Best of British Fantasy 2018
Page 27
And those who rule the inviolable floods,
Whom mortals name the dread Pacific gods
Those beings whom the ciné future know
Add toil to toil, pile woe on up-piled woe:
As swift as wind, o’er Honshu’s smoky isle,
The radioactive beams the skies defile
Through air, unseen, involved in darkness, glide,
To ev’ry chromosome and slip inside.
Fair Nippon trembles underneath the load;
Hush’d are her mountains, and her forests nod.
There on a fir, whose spiry branches rise
To join its summit to the neighbouring skies;
Dark in embowering shade, conceal’d from sight,
Sat Commerce like unto a bird of night.
“Ye think,” quoth he, “Godzilla hath no equal?
“Prepare ye for Godzilla 2: the Sequel.”
Further Reading
Forty-one more interesting stories by British (or UK resident) authors, all first published in 2018:
“Crooks Landing, By Scaffold” by G.V. Anderson (Nightmare)
“The Lord’s Prayer, From Memory” and “The King’s Escape” by Jez Burrows (Dictionary Stories)
“We All Know About Desire” by Regi Claire (For Books’ Sake)
“La Ténébreuse” by Storm Constantine (The Alchemy Press Book of Horrors)
“The Giulia Effect” by Barbara Davies (Making Monsters)
“Homebrew Wine Recipes for Favourable Effects, from the Regrettable Life of Mrs Poulman” by Matt Dovey (Arsenika)
“Ain’t That the Truth” by Bryn Fortey (Compromising the Truth)
“The Species Assimilation Unit” by Mike Fox (Cabinet of Heed)
“Sunflower seeds and supernatural beings” by Anita Goveas (Willow Lit)
“The Thought Gatherers” by Victoria Haslam (Mismatched Metacarpals)
“Counter Curse” by Cat Hellisen (Learning How to Drown)
“A Little Star” by Verity Holloway (Far Horizons)
“Ash” by Elizabeth Hopkinson (Fairytalez)
“The Blitz of Din Barham” by Cameron Johnston (Heroic Fantasy Quarterly)
“The Book of Mammon” by Michael Krawec (Mismatched Metacarpals)
“Witness” by Kim Lakin-Smith (Holding on by our Fingertips)
“The Hero of Aral Pass” by Mark Lawrence (The Art of War)
“Channeling Aphrodite” by Rachel Lister (Spelk)
“Ways to Wake” by Alison Littlewood (Nightmare)
“Domestic Magic” by Kirsty Logan (This Dreaming Isle)
“The Other Tiger” by Helen Marshall (The Silent Garden)
“The Leonard Cohen Waltzing Society for Half-drunk Fuckwits” by Helen McClory (Vol 1 Brooklyn)
“How the Mighty” by Daniel Micklethwaite (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)
“How the Tree of Wishes Gained its Carapace of Plastic” by Jeannette Ng (Not So Stories)
“How the Simurgh Won her Tail” by Ali Nouraei (Not So Stories)
“Beyond the Border” by Benedict Patrick (From the Shadows of the Owl Queen’s Court)
“Meet the Family” by Charlotte Pratt (EconoClash Review Vol 1)
“The Green-Hearted Girl” by Ella Risbridger (Make More Noise)
“Blessed” by Geoff Ryman (Fantasy & Science Fiction)
“Blocks” by George Sandison (BFS Horizons)
“Small Town Stories” by Priya Sharma (All The Fabulous Beasts)
“The Cocktail Party in Kensington Gets Out of Hand” by Robert Shearman (This Dreaming Isle)
“The Vigil of Talos” by Huw Steer (Making Monsters)
“Tales of the Immortals” by Steph Swainston (Turning Point)
“Yiwu” by Lavie Tidhar (Tor.com)
“The Pit King” by Ryan Vance (F(r)iction Magazine)
“The Logicians” by James Warner (Ninth Letter)
“Blood and Smoke, Vinegar and Ashes” by DP Watt (The Silent Garden)
“The Palace of Force and Fire” by Ron Weighell (The Silent Garden)
“Nox Una” by Marian Womack (The Silent Garden)
“The Imprint of Leaves” by Elizabeth Xifaras (The Cabinet of Heed)
About the Contributors
RJ Barker is the author of The Wounded Kingdom trilogy, Age, Blood and King of Assassins, and his work has been shortlisted for The Kitschies Award, The David Gemmell Legend Awards, British Fantasy Society Best Newcomer and Best Novel and longlisted for The Guardian’s Not The Booker. RJ lives in Leeds with his wife, son, a bitey cat, far too many books, a lot of noisy music and some very particular home decor. You can contact RJ through his website http://www.RJBarker.com or find him messing about on twitter as @dedbutdrmng.
