The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 24 (Mammoth Books)

by Stephen Jones

  Yet another tribute to The Pan Book of Horror Stories series, The Screaming Book of Horror was a hardcover edited with an introduction by Johnny Mains for Screaming Dreams. It contained twenty-one stories by John Llewellyn Probert, Alison Littlewood, Bernard Taylor, Anna Taborska, Paul Finch, Rhys Hughes, Alison More, Reginald (Reggie) Oliver, David A. Riley, Steve Rasnic Tem, Christopher Fowler, Charlie Higson and others, including posthumous contributions from John Brunner and John Burke, and a story by the editor.

  A Certain Slant of Light from Robert Morgan’s Sarob Press was a collection of eight ghost stories (three original) by Peter Bell, along with an afterword by the author. The limited, numbered hardcover was illustrated by Paul Lowe.

  For the same publisher, Rosemary Pardoe edited and introduced The Ghosts & Scholars Book of Shadows, which featured twelve sequels and prequels to M. R. James’s stories, originally submitted as competition entries, by Rick Kennett, John Llewellyn Probert, Reggie Oliver, Mark Valentine, David A. Sutton, Peter Bell and others, including Christopher Harman’s winner, “Quis est Iste?”.

  Edited and introduced by Anne C. Perry and Jared Shurin, A Town Called Pandemonium featured ten stories set in or around the eponymous Texas town by Will Hill, Joseph D’Lacey, Jonathan Oliver and others. Illustrated by Adam Hill, the shared-world anthology was available from Jurassic London as a trade paperback and a 100-copy numbered hardcover edition.

  Terry Martin’s Probably Maybe Perhaps: A Collection of Near and Future Short Stories contained nineteen tales by the editor-in-chief of The House of Murky Depths.

  Sam Stone’s Zombies at Tiffany’s, from Telos Publishing, was set in New York City in 1862.

  From Megazanthus Press, The First Book of Classical Horror Stories edited by D. F. Lewis contained twenty-one stories inspired by classical music from Andrew Hook, Stephen Bacon, John Howard, Mark Valentine and Rhys Hughes, amongst others.

  Darker Minds: An Anthology of Dark Fiction was the second volume in the anthology series from the collective Dark Minds Press, featuring new stories by Stephen Bacon, Simon Bestwick, Gary Fry, Gary McMahon and others. Ben Baldwin contributed an impressive cover image.

  Ottawa’s Ex Hubris Imprints published Postscripts to Darkness 2 edited by Sean Moreland and Aalya Ahmad. This thin anthology contained sixteen stories, an interview with American author Lee Thomas and an afterword by the editors.

  Vampyric Variations from Canada’s Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing collected ten vampire stories (one original novella) by Nancy Kilpatrick, along with an introduction by Tanith Lee. Kilpatrick also edited and supplied an introduction to Danse Macabre: Close Encounters with the Reaper for the same publisher, containing twenty-six stories by Lisa Morton, Lucy Taylor, William Meikle, Tom Piccirili, Brian Hodge, Tanith Lee and Brian Lumley, amongst others.

  Mark Leslie edited and introduced Tesseracts Sixteen: Parnassus Unbound, which contained twenty-eight stories and poems (five reprints) from authors such as Robert J. Sawyer, Sean Costello, Michael Kelly and Steve Vernon.

  Edited by Tehani Wessely for Australia’s FableCroft Publishing, Epilogue contained twelve stories about the end of the world.

  Night Shadows: Queer Horror was a gay- and lesbian-themed anthology from Bold Strokes Books edited by Greg Herren and J. M. Redmann and featuring fourteen original stories.

  William Holden’s Words to Die By and Felice Picano’s Twelve O’Clock Tales appeared under the Liberty imprint of the same lesbian/gay/bi/trans/queer publisher.

  Originally written in 1976 as an outline for a movie, and lost twice in the intervening decades, Ray Bradbury’s The Nefertiti-Tut Express finally saw print as a handsome oversized chapbook from Terence McVicker’s The RAS Press with numerous line drawings by Gary Gianni.

  Simon Marshall-Jones’s Spectral Press issued Simon Kurt Unsworth’s chapbook Rough Magic, Alison Littlewood’s The Eyes of Water, David Tallerman’s The Way of the Leaves and Mark West’s What Gets Left Behind. Each booklet was limited to just 100 signed and numbered copies.

  Nicholas Royle’s Nightjar Press issued two chapbooks by Claire Massey, Marionettes and Into the Penny Arcade, along with David Rose’s Puck and Alison Moore’s Small Animals. Each booklet was published in a signed edition limited to 200 copies.

