The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 10 - [Anthology] Read online

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  The Mammoth Book of

  Best New Horror 10

  Edited By Stephen Jones

  Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

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  CONTENTS

  Introduction: Horror in 1998

  THE EDITOR

  Learning to Let Go

  CHRISTOPHER FOWLER

  The Wedding Present

  NEIL GAIMAN

  Adventures in Further Education

  PETER ATKINS

  Bondage

  KATHE KOJA

  The Keys to D’Espérance

  CHAZ BRENCHLEY

  The Song My Sister Sang

  STEPHEN LAWS

  A Victorian Ghost Story

  KIM NEWMAN

  The Dead Boy at Your Window

  BRUCE HOLLAND ROGERS

  Ra*e

  RAMSEY CAMPBELL

  Upstairs

  LAWRENCE WATT-EVANS

  Postcards from the King of Tides

  CAITLIN R. KIERNAN

  Everybody Goes

  MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH

  Yellow and Red

  TANITH LEE

  What Slips Away

  STEVE RASNIC TEM

  Inside the Cackle Factory

  DENNIS ETCHISON

  The Specialist’s Hat

  KELLY LINK

  The Boss in the Wall: A Treatise on the House Devil

  AVRAM DAVIDSON & GRANIA DAVIS

  Objects of Desire in the Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear

  HARLAN ELLISON

  Mr Clubb and Mr Cuff

  PETER STRAUB

  Necrology: 1998

  STEPHEN JONES & KIM NEWMAN

  Useful Addresses

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  INTRODUCTION

  Horror in 1998

  Following a two-year decline in North America,a near-record number of genre books appeared in 1998. The total for horror titles was up slightly on the previous year, with around a quarter of those books published in the young adult market and more than 15 per cent of them featuring vampires.

  However, the overall number of genre books published in Britain fell to its lowest for nearly a decade. Horror titles were down around 46 per cent on the previous year’s figures, accounting for a mere 12 per cent of publishers’ genre output (which was still 2 per cent above the share of the American market).

  A new study revealed that romance books continued to lead all other genres in terms of book sales in America. The industry was worth more than $1 billion annually and accounted for nearly half of all mass-market paperbacks sold. Sales of romance titles nearly equalled the sales of all the other genres combined, including horror, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, thrillers and westerns.

  German-owned international media company Bertelsmann AG, already owner of Bantam Doubleday Dell, purchased Random House in May for an estimated $1.3 billion. This resulted in a merger of the two publishers under the Random House name.

  With a base of thirty-five million book and music club members worldwide, Bertelsmann announced an agreement with bookselling giant Barnes & Noble, Inc. to establish a joint venture with its Internet subsidiary, barnesandnoble.com. Under the agreement, Bertelsmann reportedly paid $200 million for a 50 per cent stake in the on-line service and each party also contributed $100 million capital. Launched in May1997, barnesandnoble.com became one of the twenty-five fastest-growing Web sites in the world, generating sales of $22 million for the six months ending 1 August 1998.

  Meanwhile, in November Bertelsmann separately launched its own BooksOnline service in several European countries. The service used its new collaboration with barnesandnoble.com to offer customers worldwide the experience of shopping on-line for books in multiple languages.

  In another major deal, Barnes & Noble acquired distribution giant Ingram Book Group for $200 million in cash and $400 million in stock, much to the consternation of many in the publishing and bookselling world. The purchase put Barnes & Noble in control of the primary distributor for its main on-line competitor, Amazon.com, and for most of the small chains and independent bookstores throughout the United States. The American Booksellers Association issued an official statement in which it considered the purchase to be “a devastating development that threatens the viability of competition in the book industry, and limits the diversity and availability of books to consumers.”

  In a separate case, the ABA and a number of independent booksellers filed an anti-trust lawsuit in March in the US District Court for Northern California, accusing Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstore chains of violating anti-trust laws by using their estimated combined annual buying power of $5 billion to receive secret preferential treatment from publishers. B&N chairman Len Riggio hit back with an open letter to the media denying the ABA’s assertion that book superstores were responsible for the decline in independents and stated that there was no evidence of wrongdoing on the part of Barnes & Noble.

  America’s Crown Books filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July after the new owner failed to find a buyer. This resulted in the closure of 79 of the chain’s 174 stores. Having already returned many books to publishers earlier in the year, Crown was subsequently sued by its principal supplier, Ingram, who claimed payment for $10 million in books. Ingram eventually agreed to accept more returns and extend new credit to the chain in exchange for “super-priority” status as an unsecured creditor.

  A £300 million agreement between Waterstones and Dillons bookshop chains became the biggest-ever deal in British book retailing, with the result that most of the Dillons branches were re-branded to Waterstones. The move put the combined 200-plus stores in a good position to gain further market share before potential rivals Borders could make substantial inroads into the UK market.

