The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  Britain’s monthly Book and Magazine Collector included profiles of authors Nelson S. Bond by Mike Ashley and Tod Robbins by David Ian Chapman, plus a report by Richard Dalby on the auction of a complete Aurthur Rackham library in London in May.

  With editor-in-chief Charles N. Brown celebrating his sixty-fifth birthday in 2002, Locus marked its thirty-fourth year of publication and five hundredth issue. The definitive news and reviews periodical of the SF and fantasy genre also featured interviews with Tim Powers, China Miéville, Stephen Baxter, Barry N. Malzberg, Graham Joyce, Paul McAuley, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Elizabeth Hand, Kelly Link, Neil Gaiman and Gene Wolfe, Dan Simmons, Jeff VanderMeer, veteran publisher Betty Ballantine and Charles Brown himself. Brown also finally gave up his editorial title, with Jennifer A. Hall taking over as executive editor of the monthly magazine.

  Despite the monthly cover date, DNA Publications’ new incarnation of Science Fiction Chronicle suffered from an erratic publishing schedule and unattractive design. Along with the often dated news and reviews columns by Paul Kincaid, Don D’Ammassa, Jeff Rovin, Steven Sawicki, Brian Keene and Mike Jones, the glossy “professional” trade journal also included guest articles by Spider Robinson, Eric Brown, Allen M. Steele, Cecilia Tan, Paul Barnett, Darrell Schweitzer, Alan Dean Foster, Marvin Kaye and John Gregory Betancourt, plus interviews with Spider and Jeanne Robinson, S.M. Stirling, Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, Ellen Datlow, Jane Yolen, Chris Bunch, Allen Steele and the ubiquitous Neil Gaiman.

  With the September issue, SFC’s title was shortened simply to Chronicle and founder and news editor Andrew I. Porter was fired by publisher Warren Lapine, who replaced him with John R. Douglas.

  Published quarterly, The Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America featured columns and articles by Mike Resnick and Barry N. Malzberg (including a hilariously misguided piece about editing anthologies), Michael Cassutt, Howard Waldrop, John Clute, Judith Blish, Paul Di Filippo and others, along with useful market reports and round-table discussions between Gordon Van Gelder, Ellen Datlow and Claude Lalumierè, and Stanley Schmidt, Datlow, Gardner Dozois and Van Gelder.

  The May/June issue of Vector, edited by Andrew M. Butler for the British Science Fiction Association, included an interview with China Miéville and articles on the Gollancz Fantasy Masterworks series and H.P. Lovecraft.

  The Dracula Society continued to produce its newsletter Voices from the Vaults, containing news and reviews for vampire fans. In 2002, the Society’s Hamilton Deane Award was presented to the writers of the BBC radio play There Are Such Things, while Roger Johnson won The Children of the Night Award.

  The Ghost Story Society published three more excellent perfect-bound issues of All Hallows edited by Barbara Roden and Christopher Roden. Along with a lively letters column discussing spooky moments in film and television, the magazine featured the usual insightful and informative columns by Roger Dobson, Mark Valentine, David G. Rowlands, John Howard, James Doig and Richard Dalby; new fiction from Stephen Volk, Don Tumasonis, Simon Bestwick and many others, plus artwork by Douglas Walters, Allen Koszowski, Dallas Goffin, Jason C. Eckhardt, Paul Lowe and veteran Alan Hunter.

  In February, The Horror Writers Association announced that, as a result of a poll in the HWA Newsletter, it had decided to alternate six print issues and six electronic PDF issues of the magazine under the editorship of Kathryn Ptacek.

  Under the editorship of Melissa Murphy, The British Fantasy Society’s Prism newsletter lost its regular schedule, but still managed to publish a number of informative issues, including a double-sized volume. Along with the usual news, reviews and letters, these included columns and articles by Chaz Brenchley, Peter Coleborn, Allen Ashley and Matt Williams; interviews with James Herbert, Ramsey Campbell, China Miéville, David Gemmell, Simon Clark and Willie Meikle, plus a short-short story by Tim Lebbon and an extract from Campbell’s latest novel. The two issues of the Society’s Dark Horizons were edited by Debbie Bennett and featured stories by Tina Rath, Chris Naylor, Ian Hunter, Steve Lines and Allen Ashley, among others.

  The most impressive volume yet from Peter Crowther’s PS Publishing imprint was probably Ramsey Campbell, Probably: On Horror and Sundry Fantasies. Edited by S.T. Joshi, and featuring an Introduction by Douglas E. Winter and tipped-in photo-illustrations by J.K. Potter, the 400-plus page volume collected nearly seventy essays and non-fiction pieces by one of the most insightful writers on horror. It was published in a special signed and numbered edition of 500 paperbacks and a hardcover printing of 200 slip cased copies.

