to the subversion of reality through the recontextualization of museum exhibits and various other contaminations of meat-minds through subtextual viruses. Paul Kirsch grew up on an unhealthy diet of grilled cheese and ghost stories. He’s been tinkering with a steampunk/fantasy series, and writes book reviews at paul- kirsch.com. He lives in Los Angeles. Michael J. Larson lives in Minneapolis when he’s not on his private dirigible, holding wild midair parties and getting involved in international intrigue. Therese Littleton is a curator and writer who lives in Seattle, Washington. Graham Lowther, born in Vermont, now lives in Maine, where he is building his own house. He has long been a fan of horror and surreal fiction, and sometimes writes it. This is his first appearance in print. Claire Massey lives in Lancashire with her husband and two young sons. Her short stories have been published in a variety of places and she is the founding editor of online magazine New Fairy Tales. Tony Mileman lives and works in the Czech city of Brno. His pleasures include translating Czech supernatural fiction. His previous short fiction has appeared in Nemonymous. Adam Mills lives in a town in the Missouri Ozarks, one you can only see if you pay attention and pass by at the right time of night. He writes coded messages, teaches college English, and lives in a bowling alley. Annalee Newitz is the editor in chief of io9.com. She’s published her work in Wired, the Washington Post, Flurb, and 2600. She used to be a professor who studied monsters. Ignacio Sanz was born in Madrid, Spain, in 1977, and is a sci-fi and fantasy aficionado. Until now, he has written some short pieces, but this is the first time he has competed in an international writing contest. Steven M. Schmidt is a person of no importance whatsoever. He is working to correct this appalling state of affairs but it may take some time. Grant Stone’s stories have appeared in Shimmer, Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine, and Semaphore. He lives in Auckland, New Zealand. Which is handy, since that’s where all his stuff is. Norman Taber (aka Dr. Galubrious) teaches graduate studies in ethereal anthropology and at Exeter University in Putney, Vermont. He is the world’s foremost expert on toad-scrapings. Galubrious is represented in the United States by Norman Taber, a professor of design at SUNY Plattsburgh. Brian Thill is the director of the Humanities Core Writing Program at UC Irvine, where he completed his Ph.D. in English. His research focuses include American literature, art, and politics. Nick Tramdack was born in 1985 and grew up in New Jersey. He works in the stacks of a Chicago library, where he has developed a Grendel-like hatred for noise. Nicholas Troy was born in Washington, D.C., grew up a bit in Germany, then grew up some more in Boston. He has always loved stories, and is currently a part of the Illiterati writing group. Tom Underberg lives with his wife and children in an old house. Standing on his roof, you can see Lake Michigan. He has been an economic consultant (excellent), bartender (disastrous), and dishwasher (promising). Horia Ursu is a Romanian publisher, translator, and (sometimes) writer of science fiction and fantasy. He is also senior editor of Galileo, a digest-size F&SF magazine. He lives in Satu Mare with his wife and daughter. William T. Vandemark can be found wandering the backroads of America in a pickup truck. His fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, InterGalactic Medicine Show, and in several anthologies. Kali Wallace is inconveniently overeducated and underemployed. She lives in Colorado with her family, four cats, and a turtle. Tracie Welser is a speculative fiction writer and instructor of women’s studies. She’s quite fond of owls. In 2010, she was fortunate enough to survive the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop. Amy Willats is originally from California, although she has also been seen in Texas and Maryland. Currently residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, she tries not to scream uncontrollably, although sometimes she just can’t help herself. Nadine Wilson is a reader of books, scribbler of stories, taker of photographs, mother of one, big sister to many, pet of cats, lover of oddities, seminomadic and vaguely ambitious. She loves the world, even you. Especially you. Ben Woodard recently completed a master’s in philosophy at the European Graduate School. He blogs at naughtthought.wordpress.com, and his first monograph, Slime Dynamics: Generation, Mutation, and the Creep of Life, is forthcoming from Zer0 Books.
About the Editors
Hugo Award–winner Ann VanderMeer and World Fantasy Award–winner Jeff VanderMeer have recently coedited such anthologies as Best American Fantasy #1 & 2, Steampunk, Steampunk Reloaded, The New Weird, Last Drink Bird Head, and Fast Ships, Black Sails. They are the coauthors of The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals. Future projects include The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Fictions, for Atlantic. Jeff’s latest books are the novel Finch, a World Fantasy Award and Nebula Award finalist; the story collection The Third Bear; the nonfiction collection Monstrous Creatures; the coffee-table book The Steampunk Bible (with S. J. Chambers); and the writing strategy guide Booklife. Ann is the editor in chief of Weird Tales magazine and has a regular art column on the popular SF/fantasy Web site io9. Together, they have been profiled by National Public Radio and the New York Times’ Papercuts blog. They are active teachers, and have taught at Clarion San Diego, Odyssey, and the teen writing camp Shared Worlds, for which Jeff serves as the assistant director. They live in Tallahassee, Florida, with too many books and four cats. For more information, visit jeffvandermeer.com.
First and foremost, a huge thank-you to Diana Gill, our editor, for being wonderfully supportive of this project and letting this three-ring circus reach its full potential. Thanks also to Will Hinton at Harper Voyager, who put up with a constant stream of e-mails and image downloads, among other impositions—as well as everyone else involved in this project, including the book designer. Huge thanks as well to John Coulthart for acting as an image consultant to this anthology, while also providing his own art/design and found art—you’re the best and we couldn’t have done it without you. Thanks to the gang at Brueggers, Hopkins, and Monks for good company, and for keeping us fed and caffeinated during the process. Thanks to our friends at the Leon Station post office for laughs and over twenty years of great service. We would also like to thank Myra Miller and Arthur Burns at Alpha Data Systems for continuing support (and a special shoutout to Arthur for keeping all our technology running smoothly).
We’re also indebted to Stepan Chapman and Michael Cisco’s contributions to The Thackery T. Lambshead Pocket Guide to Eccentric & Discredited Diseases, as this volume makes use of some of their ideas and writings from that prior volume. We’re also forever indebted to our New Weird editor in the Czech Republic, Martin Sust, for his help in acquiring art from Jan Svankmajer. Finally, thanks to all of the contributors for making this anthology so special for us.
ARTISTS
All images copyright 2011 to the individual creators and original to this anthology, unless otherwise noted. All public-domain art and photography provided by and/or Photoshopped by John Coulthart. All title pages copyright 2011 John Coulthart.