Malcolm Devlin’s stories have appeared in Interzone, Black Static and Shadows and Tall Trees among others. His collection, You Will Grow Into Them, is published by Unsung Stories.
Born in India, Harkiran Dhindsa was raised in London and much of her fiction is set in this city. Her characters are often outsiders ̶ out of kilter with the lives around them. Harkiran completed an MA with distinction in Creative Writing at City, University of London. Her stories have been shortlisted in the Guardian Short Story Competition and the Asham Award. Her unpublished novel was shortlisted in the SI Leeds Literary Prize and her writing then taken up for representation by Jonathan Clowes Literary Agency. “The Woman Who Turned to Soap” was first published in the debut edition of The Good Journal in 2018.
Jenni Fagan is an author, poet, screenwriter, essayist and a playwright. She has won awards from Arts Council England, Dewar Arts, and Scottish Screen, among others. She has twice been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, was shortlisted for the Dundee International Book Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the James Tait Black Prize, and has recently written for BBC Radio 4, The New York Times, the Independent, and Marie Claire.
Lisa Fransson took seed in a forest in southern Sweden and was brought up on a diet of dark fairy tales and Norse mythology. As a teen she washed up on the shores of southern England where she now writes and breathes by the sea. Her short fiction has been published in The Dark Mountain Project, The Dawntreader and The Forgotten and The Fantastical 4. She also has a children’s picture book called Älgpappan that she wrote in her native Swedish. More information and contact details can be found on www.lisafransson.com.
Beth Goddard is a writer and former English teacher based in the North West of England. She has spent a lot of time talking about what makes good literature to students. Now she has more time for writing, Beth is discovering the difficulty of putting her advice into practice. As well as writing non-fiction articles specialising in education, she enjoys writing short stories and is currently working on her first novel.
Liam Hogan is a London based short story writer, the host of Liars’ League, and a Ministry of Stories mentor. His story “Ana”, appears in Best of British Science Fiction 2016 (also from NewCon Press) and his twisted fantasy collection, Happy Ending Not Guaranteed, is published by Arachne Press. Http://happyendingnotguaranteed.blogspot.co.uk or tweet @LiamJHogan
Lizzie Hudson is a graduate of the English and Creative Writing programme at Goldsmiths, University of London and a member of the 2019 Northern Short Story Festival Academy. Her work has previously appeared in Strix, Litro and elsewhere.
Matthew Hughes writes fantasy and space opera, often in a Jack Vance mode. Booklist has called him Vance’s “heir apparent.” His short fiction has appeared in Asimov’s, F&SF, Postscripts, Lightspeed, and Interzone, and bespoke anthologies including Songs of the Dying Earth, Rogues, Old Mars, and Old Venus, all edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. He has won the Arthur Ellis Award, and been shortlisted for the Aurora, Nebula, Philip K. Dick, Endeavour (twice), A.E. Van Vogt, and Derringer Awards. He is now self-publishing his backlist as ebooks and POD paperbacks. Learn more at http://www.matthewhughes.org
Rhys Hughes has lived in many countries. He currently shares his time between Brita
in and Kenya. His first book, Worming the Harpy, was published in 1995, and since that time he has published more than forty other books, eight hundred short stories and numerous articles, and his work has been translated into ten languages around the world. His fiction is generally fantastical, whimsical and inventive. His most recent book is Mombasa Madrigal and Other African Escapades. A lover of paradoxes, he incorporates them into his fiction as entertainingly as he can.
