FRANCES GARFIELD (b. 1908) was born in Texas and has lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, since 1951 when she moved there with her husband, Manly Wade Wellman. During the late 1930s and early ’40s she had three stories published in Weird Tales and another in Amazing Stories. After retiring from her job as a secretary in a school of public health, she kept thinking up ideas for horror stories and telling them to Wellman. He said they were “women’s stories” and she would have to write them herself. So Garfield returned to her typewriter, and over the past fifteen years the results have appeared in such magazines as Fantasy Tales, Whispers, Fantasy Book, Kadath and The Tome, as well as several anthologies, including The Year’s Best Horror Stories, The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales and The Mammoth Book of Vampires.
DAVID (S.) GARNETT (b. 1947) was born in Liverpool and currently lives in West Sussex. He has published five science fiction novels (the first, Mirror in the Sky, when he was nineteen) and a collection of short stories under his own name. Garnett is also the author of numerous other books under various pseudonyms, including novelizations of the movie The Hills Have Eyes Part II and the role-playing game Warhammer: Shadowbreed (as “David Ferring”). His short fiction has been published in Interzone, Penthouse, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and such anthologies as Other Edens, Shadows and The Year’s Best Horror Stories. As an editor, he produced three volumes of The Orbit Science Fiction Yearbook, two volumes of Zenith, and is currently editing the latest incarnation of New Worlds. He is not the same David Garnett who wrote Aspects of Love.
CHARLES L. GRANT (b. 1942) has lived most of his life in north-western New Jersey. In 1964 he graduated from Trinity College, Connecticut, with a B.A. in History and English. A prolific editor, short-story writer and novelist, he sold his first story, “The House of Evil”, to The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1968. After publishing a number of science fiction novels like The Shadow of Alpha, Ascention and The Ravens of the Moon, he began to develop his unique brand of “quiet” horror in more than thirty novels, such as The Curse (1977), The Hour of the Oxrun Dead, The Grave, The Bloodwind, The Soft Whisper of the Dead, The Nestling, The Tea Party, The Orchard, The Pet, For Fear of the Night, In a Dark Dream, Dialing the Wind, Stunts, Fire Mask and Something Stirs. His stories have been collected in Tales from the Nightside, A Glow of Candles and Nightmare Seasons, and he was the editor of the popular Shadows (twelve volumes), Midnight and Greystone Bay anthologies, amongst others. As “Geoffrey Marsh”, Grant is the author of the “Lincoln Blackthorne” series of fantasy adventures, and the “Kent Montana” series of movie spoofs are published under his pseudonym “Lionel Fenn”. He has won the Nebula Award, the British Fantasy Award and the World Fantasy Award and published more than 125 short stories.
COLIN GREENLAND (b. 1954) was born in Dover, England, and lives in Harrow. From 1980 to 1982 he was the Arts Council Writer in Residence at the Science Fiction Foundation. The Entropy Exhibition, his Oxford University doctorate study of Michael Moorcock’s magazine New Worlds, was given the University of California’s Eaton Award for science fiction criticism in 1985. Greenland’s novels include The Hour of the Thin Ox, Other Voices, Harm’s Way, and Take Back Plenty, which in 1991 became the first book ever to win both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best SF Novel. His book and film reviews appear frequently in The Sunday Times, The Face and elsewhere. He is also the reviews editor of Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction.
R. S. (ROBERT STEPHEN) HADJI (b. 1953) was born in London, Ontario, Canada, where he admits he enjoyed “an idyllic childhood roaming the woods in search of salamanders”. Eventually moving to Toronto, Hadji has become a noted authority on horror fiction, with articles published in, amongst others, Myriad, Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine, American Fantasy and The Penguin Book of Horror and the Supernatural. He was also the founding editor of the Canadian magazine Borderland and was a judge for the 1988 World Fantasy Awards.
PETER HAINING (b. 1940) was born in Middlesex, England, and now lives in a sixteenth-century (haunted) house in Suffolk. Haining has been described as “the most prolific anthologist of horror fiction in the world”, and certainly the number of volumes he has compiled since his first in 1965, The Hell of Mirrors, supports this view. He began his career as a journalist in Essex and a story about Satanic desecration sparked his interest in the occult, resulting in his first book, Devil Worship in Britain (1964). Since then he has edited numerous collections, anthologies and nonfiction volumes such as The Craft of Terror, The Evil People, The Hollywood Nightmare, The Ghouls, Irish Tales of Terror, Great British Tales of Terror, Clans of Darkness, The Fantastic Pulps, Weird Tales, The Black Magic Omnibus, M.R. James’ Book of the Supernatural, Movie Monsters, The Mummy: Stories of the Living Dead, Midnight Tales (by Bram Stoker), The Best Supernatural Stories of Wilkie Collins and The Best Supernatural Stories of John Buchan. More recently, he has produced several media-related volumes including The Doctor Who File, Doctor Who: The Time Traveller’s Guide, Doctor Who: 25 Glorious Years and The Television Sherlock Holmes.
