from: Running Press
Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.0873808
EAN num: 9780786720491
ISBN number: 0786720492
Label: Running Press
Manufacturer: Running Press
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 512
Printing Date: November 08, 2007
Publishing house: Running Press
Sale Popularity Level: 526894
Studio: Running Press
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Product Description:
Here is the latest edition of the world's premier annual showcase of horror and dark, fantasy fiction, from a series that has won the World Fantasy Award, British Fantasy Award, and the International Horror Guild Award. It features some of the very best short stories and novellas by today's masters of the macabre — including Neil Gaiman, Glen Hirshberg, Tanith Lee, Ramsey Campbell, and Charles Coleman Finlay.
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Rated by buyers 
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WINNER of The 2008 British Fantasy Society Award for 'Best Anthology of the Year 2007'.
What is horror?
Well, I can't answer that. After all, I'm not an S.T. Joshi or a John Clute and, further, not nearly as well read in the genre as I'd like to be (my 'to read' pile is really a mountain! Even when funds are tight, buying the books is the easy part - it's getting the time to read them. Sigh.)
But let's take a stab at it anyway, if only from the ill informed view point of a humble reader.
Even as a teenager during the '80's horror boom, when I very first discovered the delights of the dark fantastic, I had little to no interest in movies or TV relating to the horror field. It was always the midlist writers to whom I gravitated: Ramsey Campbell, Dennis Etchison, Charles L. Grant, Thomas Ligotti, Thomas Tessier and others. Many more, of course, most of whom, although they were all active in the '80's, I didn't personally get around to reading until recently.
The whole bad joke of the Splatterpunk movement was, mercifully, short lived and rightly derided. However, to me, that's all media horror is: sure, I can get as much of a visceral thrill out of, say, Saw or The Descent as anyone, but they leave little impression. As sad looking and 'of the moment' as a Halloween cake seen in a bakery window on the 1st of November.
Old horror was easy, right? It was monsters, surely. Werewolves and vampires and cheap thrills and shocks as celebrated in Creepshow's homage to EC Comics.
But is new horror, then, simply the monsters within us? Absolutely... but as many genre writers emerging from the '80's boom began to realize this, and to write it, they soon became aware - as did their publishers - that what they were now producing were mainstream thrillers. And thus they became marketed as such.
So where does that leave horror as a genre? Last year Clive Barker called for the death of genre distinctions and, indeed, as regards to the horror field at least, this may already have occurred, its 'horrific' elements being subsumed into fantasy and the modern day thriller.
Horror, for me, are those tales which embody the feel and delicious flavor of that wonderfully archaic word `foreboding'.
A sense of unease while you're reading it. For me that is the distinction. While you're reading it.
Those are the stories.
Some 'horror' tales read like ordinary mainstream fiction, their 'horror' element grafted on during the final few pages. Until then there was no sense beforehand of foreboding or unease.
These are the situations.
True horror stories are as much about the journey as they are about the destination (sometimes it is all about the journey).
So, then, "Summer" by Al Sarrantonio is a horror story. No monsters, no sociopaths but a simple scenario (what if the best summer ever never ended?) and imbued with an absolutely delicious sense of unease and foreboding throughout.
When it comes to embodying these principles Ramsey Campbell has justly earned his reputation as the most revered living horror writer since M.R. James. No other writer has so consistently written about the mundane and yet left his readers feeling utterly uncomfortable. (That said, I found The Darkest Part of the Woods (2003) to be all atmosphere and too little substance and certainly didn't share the opinion that it was his best novel in recent years. Ramsey is a master at merely suggesting a horror unseen, The Overnight (2004) being a great case in point to the extent that the `horror' may not even exist outwith the mass hysteria and paranoia of its characters. Woods had none of Overnight's memorable characterization.)
His "Digging Deep" is an enjoyable tale and very darkly comic.
"The Luxury of Harm" by Christopher Fowler is reminiscent of Joe Hill's "Best New Horror." A fine tale.
Mark Samuel's "Sentinels" builds upon what he started in his collection The White Hands and Other Weird Tales (2003), a book which is an incredibly strong and worthy addition to the weird tale
I like Elizabeth Hand and "The Saffron Gatherers" is a wonderful story, a pleasure to read (it has now been included in three 'Best of' anthologies this year). In the world of post 9/11 it is a disquieting tale, similar in that sense to Stephen King's "The Things They Left Behind" (2005).
I've followed Mark Morris's career from the beginning and although he's not a great writer he is a damned good one. "What Nature Abhors" has all the hallmarks of being a great horror story.
Lyndia E. Rucker's "The Last Reel" had the potential to instill in the reader that sense of foreboding whilst reading it and, paradoxically, fails only because the story was so much fun to read! One of those tales that leaves you ... Read More
Rated by buyers 
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This is Number 18 in the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror series as usual edited by Stephen Jones. First off I have read almost all of these and this is the weakest entry in the series that I have read, one tends to think Jones may be spreading himself too thin or should clear some stuff off his plate before he attempts to edit Number 19.
Most of the stories were average at best, I found few to be actually what I would consider scary (The Luxury of Harm, They, and the last story The Man Who Got Off The Ghost Train.)
Otherwise the majority tend to be sub-standard at best certainly not leaving up to the book's title. What is the point of a two page or a four page story when neither one leaves a lasting impression on the reader? There are some other nice stories such as Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter (A Fantasy) which would have better suited for a fantasy anthology instead of a Horror anthology. Just seems like Jones was trying to fill up space here with a lot of clunkers.
If you must have it buy it used, I paid $6 for my new copy and I'm glad I didn't pay any more than that.
Rated by buyers 
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I wish there were more to the stories but all in all, this book is worth the money and your time. Depending on your tastes and demeanor, each story brings a new revelation. Fun to read and having intense moments all the stories were good well worth a four star rating.
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