Prism: The Newsletter of the British Fantasy Society had an erratic schedule under the editorship of Jenny Barber. Despite this, each issue was packed with publishing and media news, and there was a brief interview with David Sutton.
Under editors Marie O’Regan and the busy Barber, the BFS’ journal Dark Horizons was a messy mixture of short stories and non-fiction, including book and media reviews that would have been better suited in Prism. The two issues published in 2006 featured new and reprint fiction from Mark Chadbourn, Debbie Bennett, John Howard, Lavie Tidhar, Mark Morris, Ramsey Campbell, Tim Lebbon and others, along with interviews with Neil Gaiman and independent film-maker Jeff Brookshire.
Edited with an Afterword by the ubiquitous Paul Kane and Marie O’Regan, and featuring a “heartfelt” Introduction by Stephen Jones, The British Fantasy Society: A Celebration was an attractive trade paperback anthology of twenty horror, fantasy and SF stories (six original) with contributions from Christopher Fowler, Clive Barker, Michael Marshall Smith, John Connolly, Ramsey Campbell, Kim Newman, Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman, Brian Aldiss, Richard Christian Matheson, Robert Silverberg, Stephen Gallagher and others. All profits from the book went to the Society and the “Black Dust” Nqabakazula Charity Project in South Africa.
BFS members were also treated to a special edition of Cinema Macabre edited by Mark Morris. This trade paperback version replaced the J. K. Potter cover art on the PS Publishing edition with a new painting by Les Edwards, and Jonathan Ross’ Introduction was dropped in favour of one by Marie O’Regan and Paul Kane.
From the Ghost Story Society, All Hallows contained fiction by Stephen Volk and others along with an interview with Australian author John Harwood, plus the usual reviews, columns and articles by Ramsey Campbell, Roger Dobson, Reggie Oliver and Gary McMahon.
Edited by Gwilym Games, Machenalia was the newsletter of The Friends of Arthur Machen. Along with plenty of Machen-related news, each issue also contained reviews of other genre material.
The tenth issue of David Longhorn’s annual Supernatural Tales was another bumper volume featuring contributions from Don Tumasonis, Gary McMahon, Andrew Darlington, Lynda E. Rucker, Tina Rath and Michael Chislett, amongst others. Whispers of Wickedness included an interview with author Steven Pirie.
The two issues of John Benson’s Not One of Us contained stories and poems by Sonya Taaffe and others. Change was the latest in a series of annual, variously-titled publications from the same publisher. A trade paperback anthology edited by Benson, The Best of Not One of Us, was published by Prime Books/Wildside Press and included fifteen stories that originally appeared in the magazine.
Gavin J. Grant and Kelly Link’s Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet and Heather Shaw and Tim Pratt’s Flytrap featured the usual mixture of slipstream fiction, poetry and articles.
The October issue of The New York Review of Science Fiction included interviews with Thomas Ligotti and Peter Straub, and the Winter issue of The Bulletin of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America featured an introductory essay by Bud Webster on Donald A. Wollheim’s classic horror anthologies The Macabre Reader and More Macabre.
Published by Writer’s Digest in association with “The Horror Writers of America” [sic], Mort Castle’s guide On Writing Horror: Revised Edition contained forty-four essays (twenty-four original and the others mostly revised) on how to write horror with a Foreword by Stanley Wiater and an Afterword by Harlan Ellison.
Dorothy Hoobler and Thomas Hoobler’s The Monsters: Mary Shelley & the Curse of Frankenstein looked at the origins of Mary Shelley’s influential novel.
Edited by Scott Connors for print-on-demand publisher Hippocampus Press, The Freedom of Fantastic Things: Selected Criticism on the Writings of Clark Ashton Smith collected twenty-six critical essays (five original) by Brian Stableford, S. T. Joshi, James Blish, Donald Sidney-Fryer and others on the author’s work, along with a gathering of contemporary reviews.
H. P. Lovecraft’s Collected Essays Volume 3: Science and Collected Essays Volume 4: Travel were also available from Hippocampus, edited with notes and an Introduction by S. T. Joshi. From the same imprint came Lovecraft’s New York Circle: The Kalem Club 1924–1927, edited by Kirk Mara Hart and Joshi, with a Preface by Peter Cannon and an Introduction by Mara Kirk Hart.
In December, a number of original Lovecraft letters and manuscripts were auctioned at Sotheby’s. Among the items was an autographed manuscript of “The Shunned House” that sold for $45,000.
Charles Addams: A Cartoonist’s Life was a biography by Linda H. Davis.
From McFarland Publishing, Allen A. Debus’ Dinosaurs in Fantastic Fiction: A Thematic Survey included Forewords by Donald F. Glut and Mark F. Berry.
Published by Greenwood Press/Praeger, Legends of Blood: The Vampire in History and Myth by Wayne Bartlett and Flavia Idriceanu looked at the undead in myths, literature and film.
Don D’Ammassa’s Encyclopedia of Fantasy and Horror Fiction was a guide to the major authors and their works.
Published in a signed edition limited to 500 copies, John Clute’s The Darkening Garden: A Short Lexicon of Horror contained a selection of terms defined for a proposed encyclopaedia on horror fiction, illustrated by thirty artists. The artwork was also available as thirty postcards, limited to 300 sets.
Translated from the Russian by Adam Bromfield and published in a movie tie-in edition, Sergei Lukyanenko’s 1998 novel Night Watch (Nochnol Dozor) was the first in a trilogy about the epic battle between the creatures of Light and Dark.
Other tie-in novels of the year included V for Vendetta by Steve Moore, Superman Returns by Marv Wolfman and Snakes on a Plane by Christa Faust.
From BL Publishing/Black Flame, Final Destination 3 was also written by Faust. It was joined by novelisations for Final Destination by Natasha Rhodes and Final Destination 2 by Nancy A. Collins and Rhodes, while the spin-off title Final Destination: Looks Could Kill was written by Collins alone.
Dark Horse Comics’ DH Press launched its paperback series of licensed Universal Monsters novels with Dracula: Asylum by Paul Witcover, Frankenstein: The Shadow of Frankenstein by Stefan Petrucha and Creature from the Black Lagoon: Time’s Black Lagoon by Paul Di Filippo.
Other tie-in books based on older film properties included The Toxic Avenger by Lloyd Kaufman and Adam Jahnke, Jason X: To the Third Power by Nancy Kilpatrick, Friday the 13th: The Jason Strain by the busy Christa Faust, Friday the 13th: Carnival of Maniacs by Stephen Hand, A Nightmare on Elm Street: The Dream Dealers by Jeffrey Thomas, A Nightmare on Elm Street: Perchance to Dream by Natasha Rhodes, Predator: Forever Midnight by John Shirley and Aliens: DNA War by Diane Carey.