The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19

by Stephen Jones

  Editor Gwilym Games’ Machenthology featured tributes to the author by Jerome K. Jerome, M. P. Shiel, Lady Cynthia Asquith, Michael Powell, Gerald Suster, Iain Sinclair, Tanith Lee, Mark Samuels, Simon Clark, TimLebbon, Gwyneth Jones, China Miéville and others, along with some obscure journalism by Machen himself.

  Edited by S. T. Joshi and Jack M. Haringa, Dead Reckonings was launched by Hippocampus Press as a bi-annual literary review magazine.

  The Ghost Story Society produced two bumper volumes of All Hallows in 2007, adding up to more than 600 pages of news, reviews, articles and original fiction. Along with interviews with veteran editor E. F. Bleiler and writers Dan Simmons and Stephen Volk, retrospectives of Devil Doll (1964) and The Queen of Spades (1949), and the always entertaining “Ramsey Campbell, Probably” column (on Val Lewton and Japanese film-maker Hayao Miyazaki), there were forty-seven stories by John L. Probert, Gary McMahon, James Cooper, Gary Fry, Rhys Hughes and others.

  The British Fantasy Society produced four editions of its newsletter, Prism. Jenny Barber was responsible for a double issue in the spring, and the editorial team of Jay Earles and Selina Lock took over for two attractively designed issues before handing over to Lee Harris to end the year with a full-colour edition. With the quality regularly improving, there were columns by Ramsey Campbell, James Barclay, Mark Morris and Eric Brown, along with several reports on the 2006 FantasyCon and the usual news and reviews.

  Under the guidance of new editorial team Peter Coleborn and Jan Edwards, the Society’s Dark Horizons passed its fiftieth issue with stories and poetry by Joyce Carol Oates, H. P. Lovecraft, Karl Edward Wagner, Reggie Oliver, Mike Chinn, Ian Hunter, Allen Ashley and Anne Gay, non-fiction from David A. Sutton and Juliet E. McKenna, plus interviews with Oates, Ellen Datlow, John Connolly and artist Anne Sudworth.

  As a Christmas present to BFS members, the December mailing included a special non-fiction chapbook, H P. Lovecraft in Britain: A Monograph by Stephen Jones. Detailing the history of how Lovecraft had been published in the UK, the booklet was limited to 750 copies signed by the writer and artist Les Edwards, who provided the interior illustrations and a full-colour cover.

  Sides from Cemetery Dance collected numerous non-fiction pieces by Peter Straub, mostly drawn from introductions, afterwords, essays and speeches, along with pseudo-critical commentary by the author’s fictional alter ego and avowed bete noire, “Putney Tyson Ridge, Ph.D”. The book was available in a signed, slipcased edition of 350 copies, and a traycased lettered edition of fifty-two copies ($200.00).

  American author John Lauritsen claimed in his controversial book The Man Who Wrote Frankenstein that Mary Shelley was a fraud, and that poet Percy Bysshe Shelly was actually the author of the novel. “I go further than denying her authorship,” said the Harvard-educated Lauritsen, “I deny that she was even a good writer.”

  Even the paranormal romance field started getting its own reference books. The Dark-Hunter Companion (aka Sherrilyn Kenyan’s Dark Hunter Handbook) by Sherrilyn Kenyon and Alethea Kontis was about the series of books by Kenyon (aka “Kinley MacGregor”), including a travel guide around New Orleans and recipes.

  Available as a print-on-demand volume from Hippocampus Press, Warnings to the Curious: A Sheaf of Criticism on M. R. James collected twenty-eight essays on the ghost story author, edited by S. T. Joshi and Rosemary Pardoe. From the same publisher, W. Paul Cook: The Wandering Life of a Yankee Printer edited by Sean Donnelly collected six articles about H. P. Lovecraft’s friend and fellow amateur journalist, along with thirteen articles and twentyfive poems written by Cook under the pen name “Willis T. Crossman”.

  From McFarland & Company, Horrifying Sex: Essays and Sexual Difference in Gothic Literature edited by Ruth Bienstock Anolik collected sixteen essays about the work of Clive Barker, Edgar Allan Poe, Ann Radcliffe and others, along with author bibliographies and a general index.

  McFarland’s Plagues, Apocalypses and Bug-Eyed Monsters: How Speculative Fiction Shows Us Our Nightmares was a look at specific themes in societal fears by Heather Urbanski. Available from the same imprint, the title of Robert E. Howard: A Collector’s Descriptive Bibliography of American and British Hardcover, Paperback, Magazine, Special and Amateur Editions, with a Biography pretty much summed up Leon Nielsen’s study.

