Horror: The 100 Best Books (42 page)

PETER HAINING (b. 1940) was born in Middlesex, England, and now lives in a sixteenth-century (haunted) house in Suffolk. Haining has been described as "the most prolific anthologist of horror fiction in the world", and certainly the number of volumes he has compiled since his first in 1965,
The Hell of Mirrors
, supports this view. He began his career as a journalist in Essex and a story about Satanic desecration sparked his interest in the occult, resulting in his first book,
Devil Worship in Britain
(1964). Since then he has edited numerous collections, anthologies and non-fiction volumes such as
The Craft of Terror
,
The Evil People
,
The Hollywood Nightmare
,
The Ghouls
,
Irish Tales of Terror
,
Great British Tales of Terror
,
Clans of Darkness
,
The Fantastic Pulps
,
Weird Tales
,
The Black Magic Omnibus
,
M.R. James' Book of the Supernatural
,
Movie Monsters
,
The Mummy: Stories of the Living Dead
,
Midnight Tales
(by Bram Stoker),
The Best Supernatural Stories of Wilkie Collins
and
The Best Supernatural Stories of John Buchan
. More recently, he has produced several media-related volumes including
The Doctor Who File
,
Doctor Who: The Time Traveller's Guide
,
Doctor Who: 25 Glorious Years
and
The Television Sherlock Holmes
.

JOE HALDEMAN (b. 1943) sold his first story, "Out of Phase", to
Galaxy
in 1969. He took a BS in physics and astronomy, doing postgraduate work in mathematics and computer science before being drafted to Vietnam as a combat engineer. His first science fiction novel,
The Forever War
, proved to be a popular and critical success, winning both the Hugo and Nebula Awards, and he followed it with
Mindbridge
,
All My Sins Remembered
, a
Star Trek
novel:
Planet of Judgment
,
Into the Out Of
,
Tool of the Trade
,
Buying Time
(UK:
The Long Habit of Living
), the
Worlds
trilogy, and
The Hemingway Hoax
(which won the 1991 Hugo in its novella version). He has edited the SF anthologies
Cosmic Laughter
and
Study War No More
, and his short fiction and poetry has appeared in
Playboy
,
Omni
,
Cutting Edge
and
Blood Is Not Enough
. Haldeman also scripted the 1989 movie
Robot Jox
for director Stuart Gordon.

DAVID G. HARTWELL (b. 1941) is a multiple Hugo Award nominee for Best Editor. In 1963 he received a B.A. from Williams College, followed by an M.A. in English from Colgate University (1965) and a Ph.D in Comparative Medieval Literature from Columbia University (1973). A reviewer, columnist and awards administrator, Hartwell has edited such publications as
The Little Magazine
,
Cosmos
and
The New York Review of Science Fiction
. He has been a consulting science fiction editor at New American Library, Gregg Press and Waldenbooks Otherworlds Club, Editor-in-Chief of Berkley SF, and Director of Science Fiction for Timescape/Pocket Books and Arbor House. He is currently a consulting editor at Tor Books. Hartwell lives in Pleasantville, New York, and is the author of
Age of Wonders
, a non-fiction study of the science fiction field, and has edited such anthologies as
Christmas Ghosts
and
Spirits of Christmas
(both with Kathryn Cramer),
Masterpieces of Fantasy and Enchantment
,
The World Treasury of Science Fiction
,
Masterpieces of Fantasy and Wonder
and
Foundations of Fear
. In 1988 he won the World Fantasy Award for his huge historical horror anthology
The Dark Descent
as well as the Special Award -- Professional.

GEORGE HAY (1922-1997) was born in Chelsea, London, and he later moved to Hastings, East Sussex. Author, editor and science fiction enthusiast, he was the founder and a Council member of the Science Fiction Foundation. Hay's novels include
Man, Woman and Android
(1951) and
This Planet for Sale
(1952), and he was responsible for the reprinting of fantasy novels, plays and stories by such authors as Lord Dunsany, Walter de la Mare, Robert Aickman, Iain Sinclair etc. In 1978 he edited
The Necronomicon
-- a spoof edition of H.P. Lovecraft's fabled forbidden book, and he worked on a sequel,
The R'lyeh Text
(1995). He spent his life publicizing SF ideas and campaigned to get Applied Science Fiction accepted in the educational curriculum in Britain.