  In 1997 the publishing industry was watching HarperCollins closely, amid the turmoil of restructuring, the cancellation of numerous titles, and rumours of bankruptcy. A year later the company reported that it had increased its operating profits by 200 per cent. While revenues stayed even at $737 million, profits increased from $12 million to $37 million. According to the annual report from parent company News Corp., the results were due to “a more focused publishing programme, decreased returns and some significant bestsellers.” Fourth-quarter results for HarperCollins showed a $11 million operating profit, compared to only $1 million in 1997. Headed by publishing director John Silbersack, the HarperEntertainment imprint was launched in the autumn to cover all the media tie-ins being put out by HarperCollins.

  America’s Leisure Books launched the Leisure Horror Book Club with two September titles, Alone With the Dead by Robert J. Randisi and The Halloween Man by Douglas Clegg.

  French publisher Hachette Livre bought a 70 per cent equity stake in Britain’s Orion Publishing Group and Macmillan (owned by German publisher Holtzbrinck) made a hostile £7.3 million takeover bid for Cassell (which included the Gollancz and Vista imprints). The Cassell Board of Directors had rejected the offer of £1 per share (a 122 per cent premium over the public valuation of 45 pence) when, in an unexpected move, Orion outbid Macmillan with £1.23 per share and bought the company.

  Canadian publisher Commonwealth, who had entered into “joint contracts” (aka vanity publishing) with an estimated 2,000 authors and had an annual budget of $6 million, declared bankruptcy in March. With lawsuits threatened by disgruntled writers and employees, publisher Don Phelan went into hiding, only to resurface briefly to blame an “internal and external conspiracy” for his problems, saying he would represent himself in class action suits brought against the firm by its clients.

  De
spite an announcement in May that Stanislaus Tal’s TAL Literary Agency had been sold to a company called Extreme Entertainment, it later emerged that Tal represented few if any authors and some royalties paid to the agency had never been reported.

  The American Congress passed the Copyright Term Extension Act, adding a further twenty years to copyrights for individuals, bringing the length of copyright in the US up to life plus seventy years, and into line with the European copyright law which was amended in 1995. After vigorous lobbying by the Walt Disney Company (who was faced with losing its exclusive copyright to Mickey Mouse in 2003), another twenty years was added to the already existing seventy-five years of corporate copyrights. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act also gave full protection to work appearing on-line.

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  It was the summer of Stephen King. After his move in 1997 to Simon & Schuster for a $2 million advance and nearly 50 per cent of the profits, his big release for the year was the novel Bag of Bones. It was about bestselling author Mike Noonan, suffering from writer’s block following the unexpected death of his wife and their unborn child, who found himself caught up in a supernatural mystery centred around Dark Score Lake and a town in the grip of a tyrannical millionaire. In America the book had a first printing of 1,360,000 copies from Scribner, backed by a $1 million promotional budget.

  Despite his phenomenal popularity on both sides of the Atlantic, the author had not appeared at a public event in Britain for nearly fifteen years. To coincide with the publication of the new book, King visited London in mid-August for a rare promotional tour. Bottles of a special “King Lager” were available during the UK launch party, produced especially for the event by a London micro-brewery, and a commemorative signed edition of Bag of Bones, limited to just 2,000 copies, went on sale at London’s Royal Festival Hall when King was interviewed by novelist and broadcaster Muriel Gray, read from his work, and answered questions in front of a capacity audience.

  Books Etc. in association with Hodder & Stoughton gave away a free trade paperback omnibus to coincide with the publication of Bag of Bones. Only available from stores in the London area, King etc. included a brief message from the author plus extracts from twelve of his novels.

  Just in time for Christmas, Donald M. Grant, Publisher, re-released the first three books in King’s Dark Tower series, packaged together at a suggested retail price of $110. This included a third printing of the first title in the series, The Gunslinger (1982), with a new dustjacket, and a second printing of The Drawing of the Three (1987), with a new dustjacket and ten new paintings by artist Phil Hale. The third book, The Waste Lands (1991), was a first edition. The set weighed a total of eight pounds and was available in a leatherette slipcase stamped on the spine in silver and maroon.

  Dean Koontz’s Seize the Night was the sequel to the author’s Fear Nothing, and once again involved night-dweller Christopher Snow, who discovered more about the mutated gene virus infecting the inhabitants of Moonlight Bay and a secret government time-travel experiment. It was also released in a 750-copy signed, leatherbound, slipcased edition by Cemetery Dance Publications, illustrated by Phil Parks, along with a 52-copy lettered edition.

  Anne Rice’s Pandora was the first volume in the “New Tales of the Vampire” series, as Rice’s undead characters David Talbot and Pandora returned from the author’s previous books. It was followed by The Vampire Armand, which told the tale of the eponymous bloodsucker and leader of the Theatre des Vampires across the centuries.

  The first volume in a new two-part series, Clive Barker’s Galilee: A Romance was a Southern Gothic involving the eponymous male protagonist whose love affair with Rachel Pallenberg reawakened an old conflict between rival families. While the Gearys were rich and powerful, the Barbarossas were much darker and stranger.