JOE HALDEMAN (b. 1943) sold his first story, “Out of Phase”, to Galaxy in 1969. He took a BS in physics and astronomy, doing postgraduate work in mathematics and computer science before being drafted to Vietnam as a combat engineer. His first science fiction novel, The Forever War, proved to be a popular and critical success, winning both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and he followed it with Mindbridge, All My Sins Remembered, a Star Trek novel: Planet of Judgment, Into the Out Of, Tool of the Trade, Buying Time (UK: The Long Habit of Living), the Worlds trilogy, and The Hemingway Hoax (which won the 1991 Hugo in its novella version). He has edited the SF anthologies Cosmic Laughter and Study War No More, and his short fiction and poetry has appeared in Playboy, Omni, Cutting Edge and Blood Is Not Enough. Haldeman also scripted the 1989 movie Robot Jox for director Stuart Gordon.
DAVID G. HARTWELL (b. 1941) is a multiple Hugo Award nominee for Best Editor. In 1963 he received a B.A. from Williams College, followed by an M.A. in English from Colgate University (1965) and a Ph.D in Comparative Medieval Literature from Columbia University (1973). A reviewer, columnist and awards administrator, Hartwell has edited such publications as The Little Magazine, Cosmos and The New York Review of Science Fiction. He has been a consulting science fiction editor at New American Library, Gregg Press and Waldenbooks Otherworlds Club, Editor-in-Chief of Berkley SF, and Director of Science Fiction for Timescape/Pocket Books and Arbor House. He is currently a consulting editor at Tor Books. Hartwell lives in Pleasantville, New York, and is the author of Age of Wonders, a nonfiction study of the science fiction field, and has edited such anthologies as Christmas Ghosts and Spirits of Christmas (both with Kathryn Cramer), Masterpieces of Fantasy and Enchantment, The World Treasury of Science Fiction, Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder and Foundations of Fear. In 1988 he won the World Fantasy Award for his huge historical horror anthology The Dark Descent as well as the Special Award — Professional.
GEORGE HAY (1922-1997) was born in Chelsea, London, and he later moved to Hastings, East Sussex. Author, editor and science fiction enthusiast, he was the founder and a Council member of the Science Fiction Foundation. Hay’s novels include Man, Woman and Android (1951) and This Planet for Sale (1952), and he was responsible for the reprinting of fantasy novels, plays and stories by such authors as Lord Dunsany, Walter de la Mare, Robert Aickman, Iain Sinclair etc. In 1978 he edited The Necronomicon — a spoof edition of H.P. Lovecraft’s fabled forbidden book, and he worked on a sequel, The R’lyeh Text (1995). He spent his life publicizing SF ideas and campaigned to get Applied Science Fiction accepted in the educational curriculum in Britain.
ROBERT HOLDSTOCK (b. 1948) was born in a remote corner of Kent and currently lives in London. The eldest of five children, he read Applied Zoology at the University College of North Wales and holds a Master’s degree in Medical Zoology. His first published story was “Pauper’s Plot” in New World
s (1968) and he became a full-time writer in 1976. Among the novels published under his own name are Eye Among the Blind (1976), Earthwind, Necromancer, Where Time Winds Blow, In the Valley of the Statues, the movie novelization The Emerald Forest, the World Fantasy Award-winning Mythago Wood, Lavondyss, The Fetch and The Hollowing. Holdstock’s short fiction has been collected in The Bone Forest, he has co-written (with Malcolm Edwards) the text of five illustrated books, co-edited Stars of Albion with Christopher Priest and three volumes of Other Edens with Christopher Evans. He has also produced a bewildering array of novels under a variety of pseudonyms, including The Satanists, the novelization Legend of the Werewolf, and the “The Professionals”, “Beserker”, “Raven”, “Bulman” and six-volume “Night Hunter” series.
