Stephen Jones - The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 13

Barnes & Noble Digital debuted on September 11th with an original e-book by Dean Koontz, The Book of Counted Sorrows, but delayed the launch of its other titles until mid-October. Economic fallout from the 9/11 terrorist attacks may also have caused Random House to fold its AtRandom electronic imprint, launched in June 2000.

At the beginning of the year, editor Paula Guran announced that it had become obvious to her that the only way for her weekly electronic newsletter DarkEcho to evolve was ‘for it to head directly into extinction’, which it did. However, after publishing more than 300 issues since 1994, Guran did revive the title occasionally as a once-in-a-while informal newsletter.

Along with co-sponsoring a story contest, Leisure Books began sponsoring original fiction by new and established authors on Brett Savory’s quarterly webzine The Chiaroscuro.

Delirium Books’ website was removed by its host server in November after a complaint about the site’s graphic content. As a result, certain features such as the ‘Gross-Out Tournament’ were moved to another server.

The Spook was a fully downloadable electronic horror magazine in Adobe Acrobat (PDF) format launched in June by publisher/editor Anthony Sapienza. Featuring short fiction, celebrity profiles, reviews, cartoons and poetry, among the featured authors were Ramsey Campbell, Poppy Z. Brite, Dennis Etchison, Damon Knight, John Shirley, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Jonathan Carroll and Joyce Carol Oates. Features included interviews with Neil Gaiman, Jonathan Carroll, actress Linda Blair and artist Alan M. Clark, plus articles on Halloween’s Michael Meyers, the Zodiac Killer, the witchcraft of Shirley Jackson and the truth behind Disneyland’s Haunted Mansion. Ramsey Campbell’s opinion column (originally in Necrofile) began running from the second issue onwards. Because it was sponsored by advertisers, the full-colour monthly magazine was free to readers and received more than 4,000 hits in the first forty-eight hours.

Gothic.net underwent its annual make-over and the $15 subscription entitled readers to get the ‘premium’ short fiction, change the colour scheme, post comments and receive regular updates.

Among the authors whose stories were featured on Ellen Datlow’s Sci.Fiction on SciFi.Com in 2001 were Charles Beaumont, Terry Dowling, Ian R. MacLeod, James P. Blaylock, Geoffrey A. Landis, Lucius Shepard, Gerald Kersh, Glen Hirshberg, Richard Matheson, Pat Cadigan and many others.

After six issues as a print publication, Paul Lockey’s Unhinged, subtitled Disturbing Fiction for Discerning Adults, became a twice-yearly online magazine in May with articles, reviews and fiction by Sean Russell Friend, Mark Howard Jones, Michael Chant, T. M. Gray, Ray Clark and others.

Paul Fry’s Peep Show, published by Short, Scary Tales Publications, featured erotic horror fiction by David J. Schow and others, and more horror stories could be found on John Urbancik’s webzine Dark Fluidity.

The Zone SF, a non-fiction site, went live in mid-September with interviews with Dan Simmons and Simon Clark, and a list of the Top 10 Heavy Metal Albums with SF Themes.

Edited by Sara Creasy, aurealis Xpress was a monthly science fiction and fantasy e-bulletin for subscribers to Australia’s twice-yearly Aurealis magazine. The electronic update was issued eleven times a year (except January), and you could subscribe to both magazines by visiting the website and printing off an application form.

Pam Keesey’s Monsterzine.com looked at monster movies and was linked to the related site, BioHorror.com, while Ghoul Britannia was a tribute site for Hammer Films and other Brit horror movies.

Douglas Glegg’s ‘The Infinite Road Diary’ debuted on the Cemetery Dance website. While the author travelled across America promoting his new hardcover novel The Infinite with bookshop signings, he updated his electronic diary every few days. Neil Gaiman’s electronic diary was also credited with boosting sales of his latest novel, American Gods.

Stealth Press marked Halloween on its website with a free downloadable PDF e-anthology, All Hallows-e: Halloween Tales from Seven Masters of Terror, compiled by Paula Guran. It featured reprints by such Stealth authors as Ray Bradbury, F. Paul Wilson, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, John Shirley, William F. Nolan, Al Sarrantonio and Peter Straub.

Stealth’s e-freebie page also featured a downloadable e-chapbook of Nolan’s 1967 Playboy short story ‘The Party’, from his new collection Dark Universe, and a sample from Wilson’s novel An Enemy of the State, featuring a new introduction by the author along with the prologue and five chapters.

A follow-up to the previous year’s impressive electronic anthology, Brainbox II: Son of Brainbox, edited with an introduction by Steve Eller, featured contributions from eighteen writers, including Brett A. Savory, Charlee Jacob, Brian A. Hopkins and Mort Castle. Another CD-ROM anthology was Lone Wolf Publications’ Extremes 3: Terror on the High Seas, edited by Brian A. Hopkins and illustrated by Thomas Arensberg.

The UK print-on-demand publisher House of Stratus, which reissued much of Brian Aldiss’s backlist along with many other titles, ceased trading in June and apparently went into administration in September. Booksellers had apparently complained of late deliveries and poor billing.

After the cancellation of Enigmatic Tales, editors L. H. Maynard and M. P. N. Sims pretty much recreated their magazine as the first two volumes of the trade paperback anthology series Darkness Rising Volume One: Night’s Soft Pains and Volume Two: Hideous Dreams, from Cosmos Books, an on-demand imprint of Wildside Press. Along with obscure reprints by Howard Jones and Huan Mee introduced by Hugh Lamb, the books included original stories, with notable work from Lynda E. Rucker and Donald Murphy.

Also from Cosmos, Similar Monsters was a decade-spanning collection of fifteen stories (five original) and an afterword by Steve Savile, while City of Saints and Madmen: The Book of Ambergris collected four novellas by Jeff VanderMeer with an introduction by Michael Moorcock.

Dan Clore’s The Unspeakable and Others was a collection of forty-seven Lovecraftian tales and non-fiction pieces, with an introduction by S. T. Joshi. Stephen Mark Rainey’s Balak from Wildside Press was a Lovecraftian novel involving a woman searching for her missing child.

Fluid Mosaic collected thirteen horror stories (one original) by Michael Arnzen. Gemini Rising, Downward to Darkness and Worse Things Waiting were substantially revised versions of Brian McNaughton’s novels Satan’s Love Child (1977) , Satan’s Mistress (1978) and Satan’s Seductress (1979), while McNaughton’s Nasty Stories and Even More Nasty Stories collected twenty-five stories (eight original) and twenty-one stories (two original), respectively.

Strange Pleasures was an anthology of fourteen stories edited by Cosmos Books’ Sean Wallace and featuring contributions by Keith Brooke, Adrian Cole, Barrington Bayley, Maynard and Sims, John Grant and others.

Wallace also announced a new imprint, Prime Books, which would include a number of titles originally announced by Imaginary Worlds. These included books by Tim Lebbon, Jeff VanderMeer, Brett Savory and Michael Laimo. Subsequently, Jeff VanderMeer’s Ministry of Whimsy Press became a print-on-demand imprint of Prime.