  Edited by the author and Stanley Wiater, The Brian Lumley Companion included essays, interviews, bibliographies and concordances by Barbara Ann Lumley, W. Paul Ganley, Stephen Jones, Robert M. Price, Robert Weinberg and others. The Tor Books hardcover featured eight pages of art and photographs and was available as a regular trade edition, and in a signed, slip cased printing of 400 numbered copies and fifty lettered copies which sold out before publication.

  Originally published in 1998, Citadel Press reissued Stephen J. Spignesi’s The Lost Work of Stephen King: A Guide to Unpublished Manuscripts, Story Fragments, Alternative Versions and Oddities in a trade paperback edition. King was also the subject of a Pocket Essential written by Ashok Banker.

  Mysteries of Time and Spirit: The Letters of H.P. Lovecraft and Donald Wandrei was the first volume in Night Shade Books’ “Lovecraft Letters” series, edited by S.T. Joshi and David E. Schultz. It was available in both hardcover and trade paperback editions.

  The Science of Vampires by Katherine Ramsland, Ph.D looked at everything from “Vampire Personality Disorder” to “Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Vampire Sex but Were Afraid to Ask”.

  From Greenwood Press, The Fantastic Vampire: Studies in the Children of the Night edited by James Craig Holte contained academic essays on the work of such authors as Bram Stoker, Anne Rice and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro.

  Fighting the Forces: What’s at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a collection of critical essays about the TV show edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox and David Lavery.

  Published by The British Fantasy Society in a chapbook edition that quickly sold out, Jeff Gardiner’s study The Age of Chaos: The Multiverse of Michael Moorcock contained an Introduction by the author himself. Illustrated by Bob Covington, there was also a numbered hardcover edition signed by all the contributors, including Moorcock.

  Monsters: Evil Beings, Mythical Beasts, and All Manner of Imaginary Terrors was an illustrated study of mythical monsters by anthropology professor David D. Gilmore, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

  An expansion of his father E.F. Bleiler’s 1982 reference work, editor Richard Bleiler’s Supernatural Fiction Writers: Contemporary Fantasy and Horror included entries on 116 authors who had been writing since 1985 and was published in two huge volumes by the Gale Group/Charles Scribner’s Sons.

  Max Allan Collins not only novelized the movie The Scorpion King, but also wrote Before the Dawn, the first tie-in to the Dark Angel TV series.

  Other blockbuster film tie-ins included MIIB: Men in Black II by Esther M. Friesner, Star Trek: Nemesis by J.M. Dillard, and Spider-Man by Peter David. Behind the Mask of Spider-Man by Mark Cotta Vaz looked at the making of the movie.

  Sean Desmond’s International Horror Guild Award-winning novel Adam’s Fall was reissued in a movie tie-in edition as Abandon, while Star Trek author Keith R.A. DeCandido novelized Darkness Falls, which featured an evil Tooth Fairy seeking revenge.

  John A. Keel’s 1975 book The Mothman Prophecies was reissued to tie in with the film starring Richard Gere.

  Pocket Book’s incredibly popular series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer young-adult books continued with Oz: Into the Wild and The Wisdom of War by Christopher Golden, Crossings by Mel Odom, Little Things by Rebecca Moesta and These Our Actors by Ashley McConnell and Dori Koogler. Sweet Sixteen by Scott Ciencin and Tempted Champions by Yvonne Navarro both featured Dawn as a character, while The Cor
delia Collection contained three stories by Nancy Krulik.

  Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Journals of Rupert Giles, Vol.1 collected three stories by Nancy Holder and eight pages of colour photographs, while Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Slayer, Vol.1 was an anthology of seven stories published in hardcover by the Science Fiction Book Club.

  The show’s spin-off series Angel was equally popular among young adult readers, with Haunted and Stranger to the Sun by Jeff Mariotte, Image by Mel Odom and Vengeance by Scott Ciencin and Dan Jolley. Endangered Species by Nancy Holder and Jeff Mariotte was the first Angel hardcover, and Angel: The Longest Night Vol.1 was an anthology of twelve stories set over a single night.

  Based on the TV adventures of three witchy sisters battling demons, the Charmed books also proved a hit with younger readers as the series reached its fifteenth volume with Charmed Again and Date With Death by Elizabeth Lenhard, Garden of Evil by Emma Harrison, and Spirit of the Wolf and Dark Vengeance by Diana G. Gallagher.

