Stephen Jones: Best New Horror #26

Intended as a homage to the pulp magazine Unknown / Unknown Worlds and the digest titles Fantastic and Beyond Fantasy Fiction , the first softcover volume of Worlds of the Unknown , edited by Jon Harvey for his own Spectre Press, included fiction and poetry by Adrian Cole, Mike Chinn, Andrew Darlington and Don Webb, amongst others, along with the first part of a serialisation of Jerome Dreifuss’ 1946 novel Furlough from Heaven . Mike Ashley and Steve Sneyd contributed articles, and there was some nice artwork by Alan Hunter, Jim Pitts, Russ Nicholson, David Fletcher and Edd Cartier (whose name was consistently misspelled throughout the publication).

Borderlands Press continued its series of “Little Books” with The Little Aqua Book of Creature Tales by David J. Schow, featuring six monster stories (one original) and an Afterword by the author. It was limited to 500 signed and numbered copies.

Little by Little from Bad Moon Books was a hefty retrospective collection containing ten stories by John R. Little, along with an Introduction by Lisa Morton and story notes by the author.

Chaosium Inc.’s Kickstarter-funded anthology Madness on the Orient Express edited by James Lowder featured sixteen Lovecraftian murder mysteries by Lisa Morton, Cody Goodfellow, Christopher Golden, Darrell Schweitzer and others.

Edited by Chuck Palahniuk, Richard Thomas and Dennis Widmyer, Burnt Tongues: An Anthology of Transgressive Stories from Medallion Press contained twenty workshop stories that the editors thought were pushing the boundaries. They obviously don’t read as much horror fiction as perhaps they should.

A Dark Phantastique: Encounters with the Uncanny and Other Magical Things was a hefty 700-plus page anthology edited by Jason V. Brock and published by Cycatrix Press in a trade hardcover edition and twenty-six deluxe signed and lettered copies. Contributors included Greg Bear, Ray Bradbury, Dennis Etchison, Cody Goodfellow, Lois H. Gresh, S.T. Joshi, Paul Kane, Nancy Kilpatrick, Joe R. Lansdale, William F. Nolan, Weston Ochse, Lucy A. Snyder, Melanie Tem, Steve Rasnic Tem and Don Webb.

Fifteen stories (three original) by Steve Rasnic Tem were published in Here with the Shadows from Swan River Press, while Widow’s Dozen was a paperback collection of eleven(!) unusual stories by Marek Waldorf, published by New York’s Turtle Point Press.

From Canada’s ChiZine Publications, Helen Marshall’s second collection, Gifts for the One Who Comes After , featured an Introduction by Ann Vander-Meer and seventeen superior love stories with a decidedly dark twist (nine originals), illustrated by Chris Roberts.

From the same imprint, Knife Fight and Other Struggles brought together twelve stories (two original) and a forthcoming novel excerpt by David Nickle with an Introduction by Peter Watts, while They Do The Same Things Different There collected twenty-four reprint stories by Robert Shearman.

Dead Americans and Other Stories collected ten tales (two original) by Australian author Ben Peek with an Introduction by Rjurik Davidson.

The Hexslinger Omnibus contained all three “weird Western” novels by Gemma Files, along with three previously unpublished stories in the same series.

Editor Ellen Datlow’s Kickstarter-funded anthology Fearful Symmetries was a mixture of horror and fantasy stories by, amongst others, Terry Dowling, Garth Nix, Helen Marshall, Pat Cadigan, Stephen Graham Jones, Nathan Bellingrud, John Langan and Laird Barron.

ChiZine teamed up with Undertow Publications to produce Shadows & Tall Trees 2014 , the sixth issue edited by Michael Kelly. The original paperback anthology contained seventeen stories by Robert Shearman, F. Brett Cox, R.B. Russell, Conrad Williams, Christopher Harman, Alison Moore and others.

Laird Barron guest-edited The Year’s Best Weird Fiction: Volume One from the same pair of imprints. It included twenty-two stories, an essay by the editor and a Foreword by series editor Michael Kelly.

