The book was limited to 500 numbered hardcovers and a 100-copy de luxe edition signed by all the contributors.

  Firing the Cathedral was a new “Jerry Cornelius” novella by Michael Moorcock, in which his Swinging Sixties rebel responded to the events of 9/11. The PS publication was limited to 500 numbered paperbacks and 400 hardcovers, and Alan Moore contributed the excellent Introduction.

  Other titles from the prolific PS included the novellas Blood Follows by Steven Erikson with an Introduction by Stephen R. Donaldson, and A Year in the Linear City by Paul Di Filippo with an Introduction by Michael Bishop. Mark Morris’s novella The Uglimen, in which the protagonist uncovered a dark family secret, had an Introduction by Stephen Laws, and Neil Gaiman contributed the Introduction to Mark Chadbourn’s The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke, inspired by Richard Dadd’s painting of the same name. Each title was limited to 500 numbered paperbacks and 300 numbered hardcover copies.

  From the venerable Arkham House, The Far Side of Nowhere was a new volume of twenty-nine of Nelson Bond’s own favourite uncollected SF and fantasy stories from 1939 to 1957, grouped under five thematic sections. Each tale was briefly introduced by the 92-year-old pulp writer. Also from Arkham and limited to 2,500 copies, John D. Harvey’s The Cleansing was a first novel about a Native American wolf god, Wanata, who returned every 100 years to hold humanity accountable for its abuses against nature.

  The fourth volume in Haffner Press’s The Collected Stories of Jack Williamson, Spider Island contained twelve stories from 1936–38, several non-fiction pieces, a Foreword by Edward Bryant and a short 1936 interview and new Afterword by Williamson. A signed and slip case limited edition was available for $125.00.

  A scientist experimented with immortality in The Blue Helix by William B. Eidson, illustrated by Rick Berry and published by Donald M. Grant.

  Limited to 500 numbered and signed copies, A Stir of Echoes was Gauntlet Press’s sixth “Classic-Revisited” title from Richard Matheson. It included the original story, plus a never-before-published screenplay by Matheson, an Afterword by film director David Koepp, and a new Introduction by the author.

  The Haunted Air was F. Paul Wilson’s latest “Repairman Jack” novel from Gauntlet. In his fifth adventure, the enigmatic protagonist found himself confronting rival spiritualists and a cult of immortals in a narrative that tied in to the author’s other supernatural series that began with The Keep.

  Limited to 750 signed and numbered copies, Poppy Z. Brite’s Lost Souls: Tenth Anniversary Edition included two pages of the first electric-typed draft of the book, a lost chapter from an earlier draft, correspondence with Douglas E. Winter and editor Jeanne Cavelos, a short story entitled “Stay Awake” that takes place after the events of the book, and a new Introduction by the author.

  Impact 20 was William F. Nolan’s first collection, reissued in a revised and expanded edition of twenty-three short stories by Gauntlet, along with the original Introduction and a new Afterword by Ray Bradbury and a Preface by Gary Braunbeck.

  Bloodletting Press published Douglas Clegg’s 1990 novel Breeder with a new Introduction by Edward Lee in a limited edition of 500 and a leather-bound slip cased printing of twenty-six copies.

  Clegg’s Nightmare House was the first volume in the “Harrow Trilogy”, a tale of the ultimate in haunted houses, available in an edition of 750 signed copies from Cemetery Dance Publications. Spider Moon was a new short novel of non-supernatural horror and crime from John Shirley, written especially for Cemetery Dance and limited to 1,500 signed copies.

  Hallowe’en came to the pumpkin town of Orangefield with a vengeance in Al Sarrantonio’s novel of the same name, while a woman was stalked by a Monstrosity in the novel by Edward Lee.

  Alien-possessed humans controlled the Earth in Darkness, Darkness, the first in Peter Crowther’s “Forever Twilight” series, and Cast in Dark Waters by Ed Gorman and Tom Piccirilli mixed voodoo, vampires and pirates in the sixteenth-century Caribbean. Both novellas were available from Cemetery Dance in editions of 750 numbered copies.

  Nancy A. Collins’s second short story collection, Knuckles and Tales: Southern Neo-Gothic, featured two previously unpublished novelettes in the “Seven Devils Cycle”.

