Pseudopod, the free weekly podcast of horror stories, featured fiction by Joe R. Lansdale, Thomas Ligotti, Norman Partridge, Algernon Blackwood, Walter De La Mare, Rudyard Kipling and Clark Ashton Smith, amongst many others.
The Woman in Black, which opened at London’s Fortune Theatre in 1989 and featured Joseph Fiennes and Frank Finlay amongst its casts, clocked up its 10,000th performance in 2013.
Rebecca Lenkiewicz’s adaptation of Henry James’ ghostly novella The Turn of the Screw at London’s Almeida theatre starred Anna Madeley as the possibly unstable governess and Laurence Belcher as her sexually precocious young charge. Illusionist Scott Penrose created the on-stage special effects.
Sebastian Armesto and Dudley Hinton’s production of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari was performed by young ensemble cast Simple8 at the Arcola theatre in East London. Oliver Birch played the sinister mesmerist and Christopher Doyle was his hypnotized somnambulist Cesare.
Sam Mendes’ big-budget musical Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opened at London’s Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in June. Based on Roald Dahl’s classic 1964 children’s story, Douglas Hodge portrayed a creepy Willy Wonka, Nigel Planer was Grandpa Joe, and Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman wrote the score.
Dancer Jonathan Goddard portrayed the undead Count in the Mark Bruce Company’s version of Dracula, which toured the UK in the autumn.
Ian Talbot’s Afraid of the Dark, set in 1950s Hollywood, had its premiere at the Charing Cross Theatre in London in September. The playwright chose to remain anonymous, which was probably for the best given the poor reviews it received.
Performed by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at London’s Royal Albert Hall on July 13, the golden anniversary Doctor Who Prom presented Murray Gold’s incidental music, along with pieces by Bizet, Bach and Debussy used in the show. Matt Smith was also involved, along with Jenna Coleman, Carole Ann Ford, Peter Davison and a host of classic monsters. The event was broadcast live on BBC Radio 3.
Danny Elfman and the BBC Concert Orchestra played music from Batman, Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Alice in Wonderland and other movies at the world premiere of Danny Elfman’s Music from the Films of Tim Burton, performed at London’s Royal Albert Hall on October 7.
Ben Frost’s minimalist opera, The Wasp Factory, based on the novel by Iain Banks, premiered in Australia in August before moving to London’s Linbury Studio in Covent Garden two months later.
In a closing announcement in November, the much-troubled and hugely expensive Spider-Man: Turn off the Dark Broadway musical was projected to make a $60-million loss when it closed its doors after a three-year run in early January 2014. This followed a sharp decline in ticket sales during 2013. Original director Julie Taymor was fired following creative differences and her subsequent lawsuit was settled out of court.
Chicago’s Wildclaw Theatre presented Scott T. Barsotti’s stage adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Shadow Over Innsmouth at the Athenaeum Theatre in December.
That same month a musical version of Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel American Psycho opened at the Almeida theatre, starring former Doctor Who Matt Smith as yuppie serial killer Patrick Bateman, while the National Theatre of Scotland’s production of Let the Right One In at the Royal Court was based on the novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist and featured Rebecca Benson as the child-vampire Eli.
Six months after buying LucasFilm for just over $4 billion, The Walt Disney Company announced that it was closing down LucasArts, founded in 1982, and moving the games developer to a licensing model. LucasArts was working on the Star Wars 1313 game when the closure was announced.
After nearly seventeen years, the ninth instalment of Tomb Raider was a reboot of the popular games franchise, detailing how the young Lara Croft was shipwrecked on a deadly tropical island and became the woman we know today.
A fourteen-year-old girl and a ruthless smuggler crossed a post-epidemic America together, battling a fascist government, cannibals and zombie-like creatures in Naughty Dog’s acclaimed The Last of Us.
The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct was a first-person shooter that served as a prequel to the TV series. Norman Reedus narrated as Daryl Dixon, trying to find his brother. The Walking Dead, however, was a storytelling game with minimal action based on the original comic book series. It collected five episodic downloads and put them on disc for the first time.
There were complaints that the horror had been toned down for Dead Space 3, in which alien organisms continued to reanimate the dead, and there were more zombies in Dead Island: Riptide, as survivors from the first game had to contend with “Drowners” that lurked beneath the water.