Kirsty Logan is the author of the novels The Gloaming and The Gracekeepers, short story collections A Portable Shelter and The Rental Heart & Other Fairytales, flash fiction chapbook The Psychology of Animals Swallowed Alive, and short memoir The Old Asylum in the Woods at the Edge of the Town Where I Grew Up. Her books won the Lambda Literary Award, Polari Prize, Saboteur Award, Scott Prize and Gavin Wallace Fellowship. Her work has been translated into Japanese and Spanish, recorded for radio and podcasts, exhibited in galleries and distributed from a vintage Wurlitzer cigarette machine. She lives in Glasgow with her wife.
Helen McClory’s first story collection On the Edges of Vision, won the Saltire First Book of the Year 2015. Her second story collection, Mayhem & Death, was written for the lonely and published in March 2018. She also wrote The Goldblum Variations, a collection of microfictions on Jeff Goldblum. There is a moor and a cold sea in her heart.
Ian McDonald is an SF writer living in Northern Ireland, where the acronym SF has a rather different understanding. He lives just outside Belfast. His first niovel, Desolation Road, was published in 1988 and is still available as an ebook. His most recent publications are Luna: Moon Rising, the conclusion of the Luna trilogy (Gollancz, Tor) and the novella Time Was, from Tor.com.
Paul McQuade is a writer and translator originally from Glasgow, Scotland. He is the author of Hometown Tales: Glasgow (Orion, 2018), with Kirsty Logan, and the short story collection, Between Tongues (Cōnfingō, forthcoming). His work has been shortlisted for The White Review and Bridport Prizes and he is the recipient of Sceptre Prize for New Writing and the Austrian Cultural Forum Writing Prize.
Reggie Oliver is an actor, director, biographer, playwright, illustrator and award winning author of fiction. Published work includes six plays, three novels, and eight volumes of short stories, including Mrs Midnight (2011 winner of Children of the Night Award for best work of supernatural fiction). His stories have appeared in over seventy anthologies and three “selected” editions of his stories have been published: Dramas from the Depths (Centipede Press, 2010), Shadow Plays (Egaeus 2012), and The Sea of Blood (Dark Regions 2015). His most recent collection is The Ballet of Dr. Caligari and Madder Mysteries (Tartarus 2018/9), and The Hauntings at Tankerton Park and How They Got Rid of Them – a children’s book with over 80 illustrations by the author. Recently his story “Flowers of the Sea” was included in the Folio Book of Horror Stories among such classic luminaries of the genre as Poe, Lovecraft and M. R. James.
Heather Parry is an Edinburgh-based writer and editor. She won the 2016 Bridge Award for an Emerging Writer and was awarded the Cove Park Emerging Writer Residency in 2017. Heather’s work explores self-deception, transformation and identity. Her first novel is currently under consideration.
Ben Reynolds quit his job as a journalist in December 2016 to chase his creative writing dream and is working on his first novel, The Last of Logan, which is part grief memoir, part love letter to video games. “Mushroom Speed Boosts” is an adapted section from the book. His work has also appeared in @morestorgy and @EllipsisZine. He lives in Worcester Park in south-west London and has two children to feed, so also works as a freelance journalist and sub-editor.
Adam Roberts is Professor of 19th-century Literature and Culture at Royal Holloway University of London, and the author of eighteen novels, most recently the science fiction By the Pricking of Her Thumb (Gollancz 2018) and the historical fantasy, The Black Prince (Unbound 2018).
