Karl Wagner - The Year's Best Horror Stories 18

Kaddish by Jack Dann. Copyright 1989 by Davis Publications, Inc. for Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Gravedigger's Tale by Simon Clark. Copyright 1988 by Newsfield Limited and John Gilbert for Fear, January/February 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Meeting the Author by Ramsey Campbell. Copyright 1989 by Ramsey Campbell for Interzone 28. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Buckets by F. Paul Wilson. Copyright 1989 by F. Paul Wilson for Soft & Others. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Pit-Yakker by Brian Lumley. Copyright 1989 by the Terminus Publishing Company, Inc. for Weird Tales, Fall 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, the Dorian Literary Agency.

Mr. Sandman by Scott D. Yost. Copyright 1989 by Scott D. Yost for October Dreams. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Renaissance by A. F. Kidd. Copyright 1989 by A. F. Kidd for Bell Music. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Lord of Infinite Diversions by t. Winter-Damon. Copyright 1989 by t. Winter-Damon for Semiotext (e) SF. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Rail Rider (originally published as Third Rail) by Wayne Alien Sallee. Copyright 1989 by Wayne Alien Sallee for Masques HI. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Archway by Nicholas Royle. Copyright 1989 by Nicholas Royle for Dark Fantasies. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Confessional by Patrick McLeod. Copyright 1989 by Gretta M. Anderson for 2AM, Winter 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Deliverer by Simon MacCulloch. Copyright 1989 by Simon MacCulloch for Chillers for Christmas. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Reflections by Jeffrey Goddin. Copyright 1989 by Jeffrey Goddin for Deathrealm #10. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Zombies for Jesus by Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Copyright 1989 by Nina Kiriki Hoffman for Strained Relations. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Earth Wire by Joel Lane. Copyright 1989 by Joel Lane for Winter Chills 3. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Sponge and China Tea by D. F. Lewis. Copyright 1989 by D. F. Lewis for Dagon No. 26. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Boy With the Bloodstained Mouth by W. H. Pugmire. Copyright 1989 by Nocturne for Nocturne, Secundus. Reprinted by permission of the author.

On the Dark Road by lan McDowell. Copyright 1988 by Mercury Press, Inc. for The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Narcopolis by Wayne Alien Sallee. Copyright 1989 by Hell's Kitchen Productions, Inc. for Narcopolis & Other Poems. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Nights in the City by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Copyright 1989 by Jessica Amanda Salmonson for A Silver Thread of Madness. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Return to the Mutant Rain Forest by Brace Boston and Robert Frazier. Copyright 1989 by Brace Boston and Robert Frazier for Masques III. Reprinted by permission of the authors.

The End of the Hunt by David Drake. Copyright 1989 by David A. Drake for New Destinies, Fall 1989. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Motivation by David Langford. Copyright 1989 by David Langford for Arrows of Eros. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Guide by Ramsey Campbell. Copyright 1989 by Ramsey Campbell for Post Mortem. Reprinted by permission of the author.

The Horse of Iron & How We Can Know It & Be Changed by It Forever by M. John Harrison. Copyright 1989 by M. John Harrison for Tarot Tales. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Jerry's Kids Meet Wormboy by David J. Schow. Copyright David J. Schow, 1988, for Book of the Dead. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Don't let anyone try to tell you that the horror boom is over.

A dozen years back when I started out as editor of The Year's Best Horror Stories, I used to reserve space on one shelf for genre publications with room for stories of note published outside the horror field. For 1989 hardcover and paperback anthologies alone crammed one long shelf, while small press magazines and booklets filled three Jack Daniels' cartons this in addition to the ordered rows of monthly magazines ostensibly devoted to science fiction. This reflects a yearly progression, and there's no sign of things leveling off. While one anthology series dies, another takes its place; when one magazine folds, two more take its place rather like the old story about the Hydra.

As a consequence, your overworked editor is being crowded out of his house by tottering stacks of horrors. And you, gentle reader, need only to settle down in your comfy chair and open your copy of The Year's Best Horror Stories: XVIII this tidy, compact volume of concentrated horror. Only your dauntless editor, who probably will have to trade in his mirror shades for bifocals, has chosen the best of the best for you from amongst the many hundreds of horror stories of 1989 painstakingly and painfully.

Don't think it's all been fun.

Increasingly in recent years as the genre has proliferated the criticism has been leveled that far, far too much current horror fiction is absolute rubbish. This, unfortunately, is all too true. Skipping over the dismal quality of most horror films and novels, the short story has also fallen victim to pure and simple bad writing. Plots, when present, are too often so obvious and trite that one can only wonder as to why the author is bothering to clone a clich. Characterization is too often lacking, motivation absent, and writing skills laughable. One piece of evidence of this is the shrinking average word length of the horror story. This reflects a growing trend in horror writing simply to introduce a few faceless expendables and rush them to a grisly end the grislier the better. Your editor yawns and turns to the next and similar pointless exercise.

How then to explain the increasing popularity of horror fiction? It's a sad combination of diminished expectations on the part of the reader and of limited aspirations on the part of the writer. A readership grown up on a fast-food diet of stalk-and-slash splatter films expects the same brainless level of entertainment in what it reads. The same generation of writers has never read beyond Stephen King and thinks that expanding the frontiers of horror fiction means going for the grosser gross-out. The result is rather like shoving your basic chainsaw-zombies tape into the VCR and fast-forwarding through all the dull bits between the bare tits and the exploding heads. No need to think, and no one expects you to. Put your brain in park, and pass the Twinkies and salsa.

Well, that's enough for the bad news. The good news is that quite a lot of excellent horror fiction manages to get published despite all this. And, if we consider Sturgeon's Law that 90 % of everything makes good organic fertilizer, then it follows that there's hope for the remaining 10 % and thus if there's twice as much horror fiction as before, then that 10 % is twice as big. Just a matter of sorting through that twice-as-big 90 % to find the good stuff.

There is another positive side to this helter-skelter proliferation. Readers' tastes mature, become sophisticated. Writers grow up. There will be the inevitable attrition: the kid who isn't all that upset when his mom dumps his comics collection after he gets married; the garage-band star who puts up his K-Mart keyboard at a garage sale. Sturgeon said: 90 % ker-flush. The other 10 % is in there for the kill. That's why the horror field is growing stronger and getting better, despite all the crap it takes and the crap it cranks out.