I grew very fond of several collections of year’s best
fiction in the recent years. Ellen
Datlow and Stephen Jones are
veterans of such anthologies and in time their yearly collections proved an
important source of excellent reading materials, so there is no wonder that year
after year “The Best Horror of the Year”
and “The Mammoth Book of Best New
Horror” are high on my reading list. Recently I was happy to see being born
and to delight in “The Year’s Best
Australian Fantasy and Horror” and “Imaginarium:
The Best Canadian Speculative Writing”, two yearly collections that
gathered some of the best Australian and Canadian short stories and highlighted
quite a few very interesting and talented writers. Last, but not least, Paula Guran’s “The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror” made its way into my
list of preferences, not because it joined a catalog of similar titles, but
because it brought into attention of the readers different short stories than
the other collections. Of course, all these year’s best collections are subject
to personal choices and since reading is an intimate experience for every
reader not all the selected stories might seem like the best that were
published in a particular year. From my experience, however, each of such
collections I enjoyed reading comes pretty close to achieving perfection and
every time I was left with a completely satisfactory reading experience. And if
Paula Guran’s “The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror” is the last
collection I mentioned from my list of favorites it is also the first to
announce its 2014 line-up. By the looks of it there are plenty of reasons to
support another strong entry in the panoply of year’s best collections.
No matter your expectations, the dark is full of
the unknown: grim futures, distorted pasts, invasions of the uncanny,
paranormal fancies, weird dreams, unnerving nightmares, baffling enigmas,
revelatory excursions, desperate adventures, spectral journeys, mundane terrors
and supernatural visions. You may stumble into obsession or find redemption.
Often disturbing, occasionally delightful, let The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror be your annual guide through the mysteries
and wonders of dark fiction.
Table
of contents (in
alphabetical order by author’s last name):
“Postcards from Abroad” by Peter Atkins (Rolling
Darkness Revue 2013, Earthling Publications)
“The Creature Recants” by Dale Bailey (Clarkesworld, Issue 85, October 2013)
“The Good Husband” by Nathan Ballingrud (North
American Lake Monsters, Small Beer Press)
“Termination Dust” by Laird Barron (Tales of
Jack the Ripper, ed. Ross Lockhart, Word Horde)
“The Ghost Makers” by Elizabeth Bear (Fearsome
Journeys, ed. Jonathan Strahan, Solaris)
“The Marginals” by Steve Duffy (The Moment of
Panic, PSPublishing)
“A Collapse of Horses” by Brian Evenson (The American Reader, Feb/Mar 2013)
“A Lunar Labyrinth” by Neil Gaiman (Shadows of the
New Sun: Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe, eds. J. E. Mooney & Bill Fawcett,
Tor)
“Pride” by Glen Hirshberg (Rolling Darkness
Revue 2013, Earthling Publications)
“Let My Smile Be Your Umbrella” by Brian Hodge (Psycho-Mania!,
ed. Stephen Jones, Robinson)
“The Soul in the Bell Jar” by K. J. Kabza (The
Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nov/Dec 2013)
“The Prayer of Ninety Cats” by Caitlín R. Kiernan (Subterranean
Online, Spring 2013)
“Dark Gardens” by Greg Kurzawa (Interzone # 248)
“A Little of the Night” by Tanith Lee (Clockwork
Phoenix 4, ed. Mike Allen, Mythic Delirium)
“The Gruesome Affair of the Electric Blue
Lightning” by Joe R. Lansdale (Beyond Rue Morgue: Further Tales of Edgar
Allan Poe’s First Detective, ed. Paul Kane & Charles Prepole, Titan)
“Iseul’s Lexicon” by Yoon Ha Lee (Conservation
of Shadows, Prime Books)
“The Plague” by Ken Liu (Nature, 16 May 2013)
“The Slipway Gray” by Helen Marshall (Chilling
Tales 2, ed. Michael Kelly, Edge Publications)
“To Die for Moonlight” by Sarah Monette (Apex Magazine, Issue #50)
“Event Horizon” by Sunny Moraine (Strange
Horizons, 21 Oct 2013)
“The Legend of Troop 13” by Kit Reed (Asimov’s
Science Fiction, Jan 2013 / The Story Until Now: A Great Big Book of
Stories, Wesleyan)
“Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell” by Brandon
Sanderson (Dangerous Women, eds. George R. R. Martin & Gardner
Dozois, Tor)
“Phosphorous” by Veronica Schanoes, (Queen
Victoria’s Book of Spells: An Anthology of Gaslamp Fantasy, eds. Ellen
Datlow & Terri Windling, Tor)
“Blue Amber” by David J. Schow (Impossible
Monsters, ed. Kasey Lansdale, Subterranean Press)
“Rag and Bone” by Priya Sharma (Tor.com, 10 April 2013)
“Our Lady of Ruins” by Sarah Singleton (The Dark 2, Dec 2013)
“Cuckoo” by Angela Slatter (A Killer Among Demons,
ed. Craig Bezant, Dark Prints Press)
“Wheatfield with Crows” by Steve Rasnic Tem (Dark
World: Ghost Stories, ed. Timothy Parker Russell, Tartarus Press)
“Moonstruck” by Karin Tidbeck (Shadows and Tall
Trees, Vol. 5, ed. Mike Kelly, Undertow)
“The Dream Detective” by Lisa Tuttle (Lightspeed, Mar 2013)
“Fishwife” by Carrie Vaughn (Nightmare, Jun 2013)
“Air, Water and the Grove” by Kaaron Warren (The Lowest Heaven,
eds Anne C. Perry & Jared Shurin, Jurassic London)
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