Horror: The 100 Best Books

by Jones, Stephen

  R. (RONALD) CHETWYND-HAYES (b. 1919) was born in Isleworth, West London. His first book was The Man from the Bomb, an undistinguished science fiction novel published in 1959. A supernatural thriller, The Dark Man, followed in 1964, and by the early 1970s he was turning out a prolific number of ghost stories and gentle tales of terror, tinged with a disarming sense of humour. These have been much anthologised and collected in numerous volumes, such as The Unbidden, The Elemental, The Night Ghouls, A Quiver of Ghosts, Tales from the Dark Lands, Tales from the Other Side, The House of Dracula, Tales of the Hidden World and The Haunted Grange. He has edited Cornish Tales of Terror, Scottish Tales of Terror, twelve volumes of the Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories and the Armada Monster Books series for children. Chetwynd-Hayes is also the author of two film novelizations, Dominique and The Awakening (the latter based on Bram Stoker’s The Jewel of the Seven Stars), and his own stories have been adapted for the screen in From Beyond the Grave and The Monster Club (in which the author was portrayed by actor John Carradine). In 1989 he was presented with Life Achievement Awards by both The Horror Writers of America and The British Fantasy Society, and his recent novels include The Curse of the Snake God and Kepple.

  JOHN CLUTE (b. 1940) was born in Toronto and grew up in Canada and America. His first science fiction story, “A Man Must Die”, was published in New Worlds (1966) and he moved to London in 1969. Author of the novel The Disinheriting Party (1977) and co-editor of the award-winning The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1993) and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (1997), his acclaimed nonfiction collection, Strokes: Essays and Reviews 1966-1986, was published in 1988. Widely regarded as the premier critic of the science fiction field, his reviews and commentary have been published regularly in Foundation, Interzone, The Times Literary Supplement, The Guardian, New Statesman, New Scientist, Omni, The Washington Post and The New York Times.

  ADRIAN COLE (b. 1949) was born in Plymouth and worked for a number of years as a librarian in Birmingham before moving to Devon with his family. He began writing in the small press magazines in the early 1970s, creating a series of adventures about a cursed warrior, The Voidal. His early books include Madness Emerging (1976), The Lucifer Experiment, Wargods of Ludorbis and The Dream Lords trilogy. More recently he has published two children’s books, Moorstones and The Sleep of Giants, and two ambitious adult series: “The Omaran Saga” (A Place Among the Fallen, Throne of Fools, The King of Light and Shadows and The Gods in Anger) and the “Star Requiem” novels (Mother of Storms, Thief of Dreams, Warlord of Heaven and Labyrinth of Worlds).

  BASIL COPPER (b. 1924) was born in London and for thirty years he worked as a journalist and editor of a local newspaper before becoming a full-time writer in 1970. His first story in the horror field was “The Spider” in The Fifth Pan Book of Horror Stories (1964), and among his most-reprinted tales are “Camera Obscura” and “Amber Print”. Besides writing two nonfiction studies of the vampire and werewolf in legend, fact and art, his novels of the macabre and gaslight gothic include The Great White Space, The Curse of the Fleers, Necropolis, House of the Wolf and The Black Death. Copper’s short fiction has been collected in Not After Nightfall, From Evil’s Pillow, When Footsteps Echo and And Afterward the Dark, and has been extensively anthologised and adapted for radio and television. He has also written more than fifty hard-boiled thrillers about Los Angeles private detective Mike Faraday, and his Solar Pans collections have successfully continued the exploits of August Derleth’s Holmes-like consulting detective. Basil Copper is also one of Britain’s leading film collectors, with a private archive containing more than a thousand titles.

  RICHARD DALBY (b. 1949) is a London-born author, bibliographer, researcher and bookdealer specializing in supernatural fiction. In 1971 he unearthed a previously unreprinted M.R. James story which he included in his first anthology, The Sorceress in Stained Glass and Other Stories. He has followed that with a host of superior anthologies, many drawn from obscure sources or tied into particular themes: The Best Ghost Stories of H. Russell Wakefield, Dracula’s Brood, Ghosts and Scholars (with Rosemary Pardoe), The Virago Book of Ghost Stories (two volumes). The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, Ghosts for Christmas, Chillers for Christmas, Mystery for Christmas, Crimes for Christmas, Tales of Witchcraft and The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories (two volumes). Dalby is also the author/compiler of Bram Stoker: A Bibliography of First Editions (1983).