  John DeChancie’s Witchblade: Talons and Witchblade: A Terrible Beauty were based on the TV series about a modern warrior and her ancient magical weapon.

  Aimed at pre-teen readers, the Sabrina the Teenage Witch books made it to #46 with Tiger Tale by Mel Odom, Know-it-All by Lesa Fielder, Topsy-Turvey by Paul Ruditis, Hounded by the Baskervilles by Mercer Warriner, and The Witch That Launched a Thousand Ships and Off to See the Wizard both by Nancy Krulik.

  The Steven Spielberg/SciFi Channel’s epic ten-part miniseries Taken was novelized by Thomas H. Cook.

  In July, Games Workshop broke the £100 million sales barrier for the first time. Thanks to the group’s Warhammer and Lord of the Rings titles, turnover was up by 17 per cent to £108.6 million over the previous twelve months and profits rose by 20 per cent to £13.5 million. Pre-tax profits rose by 8 per cent to £6.5 million in the six months to 1 December.

  Although billed as “a Warhammer novel”, Silver Nails from Games Workshop’s Black Library imprint was actually a collection of five novellas (two original) by Kim Newman writing as “Jack Yeovil”, featuring his vampire character Genevieve. The same publisher also issued welcome reprints of the author’s previous volumes in the series, Genevieve Undead and Beasts in Velvet.

  From Wizards of the Coast, Keith Francis Strohm’s The Tomb of Horrors was set in the “Greyhawk” series and involved a pair of adventurers stealing a magical artefact from the tomb of a sorcerer, while Mel Odom’s The Jewel of Turmish was a “Forgotten Realms” novel and featured a zombie sorcerer attempting to raise an army of conquest.

  During the summer, Wizards of the Coast fired a number of top executives after an internal investigation revealed an extensive fraud operation among its employees.

  Edo van Belkom’s “lost” gaming novel Army of the Dead was published by Prime Books. Originally scheduled to appear in 1997, the book was cancelled by Wizards of the Coast upon the company’s purchase of TSR.

  White Wolf’s World of Darkness series continued to produce a bewildering array of novelizations based on various role-playing games. Following on from the first two books in the “Clan Lasombra” series, Vampire: Shards and Vampire: Shadows, the vampire Lucita had to prevent a group of maddened mystics from plunging the world into eternal night in Vampire: Sacrifices, the final book in the trilogy by Bruce Baugh. Vampire: A Morbid Initiation by Philippe Boulle was the first volume of the “Victorian Age Vampire” trilogy, based on “Vampire: The Masquerade”.

  Dark Ages: Nosferatu by Gherbod Fleming, Dark Ages: Assamite by Stefan Petrucha and Dark Ages: Cappadocian by Andrew Bates were the first three novels in the epic thirteen-part series of “Dark Ages Clan Novels”, chronicling a vast conflict amongst the vampires of the Middle Ages.

  World of Darkness: Werewolf: Bone Gnawers & Stargazers was an omnibus of two novels in White Wolf’s “Werewolf Tribe Novel” series, the first by Bill Bridges and Justin Achilli and the second by Bridges alone. Other “Tribe” omnibus volumes included Werewolf: Children of Gaia & Uktena by Richard Lee Byers and Stefan Petrucha, and Werewolf: Silver Fangs & Glass Walkers by Carl Bowen and Tim Dedopulos. The savage Garou had one last chance to protect Gaia and defeat a terrible monstrosity in Black Spiral Dancers & Wendigo by Eric Griffin and Bill Bridges, the seventh and final volume in the series.

  World of Darkness: Predator & Prey: Mage by Carl Bowen and Predator & Prey: Executioner by Gherbod Fleming were based around another role-playing game, while World of Darkness: Lucifer’s Shadow, edited by Philippe Boulle, contained ten original stories based on White Wolf’s new property “Demon: The Fallen”, about fallen angels in the modern world.

  Richard E. Dansky’s Exalted: Beloved of the Dead was the first volume in the “Trilogy of the Second Age”, based on the role-playing game set before the World of Darkness.

  Diablo #3: The Kingdom of Shadow by Richard Knaak was adapted from the computer game from Blizzard Entertainment.

  Leading comics and graphic novels distributor LPC Group filed for bankruptcy protection in April and was liquidated in July after its bank unexpectedly recalled the company’s revolving line of credit and seized $1.4 million in cash receipts set aside to pay publishers.