ROBERT E. (ERVIN) HOWARD (1906-1936) was born and lived all his life in a Texas not far removed from Pioneer days. He began writing at the age of 15, and although considered something of a misfit by his friends and neighbours, he made his first professional sale with “Spear and Fang” in the July 1925 Weird Tales. Responsible for almost single-handedly popularizing the heroic fantasy genre, he soon became one of the most prolific contributors to the pulp magazines, creating such memorable characters as Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, King Kull, Red Sonja and, his most famous, Conan the Cimmerian (the last two adapted by Hollywood in the 1980s). Besides his fantasy fiction and verse, Howard wrote about a wide range of topics, including sports stories, historical adventure, western, pirate, detective and Oriental mystery. His best-known horror tales include “Black Canaan”, “Worms of the Earth”, “Pigeons from Hell” and the Lovecraft-inspired “The Thing on the Roof. On the morning of June llth 1936, the thirty-year-old author ascertained that his mother (to whom he was devoted) would not regain consciousness from a coma. He calmly got into his car, rolled up the window, and shot himself in the head. As an epitaph, he left the following couplet on his typewriter: “All fled — all done, so lift me on the pyre: The Feast is over and the lamps expire.” Robert E. Howard’s continued influence on new generations of writers cannot be undervalued, and his books reached a peak of popularity during the mid-1970s.
SHAUN HUTSON (b. 1958) lives and writes in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. Described as “the sort of writer who inspires kindly old grannies to lobby their local library to remove his books from the shelves”, the self-confessed heavy metal music fan and frustrated drummer published his first novel in 1980. With the publication of Slugs (1982), an audacious blend of explicit sex and gratuitous violence, Hutson’s work met with instant popular appeal, and he has subsequently produced a steady stream of similar volumes with titles like Spawn, Shadows, Erebus, Deathday, Breeding Ground, Relics, Victims, Assassin, Nemesis, Renegades and Captives, as well as a Horror Film Quiz Book. Slugs The Movie was produced in 1987 by Spanish director Juan Piquer Simon, and Hutson lists among his hobbies “irritating and annoying people” and a desire “to see euthanasia introduced for critics …”
MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI (b. 1944) was born in Barnet, Hertfordshire, but was educated and lived in France for more than twenty years. Publisher, critic, translator, anthologist and author of more than twenty books, he has continued the exploits of Michael Moorcock’s character Jerry Cornelius in a number of stories, and is the editor of Travelling Towards Epsilon, The Complete Book of SF and Fantasy Lists, Lands of Never, Beyond Lands of Never, the “Black Box” and “Blue Murder” series of thrillers, three volumes of New Crimes, and 100 Great Detectives. He currently runs the London specialist bookstore Murder One.
M. R. (MONTAGUE RHODES) JAMES (1862-1936) was born at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was curate. A serious child, he developed a lifelong interest in medieval books and antiquities at an early age. He was educated at Eton and later King’s College, Cambridge, where he declined to follow his father and eldest brother into the Church. In 1905 he became Provost of King’s and was Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1913-15 before returning to Eton as Provost in 1918. He has been described as “an unlikely author of some of the most alarming and unforgettable ghost stories in the English language”, most of them occasional pieces, written for friends or college magazines. Among his most famous tales are such subtle chillers as “Lost Hearts”, “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-Book”, “The Mezzotint”, “Casting the Runes” (filmed in 1957 as Night of the Demon) and the classic “Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad”. The first collection of James’ tales was Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, published in 1904, followed by More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, A Thin Ghost and Others and A Warning to the Curious. An omnibus volume entitled The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James appeared in 1931. His favourite author was J. Sheridan Le Fanu, whom he described as “absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories”, and in 1923 he collected and reprinted some of Le Fanu’s stories from forgotten Victorian periodicals in Madam Crowl’s Ghost.
DIANA WYNNE JONES (b. 1934) was born in London and currently lives in Bristol with her husband and their sons. She is half-Welsh, of a family which reputedly descends from Morgan the Pirate, and decided to be a writer at the age of eight. Jones’ stories of witches, hobgoblins and magic have delighted young readers and adults since Changeover in 1970. Her prolific output of YA books includes The Ogre Downstairs, Cart and Cwidder, Dogsbody, The Eight Days of Luke, Power of Three, Charmed Life, The Magicians of Caprona, The Time of the Ghost, The Homeward Bounders, Witch Week, Archer’s Goon (adapted for television in 1992), Fire and Hemlock, A Tale of Time City, Howl’s Moving Castle, its sequel Castle in the Air, and Black Maria (USA: Aunt Maria). Her short fiction was collected in The Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories, and she edited the fantasy anthology Hidden Turnings. Jones won the Guardian Award in 1977, was runner-up for the Children’s Book Award in 1981, and has been a multiple runner-up for the Carnegie Medal.