  Nodens Books launched its Nodens Chapbooks series with Sable Revery: Poems, Sketches and Letters by Robert Nelson (1912-35), a contributor of verse to Weird Tales and a correspondent of H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. It was followed by The Ghost in the Tower: Sketches of Lost Jacobia, a historical booklet about south-western Michigan by Earl H. Reed (1863–1931). Both print-on-demand chapbooks were introduced by Douglas A. Anderson and available in trade paperback and hardcover formats.

  Algy Black and Artie Mack were back in Earthling Publications’s The Raven of October, the latest chapbook by Peter Atkins, Glen Hirshberg and Thomas St. John Bartlett to tie in to performances of The Rolling Darkness Review at Los Angeles’ Theatre/Theater during October and November.

  From Rosemary Pardoe’s Haunted Library, Ex Libris: Lufford contained a number of Jamesian pieces by Daniel McGachey, inspired by “Casting the Runes”.

  Edited by Gary William Crawford, Insufficient Answers: Essays on Robert Aickman from Gothic Press collected three essays about the life and works of the late author.

  The six bi-monthly issues of Gordon Van Gelder’s digest The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction featured the usual stellar line-up of authors, including Ron Goulart, Albert E. Cowdrey, Lewis Shiner, Michael Blumlein, Peter S. Beagle, Tim Sullivan, Steven Utley, Geoffrey Landis, Fred Chappell, Dale Bailey, Kate Wilhelm, Rachel Pollack, Andy Duncan, Richard A. Lupoff, Peter Dickinson, Lynda E. Rucker, Alan Dean Foster and Lewis Shiner.

  There were also book and film review columns by Charles de Lint, Elizabeth Hand, Kathi Maio, Chris Moriarty, Lucius Shepard, James Sallis and Michelle West, while Don Webb, Frances Grimble, Jack Womack, Bud Webster, Chris DeVito and David Langford all contributed more obscure titles to the always-fascinating “Curiosities” page.

  The first issue of Weird Tales from the new editorial team, sporting a double-covered “Elder Gods” theme, restored the title’s classic logo and featured a new Cthulhu Mythos novella by Brian Lumley, along with stories and poetry by Michael Shea, Michael Reaves, Darrell Schweitzer, Parke Godwin and Jessica Amanda Salmonson, amongst others. The flip-side contained a special tribute section featuring various works by Ray Bradbury, along with a personal reminiscence by editor Marvin Kaye.

  However, the magazine ran into controversy when plans to run an excerpt from Victoria Foyt’s controversial YA novel Save the Pearls Part One: Revealing Eden – set in a world where black people have become the dominant race – had to be pulled following an online furore that led to the resignation of senior contributing editor Anne VanderMeer “due to major differences with the existing editors”.

  Andy Cox’s Black Static managed just five issues during the year, but this was because it changed to a more compact format in July and synchronised its publishing schedule with companion title Interzone.

  Along with the usual opinion columns by Stephen Volk, Christopher Fowler and Mike O’Driscoll, the UK’s best horror magazine also featured fiction by Stephen Bacon, Simon Bestwick, Joel Lane, Nina Allan and others, plus interviews with Alison Littlewood, Christopher Fowler and Nicholas Royle.

  The two issues of Michael Kelly’s visually much-improved paperback magazine Shadows & Tall Trees featured original fiction by Nina Allan, Don Tumasonis, Andrew Hook, Gary McMahon, Stephen Bacon, Reggie Oliver, Alison Moore, Robert Shearman and others, along with a key book review per issue.

  Also looking better were the two issues of David Long-horn’s Supernatural Tales, which featured stories by Steve Rasnic Tem, Iain Rowan, Steve Duffy, Michael Chislett, Michael Kelly and others. Unfortunately, due to financial pressures, the editor announced that the title would change to print-on-demand in 2013.

  The two issues of James R. Beach’s glossy Dark Dis
coveries included fiction by Thomas Ligotti, Kurt Newton, Lisa Morton and Clark Ashton Smith, along with some very lurid limericks by Ramsey Campbell. As well as a number of interesting articles and various reviews, there were also interviews with W. Paul Ganley, Joe R. Lansdale, Lisa Morton and Ellen Datlow. The magazine found a new publisher with issue #21.

  After an almost twenty-year hiatus, John Gilbert revived his Fear magazine with a “Special Collector’s Edition” in October, and followed it up with another thin issue the following month. Featuring interviews with James Herbert, Stephen Jones, Tom Fletcher and Nicholas Vince, along with articles by Mark Morris and Stephen Volk and a selection of book reviews, the magazine also sponsored a ghostly short story competition.