  From Cemetery Dance Publications and edited by Richard Chizmar, Shivers was an anthology of new and reprint fiction from such authors as Bentley Little, “Jack Ketchum” (Dallas Mayr), Douglas Clegg, Edward Lee, Simon Clark, Nancy A. Collins, Graham Masterton, Tim Lebbon, Brian Keene, Thomas F. Monteleone, Peter Crowther, Jay Bonansinga and John Pelan.

  Edited by bookseller and publisher Greg Ketter under his own DreamHaven Books imprint, Shelf Life: Fantastic Stories Celebrating Bookstores contained sixteen tales (two reprints) by authors such as Gene Wolfe, Ramsey Campbell, Charles de Lint, Lisa Morton, Jack Williamson, Melanie Tem, Rick Hautala and Harlan Ellison, along with an Introduction by Neil Gaiman. Published to celebrate DreamHaven’s twenty-fifth anniversary, many of the stories predictably fell into the “magic bookshop” variety. The volume was limited to 1,000 signed and numbered copies.

  Cold Hand on My Shoulder: Tales of Terror and Suspense was a new collection of nine stories (four original) by Basil Copper, published by Sarob Press in a 300-copy limited edition. Illustrated by Randy Broecker, the hardcover volume also included an informative Introduction by Richard Dalby.

  Originally set to be published by David Marshall’s Pumpkin Books before that short-lived imprint collapsed, Ghosts & Other Lovers contained thirteen previously published stories and a new Introduction by Lisa Tuttle. It appeared from Sarob in a limited edition of 250 copies, illustrated by Paul Lowe.

  Limited to 225 copies, The Dark Tales collected fourteen dark fantasy stories (two original) written over a fifteen-year period by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, along with an Afterword by the author. Journeys Beyond Advice contained seven stories (including three original novellas), along with a somewhat pretentious Afterword by author Rhys Hughes. Illustrated by Justin Phillips, it was limited to 250 copies. All Sarob titles were additionally published in fifty-two-copy de luxe signed and lettered editions.

  Edited with a new Introduction by Hugh Lamb, and illustrated by his son, Richard, The Invisible Eye contained fifteen stories and a novella by nineteenth-century authors (Emile) Erckmann–(Louise Alexandre) Chatrian. The Ash-Tree Press volume was an expanded edition of the editor’s now rare 1981 Millington collection, The Best Tales of Terror of Erckmann–Chatrian, which he discussed in the Appendix.

  Limited to 600 copies, Hauntings – The Super
natural Stories contained the most comprehensive collection of Vernon Lee’s (the pseudonym of Violet Paget, 1856–1935) supernatural stories ever published, including a previously uncollected tale, edited with an Introduction by David G. Rowlands.

  Edited with an Introduction and notes by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Sinister Romance: Collected Ghost Stories contained seven gentle supernatural tales by women’s campaigner Mary Heaton Vorse (1874–1966) along with a Preface by Jane Yolen. Stefan Dziemianowicz edited and introduced Not Exactly Ghosts: Collected Weird Tales, an omnibus of the title collection (1947) and Fires Burn Blue (1948) by Andrew Caldecott (1884–1951), containing twenty-five stories. Both volumes were limited to 500 copies.

  Figures In Rain: Weird and Ghostly Tales was the first collection of short stories by Chet Williamson, with an Introduction by Joe R. Lansdale. It contained twenty-seven tales (two original), and was also limited to 500 copies.

  Expanding upon the four stories included in the identically titled 1992 chapbook, No.472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki: The Untold Stories also added eight (six original) spot-on pastiches of William Hope Hodgson’s psychic investigator written by either British author A.F. (Chico) Kidd or Australian Rick Kennett.

  Schalken the Painter and Others by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu (1814–1873) covered the period between 1838, when Le Fanu’s first supernatural tale appeared in the Dublin University Magazine, and 1861. Edited with an Introduction by Jim Rockhill and limited to 650 copies, it was the first of three volumes collecting together all of Le Fanu’s short supernatural fiction.

  Edited with an Introduction by John Pelan, Off the Sand Road: Ghost Stories Volume One was the first of two volumes for Ash-Tree Press collecting together Russell Kirk’s supernatural stories. Editor Mike Ashley (who won the SF Research Association’s Pilgrim Award in June for Distinguished SF Criticism) contributed the Preface to The Mirror and Other Strange Reflections, the first collection of twenty-eight weird and supernatural stories by Arthur Porges. Both books were limited to 500 copies.