Ellen Datlow: The Best Horror of the Year – Volume One

The Shirley Jackson Award, recognizing the legacy of Jackson 's writing, and with permission of her estate, was established for outstanding achievement in the literature of psychological suspense, horror, and the dark fantastic. The inaugural awards were announced at Readercon, held in Burlington, Massachusetts.

The winners for the best work in 2007:

Novel: Generation Loss by Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer Press); Novella: Vacancy by Lucius Shepard (Subterranean #7, 2007); Novelette: "The Janus Tree" by Glen Hirshberg (Inferno, Tor); Short Story: "The Monsters of Heaven" by Nathan Ballingrud (Inferno, Tor); Collection: The Imago Sequence and Other Stories by Laird Barron (Night Shade Books); Anthology: Inferno edited by Ellen Datlow (Tor).

The British Fantasy Society announced the winners of the British Fantasy Awards for 2008 at the awards banquet of Fantasycon 2008 in Nottingham, England on September 20.

The Sydney J. Bounds Best Newcomer Award: Scott Lynch; BFS Special Award: The Karl Edward Wagner Award: Ray Harryhausen; Best Non-Fiction: Peter Tennant, Whispers of Wickedness website reviews; Best Artist: Vincent Chong; Best Small Press: Peter Crowther, PS Publishing; Best Anthology: Stephen Jones, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 18 (Robinson); Best Collection: Christopher Fowler Old Devil Moon (Serpent's Tail); Best Short Fiction: Joel Lane, "My Stone Desire" (Black Static #1, TTA Press); Best Novella: Conrad Williams, The Scalding Rooms (PS Publishing); Best Novel: The August Derleth Fantasy Award: Ramsey Campbell, The Grin of the Dark (PS Publishing).

The International Horror Guild Awards for works from 2007 were announced Friday, October 31, 2008, and posted on the IHG website. Peter Straub, named earlier as the year's Living Legend, was honored in an essay by Stefan R. Dziemianowicz.

Winners for the best work in 2007:

Novel: The Terror by Dan Simmons (Little, Brown); Long Fiction: Softspoken by Lucius Shepard (Night Shade Books); Mid-Length Fiction: "Closet Dreams," by Lisa Tuttle (Postscripts #10); Short Fiction: "Honey in the Wound" by Nancy Etchemendy (The Restless Dead); Illustrated Narrative: The Nightmare Factory, Thomas Ligotti (Fox Atomic/Harper Paperbacks); Collection: Dagger Key and Other Stories, Lucius Shepard (PS Publishing); Anthology: Inferno, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Tor); Nonfiction: Mario Bava: All the Colors of Dark, Tim Lucas (Video Watchdog); Periodical: Postscripts; Art: Elizabeth McGrath (for "The Incurable Disorder," Billy Shire Fine Arts, December 2007).

Judges for this year's awards were Edward Bryant, Stefan R. Dziemianowicz, Ann Kennedy VanderMeer, and Hank Wagner. This was the last year that the award was given.

The World Fantasy Awards were announced November 2, 2008, at the World Fantasy Convention in Calgary, Alberta. Lifetime Achievement recipients were previously announced.

Winners for the best work in 2007:

Life Achievement: Patricia McKillip and Leo & Diane Dillon; Novel: Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay (Viking Canada; Roc); Novella: Illyria by Elizabeth Hand (PS Publishing); Short Story: "Singing of Mount Abora" by Theodora Goss (Logorrhea); Anthology: Inferno, Ellen Datlow, ed. (Tor); Collection: Tiny Deaths by Robert Shearman (Comma Press); Artist: Edward Miller; Special Award, Professional: Peter Crowther (PS Publishing); Special Award, Non-Professional: Midori Snyder & Terri Windling (Endicott Studios Website).

The Resurrectionist by Jack O'Connell (Algonquin) is the author's fifth novel, and as with his previous ones his lucid prose easily carries the reader into realms of the phantasmagoric. The story begins with a man taking a job at a very special clinic, hoping that the doctors there can miraculously help his comatose son, who is a patient. A second strand of the story follows the adventures of a group of circus freaks on the run from hostility and discrimination-a graphic novel series the man's son loves. The third strand involves a motorcycle gang, one of whose members has infiltrated the clinic. The strands tenuously come together to create a moving finale.

Sharp Teeth by Toby Barlow (Harper) is a werewolf novel told in verse, but don't let that scare you away. It's free verse, not rhyming, and the book is wonderfully gripping, in part due to the compression of language. Go and read it, you'll not be disappointed. Highly recommended.

The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson (Doubleday) is a dark, offbeat love story about the deepening relationship between a male, ex-porn-star hideously burned in a terrible accident, and a brilliant sculptor of gargoyles who claims to have been a reincarnated nun from the middle ages where they were lovers. The woman (who most people in the novel believe is mentally ill, but is quite obviously not, to any fantasy reader) tells wonderful stories within the overarching story of their love to both entertain and teach the recovering man. Not really horror- although there are horrific descriptions of the accident that maimed the man and other dark bits- but always absorbing.

The Man on the Ceiling by Steve Rasnic Tem and Melanie Tem (Discoveries) is an expansion of the multi award-winning novella by the Tems, published in 2000. A kind of fictionalized family memoir, their story is told in sections by each of them. It is imaginative, harrowing, moving, and always thoughtful about transmuting one's life experience into fiction and how that reflects back onto the creator. The book doesn't really add to the brilliance of the novella, but for those who missed that gem this is a worthwhile substitute.

The Ghost in Love by Jonathan Carroll (Farrar, Straus) is about a man who should have died, but didn't. There's a glitch in the system, so he's still around, but he's got a ghost who lives with him (although he doesn't realize it). The ghost-which can manifest as anything it likes, including a fly-is in love with the dead guy's ex-girlfriend. The Angel of Death is not happy. And of course, as in almost all of Carroll's novels, there's a dog.

Severance Package by Duane Swierczynski (St. Martin 's Press) is a clever, violent, fast-moving romp that, if the reader stops to actually think about it, makes very little sense. An executive invites his key personnel to a mysterious Saturday morning meeting in the office and then offers them poison-laced juice to drink-or face a more violent death. Why does he want to kill them and will anyone get out alive?

Infected by Scott Sigler (Crown) is an sf/horror thriller about a series of horrific homicides committed by seemingly normal, happy citizens. The story alternates between the governmental and medical teams tracking down and studying the plague, and a newly infected victim and his efforts to rid himself of what's ailing him. Entertaining, but with large plot holes that hopefully will be plugged in the sequel, titled Contagious.

Sway by Zachary Lazar (Little, Brown) miraculously projects the reader into the lives and minds of some of the prime movers of the sixties: underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger; Brian Jones, Keith Richards, and Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones; and would-be rocker/Charlie Manson follower Bobby Beausoleil. By doing this, Lazar creates something that reads almost like a memoir of the era that started with love and promise, culminating in darkness, with the murders of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Manson killings, and the near-riot at the Stones' concert at Altamont. The voices are so authentic-sounding, it's as if the author is channeling his characters.

The Shadow Year by Jeffrey Ford (William Morrow) is a satisfying expansion of Ford's novella " Botch Town," creating a sharp snapshot of growing up on Long Island, New York, in the early 1960s. Two brothers and their young sister investigate mysterious occurrences in the neighborhood, partly with the help of the sister's seemingly preternatural powers of detection. The adult narrator looking back at a dark year in his family's hometown, never intrudes on the story and the characters are so realistic that it's almost painful to read about them. Highly recommended.