  Jess Nevins’ Pulp Magazine Holdings Directory: Library Collections in North America and Europe was an alphabetical index of titles and bibliographic information along with details of library holdings.

  Edited by Benjamin Szumskyj, Fritz Leiber: Critical Essays collected eleven articles by Justin Leiber, S. T. Joshi and others, with a Foreword by John Pelan.

  Published in two hardcover volumes ($175.00) by Greenwood Press, Icons of Horror and the Supernatural: An Encyclopedia of Our Worst Nightmares edited by S. T. Joshi looked at twenty-four major classic monsters and supernatural beings with alphabetically arranged essays by Mike Ashley, Brian Stableford, Stefan Dziemianowicz and Darrell Schweitzer, among others.

  For those writers looking for new ideas, Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained may have held the answer. A group of specialist contributors revealed the truth behind everything from life on Mars to the mystery of the Mary Celeste in more than 1,250 alphabetical entries.

  The movie tie-ins of the year included Ghost Rider by Greg Cox, Spider-Man 3 by Peter David, Fantastic 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer by Daniel Josephs, Resident Evil: Extinction by Keith R. A. DeCandido and Memory by Davlin Bennett.

  Alan Dean Foster’s Transformers: Ghosts of Yesterday was the official prequel to the movie Transformers, which he also wrote the novelization of.

  Predator: Flesh and Blood by Jan Michael Friedman and Robert Greenberger was based on the Twentieth Century Fox movie series.

  From Dark Horse Books, The Bride of Frankenstein: Pandora’s Box by Elizabeth Hand and The Wolf Man: Hunter’s Moon by Michael Jan Friedman were based on the classic Universal movies.

  Richard Matheson’s seminal SF vampire novel, I Am Legend, was reissued in a film tie-in edition with ten other stories. Stephen King’s novella The Mist was published as a stand-alone movie title, while King’s 2002 collection Everything’s Eventual was also reissued to tie-in with the movie 1408 and went back into the US bestseller charts.

  Based on the screenplay by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, Beowulf by Caitlín R. Kiernan included an Introduction by Gaiman.

  Meanwhile, Gaiman’s novel Stardust, based on his 1998 graphic novel with Charles Vess, appeared in the US in two different movie tie-in editions, one including eight pages of colour stills and the other featuring additional material. The original graphic novel was also reissued by DC Comics/Vertigo in a new edition that added around thirty pages of sketches and the original proposal for the book.

  In Doctor Who: Sting of the Zygons by Stephen Cole, the Doctor and Martha travelled back to the Lake District in 1909, where a village was being terrorized by a giant, scaly monster.

  Martin Day’s Doctor Who: Wooden Heart, Jacqueline Rayner’s Doctor Who: The Last Dodo, Mark Morris’ Doctor Who: Forever Autumn, Paul Magrs’ Doctor Who: Sick Building, Mark Michalovski’s Doctor Who: Wetworld, Simon Guerrier’s Doctor Who: The Pirate Loop, James Swallow’s Doctor Who: Peacemaker and Trevor Baxendale’s Doctor Who: Wishing Well all featured TV’s tenth Doctor.

  Also available in BBC Books’ hardcover line were Andy Lane’s Torchwood: Slow Decay and Torchwood: Border Princess by Dan Abnett, while Peter Anghelides’ Torchwood: Another Life had the team of paranormal investigators tracking a serial killer through a rain-flooded Cardiff.

  Supernatural: Nevermore by Keith R. A. DeCandido and Supernatural: Witch’s Canyon by Jeff Mariotte were both based on The CW series, while several episodes of the NBC series formed the basis of Aury Wallington’s Heroes: Saving Charlie.

  Craig Shaw Gardner’s Battlestar Galactica: The Cylons’ Secret was the second novelization of the new series. It was followed by Battlestar Galactica: Sagittarius is Bleeding by Peter David and Battle
star Galactica: Unity by Steven Harper. Stargate Atlantis: Entanglement by Martha Wells was the sixth in that series.

  Tanya Huff’s 1990s “Victory Nelson” novels Blood Price, Blood Trail, Blood Lines, Blood Pact and Blood Debt were reissued to tie-in with the Lifetime TV series Blood Ties.

  Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Deathless by Keith R. A. DeCandido, Dark Congress by Christopher Golden and One Thing or Your Mother by Kristen Beyer were all based on the cancelled vampire TV show.

  Scott Ciencin’s Charmed: High Spirits was a young adult novelization based on another cancelled series.

