The July issue of the monthly The New York Review of Science Fiction had an article about Clark Ashton Smith and the 1999 tribute anthology The Last Continent, while the November issue included a special forty-four-page supplement with reactions to the terrorist attacks of September 11th.
Charles N. Brown’s monthly Locus boasted new cover designs by Arnie Fenner and included interviews with Frank Kelly Freas, Ellen Datlow, John Crowley, Thomas M. Disch, Harlan Ellison, Bob Eggleton, Andy Duncan, Lucius Shepard and several others, along with all the usual news and reviews.
Now available through Warren Lapine’s DNA Publications, Science Fiction Chronicle was almost back on schedule, producing eleven issues with founder Andrew I. Porter staying on as news editor. Along with introducing interior colour, the magazine also revived Marvin Kaye’s opinion column, premiered Brian Keene’s new horror column, and featured interviews with various SF writers.
As always, The Bulletin of The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, edited by David A. Truesdale, contained plenty of useful articles and business advice for writers. Contributors included Harry Harrison, Michael Cassutt, Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg, Barry B. Longyear, Kevin J. Anderson and others. The four quarterly issues also featured tributes to Gordon R. Dickson and Poul Anderson, a history of the Nebula Award, an interview with Patrick Nielsen Hayden, and market reports by Derryl Murphy and Randy Dannenfelser.
Despite a couple of confusing format changes and an editorial switch, The British Fantasy Society’s newsletter Prism still managed to produce six bimonthly issues for members. These featured the usual news and reviews along with articles on young-adult fantasies, regular columns by Tom Arden and Chaz Brenchley, plus interviews with Lisa Tuttle and Canadian director John Fawcett.
The society also published two square-bound volumes of Dark Horizons, both of which were all-fiction issues edited by Debbie Bennett and featuring D. F. Lewis, Paul Lewis, Tina Rath, Peter Tennant, Mark McLaughlin and Allen Ashley, amongst others. The second volume of F20, published by Enigmatic Press and the BFS, and co-edited by David J. Howe with Maynard and Sims, was an all-fantasy issue themed around the seven deadly sins. Contributors included Freda Warrington, Juliet McKenna, Storm Constantine and Louise Cooper.
Voices from the Vault, the newsletter of Britain’s Dracula Society, included obituaries for actor Francis Lederer (by Basil Copper) and author R. Chetwynd-Hayes, along with various reviews.
The Official Newsletter of the Horror Writers Association, edited on a monthly schedule by Kathryn Ptacek, featured all the usual columns and the editor’s extensive market reports, plus a fascinating article on reverting rights by Richard Laymon, an interview with Laymon by Vincent Fahey, an extensive tribute to R. Chetwynd-Hayes, and self-congratulatory reports on the 2001 World Horror Convention/Bram Stoker Weekend.
Most of the March issue was devoted to remembrances and tributes to HWA President Laymon, who died suddenly in February. Former vice-president David Niall Wilson succeeded the author as the group’s president, with Tim Lebbon stepping into the role of VP until the next regular election, when both were officially returned to office.
Barbara and Christopher Roden’s excellent All Hallows: The Journal of the Ghost Story Society included numerous book reviews, Roger Dobson’s film news and Richard Dalby’s obituary column, Ramsey Campbell’s take on The Blair Witch Project, articles on Vernon Lee, Blood of the Vampire (1958), The Ghost Breakers (1940) and The Skull (1965), and an interview with Douglas Clegg by Michael Rowe. There was also fiction by Stephen Volk, Paul Finch, Geoffrey Warburton, Peter J. Wilson and others, plus artwork by Paul Lowe, Douglas Walters, Dallas Goffin, Iain Maynard and veteran Alan Hunter.
The Stephen King Universe: A Guide to the Worlds of the King of Horror by Stanley Wiater, Christopher Golden and Hank Wagner was a chunky trade paperback from Renaissance Books which looked at the influences on King’s work by grouping the author’s novels and stories by setting and theme. A deluxe, signed, limited edition containing extra text and illustrative material not included in the paperback version was available in hardcover from Cemetery Dance Publications at $75.00.
The Essential Stephen King was yet another reference guide by Stephen J. Spignesi ranking 101 books, stories and movies by King.
Douglas E. Winter’s long-awaited authorized biography, Clive Barker: The Dark Fantastic, stretched to more than 650 pages and contained useful primary and secondary bibliographies, two eight-page photo inserts, headings by Barker and a story written when the author was fourteen years old.
A follow-up to his 1990 volumeThe Weird Tale, The Modern Weird Tale was S. T. Joshi’s critical study of such authors as Stephen King, Clive Barker, Anne Rice, Ramsey Campbell, Peter Straub, Robert Aickman, Shirley Jackson, William Peter Blatty, T. E. D. Klein, Thomas Ligotti and Thomas Tryon.
Published by Liverpool University Press, Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction was an in-depth study of the Liverpool-based horror writer by the prolific Joshi, including a detailed bibliography plus a look back at his early life by Campbell himself. From the same publisher and author, A Dreamer and a Visionary: H. P. Lovecraft in His Time proved that there were still more minutiae to be squeezed out of poor HPL’s short life.
From 1923 until 1937, C. M. Eddy, Jr. and Muriel E. Eddy enjoyed a close relationship with H. P. Lovecraft. Fenham Publishing’s trade paperback The Gentleman from Angell Street: Memories of H. P. Lovecraft contained four essays/memoirs of HPL, three poems about Lovecraft by Muriel Eddy, and several pages of photographs. A collection of five of Eddy’s weird tales, Exit Into Eternity: Tales of the Bizarre and Supernatural, was reprinted by the same publisher, with an introduction by the author’s wife.
After researching his subject for more than twenty years, Mike Ashley’s Starlight Man: The Extraordinary Life of Algernon Blackwood (aka Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life) was a long-anticipated and fascinating illustrated biography published on the fiftieth anniversary of the death of the acclaimed writer of the supernatural.
In Search of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde by Raymond T. McNally and Radu R. Florescu looked at Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel and its cultural impact.
Edited by James Van Hise, The Fantastic Worlds of Robert E. Howard was an illustrated guide to the work of the Weird Tales writer, with contributions from Rusty Burke, Rick Lai, Roy Krenkel and others, mostly taken from The Robert E. Howard United Press Association (REHUPA).
Subtitled Friends of Yesteryear: Fictioneers & Others and limited to 4,000 copies, Book of the Dead was written in the 1970s and contained wonderful personal reminiscences by the late E. Hoffman Price about friends and colleagues such as H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith, Seabury Quinn, Henry Kuttner, August Derleth and others. Unfortunately, like other recent Arkham House volumes, the book was poorly edited and filled with unnecessary typos.