Christopher Fowler - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 10

The 1998 British Fantasy Awards were presented at Fantasy-Con XXII in Birmingham, England, on Sunday 13 September. Voted for by members of the British Fantasy Society and FantasyCon, the winners were announced at the Awards Banquet by Master of Ceremonies Ramsey Campbell and Guests of Honour Freda Warrington and Jane Yolen. Light Errant by Chaz Brenchley won the Best Novel award (The August Derleth Fantasy Award); Best Short Story was Christopher Fowler’s “Wage-slaves” (from Destination Unknown/Secret City: Strange Tales of London); Dark Terrors 3: The Gollancz Book of Horror edited by Stephen Jones and David Sutton was voted Best Anthology; Jim Burns was Best Artist; the Best Small Press Award went to Interzone edited by David Pringle; D. F. Lewis was presented with the Special Karl Edward Wagner Award, and a Special Convention Award was announced for past BFS President Kenneth Bulmer.

Only the location saved one of the worst-ever organised World Fantasy Conventions, held in Monterey, California, over 29 October to 1 November. Guest of Honour was Gahan Wilson, Special Guests were Frank M. Robinson, Cecelia Holland and Richard Laymon, and Richard A. Lupoff was Toastmaster. The winners of the World Fantasy Awards, selected by a panel of judges, were announced at an anti-climactic buffet lunch. The Special Award — Non-Professional went to Fedogan & Bremer for book publishing; the Special Award — Professional was won by The Encyclopedia of Fantasy edited by John Clute and John Grant; Best Artist was Alan Lee; Best Collection went to The Throne of Bones by Brian McNaughton; the Best Anthology was Bending the Landscape: Fantasy edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel; “Dust Motes” by P. D. Cacek (from Gothic Ghosts) won for Best Short Fiction; Richard Bowes’ “Streetcar Dreams” (from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1997) was voted Best Novella, and the Best Novel was The Physiognomy by Jeffrey Ford. Life Achievement Awards were announced for editor Edward L. Ferman and writer Andre Norton.

California-based dealer Barry R. Levin announced that Peter F. Hamilton had won his Collectors Award for 1998 for Most Collectible Author of the Year. The limited Tor edition of Robert Silverberg’s anthology Legends was Most Collectible Book of the Year, and Britain’s George Locke received the special Lifetime Collectors Award for His Unique Contribution to the Bibliography of Fantastic Literature.

Ten years is a long time. It’s even longer in publishing. The past decade has not been kind to horror fiction, with the erosion of the mid-list and the cancellation of genre imprints resulting in the all-but-collapse of the commercial field.

Which makes it all the more remarkable that the Best New Horror series has reached this landmark number of volumes. This is mostly due to the tenacity of Nick Robinson of Britain’s Robinson Publishing and Kent Carroll and Herman Graf of America’s Carroll & Graf Publishers. Despite various changes of title and format, they have continued to publish and support this series of anthologies in the face of industry apathy to the genre.

If not for them, I could not have reprinted more than 1.5 million words of the best horror fiction to have appeared over the past ten years.

I have always said that the aim of this series is to present a representative sampling of stories which are being nominally published under the description of “horror”, or “dark fantasy” or whatever the publishers’ current nomenclature for the genre is.

That is why I have been proud to select work by such new and up-and-coming authors as Thomas Ligotti, Kim Newman, Michael Marshall Smith, Poppy Z. Brite, Neil Gaiman, Kathe Koja, Douglas E. Winter, Terry Lamsley, Brian Hodge, Grant Morrison, Roberta Lannes, Norman Partridge, Storm Constantine, Ian R. MacLeod, Elizabeth Massie, Nicholas Royle, Elizabeth Hand, Graham Joyce, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Chaz Brenchley, Joel Lane, Conrad Williams, Donald R. Burleson, D. F. Lewis and many others alongside more established names such as Peter Straub, Ramsey Campbell, Brian Lumley, Clive Barker, Harlan Ellison, F. Paul Wilson, Robert R. McCammon, Dennis Etchison, Charles Grant, Jonathan Carroll, Gene Wolfe, M. John Harrison, Iain Sinclair, Tanith Lee, T. E. D. Klein, Graham Masterton, Kate Wilhelm, Richard Laymon, Gahan Wilson and Thomas Tessier, to name only a few. Sadly, others like Karl Edward Wagner, Robert Bloch, Manly Wade Wellman, John Brunner and Robert Westall are no longer with us, but their work lives on, preserved in the pages of this series and elsewhere.

In fact, Best New Horror has published a total of 239 stories and novellas and one poem in its ten-year history. During that period only two authors have ever refused a request to reprint their work — it just so happens that they are the two biggest-selling names in horror on either side of the Atlantic. Go figure.

Best New Horror has also been fortunate enough to win the World Fantasy Award, the British Fantasy Award and The International Horror Critics Guild Award, as well as being nominated on several other occasions. To everyone who voted for the book and has supported it over the years, my sincere thanks.

I would also especially like to thank Ramsey Campbell, who co-edited the first five volumes with me and who remains this series’ spiritual inspiration. I continue to strive to match his taste, skill and intelligence with every new edition.

But what of the future? As the new Millennium arrives and the horror field claws its way back from the brink of the abyss and begins to find its commercial voice again, Best New Horror will hopefully be there to chart its resurgence and supply a few pointers along the way. This series will continue to discover the most exciting new names in dark fiction (in all its myriad forms) and present them alongside some of the best-known authors currently working in the field.

At its best, horror fiction is amongst the most imaginative and challenging work being published today, and Best New Horror will continue to reflect that literary excellence into the 21st century.

I hope you’ll be along for the ride.

The Editor

May, 1999

Christopher fowler’s latest novel is titled Calabash. His other recent books include two new collections of short stories, Uncut and Personal Demons, and the novel Soho Black. Among his earlier work is Roofworld (currently being developed as a big-budget action horror movie), Rune, Red Bride, Disturbia, Spanky and Psychoville (also in development). Menz Insanza is a large graphic novel from DC Comics/Vertigo, illustrated by John Bolton.

“ ‘Learning to Let Go’ came from my desire to get away from traditional ‘horror’ stories,” explains the author. “I had read many tales that were similarly constructed, and few seemed to contain any of the author’s actual experiences. So I began with a very traditional take on such tales — the journey into mystery — and gradually pulled it apart until I found something I related to myself — at which point I discovered that I no longer wished to write traditional horror stories.

“So this is a closure, if you like, the last of my ‘old style’. For a while after I stopped writing altogether, trying to work out what to do; but once the bug is in you it’s hard to let go — hence the title — and I finally struck out in an entirely new direction, which is my latest novel. As they say, if you don’t burn your bridges now and then, you never grow!”

Everyone has a story to tell, he reminded himself.