  LES DANIELS (b. 1943) was born in Danbury, Connecticut, but moved to Providence, Rhode Island, to study at Brown University, where he graduated with honours in English Literature. He received an M.A. in English in 1968 from Brown, since when he has been a freelance writer, composer, film buff and musician. He has performed with such groups as Soop, Snake and The Snatch; The Swamp Steppers, and The Local Yokels. His first book was Comix: A History of Comic Books in America (1971), and he went on to write Living in Fear: A History of Horror in the Mass Media and a huge book about the comics publisher, Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the World’s Greatest Comics. He has also edited Thirteen Tales of Terror (with Diane Thompson) and Dying of Fright: Masterpieces of the Macabre. Daniel’s debut novel, The Black Castle, was published in 1978 and introduced readers to Don Sebastian de Villanueva, the enigmatic vampire-hero whose exploits span the centuries and a series of superior horror novels: The Silver Skull, Citizen Vampire, Yellow Fog, No Blood Spilled and White Demon. His rare short fiction can be found in Cutting Edge, Book of the Dead, Borderlands, The Sea-Harp Hotel, After the Darkness and Dark Voices 4: The Pan Book of Horror.

  JACK DANN (b. 1945) was born in Johnson City, New York. A writer and anthologist with a BA in social and political science, he began publishing science fiction in 1970 with two stories in Worlds of If: “Dark, Dark, the Dead Star” and “Traps”, co-written with George Zebrowski. His short fiction has been published in most of the leading SF magazines, plus Playboy, Penthouse, Omni, Gallery, Shadows, After Midnight and A Gallery of Horror. The author of such novels as Starhiker, The Man Who Melted, Counting Coup, and the collection Timetripping, Dann has also edited a number of anthologies, including Future Power, Aliens!, Unicorns!, Magicats! (two volumes), Bestiary!, Mermaids! and Sorcerers! (all with Gardner Dozois), Wandering Stars, More Wandering Stars, and the acclaimed collection of Vietnam-related SF stories, In the Field of Fire (with his wife, Jeanne Van Buren). He is a multiple nominee for the Nebula Award, World Fantasy Award and British Science Fiction Association Award.

  CHARLES DE LINT (b. 1951) was born in Bussum, the Netherlands, but his father’s job with a surveying company allowed him to grow up in places as diverse as the Yukon, Turkey, Lebanon and Canada, where he currently lives as a full-time writer and musician. His first two books, The Riddle of the Wren and Moonheart, won him the 1984 William L. Crawford Award for Best New Fantasy Writer. Since then he has published a wide variety of books in the fantasy and horror genres, including The Harp of the Grey Rose, Mulengro, Yarrow, Jack the Giant Killer, Greenmantle, Drink Down the Moon, Ghostwood, The Dreaming Place, The Little Country, Spiritwalk and the novella, Our Lady of the Harbour. His columns on horror fiction and book reviews have appeared in a number of magazines, and he has served as a judge for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Short Fiction Award, the 1986 World Fantasy Awards, the 1987 Horror Writers of America Awards and the 1988 Nebula Awards.

  THOMAS M. DISCH (b. 1940) was raised in Arizona and has been a resident of New York, England, Turkey, Italy and Mexico. Poet, reviewer, short-story writer and novelist, Disch has been described by David Hartwell as producing “a body of work that seems of growing importance to the contemporary horror field.” His first science fiction story, “The Double-Timer”, appeared in Fantastic in 1962, and his highly regarded output includes One Hundred and Two H Bombs, The Genocides, Camp Concentration, The Prisoner (based on the cult TV series), 334, On Wings of Song, Fun With Your New Head, Getting Into Death, The Businessman, The Silver Pillow and The M.D. Disch has also had two popular children’s books published, The Brave Li
ttle Toaster (turned into an animated movie by Disney in 1987) and The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars, and such recent collections of poetry as Yes, Lets: New and Selected Poems and Dark Verses & Light. He also collaborated with John Sladek on a mystery novel, Black Alice (1968) and a Gothic, The House That Fear Built (1966).

  MALCOLM EDWARDS (b. 1949) was born in London, and he studied for three years at King’s College, Cambridge. He has an M.A. in social anthropology which he has “never put to any constructive use.” Formerly Administrator of the Science Fiction Foundation and editor of the journals Vector and Foundation, Edwards was also one of the founding co-editors of Interzone. He was a Contributing Editor to The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and coauthor (with Maxim Jakubowski) of the Complete Book of SF and Fantasy Lists. He has also co-written six illustrated books, one with Harry Harrison and five with Robert Holdstock, and his first published story, “After-Images” (Interzone, 1983), was reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories and won the British Science Fiction Award for Best Short Story. Malcolm Edwards has been the Publishing Director of Victor Gollancz, SF and fantasy division, Publishing Director of fiction at HarperCollins (UK), and is currently Managing Director at Orion.