Ellen Page voiced the character of Jodie, who had a poltergeist-like companion called Aiden that followed her commands, in the interactive movie Beyond: Two Souls, which was billed as “the most cinematic videogame ever released”.
The player was a vampire in the nearfuture set Dark, while The Wolf Among Us was based on Vertigo Comics’ Fables series and concerned the folklore characters hidden away in the New York borough of Fabletown.
A rescue mission was sent to discover what happened to Ripley and others in the disappointing first-person shooter Aliens: Colonial Marines, based on the movie series, and R.I.P.D. Rest in Peace Department was a tie-in to the movie about a pair of dead lawmen.
Warner in Canada’s Batman: Arkham Origins was a prequel game, set five years before 2009’s Batman: Arkham Asylum, that featured a younger Dark Knight being pursued by the world’s greatest assassins, including the Joker, Black Mask and Firefly. Batman: Arkham Origins Blackgate was a portable spinoff game.
In an irony possibly lost on its makers, “A Nightmare on Elm Street Toaster” cooked Freddy Krueger’s fire-ravaged features into your slice of bread.
Limited to just fifty individually numbered pieces each, Distinctive Dummies Production’s “Vampires of the 70s” series featured nicely detailed one-eighth scale collectible figures of the undead bloodsuckers from Salem’s Lot, Night Stalker, Count Yorga Vampire and Blacula.
From Dark Horse, a thirteen-inch tall “Forrest J Ackerman Statue” paid tribute to the late editor of Famous Monsters of Filmland. It was limited to just 1,000 pieces.
Robert E. Howard’s original typed manuscript for the Conan story “A Witch Shall Be Born”, inscribed and signed by the author on the first page, was offered for sale in April by Heritage Auctions. It sold for $22,500, a little below the $25,000 estimate.
A rare first edition of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, complete with annotations and drawings by J. K. Rowling, sold for £150,000 in May, which set a new record for the author’s work.
A one-of-a-kind phaser rifle used by William Shatner in the second pilot episode of the original Star Trek, sold for $231,000 – the second highest price paid at auction for a prop from the 1960s TV series.
Curated by Turner Classic Movies, the inaugural “What Dreams Are Made Of: A Century of Movie Magic at Auction” was held at Bonhams Auction House, New York, on November 25. Showcasing 100 years of props, scripts, costumes and posters, the sale raised almost $6 million.
Amongst the many notable items were a pair of replica ruby slippers from The Wizard of Oz, which sold for $35,000, while a rare pre-production draft of Noel Langley’s screenplay for the same film went for $10,000. A whip from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade sold for $10,000, and a diver’s helmet from Disney’s 20000 Leagues Under the Sea realized $81,250.
However, the highlight of the auction was undoubtedly the lead statuette from The Maltese Falcon, which set a world record for a movie prop at auction, selling for $4.085 million (including premium).
The Bram Stoker Awards Weekend 2013, incorporating World Horror Convention, was held in New Orleans over June 13–16. Author Guests of Honour were Ramsey Campbell, Caitlín R. Kiernan and Jonathan Maberry. Artist Guest was Glenn Chadbourne, Editor Guest was John Joseph Adams, Media Guest was Amber Benson, and Poet Guest was Bruce Boston. Jeff Strand was Toastmaster.
The Souvenir Book was a hefty PoD paperback edited by Norman Rubenstein and limited to 600 copies containing fiction, articles and a number of memorial pieces.
At the Bram Stoker Awards Banquet held on the Saturday evening, the Screenplay award went to the movie Cabin in the Woods, Graphic Novel to Witch Hunts: A Graphic History of the Burning Times by Rocky Wood and Lisa Morton, and Poetry Collection to Marge Simon’s Vampires Zombies & Wanton Souls.
Lisa Morton also won NonFiction for Trick or Treat: A History of Halloween, the Collection award was a tie between Mort Castle’s New Moon on the Water and Joyce Carol Oates’ Black Dahlia and White Rose: Stories, and Mort Castle and Sam Weller won the Anthology award for Shadow Show. The Short Fiction award went to “Magdala Amygdala” by Lucy Snyder (from Dark Faith: Invocations) and Gene O’Neill’s The Blue Heron won for Long Fiction.
Jonathan Maberry’s Flesh & Bone was presented with the YA Novel award, L. L. Soares’ Life Rage picked up the First Novel award, and the superior achievement in a Novel award went to Caitlín R. Kiernan’s The Drowning Girl.
