Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

The Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer went to Robert Jackson Bennett for his novel Mr Shivers , and Terry Pratchett was announced as the recipient of the Karl Edward Wagner Special Award.

Following the presentation of the awards, there was almost instant condemnation from many people in the audience who quickly realised that at least four of the winners were directly connected to the small press imprint run by the British Fantasy Society’s current Chairman/Awards Administrator/Co-Presenter (making it the most successful publisher in the forty-year history of the awards), while both the Best Short Story and Best Novel awards had gone to his partner.

While there was no evidence of any wrongdoing on anyone’s part, the subsequent online controversy, which also made the national press in Britain, resulted in the formation of an interim BFS committee and the entire voting process being made far more transparent in future.

Held in San Diego, California, over 26–30 October, World Fantasy Convention 2011 stuck rigorously to its somewhat watery theme of “Sailing on the Seas of Imagination”, thereby leaving Guests of Honour Jo Fletcher, Neil Gaiman, Parke Godwin, editor Shawna McCarthy and artist Ruth Sanderson, along with Toastmaster Connie Willis, a little becalmed.

As usual, the World Fantasy Award winners were announced at the banquet on the Sunday afternoon. The Special Award, Non-Professional Award went to Alisa Krasnostein for Twelfth Planet Press, and Marc Gascoigne received the Special Award, Professional for his Angry Robot imprint.

Best Artist was Kinuko Y. Craft, Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See and Other Stories won Best Collection, and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer was awarded Best Anthology.

The Best Short Story Award went to Joyce Carol Oates’ “Fossil-Figures” (from Stories: All-New Tales ) and Elizabeth Hand’s “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” (from the same anthology) won Best Novella. In a surprisingly feminist list of winners, the Best Novel Award went to Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, who subsequently complained about the award being in the form of a bust of H. P. Lovecraft, because she considered the author “a talented racist”. Her reaction was mostly based on a poem Lovecraft wrote almost a century earlier, when he was in his early twenties.

Peter S. Beagle and Angélica Gorodischer had previously been announced as the recipients of Life Achievement Awards for having demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field.

I’ve talked about integrity and the validity of awards in these pages before, and I don’t plan to go into the controversy surrounding the 2011 British Fantasy Awards any more than I have already done so elsewhere, other to say that I believe that people know when they really do or do not deserve to win an award, and they have to live with their actions — and the consequences of those actions — for the rest of their lives.

I’m not sure how worthwhile any award is if you know that you have actively campaigned to win it.

I would also not be surprised if many readers are now scratching their heads at some of the winners of the World Fantasy Awards above and asking themselves “Who?”

You may also have noticed that with this volume, the editorial matter is shorter than in recent editions of this series. This is because, according to my publishers (and a handful of “reviewers” on Amazon), the non-fiction elements are superfluous to the rest of the book, and they have ordered me to cut this material, despite the fact that it costs them nothing extra in editorial fees to include.

On a more positive note, I am delighted to announce that with this twenty-third volume, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror has surpassed both Ellen Datlow’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (twenty volumes) and Karl Edward Wagner’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories (twenty-two volumes) as the longest-running “Year’s Best” horror anthology series of all time!

We could not have done it without the authors, readers and booksellers who have continued to support these volumes for more than twenty years. Thank you all, and special thanks to Nick Robinson and my current editor, Duncan Proudfoot, for their continued belief in me and this series.

See you all in volume twenty-four!

RAMSEY CAMPBELL WAS BORN in Liverpool, where he still lives with his wife Jenny. His first book, a collection of stories entitled The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants , was published by August Derleth’s legendary Arkham House imprint in 1964, since when his novels have included The Doll Who Ate His Mother, The Face That Must Die, The Nameless, Incarnate, The Hungry Moon, Ancient Images, The Count of Eleven, The Long Lost, Pact of the Fathers, The Darkest Part of the Woods, The Grin of the Dark, Thieving Fear, Creatures of the Pool, The Seven Days of Cain and the movie tie-in Solomon Kane .

His short fiction has been collected in such volumes as Demons by Daylight, The Height of the Scream, Dark Companions, Scared Stiff, Waking Nightmares, Cold Print, Alone with the Horrors, Ghosts and Grisly Things, Told by the Dead , and Just Behind You . He has also edited a number of anthologies, including New Terrors, New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos, Fine Frights: Stories That Scared Me, Uncanny Banquet, Meddling with Ghosts , and Gathering the Bones: Original Stories from the World’s Masters of Horror (with Dennis Etchison and Jack Dann).

“‘Holding the Light’ came out of an experience in Rhodes two years ago, at Epta Piges (‘Seven Springs’),” recalls the author. “During the occupation, Italians constructed an irrigation tunnel there, 180 metres long and very much like the one that figures in my tale. It’s a favourite stop on guided tours and turned up on two that we took. You won’t be surprised that I was delighted to go through it both times, though others in the party stayed out.

“Pete Crowther had mentioned a Hallowe’en chapbook he wanted to publish, including several new tales. Sadly, the event he wanted to build it around didn’t work out, but by that time I’d written my contribution, and he published it as a singleton.

“As soon as I went through the Epta Piges tunnel the first time I knew I had a tale for him.”

AS HIS COUSIN followed him into the Frugoplex lobby Tom saw two girls from school. Out of uniform and in startlingly short skirts they looked several years older. He hoped his leather jacket performed that trick for him, in contrast to the duffle coat Lucas was wearing. Since the girls were giggling at the cinema staff dressed as Hallowe’en characters, he let them see him laugh too. “Hey, Lezly,” he said in his deepest voice. “Hey, Dianne.”

“Don’t come near us if you’ve got a cold,” Lezly protested, waving a hand that was bony with rings in front of her face.

“It’s just how boys his age talk,” Dianne said far too much like a sympathetic adult and blinked her sparkly purple eyelids. “Who’s your friend, Tom?”

“It’s my cousin Lucas.”

“Hey, Luke.”

Lezly said it too and held out her skull-ringed hand, at which Lucas stared as if it were an inappropriate present. “He’s like that,” Tom mumbled but refrained from pointing at his own head. “Don’t mind him.”

“Maybe he doesn’t want to give you his germs, Lezly.” To the boys Dianne said “What are you going to see?”

“ Vampire Dating Agency ,” Lucas said before Tom could make a choice.