  Butterfly, Crystal, Brooke, Raven and Runaways comprised the “Orphans” series by V. C. Andrews® and marked a transition away from horror to young adult fiction for the late author. The story involved four teenage orphans who escaped from an evil foster home. Meanwhile, Music in the Night was the fourth in the Gothic horror “Logan Family” series under the Andrews byline, still probably written by Andrew Neiderman.

  Thriller novelist Frederick Forsyth sold the American, Canadian and audio rights for The Phantom in Manhattan to New Millennium Entertainment, a new publisher based in Beverly Hills, for an advance reported to be in the mid-seven-figure area. The novel was a sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s version of the Gaston Leroux classic,The Phantom of the Opera. New Millennium also planned to release the book in DVD format, while rumours of a stage version of The Phantom in Manhattan had already been circulating in theatrical circles for over a year. Forsyth had previously said he did not want to write another book, but apparently offered his services to Lloyd Webber at a dinner party in late 1997.

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  Published in America but not in his native Britain, Ramsey Campbell’s psychological thriller The Last Voice They Hear involved an investigative journalist who was challenged by his long-missing brother to solve a series of murders, with his own family as the prize.

  Although not usually known for their horror or dark fantasy work, Terry Brooks’ A Knight of the World was the sequel to his bestseller Running with the Demon, whileHomebody was a haunted house novel from Orson Scott Card.

  Legacies was the second Repairman Jack novel from F. Paul Wilson (“writing as Colin Andrews” on the UK edition). The mysterious fixer became involved with a woman intent on destroying a house she had just inherited, and also the evil Arabs, Japanese agents, and American hit men who were out to discover the secrets concealed in the dilapidated mansion.

  Charles Grant’s “Millennium Quartet” continued with Chariot, the third novel in the series about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This time Plague used smallpox to wreak havoc in a world already at the mercy of Famine and Death, and only Las Vegas was spared. The author also launched a new series about a private occult investigation service with Black Oak 1: Genesis and 2: The Hush of Dark Wings.

  The Searchers: City of Iron by Chet Williamson marked the beginning of a new X Files-type trilogy about a team of three CIA agents investigating the supernatural. Phil Rickman’s The Wine of Angels was the first in a series featuring new vicar Merrily Watkins and a mystery linked to a town’s 17th century witch-hunts.

  Set in the near-future, Peter James’ Denial was about a psychiatrist who gave the wrong advice to a patient, an aging movie actress, who killed herself as a result. Her sociopath son held the doctor responsible and decided to avenge her death. Soho Black by Christopher Fowler concerned the high-pressure lifestyle of a failing film executive who dropped dead in a trendy bar one evening, and by doing so revitalised his career.

  Michael Marshall Smith’s One of Us was set in a world where dreams and memories could be accessed, a group of survivors confronted an ancient evil released from the Chasm by Stephen Laws, a horror writer discovered where he got his bizarre ideas from inStraker’s Island by Steve Harris, and the myths behind the Arabian Nights and the secret history of Tut-ankh-amen’s tomb were explored by Tom Holland inThe Sleeper in the Sands.

  Terror was the third in Graham Masterton’s series about Jim Rook, a teacher with supernatural powers, whileHouse of Bones was a young adult novel in the Point Horror series from the same author.

  After his success in 1997 with the mainstream thriller Bad Karma (under the “Andrew Harper” pseudonym), Douglas Clegg’s The Halloween Man marked a return to the horror field for the author. It was set in the quiet New England town of Stonehaven, which was filled with secrets of both natural and supernatural origin, including the terrifying figure of the title.

  William Browning Spencer’sIrrational Fears followed Jack Lowry, an alcoholic ex-professor trying to dry out. After witnessing the bizarre death of a fellow inmate in a hospital ward and being introduced to The Clear, a group of clean-cut young men who are the sworn enemy of Alcoholics Anonymous, Jack was transferred to a ru
ral retreat where everyone gave thanks to H.P. Lovecraft’s Elder Gods.

  Greg Kihn’s Big Rock Beat was a sequel to the author’s Horror Show, also featuring director Landis Woodley, who this time became mixed-up in the production of a bizarre teen/monster beach movie.

  Andrew Neiderman’s In Double Jeopardy was about a female medical student who found herself involved with a man who behaved just like her brother-in-law, who had been executed for the brutal murder of her sister. The Good Children by Kate Wilhelm strayed into V.C. Andrews and Shirley Jackson territory with its tale of four young people trying to keep their family together in the face of lies, love, insanity and possible murder.

  Joe R. Lansdale’s Rumble, Tumble was the latest Hap and Leonard crime novel in which Hap Collins’ girlfriend learned that her teenage daughter was part of a hellish prostitution ring and the two friends were forced to confront a biker army turned vice barons and stone-mad killers. Norman Partridge’s The Ten-Ounce Siesta was the second volume in the enjoyable Jack Baddalach mysteries, in which the standard-issue good guy became involved with bikini girls with machine guns, cops with donuts, the heavyweight champion of the world, and a demon from Hell.