The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 2003, Volume 14

by Stephen Jones

  Brunel nodded, and for a moment we were all lost to each other in our own thoughts. Then he raised his glass and said, “Whatever we believe we saw – or did not see – we have defeated something evil. Let’s be content with that.”

  You know the rest of his story, of course. Work on the Thames Tunnel eventually resumed, and it was completed eleven years later. At Brunel’s invitation I attended the opening ceremony and finally met his father; neither of us mentioned the skeleton that we had retrieved from the river, or anything of our adventures. By then, Isambard Kingdom Brunel had become the most famous engineer of an age in which engineers were feted as heroes. He built more than a thousand miles of railway. He built bridges and viaducts and tunnels; although he did not live to see it completed, he designed the beautiful suspension bridge over Clifton Gorge. He built three great ships, and the strain of finishing the last of these, the Great Eastern, brought on his early death.

  It was at Napier Yard in the Isle of Dogs, in the shadow of his great, doomed ship, that I last saw him. It was a foul, rain-whipped night in late December, some twenty-five years after the affair of Dr Pretorius and the lost temple. For the last four weeks, Brunel and his men had laboured unsuccessfully to ease the Great Eastern down steel tracks into the river, and now, to almost universal derision, the project was stalled. He was prematurely aged and very weary. He walked with the aid of a stick, and his face was haggard and deeply lined, and spots of hectic colour burned on his cheeks. His former energy showed only in his fierce gaze.

  He had engaged me to discover if the series of accidents and frustrations that had dogged the launch had been caused by some malign ghost or spirit. I walked the canted, half-finished deck with him, in gusty rain that a freezing wind harried across the dark marshes and muddy fields, and at the end told him that I could find nothing.

  “It’s good to know,” he said, after we had repaired to the shelter of his office. He had a bad cough, and his voice rasped from an old injury to his throat. “The press is taunting me, I am plagued by idiotic suggestions from half the cranks in England, my shipbuilder is so bitterly jealous of me, and so bad at managing his business, that he tries to avoid his commitments while at the same time demanding advance payments for work that he has not done . . . So it is good to know that I must deal with a mere engineering problem. I have already ordered more hydraulic presses from the Tangye brothers. They are excellent men, and in the New Year I will have her afloat, I promise you. Unless, of course,” he added, with a wry smile, “you could invoke that ghost from our old adventure, and raise such a tide that would float her, cradle and all, straight off the slipway.”

  “That is beyond such little power as I have, I fear,” I said.

  Brunel insisted on paying my fee. “I would swear that you haven’t aged a day since I last saw you,” he said, as I drew on my Inverness cape.

  “It is one of the few perks of my trade.”

  “You should—” he said, and was seized by a coughing fit, and had to take a drink of water before he could speak again. “You should teach me that trick. I still have so much to do.”

  “It would take up all of your life, as it has mine. You would have no time for your great works.”

  “Pretorius was right, wasn’t he? There are two worlds, and you must choose which to inhabit.”

  “He was wrong about most things,” I said. “But he was right about that.”

  I did not see Brunel again. The Great Eastern was launched in the New Year, but Brunel was still embroiled in disputes with his shipbuilder, who against his advice had been given the contract to outfit the ship. He suffered a massive stroke a few days before the Great Eastern’s maiden voyage, and as he lay dying received news that two of the ship’s boilers had exploded, destroying a funnel and the grand saloon, and killing six of the crew. His ship was so strongly built that she easily survived the disaster, but for Brunel it was a fatal blow, and he died the same night.

  As for Dr Pretorius, he somehow survived the destruction of the lost temple, and a few years later quit the country for the United States, ahead of a scandal involving a patent electric elixir. At the time I write, he is living in some great style on the Baja Coast in Mexico, having made a fortune treating movie stars at his clinic. Although I admit that I have a faint professional curiosity about how he has lived to such a great age (my own springs naturally from my familiarity with the matter of the dead though I suspect that there is nothing natural about Dr Pretorius’s longevity), nonetheless I have no desire to see him again, or to ever attempt to invoke the mingled ghost of Mithras and Ulpius Silvanus. As for myself, I have continued in my trade. I know no other.

  Our stories have no proper endings, but are braided into a great unending tapestry, and each of us, living or dead, understands only a little of that grand design.

  I was still standing in the sunlight at the edge of the excavation, thinking of the young engineer, and Dr Pretorius and the lost temple, when one of the archaeologists called to me. She was a slim, pretty young woman in dungarees and wellington boots, her hair tied up in a bright red scarf, her lively face further enlivened by a bold dash of lipstick, her hands on her hips as she looked up at me from the floor of the past. She had mistaken me for a visiting scholar, and wondered if I had business with Professor Grimes. He was away at a meeting, she said, and would not be back until tomorrow.