  Hellboy: The Dragon Pool by Christopher Golden was based on the movie and comic series created by Mike Mignola, while 30 Days of Night: Immortal Remains by Steve Niles and Jeff Mariotte was based on the vampiric graphic novel series created by Niles.

  Initially announced for spring 2001 publication, Tim Lucas’ Mario Bava: All the Colors of the Dark finally saw print some six years late as a hernia-inducing 1,125-page hardcover. With a brief Introduction by Martin Scorsese and a Foreword by the late Riccardo Freda, this beautifully produced and designed volume told you more than you ever needed to know about the legendary Italian director and his work. Although arguably not worth the long wait, there was still no denying that it was probably the most impressive movie-related book of 2007.

  However, a close runner-up for that title was also Nightmare USA: The Untold Story of the Exploitation Independents, from FAB Press, in which author Stephen Thrower took an incisive look at American independent film-makers of the 1970s and early 1980s.

  Jonathan Rigby’s American Gothic: Sixty Years of Horror Cinema was a welcome follow-up to the author’s earlier volume English Gothic: A Century of Horror Cinema also published by Reynolds & Hearn. Profusely illustrated with black and white stills and posters, along with an impressive colour section, the book focused on many classic titles from the silent era up to the mid-1950s.

  Paul Kane’s The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy from McFarland & Company took an illustrated look at the series created by Clive Barker, with an Introduction by Doug (“Pinhead”) Bradley.

  Universal Horrors: The Studio’s Classic Films, 1931-1946 was a welcome updating of Tom Weaver, Michael Brunas and John Brunas’ definitive study, originally published in 1990.

  David Deal’s Television Fright Films of the 1970s examined almost 150 made-for-TV features.

  In McFarland’s Grimm Pictures: Fairy Tale Archetypes in Eight Horror and Suspense Films, Walter Rankin explored the fairy tale motifs and themes in such movies as Rosemary’s Baby and Alien.

  Published by Collectable Press, Bela Lugosi: Dreams and Nightmares was written by Lugosi scholar Gary D. Rhodes with Richard Sheffield who, as a teenage horror fan, befriended the Dracula actor during his final years.

  Issued as a hefty trade paperback by Telos Publishing, Zombie-mania: 80 Movies to Die For was a profusely illustrated guide by Dr Arnold T. Blumberg and Andrew Hershberger that included an extensive index of more than 550 titles and a brief Afterword by Shaun of the Dead actor Mark Donovan.

  A 500-copy limited edition of the 2005 tie-in book of MirrorMask, signed by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, was published by Subterranean Press at $125.00. The twenty-six copy lettered and tray-cased edition ($500.00) even came with an original drawing by McKean.

  Beowulf: The Script Book included both the motion-capture movie’s first and final scripts by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary, along with a sampling of some early concept artwork and story-boards, plus commentary by the writers.

  Published by Titan Books, Stardust: The Visual Companion looked behind the making of the fairy tale fantasy movie based on the graphic novel series by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. Written by Stephen Jones, with an Introduction by Gaiman, the oversized volume also included the shooting script by Jane Goldman and director Matthew Vaughn.

  Titan also issued revised and updated oversized hardcover editions of Starring Sherlock Holmes: A Century of the Master Detective on Screen by David Stuart Davies and The Hammer Story: The Authorised History of Hammer Films by Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes.

  Sinclair McKay’s A Thing of Unspeakable Horror: The History of Hammer Films was an official history of the House of Hammer from Aurum Press, using new interview material from surviving cast and crew.

  Published by Duke University Press, Undead TV: Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer edited by Elana Levine and Lisa Parks collected eight critical essays, a bibliography and a filmography.

  British aristocrat Lord Henry Baltimore encountered an ancient evil on the bloody battlefields of The Great War, and his story was told from various points-of-view in Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire, a novel by Christopher Golden and Mike Mignola that included more than 150 black and white illustrations by Hellboy creator Mignola.

  The Devil’s Rose was an illustrated novel by (Gerald) Brom about a group of escapees from Hell terrorizing Texas.

  Published by Feral House, Mexican Pulp Art was a full-colour collection of the weird, wild and just plain wacky paintings used for pulp novels and comics published South of the Border during the 1960s and 1970s. María Christina Tavera supplied a short, but informative, Introduction.

  From NonStop Press, Emshwiller: Infinity x Two was a profusely-illustrated biography of the late pulp artist with text by Luis Ortiz and introductions by his widow Carol Emshwiller and art consultant Alex Eisenstein.

