The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror. Volume 23

authors Jack Ketchum (Dallas Mayr), Joe Hill and Sarah Langan, ChiZine editors Brett Alexander Savory and Sandra Kasturi, British artist Vincent Chong, and media writer Steve Niles.

Brian Keene and bookseller Del Howison were Special Guests, and Joe R. Lansdale was Toastmaster. Jack Ketchum was given the convention’s Grand Master Award in a ceremony on the Friday night.

The winners of the Horror Writers of America 2010 Bram Stoker Awards for Superior Achievement were announced at the Stoker Awards Weekend in Uniondale, New York, on 19 June.

In a whole raft of announcements, the Silver Hammer Award for outstanding service to the HWA was presented to Angel Leigh McCoy, The President’s Richard Laymon Service Award went to Michael Colangelo, and Joe Morey of Dark Regions Press received the award for Specialty Press.

The Poetry Collection award went to Bruce Boston for Dark Matters, Gary A. Braunbeck’s To Each Their Darkness received Non-Fiction, and Stephen King’s Full Dark No Stars picked up Collection. The Anthology award was given to Haunted Legends edited by Ellen Datlow and Nick Mamatas, while Joe R. Lansdale’s story “The Folding Man” from the same book received the Short Fiction award. Long Fiction was given to Norman Prentiss for Invisible Fences, the First Novel award was a tie between Black and Orange by Benjamin Kane Ethridge and Castle of Los Angeles by Lisa Morton, and Peter Straub was presented with the Superior Achievement in a Novel award for A Dark Matter.

It had been previously announced that Ellen Datlow and veteran EC artist Al Feldstein each received Life Achievement Awards.

Celebrating the thirty-fifth British Fantasy Convention, FantasyCon 2011 was held in Brighton, England, over 30 September–2 October. Guests of Honour were Gwyneth Jones, John Ajvide Lindqvist, Peter Atkins and Joe Abercrombie. Brian Aldiss and Christopher Paolini were Special Guests and Sarah Pinborough was Mistress of Ceremonies.

The British Fantasy Awards were presented at a banquet on the Sunday afternoon. The awards for Best Film and Best Television went to Christopher Nolan’s Inception and the BBC’s Sherlock, respectively. Best Graphic Novel was At the Mountains of Madness: A Graphic Novel by I. N. J. Culbard, Best Magazine was Andy Cox’s Black Static, and the Best Small Press award went to Telos Publishing for the second year running.

Vincent Chong won Best Artist, and his book Altered Visions: The Art of Vincent Chong also picked up the Best Non-Fiction award. Back from the Dead: The Legacy of the Pan Book of Horror Stories edited by Johnny Mains was awarded Best Anthology, and Stephen King’s Full Dark, No Stars was announced Best Collection. Best Novella was presented to Humpty’s Bones by Simon Clark, while Sam Stone collected Best Short Story for “Fool’s Gold” (from The Bitten Word) and The August Derleth Award for Best Novel for Demon Dance, the third volume in the “Vampire Gene” series.

The Sydney J. Bounds Award for Best Newcomer went to Robert Jackson Bennett for his novel Mr Shivers, and Terry Pratchett was announced as the recipient of the Karl Edward Wagner Special Award.

Following the presentation of the awards, there was almost instant condemnation from many people in the audience who quickly realised that at least four of the winners were directly connected to the small press imprint run by the British Fantasy Society’s current Chairman/Awards Administrator/Co-Presenter (making it the most successful publisher in the forty-year history of the awards), while both the Best Short Story and Best Novel awards had gone to his partner.

While there was no evidence of any wrongdoing on anyone’s part, the subsequent online controversy, which also made the national press in Britain, resulted in the formation of an interim BFS committee and the entire voting process being made far more transparent in future.

Held in San Diego, California, over 26–30 October, World Fantasy Convention 2011 stuck rigorously to its somewhat watery theme of “Sailing on the Seas of Imagination”, thereby leaving Guests of Honour Jo Fletcher, Neil Gaiman, Parke Godwin, editor Shawna McCarthy and artist Ruth Sanderson, along with Toastmaster Connie Willis, a little becalmed.

As usual, the World Fantasy Award winners were announced at the banquet on the Sunday afternoon. The Special Award, Non-Professional Award went to Alisa Krasnostein for Twelfth Planet Press, and Marc Gascoigne received the Special Award, Professional for his Angry Robot imprint.

Best Artist was Kinuko Y. Craft, Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See and Other Stories won Best Collection, and My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer was awarded Best Anthology.

The Best Short Story Award went to Joyce Carol Oates’ “Fossil-Figures” (from Stories: All-New Tales) and Elizabeth Hand’s “The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” (from the same anthology) won Best Novella. In a surprisingly feminist list of winners, the Best Novel Award went to Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor, who subsequently complained about the award being in the form of a bust of H. P. Lovecraft, because she considered the author “a talented racist”. Her reaction was mostly based on a poem Lovecraft wrote almost a century earlier, when he was in his early twenties.

Peter S. Beagle and Angelica Gorodischer had previously been announced as the recipients of Life Achievement Awards for having demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field.

I’ve talked about integrity and the validity of awards in these pages before, and I don’t plan to go into the controversy surrounding the 2011 British Fantasy Awards any more than I have already done so elsewhere, other to say that I believe that people know when they really do or do not deserve to win an award, and they have to live with their actions — and the consequences of those actions — for the rest of their lives.

I’m not sure how worthwhile any award is if you know that you have actively campaigned to win it.

I would also not be surprised if many readers are now scratching their heads at some of the winners of the World Fantasy Awards above and asking themselves “Who?”

You may also have noticed that with this volume, the editorial matter is shorter than in recent editions of this series. This is because, according to my publishers (and a handful of “reviewers” on Amazon), the non-fiction elements are superfluous to the rest of the book, and they have ordered me to cut this material, despite the fact that it costs them nothing extra in editorial fees to include.

On a more positive note, I am delighted to announce that with this twenty-third volume, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror has surpassed both Ellen Datlow’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (twenty volumes) and Karl Edward Wagner’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories (twenty-two volumes) as the longest-running “Year’s Best” horror anthology series of all time!

We could not have done it without the authors, readers and booksellers who have continued to support these volumes for more than twenty years. Thank you all, and special thanks to Nick Robinson and my current editor, Duncan Proudfoot, for their continued belief in me and this series.

See you all in volume twenty-four!

The Editor

May, 2012

RAMSEY CAMPBELL Holding the Light

RAMSEY CAMPBELL WAS BORN in Liverpool, where he still lives with his wife Jenny. His first book, a collection of stories entitled The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants, was published by August Derleth’s legendary Arkham House imprint in 1964, since when his novels have included