  “It is quite all right,” I said. “I’m no more than an idle spectator. There is nothing to trouble me here.”

  STEPHEN JONES & KIM NEWMAN

  Necrology: 2002

  MORE THAN EVER, WE ARE MARKING the passing of writers, artists, performers and technicians who, during their lifetimes, made significant contributions to the horror, science fiction and fantasy genres (or left their mark on popular culture and music in other, often fascinating, ways) . . .

  AUTHORS/ARTISTS

  60-year-old science fiction writer Jack (“Jay”) C. (Carroll) Haldeman II, the elder brother of author Joe Haldeman, died on January 1st of complications of kidney cancer after entering a hospice care centre. He produced nine novels and around 100 short stories since 1971, often writing in collaboration with his brother, his wife Barbara Delaplace, and fellow SF authors Harry Harrison, Andrew J. Offutt, Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. His books include Vector Analysis (1978), High Steel, Bill the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Zombie Vampires and the Star Trek novelization Perry’s Planet. He also contributed to the Spaceways series under the pseudonym “John Cleve”. In 1974 Haldeman chaired the World Science Fiction Convention in Washington, D.C.

  Mexican composer Juan García Esquivel, whose credits include TV’s Battlestar Galactica, died on January 3rd, aged 83.

  Comics artist John Buscema died of stomach cancer on January 10th, aged 74. After stints at Timely Comics and Dell (where he adapted the movie The 7th Voyage of Sinbad), he joined Marvel in 1966 where he worked on such titles as Conan the Barbarian, Silver Surfer, Howard the Duck, Ka-Zar, The Mighty Thor, Sub-Mariner, The Incredible Hulk, Fantastic Four, The Avengers and Raiders of the Lost Ark. He also designed She-Hulk and illustrated the daily Conan newspaper strip from 1978 onwards. He wrote the manual How to Draw Comics the Marvel Way with Stan Lee and, despite retiring in 1996, teamed up with Lee again in 2001 to radically reinvent Superman for a one-off publication from rival DC Comics.

  Emmy Award-winning TV writer Mike [Merrill D.] Marmer, whose credits include the 1970–72 series Lancelot Link Secret Chimp (as co-creator) and episodes of Gilligan’s Island, F Troop and Get Smart, died of pancreatic cancer on January 12th, aged 76.

  Cele Goldsmith [Lalli], the former editor of Amazing and Fantastic digest magazines from 1958 until 1965, was killed in an automobile accident on January 14th, aged 68. She apparently lost control of the vehicle and hit a tree near her Newtown, Connecticut, home. While an editor for Ziff-Davis, Goldsmith Lalli bought early stories by a number of authors, including Piers Anthony, Ben Bova, Thomas M. Disch, Harlan Ellison, Roger Zelazny and Ursula K. Le Guin. S
he won a Special Hugo Award in 1962. In 1998 she retired as editor-in-chief of Modern Bride magazine after thirty-three years.

  TV writer Gene Wyckoff (Eugene Wyckoff Bilik) died of complications from cancer on January 15th, aged 76. He scripted the 1950 ABC-TV series Buck Rogers starring Kim Dibbs.

  Film and TV character actor and singer Sheldon Allman died of heart failure on January 22nd, aged 77. As a songwriter, he worked on Mr. Ed and such cartoons as Super Chicken and George of the Jungle, and with Bobby “Boris” Pickett he co-wrote the 1967 stage musical I’m Sorry the Bridge is Out, You’ll Have to Spend the Night, which was filmed in 1994 as Frankenstein Sings (aka Monster Mash the Movie). His comedy LP Sing Along with Drac came out in 1960.

  British theatre, film and TV writer, director and producer John McGrath, who scripted Ken Russell’s sci-spy movie Billion Dollar Brain, died of pneumonia the same day, aged 66.

  Comic-book artist Kurt Schaffenberger, who worked on Captain Marvel for Fawcett in the 1940s and early 1950s, died of diabetes on January 24th, aged 81. He was also the artist on Lois Lane and other DC Comics titles.

  Animator T.M. “Tom” Yakutis died of lymphoma on January 25th, aged 72. He began his career as a storyboard artist at Disney in 1956 and later worked as a story director for Hanna-Barbera’s The Jetsons series and designed the 1977 cartoon feature Race for Your Life, Charlie Brown.