  Edited and written by J. David Spurlock and Dean Motter, Mythos: The Fantasy Art Realms of Frank Brunner collected the work of the under-appreciated comics artist.

  John Gunnison’s Walter Baumhofer: Pulp Art Masters from Adventure House showcased the work of the acclaimed pulp illustrator of the 1930s and 1940s.

  Vampyre: The Terrifying Lost Journal of Dr Cornelius Van Helsing was credited to “Cornelius Van Helsing and Gustav de Wolff” (Mary-Jane Knight) and was an illustrated young adult journal for vampire-hunters.

  Spectrum 14: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art edited by Cathy Fenner and Arnie Fenner contained work by more than 300 artists, along with a profile of Grand Master Award recipient Syd Mead.

  From the same editorial team, Spectrum Presents: Rough Work by Frank Frazetta featured sketches and conceptual designs by the legendary illustrator.

  In July, British lawyer David Enright complained to his local Borders chain about finding a copy of Herge’s The Adventures ofTintin in the Congo for sale on their shelves. In a letter to the store, Enright said that he was “utterly astonished and aghast” at the book’s depiction of black African people. As a result of his protest, specialist hate crime officers from the Hertfordshire police logged it as a “racist incident” and the bookstore agreed to move the volume from its children’s section to the adult “graphics” area.

  In a statement, Borders said that it “cannot and will not act as moral judge and jury in deciding what material we sell to our customers”. Written in 1930, Tintin in the Congo was the second book by Belgium cartoonist Herge about his popular boy detective, and although published in thirty-five languages around the world, it has only been available in the UK since 2005 and includes a warning about its subject matter.

  Sixty-six years after he was created by Joe Simon, Captain America was killed off by Marvel Comics in March when the character was shot by an unknown sniper on the steps of a court house.

  Written by Robin Furth and Peter David, with art by Jae Lee and Richard Isanove, The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born from Marvel Comics was a seven-issue miniseries based on the novel cycle by Stephen King that looked at the back story of hero Roland Deschain. The entire saga was subsequently collected as a graphic novel, with an Introduction by Ralph Macchio and an Afterword by King.

  The Nightmare Factory from HarperCollins/Fox Atomic Comics adapted four stories (“The Last Feast of Harlequin”, “Dream of a Mannikin”, “Dr Locrian’s Asylum” and “Teatro Grottesco”) by Thomas Ligotti into graphic format, with introductions to each tale by the author.


  The same imprints also issued 28 Days Later: The Aftermath, Steve Niles’ four-story graphic collection set in a world overrun with zombies, with art by Dennis Calero, Diego Olmos and Nat Jones.

  Neil Caiman’s Neverwhere collected the first nine issues of the DC Comics/Vertigo adaptation of Gaiman’s dark fantasy novel, written by Mike Carey and illustrated by Glenn Fabry.

  Following on from Batman and The Monster Men, DC Comics’ “Dark Moon Rising” graphic novel series continued with Batman and The Mad Monk, which collected the six-volume series written and edited by Matt Wagner. Another early adventure of the Dark Knight, it pitted Batman against a sacrificial vampire cult.

  From DCs WildStorm Productions, Supernatural: Origins was a six-issue prequel series to The CW television show created by Eric Kripke. Writer Peter Johnson and artist Matthew Dow Smith charted the adolescent exploits of brothers Sam and Dean Winchester and their father John’s quest to discover who or what killed his wife Mary.

  Also from WildStorm, Heroes: Volume One collected the first thirty-four chapters of the online graphic series. Illustrated by Tim Sale (who produces Isaac’s paintings in the show), with an Introduction by actor Masi Oka, the hardcover compilation was available in two editions, with different covers by Alex Ross and Jim Lee.

  WildStorm also published graphic novel compilations of its Friday the 13th, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and A Nightmare on Elm Street titles.

  Comics writer turned Lost producer Brian K. Vaughan reworked a failed direct-to-DVD project featuring renegade Slayer Faith into a four-issue arc of Dark Horse’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8. Created by Joss Whedon, the comics series was launched in March and continued the narrative several months after the TV show finished, with Buffy leading a team of potential new slayers.

  From Marvel, Anita Blake Vampire Hunter: Guilty Pleasures Volume 1 collected the six-issue comic series adapted from Laurell K. Hamilton’s books by Stacie Ritchie and Jess Ruffner-Booth and illustrated by Brett Booth.

  Vampire Kisses: Blood Relatives, Volume 1 was a graphic novel based on the YA vampire series by Ellen Schreiber.