The previously announced Specialty Press Award went to Jerad Walters of Centipede Press, and both Clive Barker and Robert R. McCammon were the recipients of HWA Life Achievement Awards.
For only the third time in its history, the World Fantasy Convention was held outside North America. Celebrating the themes “World Fantasy Convention: The Next Generation” and “Arthur Machen @ 150”, the event ran from October 31 to November 3 in Brighton, on England’s south-east coast.
Although Guest of Honour Richard Matheson died earlier in the year and Artist Guest of Honour Alan Lee was unable to attend due to work commitments in New Zealand, there was no shortage of guests as the convention welcomed Joanne Harris, Joe Hill, Richard Christian Matheson, Brian W. Aldiss, Tessa Farmer and Robert Lloyd Parry (as “M. R. James”). Life Achievement Award recipients Susan Cooper and Tanith Lee also both attended, and there was a special appearance by Sir Terry Pratchett. When original Master of Ceremonies China Miéville unexpectedly pulled out at the last minute, Neil Gaiman graciously stepped into the breach.
The World Fantasy Awards were presented on the Sunday afternoon. There were Special Convention Awards for Brian Aldiss and William F. Nolan. The Special Award, Non-Professional went to S. T. Joshi for his two volumes of Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction, and the Special Award, Professional went to Lucia Graves for her translation of Carlos Ruiz Zafón’s The Prisoner of Heaven.
Vincent Chong received the Artist award, Collection went to Joel Lane’s Where Furnaces Burn, and editor Danel Olson’s PostScripts #28-29: Exotic Gothic 4 won for Anthology. Gregory Norman Bossert’s “The Telling” (from Beneath Ceaseless Skies) won Short Fiction, and “Let Maps to Other” by K. J. Parker (from Subterranean) won Novella. The Novel award was presented to Alif the Unseen by G. Willow Wilson.
With the World Fantasy Convention being held in Britain, there was, as usual, no separate FantasyCon in 2013. Instead, the British Fantasy Awards were presented alongside the World Fantasy Awards.
The Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer went to Helen Marshall for her collection Hair Side, Flesh Side. The Cabin in the Woods received Best Screenplay, Saga by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples was voted Best Comic/Graphic Novel, and Sean Phillips won Best Artist.
Interzone picked up the Best Magazine/Periodical, Pornokitsch edited by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin was Best NonFiction, and ChiZine Publications was awarded Best Small Press. Magic: An Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane edited by Jonathan Oliver collected Best Anthology, while Robert Shearman’s Remember Why You Fear Me was the winner of Best Collection.
Best Short Story went to “Shark! Shark!” by Ray Cluley (from Black Static), and John Llewellyn Probert’s The Nine Deaths of Dr. Valentine was Best Novella. The August Derleth Award for Best Horror Novel was presented to Last Days by Adam Nevill, and The Robert Holdstock Award for Best Fantasy Novel went to Some Kind of Fairy Tale by Graham Joyce. The British Fantasy Special Award was presented posthumously to Iain M. Banks.
As I am sure you are aware, this is the 25th Anniversary edition of Best New Horror.
A quarter of a century is a very long time in publishing and, in the horror genre, the venerable Pan Book of Horror Stories is the only anthology series to have a longer run with the same publisher in the UK (and, even then, it changed editors).
These days there are far too many “Year’s Best” anthologies out there competing with each other (in all genres), while the number of books, movies, TV shows and other related media has increased enormously over the past decade.
However, although each annual volume takes an inordinate amount of work and time to compile, it has been an exhilarating and rewarding experience ever since Nick Robinson, Ramsey Campbell and I embarked upon this venture twenty-five years ago.
I would like to thank all of the in-house editors who have collaborated with me on these books over the years – not least, my current editor Duncan Proudfoot, who has done everything in his power to support and nurture this title during the time we have worked together – and all the contributors, publishers and, most importantly, readers, who have kept us going for a remarkable twenty-five volumes.
Publishing has never been more uncertain than it is today, and with new technologies and multiple platforms squeezing out print editions, and bricks-and-mortar bookstores closing down almost every week, we face an unpredictable future when it comes to books – and I’m not just talking about horror.
I am extraordinarily proud of what I have done with Best New Horror and the remarkable body of work that I have been privileged to showcase within these pages – I truly hope that this series stands as an indispensable record of contemporary horror for every year it has been published. And perhaps more than anybody, I am excited to see where the next few years will take us.
