Previous SFF Author: Derek Landy
John Langan got his MA from State University of New York (SUNY) and received a Masters in Philosophy from the City University of New York. His horror stories and essays have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction; Fantasy Commentator; The Lovecraft Annual and the New York Review of Science Fiction. His stories can be found in several anthologies including The Living Dead, By Blood We Live, and Supernatural Noir. He is adjunct faculty at the New Paltz campus of SUNY, where he teaches creative writing. Here’s John Langan’s website.
John Langan has been shortlisted for numerous horror awards and received critical acclaim for both his shorter work, like his story collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters (Terry reviewed it here), and his two novels, House of Windows and The Fisherman (you can read our review here). In addition to writing, he edited the Creatures; Thirty Years of Monsters anthology with Paul Tremblay. Marion Interviewed him about The Fisherman, “literary” stories versus “horror” stories,
We are living in a Golden Age of the short story of the fantastic, as is ably demonstrated by John Langan in his first collection of short stories, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters. Langan writes the sort of psychological horror that reminds one of both Henry James and M.R. James, as Elizabeth Hand points out in her introduction to this collection. Each story is elegantly written, with craft evident in every sentence.
Terry Weyna´s rating: 4 | John Langan | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Fisherman (2016), by John Langan, gets my first five-star review of 2017. The Fisherman is a story about bereavement. It is a story about dead wives and children. And it’s a story about fishing and the things we pull up from beneath the surface. It is horror; it will disturb you while you’re reading it, and sneak up on you for days afterward.
Langan structures The Fisherman as a series of nested stories.
Marion Deeds´s rating: 5 | John Langan | Horror, Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 9 comments |
The magazine isn’t horrible; it’s in the horror genre. Perhaps reading about a great magazine — and then reading the magazine itself — will make your Monday more bearable!
John Joseph Adams, editor of the well-regarded science fiction and fantasy e-journal, Lightspeed, as well as numerous excellent anthologies, has launched a new horror e-zine, Nightmare. It will feature two reprint stories along with two original stories each month, along with in-depth interviews, short interviews with each author whose story is featured in the issue,
It’s not the magazine that’s horrible; it’s that the magazine contains horror fiction. A perfect mood setter for Halloween!
Because Wednesday is Halloween, here’s another serving of the new magazine Nightmare, edited by John Joseph Adams. The second issue of this new online magazine makes me think we’ve got something special going here: the fiction is excellent, the nonfiction informative, the art compelling.
The first story in this issue is “Construction Project” by Desirina Boskovich. The married couple who tell this story in first person plural believe that a creature is waiting for them should they drop their guard for even a moment.
Poe: 19 New Tales Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe edited by Ellen Datlow
Whether you’re aligned with the literary academia or an unabashed genre reader, the name Edgar Allan Poe commands much respect. I think it’s only fitting that a modern anthology inspired by the author’s body of work should be released on his 200th anniversary. Kudos to Solaris Books for taking on the task of publishing such a book, which all comes together with the firm editorial direction of Ellen Datlow. Datlow, for me, has been an editor who’s less impressed with literary fireworks or verbal acrobatics but focuses more on the meat and bones of the story,
Charles Tan (GUEST)´s rating: 4 | Ellen Datlow, John Langan, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Lucius Shepard, Suzy McKee Charnas | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Supernatural Noir edited by Ellen Datlow
Ellen Datlow suggests in her introduction to Supernatural Noir that noir fiction and supernatural fiction, with its roots in the gothic, have a lot in common. The main character in each tends to be a hard-living guy, usually down to his last flask of scotch, haunted by a sexy dame whose middle name is trouble. So it seemed natural to her to combine the two genres for an original anthology.
Despite my general rule that any anthology edited by Ellen Datlow is one I want to read,
The Best Horror of the Year, Volume Four edited by Ellen Datlow
Anything Ellen Datlow edits automatically finds a place on my list of books to read. For many years, this included the excellent anthology series The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, which Datlow coedited with Terri Windling. When that series disappeared, much to the dismay of fans of short fiction everywhere, Datlow undertook to publish The Year’s Best Horror, which has been published by the terrific smaller press,
Terry Weyna´s rating: 5 | A.C. Wise, Ellen Datlow, Glen Hirshberg, John Langan, Laird Barron, Margo Lanagan, Peter Straub, Stephen King, Terri Windling | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
The Monstrous edited by Ellen Datlow
Whenever I see Ellen Datlow’s name as editor on the cover of an anthology, I know I’m in good hands. Datlow has a made a thirty-plus year career of choosing good stories and developing collections that take different aims at the theme. The theme of The Monstrous is monsters, and Datlow makes sure to explore all facets of that word with this mostly-reprint anthology from Tachyon Press.
There are twenty stories in the book. One is original to the anthology.
Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror edited by Ellen Datlow
This anthology comes after a similarly titled anthology, also edited by Ellen Datlow, called Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror which came out in March 2010. Datlow also edits an annual anthology of horror fiction (collaborating with other editors on those). It seems then that Nightmares: A New Decade of Modern Horror (which came out in October 2016) is informed by a great deal of knowledge in the field of speculative horror literature.
Skye Walker´s rating: 3.5 | Caitlín R. Kiernan, Ellen Datlow, Garth Nix, Gemma Files, Gene Wolfe, John Langan, Kaaron Warren, Laird Barron, Lisa Tuttle, Margo Lanagan, Richard Kadrey | Horror, Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Previous SFF Author: Derek Landy
The black, white and blue is VERY striking, and carries the sense of a night sky and mystery.
Thanks, Kat, great input!
Marion, thanks for the audiobook article! Interestingly, they list All Systems Red by Martha Wells. Here's part of my review…
And, oh...as to that 2.5-star rating: I think I gave Damon Knight's "Beyond the Barrier" a similar halfhearted rating earlier…
And speaking of mixed, that's how the book left me...mixed! As in MIXED UP!