  The September issue of Fortean Times celebrated the 150th anniversary of the birth of M. R. James with an article by Robert Lloyd Parry and commentary from Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Jones, Kim Newman, John Connolly, Stephen Volk, Gary McMahon and Adam Nevill.

  The six issues Tim Lucas’s Video WatcHDog: The Perfectionist’s Guide to Fantastic Video included tributes to actress Lina Romay and director Robert Fuest; a look at Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland and an adult version of the story; a retrospective of Dark Shadows; an overlong interview with actress Daliah Laví; a look at the Universal Classic Monsters Essential Collection on Blu-ray, and an interesting history of Exorcist II: The Heretic, along with all the usual reviews and the “Ramsey’s Rambles” column by Ramsey Campbell.

  Canada’s Rue Morgue put out its usual eleven glossy issues, including a bumper fifteenth-anniversary Hallowe’en edition celebrating 100 years of Universal Studios. Other features included articles on Hammer’s The Woman in Black, the new version of Clive Barker’s Nightbreed and the anniversaries of Poltergeist and Prince of Darkness.

  Among those interviewed were writers Anne Rice, Sarah Pinborough, George Clayton Johnson and John Skipp, along with actors and directors Carla Laemmle, Julie Adams, Sidney J. Furie, William Lustig, Tommy Lee Wallace, Tim Burton and the cast of the original Dark Shadows TV show, and the late Jean Rollin, David Friedman and Ray Bradbury.

  Bob Eggleton illustrated a fantasy smack-down between Godzilla and Gamera on the cover of the kaiju-themed issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland #262. The artist also contributed an article on the 1958 movie Varan the Unbelievable to the same edition.

  The March 16th issue of Entertainment Weekly included an exclusive excerpt from Justin Cronin’s vampire novel The Twelve, a sequel to The Passage.

  The forty-fourth anniversary issue of Locus was a special “Science Fiction and Fantasy Art” edition that included interviews with (Gerald) Brom and John Picacio, along with commentary from an impressive roster of other artists, while the July issue was a “Young Adult Fiction” special featuring interviews with Holly Black, Tamora Pierce and Rae Carson. Other writers interviewed in the magazine during the year included Claude Lalumière, Joe Haldeman, Paul Di Filippo, Sarah Pinborough, William F. Nolan, Jack Vance and Tim Pratt.

  The British Fantasy Society managed to get only two issues of its BFS Journal out in 2012, but they were both hefty trade paperback editions packed with columns and articles by Lee Harris, Ramsey Campbell, Mark Morris, Simon Bestwick, Michael Marshall Smith, Amanda Rutter, Stephen Volk, Gillian Redfearn, Paul Kane and others, along with interviews with Sarah Pinborough, Nina Allan, Rhys Hughes, Mike Barrett, David A. Sutton and artist Chris Roberts.

  There was also fiction and poetry from, amongst others, Jonathan Oliver, Marie O’Regan, Allen Ashley, Garry Kilworth, Christopher Golden, Gary Fry and Peter Crowther, plus the usual BFS news and views.

  The FantasyCon 2012 souvenir book was a hardcover edited by Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan, while Christopher and Barbara Roden edited the World Fantasy Convention 2012 softcover souvenir book, which reflected the event’s theme of “Northern Gothic and Urban Fantasy”. Both featured fiction by and articles about the various Guests of Honour. There was also apparently a hardcover edition the WFC Souvenir Book, but that was only available to a select few.

  The two issues of Rosemary Pardoe’s The Ghost & Scholars M. R. James Newsletter included Christopher Harman’s winning entry in a short story competition, an article about the influence of dreams in James’s fiction, and the usual Jamesian news and reviews.

  After taking over the subscription list for the now-defunct Realms of Fantasy, Hildy Silverman’s Space and Time entered the magazine’s forty-sixth year of continuous publication with fiction by Scott Edelman and others, along with an interview with Kevin J. Anderson.

  John Meaney was interviewed in Ireland’s Albedo One, which also featured fiction by Todd McCaffrey and others.

  Thirty years after he ceased publication, Jon M. Harvey revived his Spectre Press as an imprint for charity. The first new publication was The Weird and the Wonderful Portfolio 1: From the Collection of Jon Harvey. It contained an explanatory booklet and eleven prints by Stephen E. Fabian, Brian Frost, Dallas Goffin, Alan Hunter, David Lloyd, Martin McKenna, Jim Pitts (the only one in colour), SMS, John Stewart and two by the publisher. The portfolio, which was also available as a CD-Rom, was followed by Alan Hunter 1929–2012, a slim chapbook featuring a haphazard selection of artwork by the late British illustrator.

