coll. - The best horror of the year. Volume 9

SUMMATION 2016

H ere are 2016s numbers: There are twenty-one stories and novelettes in this years volume, ranging from 500 words to 14,400 words. They were chosen from anthologies, print magazines, webzines, single-author chapbooks, and single-author collections. Eleven of the contributors live in the United States, one lives in Canada, and eight in the United Kingdom. One writer grew up in Indonesia, one in New Zealand (as well as England). Six contributors are female, fourteen male (two novelettes are by one male writer). The authors of eight stories have never appeared in previous volumes of my years best.

AWARDS

The Horror Writers Association announced the winners of the 2015 Bram Stoker Awards May 14, 2016, at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. The presentations were made during a banquet held at the inaugural Stokercon. The winners:

Superior Achievement in a Novel: A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay, (William Morrow); Superior Achievement in a First Novel: Mr. Suicide by Nicole Cushing (Word Horde Press); Superior Achievement in a Young Adult Novel: Devils Pocket by John Dixon (Simon & Schuster); Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel: Shadow Show: Stories in Celebration of Ray Bradbury: by Sam Weller, Mort Castle, Chris Ryall, & Carlos Guzman (editors) (IDW Publishing); Superior Achievement in Long Fiction: Little Dead Red by Mercedes Yardley (Grimm Mistresses, Ragnorak Publications); Superior Achievement in Short Fiction: Happy Joes Rest Stop by John Palisano (18 Wheels of Horror, Big Time Books); Superior Achievement in a Screenplay: It Follows by David Robert Mitchell (Northern Lights Films); Superior Achievement in an Anthology: The Library of the Dead edited by Michael Bailey (Written Backwards); Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection: While the Black Stars Burn by Lucy A. Snyder (Raw Dog Screaming Press); Superior Achievement in Nonfiction: The Art of Horror by Stephen Jones (Applause Theatre Books and Cinema Book Publishers); Superior Achievement in a Poetry Collection: Eden Underground by Alessandro Manzetti (Crystal Lake Publishing).

The Specialty Press Award: Borderlands Press.

The Richard Layman Presidents Award: Patrick Freivald and Andrew Wolter.

The Silver Hammer Award: Michael Knost.

Mentor of the Year went to Tim Waggoner.

Life Achievement Awards: Alan Moore and George R. Romero.

The 2015 Shirley Jackson Awards were given out at Readercon on July 10, 2016, in Quincy, Massachusetts. Jurors were Robert Shearman, Bev Vincent, Livia Llewellyn, Simon Kurt Unsworth, and Kaaron Warren.

The winners were: Novel: Experimental Film by Gemma Files (ChiZine Publications); Novella: Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand (PS Publishing-UK/Open Road Media-US); Novelette: Even Clean Hands Can Do Damage by Steve Duffy (Supernatural Tales #30, Autumn); Short Fiction: The Dying Season by Lynda E. Rucker (Aickmans Heirs); Single-author Collection: The Bazaar of Bad Dreams by Stephen King (Scribner); Edited Anthology: Aickmans Heirs edited by Simon Strantzas (Undertow Publications).

The World Fantasy Awards were presented October 30, 2016, at a banquet held during the World Fantasy Convention in Columbus, Ohio. The Lifetime Achievement recipients, David G. Hartwell and Andrzej Sapkowski, were previously announced. The judges were Laird Barron, Rani Graff, Elaine Isaak, Kay Kenyon, and Konrad Walewski.

Winners for the best work in 2015: Novel: The Chimes by Anna Smaill (Sceptre, UK); Long Fiction: The Unlicensed Magician by Kelly Barnhill (PS Publishing); Short Fiction: Hungry Daughters of Starving Mothers by Alyssa Wong (Nightmare magazine, October 2015); Anthology: She Walks in Shadows edited by Silvia Marino-Garcia and Paula R. Stiles (Innsmouth Free Press); Collection: Bone Swans by C.S.E. Cooney (Mythic Delirium Books); Artist: Galen Dara; Special Award, Professional: Stephen Jones for The Art of Horror (Applause Theatre Books and Cinema Book Publishers); Special Award, Non-Professional: John ONeill for Black Gate: Adventures in Fantasy Literature.

NOTABLE NOVELS OF 2016

Stiletto by Daniel OMalley (Little, Brown) is the long-awaited sequel to the brilliantly entertaining The Rook, about the Checquy, a top secret group of supernatural operatives working out of the British government. In this book, Mythwany Thomas, who is The Rook, plays a secondary role to two young women who couldnt be more unalike. One is a member of the Checquy. The other is a Grafter, the Checquys centuries long enemy. Although deeply distrustful of each other, the two are forced to work together when the tenuous peace is seemingly being sabotaged. Murder, mayhem, humor, and a fascinating look at diplomacy on a supernatural scale.

The Everything Box by Richard Kadrey (HarperCollins) is the first in a new dark fantasy series by the author of the celebrated Sandman Slim novels. One thing is immediately apparent: angels are assholes. The plot revolves around a box that a low-ranking but ambitious angel is ordered to use to destroy the world. Alas, the angel loses the box and has been stuck on Earth for thousands of years, searching for it. But the book is really about Coop, a thief immune to magic who is coerced into stealing the box back. Violent and full of action, the novel is also very funny.

The Perdition Score by Richard Kadrey (HarperCollins) is the eighth Sandman Slim novel about Stark, a Nephilim (half human/half angel), who has saved the world multiple times, escaped from Hell more than once, been Lucifer, and continues on his merry way to wreak havoc in our Los Angeles, and the one underground. Stark is forced to deal with the Wormwood Corporation when they cook up a little something called Black Milk, which makes angels into Berserkers and can make mortals immortal. Entertaining and violent dark fantasy.

Lovecraft Country by Matt Ruff (HarperCollins) combines the harrowing horror of 1950s Jim Crow America with the supernatural horror of the Lovecraftian Mythos. In 1954, an African American man goes missing and his war veteran son sets out from Chicago with two companions to search for him. Each chapter tells a separate story that builds into a complete whole exuding an acute sense of dreadalmost more from the rampant racism than the monsters conjured up by a cult of sorcerers. But even so, this is most definitely a Lovecraftian story, with all the paranoia, conspiracies, family secrets, and cosmic horror that readers could hope for.

Its the perfect companion to Victor LaValles novella (see under chapbooks), The Ballad of Black Tom.

Mongrels by Stephen Graham Jones (William Morrow) is a gorgeous dark and moving coming-of-age story about a young, not-yet werewolf being brought up by his grandfather, aunt, and uncle who are all tasked with teaching him how to be a werewolfwhat a werewolf can and cant do, what can harm or kill it. Moving gracefully back and forth over a period of several years, clues are sprinkled throughout to the history of the family.

Flicker by Theodore Roszak (Summit Books) was published in 1991. Its one of those books I should have read when it first came out but never got around to. Friends have been urging me to read it for years and Ive bought more than one copy since it was published, forgetting I have one. So... I finally decided to take a break from 2016 novels and see what all the fuss was about. A movie lovers dream, Flicker just might be the lost movie/auteur/secret history/conspiracy novel that started the subgenre. Told from the point of view of a film critic who in the 1960s becomes obsessed with a minor filmmaker named Max Castle and where this obsession leadsto an exploration of the hidden depths beneath the surface of film, the Knights Templar, the Cathars, and a group of death cultists named the orphans of the storm, who are intent on the destruction of humankind.