ROBERT HOLDSTOCK (b. 1948) was born in a remote corner of Kent and currently lives in London. The eldest of five children, he read Applied Zoology at the University College of North Wales and holds a Master's degree in Medical Zoology. His first published story was "Pauper's Plot" in
New Worlds
(1968) and he became a full-time writer in 1976. Among the novels published under his own name are
Eye Among the Blind
(1976),
Earthwind
,
Necromancer
,
Where Time Winds Blow
,
In the Valley of the Statues
, the movie novelization
The Emerald Forest
, the World Fantasy Award-winning
Mythago Wood
,
Lavondyss
,
The Fetch
and
The Hollowing
. Holdstock's short fiction has been collected in
The Bone Forest
, he has co-written (with Malcolm Edwards) the text of five illustrated books, co-edited
Stars of Albion
with Christopher Priest and three volumes of
Other Edens
with Christopher Evans. He has also produced a bewildering array of novels under a variety of pseudonyms, including
The Satanists
, the novelization
Legend of the Werewolf
, and the "The Professionals", "Beserker", "Raven", "Bulman" and six-volume "Night Hunter" series.

ROBERT E. (ERVIN) HOWARD (1906-1936) was born and lived all his life in a Texas not far removed from Pioneer days. He began writing at the age of 15, and although considered something of a misfit by his friends and neighbours, he made his first professional sale with "Spear and Fang" in the July 1925
Weird Tales
. Responsible for almost single-handedly popularizing the heroic fantasy genre, he soon became one of the most prolific contributors to the pulp magazines, creating such memorable characters as Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, King Kull, Red Sonja and, his most famous, Conan the Cimmerian (the last two adapted by Hollywood in the 1980s). Besides his fantasy fiction and verse, Howard wrote about a wide range of topics, including sports stories, historical adventure, western, pirate, detective and Oriental mystery. His best-known horror tales include "Black Canaan", "Worms of the Earth", "Pigeons from Hell" and the Lovecraft-inspired "The Thing on the Roof. On the morning of June llth 1936, the thirty-year-old author ascertained that his mother (to whom he was devoted) would not regain consciousness from a coma. He calmly got into his car, rolled up the window, and shot himself in the head. As an epitaph, he left the following couplet on his typewriter: "All fled -- all done, so lift me on the pyre: The Feast is over and the lamps expire." Robert E. Howard's continued influence on new generations of writers cannot be undervalued, and his books reached a peak of popularity during the mid-1970s.

SHAUN HUTSON (b. 1958) lives and writes in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire. Described as "the sort of writer who inspires kindly old grannies to lobby their local library to remove his books from the shelves", the self-confessed heavy metal music fan and frustrated drummer published his first novel in 1980. With the publication of
Slugs
(1982), an audacious blend of explicit sex and gratuitous violence, Hutson's work met with instant popular appeal, and he has subsequently produced a steady stream of similar volumes with titles like
Spawn
,
Shadows
,
Erebus
,
Deathday
,
Breeding Ground
,
Relics
,
Victims
,
Assassin
,
Nemesis
,
Renegades
and
Captives
, as well as a
Horror Film Quiz Book
.
Slugs The Movie
was produced in 1987 by Spanish director Juan Piquer Simon, and Hutson lists among his hobbies "irritating and annoying people" and a desire "to see euthanasia introduced for critics . . ."

MAXIM JAKUBOWSKI (b. 1944) was born in Barnet, Hertfordshire, but was educated and lived in France for more than twenty years. Publisher, critic, translator, anthologist and author of more than twenty books, he has continued the exploits of Michael Moorcock's character Jerry Cornelius in a number of stories, and is the editor of
Travelling Towards Epsilon
,
The Complete Book of SF and Fantasy Lists
,
Lands of Never
,
Beyond Lands of Never
, the "Black Box" and "Blue Murder" series of thrillers, three volumes of
New Crimes
, and
100 Great Detectives
. He currently runs the London specialist bookstore Murder One.