  HARLAN ELLISON (b. 1934), author, essayist and screenwriter, was born and raised in Ohio and moved to Los Angeles in 1962, where he has remained. Probably one of the field’s most controversial yet talented writers, Ellison made his professional debut with “Glowworm” in Infinity Science Fiction (1956). After several books based on his experiences with New York street gangs (Rumble, The Juvies etc.) and a stint as editor of Rogue Magazine, he firmly established himself as a maverick SF/horror writer with a string of powerful short stories and the occasional novel. In 1963 he started writing for television, contributing scripts to such popular shows as The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, The Outer Limits, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Star Trek and the revived Twilight Zone. Ellison co-scripted The Oscar (1966), and his 1969 novella A Boy and His Dog was filmed with reasonable success in 1975. He edited the landmark anthologies Dangerous Visions (1967) and Again, Dangerous Visions, (1972), while a third volume, Last Dangerous Visions, has been awaiting publication for many years. He has won numerous awards, including the Hugo, Nebula, Edgar, Writer’s Guild of America, World Fantasy and Bram Stoker, and his essays and criticism were recently collected in Harlan Ellison’s Watching and The Harlan Ellison Hornbook.

  DENNIS ETCHISON (b. 1943) was born in Stockton, California. Described as the best short story writer in the horror field today, he started writing before his teens, winning $250 for an essay “What America Means to Me” at the age of twelve. His first professional sale was a science fiction story, “Odd Boy Out”, in Escapade (1961), since when he has contributed fiction to numerous magazines and anthologies. Etchison has had three major collections of short stories published, The Dark Country, Red Dreams and The Blood Kiss, and he has edited the anthologies Cutting Edge, three volumes of Masters of Darkness, Lord John Ten and MetaHorror. He is the author of such novels as Darkside, Shadowman and California Gothic, and his novelizations include The Fog and, under his “Jack Martin” pseudonym, Halloween II, Halloween III and Videodrome. Etchison has worked with such directors as John Carpenter, David Cronenberg and Dario Argento, and his unproduced screenplays include Halloween IV and adaptations of Ray Bradbury’s The Fox and the Forest and Stephen King’s The Mist, and he was a staff writer for the HBO TV series The Hitch Hiker. He also adapted his own story “The Late Shift” for a short film entitled Killing Time, and his story “The Dark Country” won both the British Fantasy Award and The World Fantasy Award.

  CHRISTOPHER EVANS (b. 1951) was born in Tredegar, South Wales, and has been a London-based freelance writer since 1979. He has written science fiction, fantasy, horror, TV and film novelizations, nonfiction and reviews under various pen-names. Recent books under his own name include the novels Capella’s Golden Eyes, The Insider and In Limbo, the collection Chimeras, and the “how-to” volume, Writing Science Fiction. With Robert Holdstock, Evans also co-edited three volumes of Other Edens, an anthology of new fantasy and science fiction stories.

  LIONEL FANTHORPE (b. 1935) was born in Dereham, Norfolk, and for a period of fifteen years was Britain’s most prolific science fiction, fantasy and horror author. While working as a full-time teacher, Fanthorpe wrote his first published story for the John Spencer imprint in 1952 and until 1966 he produced almost 200 books for them with titles like The Macabre Ones, Softly By Moonlight, The Immortals, Valley of the Vampire, The Crawling Fiend, The Loch Ness Terror, Fingers of Darkness and Rodent Mutation. He almost single-handedly filled all the issues of Supernatural Stories, using a multitude of pseudonyms, and created a series about occult investigator Val Stearman and his wife La Noire. In 1979 he coauthored the novel The Black Lion with his wife Patricia, and they also collaborated on The Holy Grail Revealed (1982). In 1987 Fanthorpe was Ordained as a Minister in the Church of Wales, serving as non-stipendiary assistant curate at St. German’s, Roath, Cardiff, and was also Headmaster of Glyn Derw Comprehensive High School in Cardiff for eleven years. He took early retirement at his own request in 1989 to run his own management consultancy business. His most recent books include God in All Things (1987), a collection of Christian pieces, Thoughts and Prayers for Troubled Times and Life of St. Francis (1989), The Christmas Story and Birds and Animals of the Bible (1990). In collaboration with Patricia, he has published Rennes-le-Chau: It Mysteries and Secrets, The Oak Island Mystery and Down the Badger Hole.