Priya Sharma’s fiction has been published in various venues such as Interzone, Black Static, Nightmare, The Dark and Tor. She’s been anthologised in many “Best ofs” from editors Ellen Datlow, Paula Guran, Jonathan Strahan, Steve Haynes and Johnny Mains. She’s also been on many Locus’ Recommended Reading Lists. Fabulous Beasts was a Shirley Jackson Award finalist and won a British Fantasy Award for Short Fiction. She is a Grand Judge for the Aeon Award, an annual writing competition run by Albedo One, Ireland’s longest-running and foremost magazine of the Fantastic. Her collection All the Fabulous Beasts was released by Undertow Publications in 2018. Her website is www.priyasharmafiction.wordpress.com.
Steph Swainston started writing fiction at an early age for her own enlightenment and never quite stopped. Since 2004 she has written for other people’s enjoyment too, and is author of the acclaimed ‘Castle’ series which includes the novels The Year of Our War, No Present Like Time, The Modern World, and Fair Rebel. She is currently recovering from breast cancer and is wondering where life will lead now. Hopefully it will involve more writing.
Tade Thompson lives and works in the South of England. He is the author of the Rosewater books, the Molly Southbourne books, and Making Wolf, as well as the short stories “The Apologists” and “Yard Dog”, among others. He is a multiple winner of the Nommo Award, winner of the Kitchies’ Golden Tentacle award, a John W. Campbell Award finalist, a Shirley Jackson Award finalist, a Theodore Sturgeon Award finalist, and a nominee for both the British Fantasy Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award. His background is in medicine, psychiatry and social anthropology. His hobbies include jazz, visual arts, martial arts, comics and pretending he will ever finish his TBR stack.
James Warner was born in Portsmouth and currently lives in San Francisco. His stories have appeared in Interzone, ZYZZYVA, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, and elsewhere. He is sometimes seen busking in subway stations.
Aliya Whiteley was born in Devon in 1974, and currently lives in West Sussex, UK. She writes novels, short stories and non-fiction and has been published in places such as The Guardian, Interzone, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Black Static, Strange Horizons, and anthologies such as Unsung Stories’ 2084 and Lonely Planet’s Better than Fiction I and II. She has been shortlisted for a Shirley Jackson Award, British Fantasy and British Science Fiction awards, the John W Campbell Award, and a James Tiptree Jr award. She also writes a regular column for Interzone and occasionally reviews films, books and TV at Den of Geek. Her latest novel, The Loosening Skin, was published in the UK by Unsung Stories in November 2018.
~*~
Matty Long is an award-winning author and illustrator. He holds a first-class degree in Illustration and a Master’s in Children’s Book Illustration from the prestigious Cambridge School of Art. His debut picture book Super Happy Magic Forest was shortlisted for the prestigious Waterstones Children’s Prize.
Jared Shurin has edited or co-edited over two dozen anthologies, including The Djinn Falls in Love and The Outcast Hours (with Mahvesh Murad), The Lowest Heaven (with Anne C. Perry) and The Book of the Dead. He has won some awards and lost many more. He’s a certified BBQ judge.
Notes
[←1]
Some editions change the comma between the last and the desire into a semi-colon but I disapprove.
Table of Contents
Introduction: We All Fall Together Jared Shurin
There’s a Witch in the Word Machine Jenni Fagan
We Are Now Beginning Our Descent Malcolm Devlin
The Dance of a Thousand CutsLiam Hogan
A Son of the Sea Priya Sharma
To Look Upon His Works RJ Barker
12 Answers Only You Can Question James Warner
The Woman Who Turned into Soap Harkiran Dhindsa
Mushroom Speed Boosts Ben Reynolds
The Guile Ian McDonald
The Moss Child Lisa Fransson
We Can Make Something Grow Between the Mushrooms and the Snow Kirsty Logan
Boys Lizzie Hudson
The Farm at the World’s End Helen McC
lory
The Prevaricator Matthew Hughes
The Small Island Heather Parry
A Gift of Tongues Paul McQuade
Velocity Steph Swainston
Counting the Pennies Rhys Hughes
The Councillor’s VisitBeth Goddard
Yard Dog Tade Thompson
Dark Shells Aliya Whiteley
Coruvorn Reggie Oliver
Godziliad Adam Roberts
Further Reading
About the Contributors
Notes