Adrian Cole’s novel The Shadow Academy from Canada’s Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing was set in a post-apocalyptic future Britain after the Plague Wars.

Number nine in “The Exile Book of Anthology Series”, Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse was edited with an Introduction by Silvia Moreno-Garcia and contained twenty-three original stories by Michael Matheson, Claude Lalumière and others.

Angela Slatter’s psychological horror story Home and Hearth was published as a 125-copy signed and numbered chapbook by Spectral Press.

The converse narrative of a woman who was surrounded by murder and madness was revealed in the novella By Insanity of Reason , a chapbook collaboration between Lisa Morton and John R. Little from Bad Moon Books.

Tim Waggoner’s Deep Like the River was an atmospheric novella about a creepy canoe trip, nicely packaged by Dark Regions Press.

The Night Just Got Darker was a psychological horror story about a writer cursed to hold back the darkness by Gary McMahon. It was available in chapbook form from the UK’s KnightWatch Press in an edition of 100 signed copies.

From Rainfall Books, Gunthar: The Purple Priestess of Asshtar by Steve Dilks and Glen Usher and Gunthar and the Jaguar Queen by Dilks alone offered sword & sorcery fiction in the tradition on Conan, with artwork by Steve Lines.

The previously unpublished fantasy story The Horse of Another Color by artist and author Hannes Bok (1914-64) was issued by the Sidecar Preservation Society as an attractive booklet limited to 170 copies with a cover illustration by Tim Kirk.

Entering its 66th year of publication, Gordon Van Gelder’s The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction produced its usual six bumper bi-monthly issues with fiction by Dale Bailey, Scott Baker, Albert E. Cowdrey, Gordon Eklund, Paul Di Filippo, Phyllis Eisenstein, C.C. Finlay, Ron Goulart, Alex Irvine, Marc Laidlaw, Tim Sullivan, Ian Tregilli, Ray Vukcevich and Ted White, amongst others.

There were the usual book and film review columns by Charles De Lint, Elizabeth Hand, Michelle West, James Sallis, Chris Moriarty, David J. Skal, Alan Dean Foster, Kathi Maio and others, and Lawrence Forbes, David Langford, Bud Webster, Paul Di Filippo and Graham Andrews contributed to the always fascinating ‘Curiosities’ column. The July/August issue of F&SF was guest-edited by C.C. Finlay.

The non-fiction in Andy Cox’s Black Static has always had the edge over the stories, and that was certainly true for the six stylish issues published in 2014, with insightful commentary on the genre in each issue by Stephen Volk and Lynda E. Rucker; interviews with A.K. Benedict, Ramsey Campbell, Gary Fry, Carole Johnstone and James Cooper; book reviews by Peter Tennant, and DVD reviews by Tony Lee. Nicholas Royle contributed a touching personal tribute to author Joel Lane in the January/February edition, and there was also fiction from the likes of Ray Cluley, John Grant, Andrew Hook, Maura McHugh, Paul Meloy, Steve Rasnic Tem, Tim Waggoner, Simon Bestwick and others.

Cox’s companion SF and fantasy magazine Interzone boasted full colour throughout and featured book reviews by diverse hands and film reviews by the dependable Tony Lee and Nick Lowe.

Edited by Richard T. Chizmar, Cemetery Dance produced an “All Fiction Special Issue” that featured stories by Bentley Little, Simon Clark, Darrell Schweitzer, Jack Ketchum, Joel Lane and others.

Canada’s glossy Rondo Award-winning Rue Morgue magazine included interviews with writers Mike Mignola, Nancy Baker, Simon Strantzas, Aaron Sterns, Gregory Lamberson, Josh Malerman, Lauren Beukes, Anne Rice, Kim Newman and Joe R. Lansdale, and film-makers David Cronenberg, Gareth Edwards, Ty West, Robert Rodriguez, Kevin Connor, Eli Roth, Chuck Russell, Eduardo Sánchez, Jennifer Kent, Jen and Sylvia Soska, Ivan Reitman, Lloyd Kaufman and Douglas Cheek. The 17th Anniversary Halloween issue was a special tribute to artist H.R. Giger.