Black Gate

Arguably the major living expert on the body of work of Rev. Montague Rhodes James, the cult British author of classical “ghost” stories, Rosemary Pardoe has been the editor of the journals Ghosts & Scholars, The Ghosts & Scholars MR James Newsletter, and the three volumes of the anthology series The Ghost & Scholars Book of Shadow (Sarob Press).

Here’s yet another short story anthology by Pardoe, entitled A Ghosts & Scholars Book of Folk Horror.

Traditional folklore is the basis not only for a good portion of Jamesian stories, but of classic British horror in general, so the new anthology is consistent with Pardoe’s previous work in this area. It assembles seventeen tales, ten of which are reprinted from the journals mentioned above, and seven which are original to this anthology.

Let me tell you right away that, not surprisingly, the best contributions are to be found among the reprints, first of all the outstanding “Meeting Mr. Ketchum” by Michael Chislett. This superb, creepy tale, perfectly in keeping with the anthology’s theme, depicts how ancient horrors come back to terrify a couple of accidental tourists exploring a desolate landscape.

Other excellent offerings include “Where are the Bones..?” by Jacqueline Simpson, a delightful story featuring MR James himself, in which old legends cast a dark shadow on an innocent boy, and” The Walls” by Terry Lamsley, a very unusual tale of supernatural horror, describing the eerie trip taken by two men to find a friend lost in a deserted area near abandoned lead mines that hide unfathomable secrets. Lamsley’s recent disappearance from the British horror scene is still sorely lamented.

The book features also some very conventional yet effective ghost stories such as CE Ward’s “The Spinney” and Kay Fletcher’s “The Peewold Amphisbaena,” both quite enjoyable and well worth reading. The same applies to “Loreley” by Carol Tyrrell, an offbeat tale portraying a case of unconventional vampirism.

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James Patrick Kelly is one of the best short story writers we have. His Hugo-winning tale “Think Like a Dinosaur” is one of the finest SF stories of the past 25 years (perhaps the finest), and his fiction has been collected in such essential volumes as Think Like a Dinosaur and Other Stories (1997), Strange But Not a Stranger (2002), and The Wreck of the Godspeed and Other Stories (2008). His novels include Planet of Whispers (1984), Look Into the Sun (1989), Freedom Beach (1985, with John Kessel) and Wildlife (1994).

A new James Patrick Kelly collection is a major event, and I purchased The Promise of Space and Other Stories as soon as it arrived in July. It contains 15 stories published between 2007 and 2016, plus one new tale, “Yukui!” It also contains an introduction by Sheila Williams, and an Afterword by the author. Here’s a snippet from Gark Wolfe’s review in the Chicago Tribune.

The idea of uploading your whole personality into a computer matrix as a hedge against death isn’t new, but should it become a legal right (as in “Declaration”) or face religious opposition (as in “One Sister, Two Sisters, Three”)? Could it even lead to most humans disappearing, leaving the world to intelligent chimps (“”The Chimp of the Popes”)?

For that matter, can technology ever really replace a mind? In the most heartbreaking story, “The Promise of Space,” a wife tries to connect with her brain-damaged astronaut husband, whose own faulty memory is supplemented by thousands of hours of personal video, but who can’t emotionally understand the facts he calls up.

Kelly also has a clear grasp of other genres, but uses them in unexpected ways. “The Last Judgment” is set in a world from which all the men have been snatched away by aliens, but takes the form of a hard-boiled mystery. “The Rose Witch” takes on the tone and form of a fairy tale, complete with a life-changing moral choice the heroine faces. In nearly every story, Kelly offers a master class on how short fiction works.

You can read the title story in Clarkesworld here. The Promise of Space and Other Stories was published by Prime Books on July 31, 2018. It is 383 pages, priced at $15.85 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Piotr Foksowicz. See all of our recent New Treasures here.

We’ve just about wrapped up the Best of the Year season, the summer/fall period when eight publishers and a dozen editors collaborate to produce ten volumes gathering the best short science fiction, fantasy, and horror of the year. We’ve had eight so far, from Neil Clarke, Jonathan Strahan, Gardner Dozois, Rich Horton, David Afsharirad, N.K. Jemisin and John Joseph Adams, and others.

But we’re not done yet — and in fact, this week two of my favorites landed on the same day. I’ll deal with Robert Shearman and Michael Kelly’s The Year’s Best Weird Fiction Volume Five in a future post, but today I want to talk about the latest installment in Paula Guran’s long-running Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror.

This is the ninth volume in the series, which has been continuously published since 2010. While Paula has been enormously productive in the last decade, this is her sole anthology in 2018, which she laments a little in her Acknowledgments.

This is, if she’s counted correctly, the forty-fifth anthology Guran has edited. Instead of what had become the usual multiple titles per calendar year, it is the only anthology that will appear from her in 2018. That’s probably a refreshing break for most people. She’s got mixed feelings about it herself. After more than a decade of full-time editing, she now freelancing. Guran enjoys the variety but regrets the lack of a monthly paycheck.

This year’s edition includes much of the most talked-about horror and dark fantasy of the year, including Rebecca Roanhorse’s “Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience™,” Laird Barron’s “Swift to Chase,” Priya Sharma’s “The Crow Palace,” M. Rickert’s “Everything Beautiful Is Terrifying,” Robert Shearman’s “The Swimming Pool Party,” and Stephen Graham Jones’s complete Tor.com novella Mapping the Interior, published at $10.99. Another reason why The Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror is one of the best values on the shelves.

Altogether there are 26 stories in the latest volume, plus an introduction by Paula and a 7-page About the Authors section. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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