So I just want to thank you all – authors, publishers, booksellers, reviewers and readers alike – for your continued support. For me, horror fiction remains the most vibrant and exciting genre I can imagine working in, and I fervently hope that you will stick with us to see what the future holds.
For now, more than anything, I urge you to just keep reading!
The Editor
June, 2014
KIM NEWMAN
Who Dares Wins: Anno Dracula 1980
KIM NEWMAN IS a novelist, critic and broadcaster. His fiction includes The Night Mayor, Bad Dreams, Jago, the Anno Dracula novels and stories, The Quorum, The Original Dr. Shade and Other Stories, Life’s Lottery, Back in the USSA (with Eugene Byrne), The Man From the Diogenes Club, Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the d’Urbervilles and An English Ghost Story under his own name, and The Vampire Genevieve and Orgy of the Blood Parasites as “Jack Yeovil”.
His nonfiction books include Nightmare Movies, Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Neil Gaiman), Horror: 100 Best Books and Horror: Another 100 Best Books (both with Stephen Jones), Wild West Movies, The BFI Companion to Horror, Millennium Movies, and the BFI Classics studies of Cat People, Doctor Who and Quatermass and the Pit.
Newman is also a contributing editor to Sight & Sound and Empire magazines (writing Empire’s popular “Video Dungeon” column), has written and broadcast widely, and scripted radio and television documentaries. His stories “Week Woman” and “Ubermensch” have been adapted into an episode of the TV series The Hunger and an Australian short film, respectively. He has directed and written the tiny film Missing Girl, and he co-wrote the West End play The Hallowe’en Sessions. Following his Radio 4 play “Cry Babies”, he scripted episodes for Radio 7’s series The Man in Black (“Phish Phood”) and Glass Eye Pix’s Tales From Beyond the Pale (“Sarah Minds the Dog”).
The author’s two contributions to this volume of Best New Horror are reasonably self-contained selections from the long-in-progress fourth Anno Dracula novel, Johnny Alucard. There will eventually be a fifth book in the series, and a comic book is also in the works. Fans of t
he series may also like to note that the following story features the Anno Dracula version of occult detective Richard Jeperson, who features in the collection The Man from the Diogenes Club.
Previously … in Anno Dracula: Dracula is gone, but vampirism has spread across the globe and his former lieutenants – like the Baron Meinster, from Hammer’s The Brides of Dracula – contest the position of King of the Cats, the monarch of the undead. A movement has arisen to claim Transylvania as a vampire homeland. In London, vampire journalist Kate Reed covers an embassy siege …
PALACE GREEN WAS blocked, an armoured car emphasising a point she would have thought established sufficiently well by police vans. Uniformed coppers – the Special Patrol Group, of recent ill reputation – and camo-clad squaddies were kitted up for riot, and locals kept out of their homes and offices muttered themselves towards a resentful shade of disgruntled. To Kate Reed, this patch of Kensington felt too much like Belfast for comfort, though passing trade on Embassy Row – veiled woman-shapes with Harrods bags, indignant diplomats of all nations, captains of endangered industries – was of a different quality from the bottle-throwers and -dodgers of the Garvachy Road.
TV crews penned beyond the perimeter had to make do with stories about the crowds rather than the siege. Kate saw the TV reporter Anne Diamond, collar turned up and microphone thrust out, sorting through anxious faces at the barrier, thirsty for someone with a husband or girlfriend trapped inside the Embassy or, better yet, among the terrorists.
“Evenin’ Miss Reed,” said a vampire bobby she remembered from the Met’s old B Division, which used to handle vampire-related crime.
“It’s been a funny old week at Palace Green …” Sensing the imminence of an anecdote with a moral, Kate showed Sergeant Dixon her NUJ card and was let through.
“We’ve been waiting for you,” said the sergeant, with fatherly concern, lifting a plank from the barrier. “This is a rum old do and no mistake.”
Anne Diamond and a dozen other broadcast and print hopefuls were furious that one of the least significant of their number had a free ticket to the big carnival. It wasn’t even as if Kate were the only vampire hack on the street. She’d spotted Paxman, drifting incorporeally in mist-form through the crowds. She was, however, the only journo Baron Meinster would talk with.
Best New Horror, Volume 25 Page 10