  Swedish fantasy and children’s writer Astrid Lindgren (Astrid Anna Amelia Ericsson) died in her sleep following a brief viral infection on January 28th, aged 94. Most famous for her 1941 book Pippi Longstocking and its various sequels, she also wrote the high fantasies The Brothers Lionhart and Ronja the Robber’s Daughter. Her 1954 novel Mio My Son was filmed in 1987 starring Christopher Lee. With total sales of Lindgren’s books exceeding 100 million, a Lindgren theme park opened in Sweden in 1989 and attracts 300,000 visitors each year. A stamp was issued in her honour in March 2002.

  60-year-old Cathleen Jordan (Cathleen Gunn), the editor of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine for twenty years, died in her sleep in New York City on January 31st. She had been ill with flu-like symptoms which were not thought to be serious. A posthumous winner of the 2002 Ellery Queen Award, Jordan also edited twenty-one anthologies taken from the magazine.

  Swiss-born mystery and young-adult author Isabelle Holland, whose novel Bump in the Night was filmed for TV in 1991, died on February 9th, aged 81. Her 1972 novel The Man Without a Face was made into a 1993 movie starring Mel Gibson.

  Author and film buff Alan G. (Gregory) Barbour died on February 12th, aged 68. The editor and publisher of Screen Facts Magazine, his books about the movies include Days of Thrills and Adventure, The Thrill of It All, A Thousand and One Delights, Cliffhanger and Saturday Afternoon at the Movies.

  Children’s author Virginia [Esther] Hamilton, whose second novel The House Dies Drear won an Edgar Allan Poe Award in 1968 and was filmed for TV in 1984, died of breast cancer on February 19th, aged 65. The Newbery Medal and National Book Award-winning author’s The Planet of Junior Brown was also filmed in 1997. Her other books include Zeely, M.C. Higgins the Great, Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush, and Willie Bea and the Time the Martians Landed.

  British novelist A. (Audrey) L. (Lilian) Barker died on February 21st, aged 83. The author of eleven acclaimed novels, she appeared in the first Pan Book of Horror Stories (1959) and was also a regular contributor to William Kimber’s ghost anthologies from 1979 until 1987.

  Innovative German musician and physicist Oskar Sala died in Berlin on February 26th, aged 91. An early pioneer in electronic music, he composed pieces for Snow White and Rose Red, The Strangler of Blackmoor Castle, The Secret of Dr Mabuse and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds.

  British fan and amateur film-maker Harry Nadler died of a heart attack at work on March 1st, aged 61. In 1966 he co-edited the one-shot fanzine Alien Worlds with Charles Partington, and from 1969 until 1971 he edited five issues of L’Incroyable Cinema, one of Britain’s seminal and best small-press fantasy-film magazines. In 1990 he founded and organized the annual Festival of Fantastic Films in Manchester.

  Disney animator and writer Bill Berg died of pneumonia on March 2nd, aged 84. He worked on the Donald Duck cartoon series and wrote for the TV shows Mickey Mouse Mouse Club and Wonderful World of Disney.

  Soviet screenwriter Fridrikh Gorenstein died in Berlin, Germany, on March 3rd, aged 69. In 1972 he co-scripted Solaris with director Andrei Tarkovsky.

  Country-music songwriter Harlan Howard died unexpectedly at his Nashville home the same day. He was 74 and had suffered from heart trouble for some time. Some of his biggest hits include “I Fall to Pieces”, “Busted”, “Heartaches by the Number” and “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail”. In 1961 he had fifteen songs on the country charts at the same time.

  69-year-old Bennett Byron Sims, former president of Warner Publishing where he oversaw Warner Books and DC Comics, died of cancer on March 5th. A former Warner Bros. motion picture executive and scriptwriter, he also came up with the National Enquirer’s slogan “Inquiring Minds Want to Know”.

  German-born surrealist painter Mati Klarwein (aka “Abdul Mati”), who designed psychedelic album covers for such musicians as Santana, Jimi Hendrix, Jerry Garcia and Earth Wind & Fire, died in Mallorca, Spain, on March 6th, aged 69. Klarwein also produced covers for various Ballantine books, including titles by Philip José Farmer, David Gerrold, John Wyndham and R.A. Lafferty.