  Morpheus Tales finally improved its print design as it put out four issues featuring fiction by, amongst others, Stuart Hughes and Matt Leyshon.

  Edited by June M. Pulliam and Tony Fonseca, and issued twice a year by Hippocampus Press as a slim on-demand paperback, Dead Reckonings was a surprisingly entertaining compilation of book reviews from diverse hands, along with regular columns by Ramsey Campbell and S. T. Joshi.

  Edited by Daniel Corrick and Mark Samuels for Hieroglyphic Press, Sacrum Regnum 1 was a literary paperback magazine containing fiction, poems, essays and reviews by Samuels, Mark Valentine and others.

  Published in full colour, it was a shame that Justin Marriott’s attractive and informative The Paperback Inferno had to go to subscription-only due to increased Royal Mail charges. Issue 22 was a bumper special edition dedicated the Tandem and Award book imprints and included articles on authors R. Chetwynd-Hayes and Charles Birkin, Occult books of the 1970s, Planet of the Apes tie-ins, and the UK edition of Galaxy magazine. It also included an impressive gallery of Robert Bloch covers, along with a lively letters column.

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  S. T. Joshi’s wide-ranging study Unutterable Horror: A History of Supernatural Fiction was split over two hardcover editions (and nearly 800 pages) by PS Publishing in Volume 1: From Gilgamesh to the End of the Nineteenth Century and Volume 2: The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries.

  Joshi also edited a revised and updated edition of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature for Hippocampus Press, and with David E. Schultz he co-edited and introduced Letters to James F. Morton, a collection of Lovecraft’s letters to one of his numerous correspondents, along with an appendix, index and various articles about Morton.

  Jenifer Paquette’s Respecting The Stand: A Critical Analysis of Stephen King’s Apocalypse Novel was published by McFarland, as was The Subversive Harry Potter: Adolescent Rebellion and Containment in the J. K. Rowling Novels by Vandana Saxena.

  Edited by Tracy L. Bealer, Rachel Luria and Wayne Yuen, Neil Gaiman and Philosophy for Carus Publishing/Open Court collected fourteen essays, while the equally esoteric Feminism in the Worlds of Neil Gaiman: Essays on the Comics, Poetry and Prose, edited by Tara Prescott and Aaron Drucker for McFarland, contained sixteen essays.

  Christopher M. O’Brien’s The Forrest J Ackerman Oeuvre from McFarland was subtitled A Comprehensive Catalog of the Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Screenplays, Film Appearances, Speeches and Other Works, with a Concise Biography. A checklist of more than 3,000 items that was likely to only appeal to the most hardcore Forry fan, it came with a foreword by Dennis Billows and included a selection of black and white photos.

  Terry Earl Kemp’s The Anthem Series: A Guide to the Science Fiction, Fanta
sy, Horror and Weird Specialty Publishers of the Golden Age from The Last Stand was a bibliographic listing of the publications of more than forty small press imprints, including Arkham House, Shasta, Fantasy Press and others, along with numerous colour cover reproductions.

  A Natural History of Ghosts: 500 Years of Hunting for Proof was a terrific examination of the British fascination with ghost-hunting by film critic and former horror writer Roger Clarke.

  In May, a pastel version of Edvard Munch’s painting The Scream was sold to an anonymous buyer at Sotherby’s in New York for a record-breaking $119.9 million (£74 million), making it the most expensive piece of artwork ever sold at auction. Three other versions of the picture are known to exist.

  Edited with a Preface by Joseph Wrzos for Centipede Press, Hannes Bok: A Life in Illustration was a massive tome that collected hundreds of examples of the pulp artist’s work, including all of his early illustrations for Weird Tales, much of it in full colour. There was also a reprinted memoir by Ray Bradbury, along with tributes from other artists and additional biographical and critical material.

  From IDW Publishing/Desperado, Jeffrey Jones: A Life in Art contained text by the late artist and Cliff Biggers.

  Written and illustrated by Brom, Krampus: The Yule Lord involved a failed songwriter and the eponymous demon, who was plotting to destroy Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

  Mike Mignola and Christopher Golden’s novella Father Gaetano’s Puppet Catechism was also illustrated by Mignola.

  From Underwood Books, Spectrum 19: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art edited by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner included reproductions of more than 500 pieces of art from over 300 artists, along with a profile of Grand Master Award-winner James Gurney.

  PS Art Books continued its successful series of full-colour pre-code comic book reprints with ACG Collected Works: Out of the Night Volume One with a foreword by Roy Thomas and ACG Collected Works: Skeleton Hand with a foreword by Peter Normanton, while Christopher Fowler contributed the foreword to Harvey Horrors Collected Works: Black Cat Mystery Volume One.