  JOHN M. FORD (b. 1957) was born in East Chicago, Indiana. He began writing in 1974 and sold his first science fiction story, “This, Too Reconcile”, to Analog the following year. Since then, his short fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies and such magazines as Amazing, Omni and Asimov’s. Ford published his first novel, Web of Angels, in 1980, and followed it with The Princes of the Air, the World Fantasy Award-winning The Dragon Waiting, The Illusionist, two bestselling Star Trek volumes, The Final Reflection and How Much For Just the Planet?, the espionage thriller The Scholars of the Night, and a collection, Casting Fortune. He won the World Fantasy Award again in 1989 for Best Short Fiction with his poem “Winter Solstice, Camelot Station”.

  NEIL GAIMAN (b. 1960) was born in Portchester, England. Interested in books and comics at an early age, he was twelve when he was told by a school advisor that it would be impossible to become a comics writer. His articles, interviews and reviews have appeared in Today, Time Out, The Good Book Guide, Shock Xpress, Foundation, Knave, News on Sunday, You, American Fantasy, Publishing News, Observer Colour Supplement, The Sunday Times Magazine, Penthouse and Clive Barker’s Shadows in Eden. Gaiman’s short fiction has been published in Knave, Imagine, Penthouse, Dragon, Winter Chills, Tales from the Forbidden Planet 2, Words Without Pictures, Digital Dreams, Midnight Graffiti and Fantasy Tales. He co-wrote the bestselling novel Good Omens with Terry Pratchett and is the author of The Official Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion, the award-winning graphic novels Violent Cases, Sandman (three volumes), Black Orchid and Signal to Noise, and co-compiled Ghastly Beyond Belief with Kim Newman. He has co-edited a book of nasty verse, Now We Are Sick, with Stephen Jones and co-“devised” the shared world anthologies Temps (with Alex Stewart), The Weerde (with Mary Gentle and Roz Kaveney) and Villains! (with Gentle). Gaiman has written numerous comic strips, and he won the 1991 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” in DC Comics’ Sandman.

  STEPHEN GALLAGHER (b. 1954) was born in Salford, Lancashire, and currently lives in Blackburn with his wife and daughter. He graduated with Joint Honours in Drama and English from Hull University in 1975 and worked for a number of British television companies before making his first professional sale as a writer to commercial radio. Gallagher became a full-time freelance writer in 1980, and he went on to script two serials for BBC-TV’s popular Dr. Who series, Warrior’s Gate and Terminus (which he subsequently novelized under the pseudonym “John Lydecker”
), and the BBC’s Moving Targets. His short fiction has appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Asimov’s, Ripper!, Shadows 9, Winter Chills, Night Visions 8 and Fantasy Tales 4. Early books include The Last Rose of Summer, Dying of Paradise, The Ice Belt and the novelization of the SF movie Saturn 3, and among his horror and mystery novels are Chimera (recently produced as a television mini-series), Valley of Lights, Follower, Oktober, Down River, Rain, The Root House and Nightmare, With Angel.

  CRAIG SHAW GARDNER (b. 1949) was born in Rochester, New York, the home of the Eastman Kodak Company (“thus I was able to obtain large amounts of free film at an early age”), and currently lives in “artsy” Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was introduced to science fiction at the age of ten and he wrote Frankenstein Meets Juliet for his grammar school paper. After majoring in “Broadcasting and Film” at Boston University (“a degree with absolutely no worth in the real world”), he worked in public relations while writing short stories in his spare time. In 1978 he sold “A Malady of Magicks” to Fantastic Stories and within a couple of years his fiction was appearing regularly in magazines and anthologies. His first novel, A Malady of Magicks (1986), was a humorous fantasy and the first volume in The Ebenezum Trilogy”, followed by A Multitude of Monsters and A Night in the Netherhells. “The Ballard of Wuntvor” was a second series involving the same characters and included A Difficulty With Dwarves, An Excess of Enchantments and A Disagreement With Death. He has continued the humour in the “Cineverse Cycle” (Slaves of the Volcano God, Bride of the Slime Monster and Revenge of the Fluffy Bunnies) and his “Arabian Nights” series (The Other Sinbad, A Bad Day for Ali Baba and Scherezade’s Night Out). He has also novelized the Wishbringer computer game as well as such hit movies as The Lost Boys, Back to the Future Part II and III, Batman and a spin-off novel, The Batman Murders.