Stephen Jones - Best New Horror #26

The seventh issue of the British Illustrators magazine featured an extensive spread on the work of Alan Lee, illustrated with many original paintings and book covers.

In April, The New Yorker presented a previously unpublished story by the late Shirley Jackson. ‘The Man in the Woods’ was an atmospheric weird tale about a man who came upon a lonely house, occupied by three strange inhabitants.

Locus included interviews with Stephen Baxter, Sir Terry Pratchett, K.W. Jeter and Michael Moorcock. To celebrate the centenary of the birth of R.A. Lafferty (1914-2002), the November issue included a short story reprint by the author, while the following month’s edition celebrated Moorcock’s 75th birthday.

The two issues of Hildy Silverman’s small press magazine Space and Time: The Magazine of Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction featured the usual mix of fiction and poetry, along with interviews with Catherine Asaro and Jody Lynn Nye.

David Longhorn’s Supernatural Tales managed three solid issues in 2014, with contributions from David Buchan, Michael Chislett, Tim Foley, Sean Logan, William I.I. Read and David Surface, amongst others, while Sam Dawson supplied the artwork for each edition.

With issue #27, Aaron J. French took over as editor-in-chief of Dark Discoveries (which was also available in a limited hardbound edition). With issues devoted to “Dark Mystery” and “Zombie Creature Feature”, the full-colour magazine included fiction by Douglas Clegg, Bentley Little, John R. Little, Kevin J. Anderson, Gene O’Neill and Tim Waggoner, interviews with Brian Evenson, Tom Piccirilli, Graham Masterton and Doug Bradley, and short features by Michael R. Collings, Yvonne Navarro, Frank R. Robinson, James R. Beach and Robert Morrish, amongst others.

Rosemary Pardoe’s usual two issues of her always fascinating The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Newsletter featured Jamesian-inspired fiction by Mark Nicholls, Derek John, D.P. Watt, Jacqueline Simpson and Peter Bell, along with articles and news. Issue #25 came with a hefty Reviews Supplement.

Tim Paxton (with help from co-editor Steve Fenton) revived his movie magazine Monster! as a monthly PoD paperback. Featuring numerous exuberant reviews and interesting articles crammed in amongst the cluttered layouts, issues also featured interviews with Joe Dante and Roger Corman, along with a Godzilla portfolio by Stephen R. Bissette.

During a turbulent year that saw the resignation of two of its quartet of editors, the four paperback issues of the British Fantasy Society’s BFS Journal contained the usual news and events, along with interviews with Mark Hodder, Richard Wright, William Meikle, Freda Warrington, Tim Powers, Helen Marshall, Lavie Tidhar, Rosie Garland, and artists Howard Hardiman, Pye Parr and Jennie Gyllblad.

There were articles about sexism in the genre, writing a television guide, Jonathan Carroll’s The Land of Laughs , John Jakes’ “Brak the Barbarian” series, Geoff Ryman’s The Child Garden , John Mansfield’s The Box of Delights , Roger Zelazny’s The Chronicles of Amber , and a delayed celebration of Peter Cushing’s centenary, along with fiction and poetry from, amongst others, Mike Chinn, Allen Ashley, Gary Couzens, Jonathan Oliver, James Dorr, Marion Pitman and Tina Rath.

It is perhaps debatable whether the world really needed yet another biography of the Gentleman from Providence, but Paul Roland’s The Curious Case of H.P. Lovecraft from British publisher Plexus did a decent enough job of summing up the influential pulp author’s life and career, with the welcome addition of two sections of photographs and various Appendices.

Boasting a delightfully perverse cover by Gahan Wilson, Bobby Derie explored the aberrant sex found in the work of Lovecraft and others in Sex and the Cthulhu Mythos from PoD imprint Hippocampus Press, who also published S.T. Joshi’s substantial volume Lovecraft and a World in Transition: Collected Essays on H.P. Lovecraft .

Edited by the busy Joshi for PS Publishing, Letters to Arkham: The Letters of Ramsey Campbell and August Derleth, 1961-1971 was exactly what the title said, with an Afterword by Campbell. Also from PS, Peter Berresford Ellis’ The Shadow of Mr. Vivian: The Life of E. Charles Vivian (1882-1947) was a terrifically entertaining biography of the prolific British novelist and pulp author whose real name was Charles Henry Cannell, but who also wrote as “Jack Mann” and “Barry Lynd”. The hardcover also included a useful Bibliography of the author’s work.

Brian Gibson’s Reading Saki: The Fiction of H.H. Munro was a not very complimentary study of the author, published by McFarland, while Robert T. Tally, Jr.’s Poe and the Subversion of American Literature was a critical examination of the author’s career.

Edited by Massimo Berruti, S.T. Joshi and Sam Gafford, William Hope Hodgson: Voices from the Borderland: Seven Decades of Criticism on the Master of Cosmic Horror brought together numerous essays about the author by, amongst others, Brian Stableford, Mark Valentine, Leigh Blackmore and Andy Sawyer, along with a terrific Bibliography compiled by Joshi, Gafford and Mike Ashley and some useful indexes.

Edited by Patrick McAleer and Michael A. Perry for McFarland, Stephen King’s Modern Macabre: Essays on the Later Works collected thirteen critical essays covering the period 1994-2013.

The third book in Phil and Sarah Stokes’ monumental project Memory Prophecy and Fantasy: The Works and Worlds of Clive Barker was subtitled Masquerades and limited to 250 numbered hardcover copies. The volume covered Barker’s theatrical career with the Dog Company.

Paul Meehan’s The Vampire in Science Fiction Film and Literature from McFarland explored the science behind the mythology, while Paul Adams’ Written in Blood: A Cultural History of the British Vampire from The Limbury Press was an in-depth guide to British bloodsuckers that also included a section of photographs.

Zombie Book: The Encyclopedia of the Living Dead by Nick Redfern and Brad Steiger covered everything that was dead…but alive. That didn’t stop editors Shaka McGlotten and Steve Jones trying to dig up a different approach in Zombies and Sexuality: Essays on Desire and the Living Dead , which contained ten critical essays.

From The Alchemy Press, Touchstones: Essays on the Fantastic reprinted twenty-two articles by John Howard on such authors as Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Robert Hood, Carl Jacobi, Fritz Leiber, Arthur Machen, William Sloane, Hugh Walpole and Karl Edward Wagner, amongst others.

Jason V. Brock’s Disorders of Magnitude: A Survey of Dark Fantasy contained essays, articles and interviews. It was published as part of the “Studies in Supernatural Literature” series edited by S.T. Joshi for publisher Rowman & Littlefied.

In Monstrous Bodies: Feminine Power in Young Adult Horror Fiction from McFarland, June Pulliam explored the roles of women in YA ghost, lycanthrope and witchcraft fiction.

Michael Howarth’s Under the Bed, Creeping: Psychoanalyzing the Gothic in Children’s Literature from the same publisher looked at Neil Gaiman’s Coraline , amongst other children’s books and stories. So, too, did The Gothic Fairy Tale in Young Adult Literature: Essays on Stories from Grimm to Gaiman edited by Joseph Abbruscato and Tanya Jones, also from McFarland.

Edited by Laurie Lamson, Now Write!: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror included eighty-seven essays and writing exercises by Ramsey Campbell, Jay Lake and others.