M. R. (MONTAGUE RHODES) JAMES (1862-1936) was born at Goodnestone Parsonage in Kent, where his father was curate. A serious child, he developed a life-long interest in medieval books and antiquities at an early age. He was educated at Eton and later King's College, Cambridge, where he declined to follow his father and eldest brother into the Church. In 1905 he became Provost of King's and was Vice-Chancellor of the University from 1913-15 before returning to Eton as Provost in 1918. He has been described as "an unlikely author of some of the most alarming and unforgettable ghost stories in the English language", most of them occasional pieces, written for friends or college magazines. Among his most famous tales are such subtle chillers as "Lost Hearts", "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book", "The Mezzotint", "Casting the Runes" (filmed in 1957 as
Night of the Demon)
and the classic "Oh, Whistle, and I'll Come to You, My Lad". The first collection of James' tales was
Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
, published in 1904, followed by
More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary
,
A Thin Ghost and Others
and
A Warning to the Curious
. An omnibus volume entitled
The Collected Ghost Stories of M.R. James
appeared in 1931. His favourite author was J. Sheridan Le Fanu, whom he described as "absolutely in the first rank as a writer of ghost stories", and in 1923 he collected and reprinted some of Le Fanu's stories from forgotten Victorian periodicals in
Madam Crowl's Ghost
.

DIANA WYNNE JONES (b. 1934) was born in London and currently lives in Bristol with her husband and their sons. She is half-Welsh, of a family which reputedly descends from Morgan the Pirate, and decided to be a writer at the age of eight. Jones' stories of witches, hobgoblins and magic have delighted young readers and adults since
Changeover
in 1970. Her prolific output of YA books includes
The Ogre Downstairs
,
Cart and Cwidder
,
Dogsbody
,
The Eight Days of Luke
,
Power of Three
,
Charmed Life
,
The Magicians of Caprona
,
The Time of the Ghost
,
The Homeward Bounders
,
Witch Week
,
Archer's Goon
(adapted for television in 1992),
Fire and Hemlock
,
A Tale of Time City
,
Howl's Moving Castle
, its sequel
Castle in the Air
, and
Black Maria
(USA:
Aunt Maria
). Her short fiction was collected in
The Warlock at the Wheel and Other Stories
, and she edited the fantasy anthology
Hidden Turnings
. Jones won the Guardian Award in 1977, was runner-up for the Children's Book Award in 1981, and has been a multiple runner-up for the Carnegie Medal.

MARVIN KAYE (b. 1938) was born in Philadelphia and currently lives in New York City. A graduate of Pennsylvania State University and the University of Denver, he has a B.A. in Theatre and an M.A. in English Literature. Author, actor, lecturer, public speaker, singer, playwright, editor and columnist, his short fiction has appeared in
Amazing
,
Fantastic
,
Fantasy Tales
,
Fantasy Macabre
,
Galileo
,
Night Cry
,
Weird Tales
and such anthologies as
Arabesque II
,
Magical Wishes
and
The Year's Best Fantasy Stories
. Kaye is the author of a number of horror, mystery, science-fantasy and suspense novels (some in collaboration with Parke Godwin). These include
Ghosts of Night and Morning
,
A Cold Blue Light
,
The Masters of Solitude
,
Wintermind
,
The Incredible Umbrella
,
The Amorous Umbrella
,
The Soap Opera Slaughters
,
The Laurel and Hardy Murders
,
Bullets for Macbeth
,
The Nautical Umbrella
and
Fantastique
. He has also edited such excellent anthologies as
Masterpieces of Terror and the Supernatural
,
Ghosts
,
Brother Theodore's Chamber of Horrors
,
Fiends and Creatures
,
Devils and Demons
,
Weird Tales: The Magazine That Never Dies
,
Witches and Warlocks
,
13 Plays of Ghosts and the Supernatural
,
Haunted America: Star-Spangled Supernatural Stories
and
Lovers and Other Monsters
. Kaye's non-fiction volumes include
The Histrionic Holmes
and three handbooks of Magic.