THE BEST HORROR OF THE YEAR VOLUME TEN
Edited by Ellen Datlow
Thanks to Gardner Dozois, Priya Sharma, Jonathan Strahan, and Stefan Dziemianowicz for their recommendations.
Than you to all the magazine and book publishers who sent me material for review in a timely manner.
Thanks to Kristine Dikeman, who helped me in my reading. And special thanks to Jason Katzman, my editor at Night Shade.
SUMMATION: 2017
Here are 2017’s numbers: There are twenty-one stories, novelettes, and novellas in this year’s volume, ranging from 1,500 words to 17,900 words. There are almost 20,000 more words this year than there were last year. The material comes from anthologies, collections, magazines, webzines, and eBook-only publications. Eleven of the contributors live in the United States, five in the United Kingdom, three in Canada, and one in Australia. Eleven stories are by women (two stories are by one of them) and ten are by men. The authors of nine stories have never before appeared in my best of the year series.
The Horror Writers Association announced the winners of the 2015 Bram Stoker Awards® April 29 on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. The presentations were made during a banquet held at the organization’s second StokerCon. The winners were as follows:
Superior Achievement in a Noveclass="underline" The Fisherman by John Langan (Word Horde Press); Superior Achievement in a First Noveclass="underline" Haven by Tom Deady (Cemetery Dance Publications); Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Noveclass="underline" Snowed by Marie Alexander (Raw Dog Screaming Press); Superior Achievement in a Graphic Noveclass="underline" Kolchak the Night Stalker: The Forgotten Love of Edgar Allan Poe by James Chambers (Moonstone); Superior Achievement in Long Fiction: The Winter Box by Tim Waggoner (Dark Fuse); Superior Achievement in Short Fiction: “The Crawl Space” by Joyce Carol Oates (Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, March/April); Superior Achievement in a Screenplay: The VVitch by Robert Eggers (Parts and Labor, RT Features, Rooks Nest Entertainment, Code Red Productions, Scythia Films, Maiden Voyage Pictures, Mott Street Pictures, Pulse Films, and Very Special Projects); Superior Achievement in an Anthology: Borderlands 6 edited by Thomas F. Monteleone and Olivia F. Monteleone (Borderlands Press/Samhain); Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection: The Doll-Master and Other Tales of Terror by Joyce Carol Oates (Mysterious Press); Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction: Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin (W. W. Norton); Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection: Brothel by Stephanie M. Wytovich (Raw Dog Screaming Press).
The Specialty Press Award: Omnium Gatherum.
The Richard Layman President’s Award: Caren Hanten.
The Silver Hammer Award: James Chambers.
Mentor of the Year went to Linda Addison.
Life Achievement Awards: Dennis Etchison and Thomas F. Monteleone.
The 2016 Shirley Jackson Awards were given out at Readercon 28 on Sunday, July 16, 2017, in Quincy, Massachusetts. The jurors were Nadia Bulkin, Robert Levy, Helen Marshall, Robert Shearman, and Chandler Klang Smith.
The winners were: Noveclass="underline" The Girls, Emma Cline (Random House); Novella: The Ballad of Black Tom, Victor LaValle (Tor.com Books); Novelette: “Waxy” by Camilla Grudova (Granta); Short Fiction: “Postcards from Natalie” by Carrie Laben (The Dark); Single-Author Collection: A Natural History of Hell by Jeffrey Ford (Small Beer Press); Edited Anthology: The Starlit Wood, edited by Dominik Parisien and Navah Wolfe (Saga Press) and the Board of Director’s Award to Ruth Franklin in recognition of the biography, Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life.
The World Fantasy Awards were presented October 30, 2016, at a banquet held during the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio. The Lifetime Achievement recipients, Terry Brooks and Marina Warner, were previously announced. The judges were Elizabeth Engstrom, Betsy Mitchell, Daryl Gregory, Juliet Marillier, and Nalo Hopkinson.
Winners of the Best Work 2016: Best Noveclass="underline" The Sudden Appearance of Hope, Claire North (Redhook; Orbit UK); Best Long Fiction: The Dream-Quest of Vellitt Boe, Kij Johnson (Tor.com Books); Best Short Fiction: “Das Steingeschöpf,” G.V. Anderson (Strange Horizons 12/12/16); Best Anthology: Dreaming in the Dark, Jack Dann, ed. (PS Australia); Best Collection: A Natural History of Hell, Jeffrey Ford (Small Beer);
Best Artist: Jeffrey Alan Love; Special Award, Professionaclass="underline" Michael Levy & Farah Mendlesohn, for Children’s Fantasy Literature: An Introduction (Cambridge University Press); Special Award, Non-Professionaclass="underline" Neile Graham, for fostering excellence in the genre through her role as Workshop Director, Clarion West.
Chalk by Paul Cornell (Tor.com Books) begins with a brutal act perpetrated on a bullied British teenager, accidently awakening an ancient power that becomes the embodiment of revenge against those who wronged the boy.
The Bone Mother by David Demchuk (ChiZine Publications) is a series of related vignettes about monsters and magical creatures trying to survive in three villages on the Ukrainian/Romanian border in a time of war. Moving, horrifying, terrifying. A quick, enjoyable read.
Mormama by Kit Reed (Tor) is a marvelous southern gothic about a cursed ancestral home with three elderly sisters living within. When a divorced relative and her young son move in and an accident victim with no memory hides out in the basement the haunts become active, whispering ugly secrets.
The Dark Net by Benjamin Percy (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is an entertaining ride into the dark side of the internet where all sorts of things can be acquired and where awful secrets reside. Demons are intent on using the dark net to create havoc in the world by infecting everything digital. A reporter in Portland, Oregon, stumbles on the plot by accident, and her blind niece—using a new device that enables her to see—might be the key to stopping it. What’s most interesting about the plot is how it dovetails nicely with our dependence on and anxieties about the ubiquitous technology that inextricably links us worldwide.
The Boy on the Bridge by M. R. Carey (Orbit) takes place in the same post-apocalyptic world as The Girl with All the Gifts, the terrific 2016 novel and movie. However, it’s not a sequel—it’s been called a “sidequel,” which seems about right. A fungus that mutated from insects has turned most people in England into “hungries”—mindless creatures with a craving for fresh meat—animal or human.
A group of scientists, soldiers, and a brilliant fifteen-year-old boy who is the only survivor of a hungries attack embark on an expedition to Scotland from the last human holdout in England in an attempt to find caches of Cordyceps cultures spread around the countryside by an earlier expedition to test whether specific environments might be less hospitable to the pathogen—or better yet, contain a cure. Initially, the relationship of the boy and the epidemiologist who has taken care of him since he was orphaned plus the road-trip plot seem to indicate a trajectory similar to that of The Girl with All the Gifts, but oh, does it move along.