From Publishers Weekly
Fans of horror fiction will no doubt read special auguries in this dependable anthology series tallying its "lucky" 13th volume. Like all previous incarnations, though, the book distinguishes itself simply by offering a cross-section of what Jones, one of the genre's most enthusiastic cheerleaders, reckons the best short horror fiction of the previous year. More than before, the contents seem to fall into categories that are easily discerned if not explicitly advertised. Travel to alien lands full of mystery and menace is a theme shared by a several stories, notably Graham Joyce's "First, Catch Your Demon," a fever dream of erotic fantasy and creepy physical transformation for a visitor to the Greek isles, and Ramsey Campbell's "All for Sale," which extrapolates its stranger-in-a-strange-land premise into the ultimate traveler's nightmare. Horrors seem to grow just as easily from the everyday in Charles L. Grant's "Whose Ghosts Are These," in which the ennui of small-town life transmutes into sociopathy; Thomas Ligotti's "Our Temporary Supervisor," which finds a supernatural consciousness behind routines that ensnare the average office drone; and Donald Burleson's "Pump Jack," a dandy bit of dark folklore involving ubiquitous oil wells in the American southwest. A high number of selections-by Tanith Lee, Chico Kidd (two stories), Michael Chislett and Conrad Williams-reference well-known supernatural works and showcase the recent resurgence of interest in horror's classic tradition. Jones's comprehensive summary essay and eloquent reflections on horror fiction's importance in the wake of the international events in 2001 help to make this volume one of horror's best.Fantasy Award for best anthology.Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Another year, another horror annual from tireless editor Jones. The thirteenth in this Mammoth series features stories by Chico Kidd, Ramsey Campbell, Poppy Z. Brite, and many others. It opens with a thorough review of horror in several different media, including graphic novels, movies, television, and even action figures. Highlights among the stories include Douglas Smith's delightfully creepy "By Her Hand, She Draws You Down," about a young woman who is driven by a mysterious hunger to sketch people and steal their life force as her horrified lover looks on. Brite's story, "O Death, Where Is Thy Spatula?" features her alter ego, New Orleans coroner Dr. Brite, who, unable to eat after the owner of her favorite restaurant is murdered, turns to voodoo to resurrect him. The book ends with a necrology of genre hands who died in 2001 and an annotated address list of publishers, magazines, book dealers, and other horror writers' markets. As always, a delight for horror aficionados. Kristine Huntley
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
The award-winning Best New Horror anthology series—winner of the World Fantasy Award and the International Horror Critics Guild Award—has now reached its thirteenth spectacular volume and to mark the event, Stephen Jones has chosen only the very best short stories and novellas by the horror genre’s finest exponents and by new discoveries in the field. Contributors to this volume include Gala Blau, Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Charles Grant, Glen Hirshberg, Chico Kidd, Nancy Kilpatrick, Paul J. McAuley, and Conrad Williams. Also, Stephen Jones once again provides the most comprehensive overview of the field for the year and a full necrology, plus a list of useful contacts among organizations, magazines, booksellers, and more. Whether a reader is a fan of supernatural chillers, macabre fantasy, or psychological terror, the thirteenth Mammoth Book of Best New Horror will appeal to their dark side. "The definitive series of Horror ‘Bests’ ... you’ll get quantity as well as quality."—Science Fiction Chronicle "A formidable line-up of must-read creepers whose merits are indisputable even to entrenched enthusiasts of the genre."—Publishers Weekly "Essential reading every year."—Hellnotes "The finest horror collection going."—Kirkus Reviews
Mammoth Book of Best New Horror FROM THE PUBLISHER
The fourteenth volume in this series is going strong, and with another generous sampling of the past year's best horror fiction, it again earns "merits" from Publishers Weekly. With contributions from such favorites as Ramsey Campbell and Kim Newman, along with the talented likes of Neil Gaiman, China Mieville, Graham Joyce, Paul McCauley, Stephen Gallagher, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Jay Russell, Glen Hirshberg and many more, the hairraising tales in this edition hold nightmares for travelers in alien lands, unveil the mystery and menace lurking in our everyday reality, explore the terrors of the supernatural, and honor horror's classic tradition. As always, editor Stephen Jones provides an illuminating and engaging overview of the past year in horror fiction, as well as an affecting necrology and a guide to contacts among publishers, organizations, booksellers, and magazines in the eerier fields of fiction.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
Lovers of bone-crunching visceral horrors and prose that pulses with inventive morbidity, beware: Jones's selection of 20 choice cuts from the previous year's fear fiction is more kindly predisposed to subtle stories informed by the genre's classic tradition. Some are period chillers, such as Paul McAuley's novella, "Dr. Pretorius and the Lost Temple," a well-told Victorian penny dreadful involving psychic detection, Roman remains, subterranean survivals and occult experiments to create life. Jay Russell's "Hides" features Robert Louis Stevenson in a tale of recrudescent horrors that linger in Donner's Pass. In "Ill Met by Daylight," Basil Copper pays tribute to the fiction of turn-of-the-century ghost story master M.R. James. Both China Mieville, in "Details," and Caitlin R. Kiernan, in "Nor the Demons Down Under the Sea," obliquely invoke the Cthulhu Mythos in stories that put a modern spin on Lovecraft's cosmic terrors. Neil Gaiman's "October in the Chair" is a delicate dark fantasy homage to Ray Bradbury's Halloween Gothic. Even stories that don't explicitly reference horror's hallowed icons show the impact of their lessons in tasteful restraint, among them Don Tumasonis's "The Wretched Thicket of Thorn," which conjures an awesome monster that's all the more frightening for never being shown directly. In his indispensable overview of horror in 2002, Jones speaks of "the diversity of taste and erudition that binds our community." This volume, like volumes past, exuberantly celebrates that diversity. (Nov. 5) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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