  In November, Stan Lee filed a $10 million lawsuit against Marvel Comics, claiming a 1998 deal with the company entitled him to a 10 per cent share of profits from film and TV projects that use his characters, along with a portion of the merchandising revenue. Marvel claimed that although such films as Spider-Man and X-Men had earned an estimated $404 million and $157 million respectively, they have not shown a “profit” under the terms of the agreement.

  In a separate case, 87-year-old Joseph H. Simon sued Marvel to regain the rights to his character Captain America, whom he created in the late 1930s. Simon had already regained the rights in 1999 under a provision of the 1976 Copyright Act, but Marvel successfully sued to retain the character.

  In October, writer Neil Gaiman won his nine-count lawsuit against comics tycoon Todd McFarlane, establishing his copyright interest in three characters in McFarlane’s Spawn universe, along with five comics he had written. Gaiman was awarded $45,000 (the full amount requested by his lawyers) for unauthorized use of his name and biography to imply that he’d endorsed a recent reprint of some of this material. With more in back royalties possibly due, it was speculated that as part of the settlement McFarlane would be asked to release whatever rights he may have to the MiracleMan comic. Any profits beyond lawyers’ fees were donated by Gaiman to such charities as the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund.

  Dark Horse Books adapted two of Gaiman’s short stories as graphic novels: Harlequin Valentine (reprinted in Best New Horror Volume Eleven) was illustrated by John Bolton, and Murder Mysteries was illustrated by P. Craig Russell.

  From the same publisher, in collaboration with Editions Carabas, Vampires collected artwork depicting the undead from a number of international artists, including Gary Gianni and David Lloyd.

  Written by Peter M. Lenkov and illustrated by Frazer Irving, the Dark Horse series Fort: Prophet of the Unexplained pitted nineteenth-century librarian and seeker of truth Charles Fort against an alien menace.

  Dr Jekyll & Mr Hyde was a graphic-novel adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson’s story by Lorenzo Mattotti and Jerry Kramsky, translated from the Italian.

  The second six-issue series of writer Alan Moore and artist Kevin O’Neill’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen pitched its team of nineteenth-century literary superheroes against H.G. Wells’s Martian war machines and also featured a guest appearance by the writer’s Dr Moreau.

  From Moonstone, Kolchak: The Night Stalker: The Get of Belial was based on an unfilmed television script and adapted by Joe Gentile, Art Nichols and Felix Serrano.

  Possibly one of the finest-looking illustrated books ever produced in the genre was Art of the Imagination: 20th Century Visions of Science Fiction, Horror and Fantasy from Collectors Press. Containing more than 760 glossy full-colour pages, this gigantic volume collected th
ree previously published books by Frank M. Robinson, Robert Weinberg and Randy Broecker, along with a new Introduction by Robinson. Although there were a few minor design glitches, this new compilation featured even better cover reproductions than in the original volumes.

  Spectrum 9: The Best in Contemporary Fantasy Art was, as usual, edited by Cathy and Arnie Fenner and published by Underwood Books. This year’s volume, which had its release delayed by two months because of a dock workers’ strike, contained more than 300 full-colour works from 2001 by over 200 artists including John Jude Palencar, Brom, Dave McKean, Michael Whelan, Tom Kidd, Gary Gianni, Rick Berry and Leo and Diane Dillon.

  From the same publisher, The Art of Jeffrey Jones was also edited by the Fenners and contained 175 illustrations reproducing book covers, comics and previously unpublished private work. It was also available in a $100 signed and slip cased edition.

  Bradbury – An Illustrated Life: A Journey to Far Metaphor was an oversized “visual biography” of the author by Jerry Weist, containing magazine illustrations, movie stills, posters, book covers, comics, scripts, paintings and photos, along with a Foreword by Donn Albright and an Introduction by Bradbury himself.

  Paper Tiger’s The Fantasy Art Gallery edited by “Paul Barnett” (John Grant) featured interviews from the online magazine The Paper Snarl with twenty-five top genre artists, including Brom, Jim Burns, Steve Crisp, Vincent Di Fate, Bob Eggleton, Frank Kelly Freas, Lisa Snellings and the late Ron Walotsky. Each chapter was accompanied by a full-colour selection of the artists’ work chosen by the illustrators themselves.

  From the same imprint, The Art of Rowena was another stunning collection of full-colour art by Rowena Morrill, with text by Doris Vallejo and a Foreword by Greg and Tim Hildebrandt. Twin Visions featured more than 120 fantasy, SF and horror paintings by Boris Vallejo and Julie Bell.