  New Zealand-born author Cherry Wilder (Cherry Barbara Lockett) died on March 14th in a nursing home in Wellington after a long battle with cancer. She was 71. Her first story was published in 1974 in New Writings in SF 24, since when she also published poetry and criticism, and her short fiction appeared in many magazines and anthologies, including Interzone, Asimov’s Ghosts, Best SF 16, New Terrors, Dark Voices, Skin of the Soul, Phantoms of Venice, Gathering the Bones and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Her books include the Ditmar Award-winning “Torin” trilogy (The Luck of Brin’s Five, The Nearest Fire and The Tapestry Warriors), the “Rulers of Hylor” trilogy (A Princess of the Chameln, Yorath the Wolf and The Summer’s King), the “Rhomary” series (Second Nature and Signs of Life), and the horror novel Cruel Designs. Her collection Dealers in Light and Darkness was published in 1995 by Edgewood Press, and at the time of her death she left three unpublished novels and was working on a new “Hylor” trilogy for Tor books. In the late 1990s Wilder returned to her native New Zealand after living in West Germany with her late husband and two daughters since 1976.

  87-year-old Irish-American author R. (Raphael) A. (Aloysius) Lafferty died on March 18th after a long illness which included two strokes and the onset of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease. He did not start writing until he was in his forties, and his first SF story appeared in Science Fiction Stories in 1960. Over the next two decades he produced more than 200 short stories and over twenty novels, including Past Master (1968), Fourth Mansions, The Reefs of Earth, The Devil is Dead and Serpent’s Egg. Lafferty stopped writing in 1984, but his books continued to appear, many of them from small presses. He won the 1973 Hugo Award for his story “Eurema’s Dam” and the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 1990.

  British rock musician and novelist John B. (Barry) Spencer died of endocarditis on March 25th, aged 57. The founder of the influential Young Artists illustration agency, his eight genre books include the 1975 SF novel The Electronic Lullaby Meat Market and the “Charley Case” series.

  British scriptwriter and broadcaster Barry Took died of cancer on March 31st, aged 73. During the late 1950s and 1960s he collaborated with writer-performer Marty Feldman (who died in 1983) on a number of TV and radio series and the movie Every Home Should Have One (aka Think Dirty). His books include an autobiography, A Point of View (1990), and Star Turns: The Life and Times of Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd.

  Mystery and SF writer Henry Slesar died of complications from minor elective surgery on April 2nd, aged 74. The author of more than 500 short stories (unde
r his own name and as “O.H. Leslie”, “Jay Street”, “John Murray” and others), fifty-five radio plays and six books, he won two Edgar Awards. His story “Bottle Baby” was filmed as Terror from the Year 5000, he scripted the movie Two on a Guillotine and co-scripted the 1971 Murders in the Rue Morgue. He novelized the Ray Harryhausen film 20 Million Miles to Earth, and around fifty of his scripts were produced for the TV series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He also scripted episodes of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Twilight Zone, Tales of the Unexpected and Batman, and from 1968 until 1983 he was head writer for the Emmy Award-winning daytime soap opera The Edge of Night. As an advertising copywriter he is credited with creating the term “coffee break” in an ad campaign.

  Russian-born musical director David Chudnow, who began his career in the silent-movie era, died on April 8th, aged 99. His many low budget film credits include Torture Ship (1939), The Invisible Killer, The Mad Monster, The Devil Bat, Dead Men Walk, The Black Raven, Nabonga, The Chinese Cat, Charlie Chan in Black Magic, Lured, The Monster Maker, Siren of Atlantis and Red Planet Mars. He later became a producer for Herschell Gordon Lewis and for his son, film director Byron Chudnow.

  SF art historian and author Jon [Martin] Gustafson died on April 13th, aged 56. He had been hospitalized in January after a stroke complicated by diabetes, and his family terminated life support on April 8th after he had been in a coma for several weeks. He wrote Chroma: The Art of Alex Schomburg (1986) and he was a contributor to such books as The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Starlog Science Fiction Yearbook 1979 and The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction.

  Science fiction author, editor and critic Damon [Francis] Knight died after a long illness on April 15th, aged 79. After making his debut in the first issue of Stirring Science Stories in 1941, he published around seventeen novels, including Hell’s Pavement (aka Analogue Men), Masters of Evolution, The People Maker (aka A for Anything), The Rithian Terror and The World and Thorinn, and his more than 100 short stories include the 1950 classic “To Serve Man” (adapted for TV’s Twilight Zone in 1962). The Best of Damon Knight appeared in 1976. He briefly edited the SF magazines Worlds Beyond and If Science Fiction, as well as twenty-one volumes of the influential Orbit anthology series. His 1956 book of critical essays In Search of Wonder won the Hugo Award. The same year he co-created the Milford Science Fiction Writers’ Conference with James Blish and Judith Merril, and in 1965 he founded the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA). He was awarded the Grand Master Nebula Award in 1994, and his third and final wife was writer Kate Wilhelm.