GEOFF RYMAN
Devil’s Smile
GLEN HIRSHBERG
The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train
KIM NEWMAN
Necrology: 2006
STEPHEN JONES & KIM NEWMAN
Useful Addresses
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank David Barraclough, Kim Newman, Michael Marshall Smith, Sara and Randy Broecker, Val and Les Edwards, Max Burnell, Rodger Turner and Wayne MacLaurin (www.sfsite.com), Gordon Van Gelder, Peter Crowther, Mandy Slater, Pamela Brooks, Hugh Lamb, Claudia Dyer, Tim Lucas, Brian Mooney, Violet Jones, Amanda Foubister, Christopher Wicking and, especially, Pete Duncan and Dorothy Lumley for all their help and support. Special thanks are also due to Locus, Variety, Ansible and all the other sources that were used for reference in the Introduction and the Necrology.
INTRODUCTION: HORROR IN 2006 copyright © Stephen Jones 2007.
SUMMER copyright © Al Sarrantonio 2006. Originally published in Retro Pulp Tales. Reprinted by permission of the author.
DIGGING DEEP copyright © Ramsey Campbell 2006. Originally published in Phobic: Modern Horror Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE NIGHT WATCH copyright © John Gordon 2006. Originally published in Left in the Dark: The Supernatural Tales of John Gordon. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE LUXURY OF HARM copyright © Christopher Fowler 2006. Originally published in The British Fantasy Society: A Celebration. Reprinted by permission of the author.
SENTINELS copyright © Mark Samuels 2006. Originally published in Alone on the Darkside: Echoes from the Shadows of Horror. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE SAFFRON GATHERERS copyright © Elizabeth Hand 2006. Originally published in Saffron & Brimstone: Strange Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author.
WHAT NATURE ABHORS copyright © Mark Morris 2006. Originally published in Night Visions 12. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE LAST REEL copyright © Lynda E. Rucker 2006. Originally published in Supernatural Tales 10, 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE AMERICAN DEAD copyright © Joseph E. Lake, Jr. 2006. Originally published in Interzone, Issue #203, April 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.
BETWEEN THE COLD MOON AND THE EARTH copyright © Peter Atkins 2006. Originally published in At the Sign of the Snowman’s Skull. Reprinted by permission of the author.
SOB IN THE SILENCE copyright © Gene Wolfe 2006. Originally published in Strange Birds. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Virginia Kidd Agency, Inc.
CONTINUITY ERROR copyright © Nicholas Royle 2006. Originally published in London: City of Disappearances. Reprinted by permission of the author.
DR PRIDA’S DREAM-PLAGUED PATIENT copyright © Michael Bishop 2006. Originally published in Aberrant Dreams #7, Spring 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE ONES WE LEAVE BEHIND copyright © Mark Chadbourn 2006. Originally published in Dark Horizons, Issue No.48, Spring 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.
MINE copyright © Joel Lane 2006. Originally published in The Lost District and Other Stories. Reprinted by permission of the author.
OBSEQUY copyright © David J. Schow 2006. Originally published in Subterranean, Issue #3. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THROWN copyright © Don Tumasonis 2006. Originally published in New Genre, Issue Four, Winter 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.
HOUSES UNDER THE SEA copyright © Caitlín R. Kiernan 2006. Originally published in Thrillers 2. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THEY copyright © David Morrell 2006. Originally published on Amazon Shorts, September 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author.
THE CLOCKWORK HORROR copyright © F. Gwynplaine Maclntyre. Originally published in Evermore. Reprinted by permission of the author.
MAKING CABINETS copyright © Richard Christian Matheson. Originally published in Masques V. Reprinted by permission of the author.
POL POT’S BEAUTIFUL DAUGHTER (FANTASY) copyright © Geoff Ryman 2006. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction No.655, October/November 2006. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent.
DEVIL’S SMILE copyright © Glen Hirshberg 2006. Originally published in American Morons. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author’s agent, Anderson Grinberg Literary Management, Inc.
THE MAN WHO GOT OFF THE GHOST TRAIN copyright © Kim Newman 2006. Originally published in The Man from the Diogenes Club. Reprinted by permission of the author.
NECROLOGY: 2006 copyright © Stephen Jones and Kim Newman 2007.
USEFUL ADDRESSES copyright © Stephen Jones 2007.
Congratulations to
Paul and Marie
on the occasion of their wedding.
INTRODUCTION
Horror in 2006
IN FEBRUARY 2006, French conglomerate Lagardere bought the Time Warner Book Group for $537.5 million and became the third largest book publisher in the world (after Pearson and McGraw Hill). Lagardere is the parent company of publisher Hachette Livre, which already owned Orion/Gollancz and Hodder Headline in the UK. The acquisition meant that they also took control of the Warner Books, Warner Aspect, Little Brown and Mysterious Press imprints in the US, and Orbit and Atom in the UK. The various imprints were subsequently renamed Hachette Book Group USA and Little Brown Book Group.
Following the death of their founder in 2005, Byron Preiss Visual Publications and iBooks, Inc. voluntarily filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy and closed down all operations at the end of February. It was announced that the companies did not have sufficient resources to continue operations. They were subsequently put up for public auction, with the back catalogue, copyrights and author agreements included amongst the assets. The companies were acquired by J. Boylston & Company, who placed an initial bid of $125,000 and planned to continue publishing titles under the Byron Preiss imprints.
American Marketing Services, which owned Publishers Group West, declared Chapter 11 bankruptcy on December 26th with debts of $200 million. AMS was the largest book distributor in America, with more than 150 clients including Carroll & Graf, Dark Horse Comics, McSweeney’s, RE/Search, Thunder’s Mouth Press and Underwood Books.
HMV acquired Britain’s Ottakar’s bookshop chain for £62.9 million, and pulped several million pounds of stock in the process. The 141 stores were subsequently rebranded as Waterstone’s.
Mr Alton Verm of Conroe, Texas, was outraged when he saw the book his fifteen-year-old daughter brought home from the local high school. “It’s just all kinds of filth,” Verm complained. “I want to get the book taken out of the class.” To that end, he filed a “Request for Reconsideration of Instructional Materials” with the Conroe Independent School District. The book he so vehemently objected to was Ray Bradbury’s classic Fahrenheit 451, which is all about a near-future society where books are banned. Of course, Verm didn’t know that – he admitted that he hadn’t actually read it.
In September, the Rt Reverend David Gillett, the Bishop of Bolton, accused retailers of creating a “climate of fear” by selling traditional Halloween merchandise. Writing to Britain’s five biggest supermarket chains, he urged them to rethink the way they marketed the pagan holiday: “I share the view of many Christians that large retailers are increasingly keen to commercialise Halloween celebrations in a way that pressurises parents to purchase goods that promote the dark, negative side of Halloween and could encourage anti-social behaviour,” he said. “I am worried that Halloween has the potential to trivialise the realities of evil in the world and that occult practices should not be condoned, even if they are only being presented in a caricatured, light-hearted form.”