MARVIN KAYE (b. 1938) was born in Philadelphia and currently lives in New York City. A graduate of Pennsylvania State University and the University of Denver, he has a B.A. in Theatre and an M.A. in English Literature. Author, actor, lecturer, public speaker, singer, playwright, editor and columnist, his short fiction has appeared in Amazing, Fantastic, Fantasy Tales, Fantasy Macabre, Galileo, Night Cry, Weird Tales and such anthologies as Arabesque II, Magical Wishes and The Year’s Best Fantasy Stories. Kaye is the author of a number of horror, mystery, science-fantasy and suspense novels (some in collaboration with Parke Godwin). These include Ghosts of Night and Morning, A Cold Blue Light, The Masters of Solitude, Wintermind, The Incredible Umbrella, The Amorous Umbrella, The Soap Opera Slaughters, The Laurel and Hardy Murders, Bullets for Macbeth, The Nautical Umbrella and Fantastique. He has also edited such excellent anthologies as Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural, Ghosts, Brother Theodore’s Chamber of Horrors, Fiends and Creatures, Devils and Demons, Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies, Witches and Warlocks, 13 Plays of Ghosts and the Supernatural, Haunted America: Star-Spangled Supernatural Stories and Lovers and Other Monsters. Kaye’s nonfiction volumes include The Histrionic Holmes and three handbooks of Magic.
GARRY KILWORTH (b. 1941) was born in York and spent his formative years in Aden. He studied English at King’s College, London, after twenty years of global travel with the Royal Air Force and, later, Cable and Wireless. More recently he has lived in Hong Kong for several years before moving to Ashingdon, Essex, with his wife Annette. Kilworth’s first science fiction story, “Let’s Go to Golgotha”, was published in The Gollancz/Sunday Times Best SF Stories anthology in 1975, having won the competition. His first SF novel, In Solitary, appeared two years later, since when he has written more than sixty short stories and is the prolific author of many science fiction, fantasy, horror, mainstream and young adult books, including Theatre of Timesmiths, Witchwater Country, The Wizard of Woodworld, Cloudrock, Abandonati, Spiral Winds, The Voyage of the Vigilance, Hunter’s Moon (USA: The Foxes of First Dark), The Rain Ghost, Midnight’s Sun, The Drowners, The Third Dragon, The Gulli-Gulli Man and Frost Dance
rs. His short fiction has been collected in The Songbirds of Pain; In the Hollow of the Deep-Sea Wave; Dark Hills, Hollow Clocks: Stories from the Otherworld and In the Country of Tattooed Men, while an urban horror novel, The Street, was published under the pseudonym “Garry Douglas”.
STEPHEN KING (b. 1947) is arguably the most popular novelist in the history of American fiction and is indisputably the most successful horror writer of all time, with more than 100 million copies of his books in print. Born in Portland, Maine, he currently lives in Bangor with his wife, Tabitha, and their three children. His first published story was “I Was a Teenage Graverobber” in a 1965 comic book fanzine. He made his first professional sale with “The Glass Floor” in Startling Mystery Stories (1967), which was quickly followed by sales to better-paying markets. King’s first novel, Carrie, appeared in 1974, since when he has published a phenonomenal string of bestsellers: ‘Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, Cujo, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger, Cristine, Cycle of the Werewolf, Pet Sematary, The Talisman (with Peter Straub), The Eyes of the Dragon, It, The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three, Misery, The Tommyknockers, The Dark Half, The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands, Needful Things and Gerald’s Game. His short fiction and novellas have been collected in Night Shift, Different Seasons, Skeleton Crew and Four Past Midnight, and he wrote a nonfiction volume about the field, Danse Macabre. As “Richard Bachman” he has also published Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, The Running Man and Thinner. Most of King’s books and stories have been filmed or optioned by Hollywood; he wrote and directed Maximum Overdrive (1986), and his original screenplays include Creepshow and Sleepwalkers. There are numerous volumes available dissecting his work.
T. E. D. KLEIN (b. 1947) is a native New Yorker who has been described as “one of the finest stylists among modern horror writers.” He became a horror enthusiast after discovering the works of H.P. Lovecraft while studying at Brown University. His blending of themes found in Lovecraft and Machen’s fiction resulted in the acclaimed short story The Events at Poroth Farm”, first published in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series II (1974). This was expanded to novel-length in the British Fantasy Award-winning The Ceremonies (1984), which he followed with Dark Gods (collecting three novelettes: “Prey”, “Nadelman’s Gold”, “Black Man with a Horn”, and the short novel, “Children of the Kingdom”). For five years Klein was editor of the successful Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine and he also edited the true-crime magazine, CrimeBeat. In 1994 he scripted the Dario Argento movie Trauma.
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