Horror: The 100 Best Books (41 page)

CHRISTOPHER EVANS (b. 1951) was born in Tredegar, South Wales, and has been a London-based freelance writer since 1979. He has written science fiction, fantasy, horror, TV and film novelizations, non-fiction and reviews under various pen-names. Recent books under his own name include the novels
Capella's Golden Eyes
,
The Insider
and
In Limbo
, the collection
Chimeras
, and the "how-to" volume,
Writing Science Fiction
. With Robert Holdstock, Evans also co-edited three volumes of
Other Edens
, an anthology of new fantasy and science fiction stories.

LIONEL FANTHORPE (b. 1935) was born in Dereham, Norfolk, and for a period of fifteen years was Britain's most prolific science fiction, fantasy and horror author. While working as a full-time teacher, Fanthorpe wrote his first published story for the John Spencer imprint in 1952 and until 1966 he produced almost 200 books for them with titles like
The Macabre Ones
,
Softly By Moonlight
,
The Immortals
,
Valley of the Vampire
,
The Crawling Fiend
,
The Loch Ness Terror
,
Fingers of Darkness
and
Rodent Mutation
. He almost single-handedly filled all the issues of
Supernatural Stories
, using a multitude of pseudonyms, and created a series about occult investigator Val Stearman and his wife La Noire. In 1979 he co-authored the novel
The Black Lion
with his wife Patricia, and they also collaborated on
The Holy Grail Revealed
(1982). In 1987 Fanthorpe was Ordained as a Minister in the Church of Wales, serving as non-stipendiary assistant curate at St. German's, Roath, Cardiff, and was also Headmaster of Glyn Derw Comprehensive High School in Cardiff for eleven years. He took early retirement at his own request in 1989 to run his own management consultancy business. His most recent books include
God in All Things
(1987), a collection of Christian pieces,
Thoughts and Prayers for Troubled Times
and
Life of St. Francis
(1989),
The Christmas Story and Birds and Animals of the Bible
(1990). In collaboration with Patricia, he has published
Rennes-le-Chau: It Mysteries and Secrets
,
The Oak Island Mystery
and
Down the Badger Hole
.

JOHN M. FORD (b. 1957) was born in East Chicago, Indiana. He began writing in 1974 and sold his first science fiction story, "This, Too Reconcile", to
Analog the
following year. Since then, his short fiction has appeared in a number of anthologies and such magazines as
Amazing
,
Omni
and
Asimov's
. Ford published his first novel,
Web of Angels
, in 1980, and followed it with
The Princes of the Air
, the World Fantasy Award-winning
The Dragon Waiting
,
The Illusionist
, two best-selling
Star Trek
volumes,
The Final Reflection
and
How Much For Just the Planet?
, the espionage thriller
The Scholars of the Night
, and a collection,
Casting Fortune
. He won the World Fantasy Award again in 1989 for Best Short Fiction with his poem "Winter Solstice, Camelot Station".

NEIL GAIMAN (b. 1960) was born in Portchester, England. Interested in books and comics at an early age, he was twelve when he was told by a school advisor that it would be impossible to become a comics writer. His articles, interviews and reviews have appeared in
Today
,
Time Out
,
The Good Book Guide
,
Shock Xpress
,
Foundation
,
Knave
,
News on Sunday
,
You
,
American Fantasy
,
Publishing News
,
Observer Colour Supplement
,
The Sunday Times Magazine
,
Penthouse
and
Clive Barker's Shadows in Eden
. Gaiman's short fiction has been published in
Knave
,
Imagine
,
Penthouse
,
Dragon
,
Winter Chills
,
Tales from the Forbidden Planet 2
,
Words Without Pictures
,
Digital Dreams
,
Midnight Graffiti
and
Fantasy Tales
. He co-wrote the bestselling novel
Good Omens
with Terry Pratchett and is the author of
The Official Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion
, the award-winning graphic novels
Violent Cases
,
Sandman
(three volumes),
Black Orchid
and
Signal to Noise
, and co-compiled
Ghastly Beyond Belief
with Kim Newman. He has co-edited a book of nasty verse,
Now We Are Sick
, with Stephen Jones and co-"devised" the shared world anthologies
Temps
(with Alex Stewart),
The Weerde
(with Mary Gentle and Roz Kaveney) and
Villains!
(with Gentle). Gaiman has written numerous comic strips, and he won the 1991 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction for "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in DC Comics'
Sandman
.

STEPHEN GALLAGHER (b. 1954) was born in Salford, Lancashire, and currently lives in Blackburn with his wife and daughter. He graduated with Joint Honours in Drama and English from Hull University in 1975 and worked for a number of British television companies before making his first professional sale as a writer to commercial radio. Gallagher became a full-time freelance writer in 1980, and he went on to script two serials for BBC-TV's popular
Dr. Who
series,
Warrior's Gate
and
Terminus
(which he subsequently novelized under the pseudonym "John Lydecker"), and the BBC's
Moving Targets
. His short fiction has appeared in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
,
Asimov's
,
Ripper!
,
Shadows 9
,
Winter Chills
,
Night Visions 8
and
Fantasy Tales 4
. Early books include
The Last Rose of Summer
,
Dying of Paradise
,
The Ice Belt
and the novelization of the SF movie
Saturn 3
, and among his horror and mystery novels are
Chimera
(recently produced as a television mini-series),
Valley of Lights
,
Follower
,
Oktober
,
Down River
,
Rain
,
The Root House
and
Nightmare, With Angel
.

CRAIG SHAW GARDNER (b. 1949) was born in Rochester, New York, the home of the Eastman Kodak Company ("thus I was able to obtain large amounts of free film at an early age"), and currently lives in "artsy" Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was introduced to science fiction at the age of ten and he wrote
Frankenstein Meets Juliet
for his grammar school paper. After majoring in "Broadcasting and Film" at Boston University ("a degree with absolutely no worth in the real world"), he worked in public relations while writing short stories in his spare time. In 1978 he sold "A Malady of Magicks" to
Fantastic Stories
and within a couple of years his fiction was appearing regularly in magazines and anthologies. His first novel,
A Malady of Magicks
(1986), was a humorous fantasy and the first volume in The Ebenezum Trilogy", followed by
A Multitude of Monsters
and
A Night in the Netherhells
. "The Ballard of Wuntvor" was a second series involving the same characters and included
A Difficulty With Dwarves
,
An Excess of Enchantments
and
A Disagreement With Death
. He has continued the humour in the "Cineverse Cycle" (
Slaves of the Volcano God
,
Bride of the Slime Monster
and
Revenge of the Fluffy Bunnies
) and his "Arabian Nights" series (
The Other Sinbad
,
A Bad Day for Ali Baba
and
Scherezade's Night Out
). He has also novelized the
Wishbringer
computer game as well as such hit movies as
The Lost Boys
,
Back to the Future Part II
and
III
,
Batman
and a spin-off novel,
The Batman Murders
.

FRANCES GARFIELD (b. 1908) was born in Texas and has lived in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, since 1951 when she moved there with her husband, Manly Wade Wellman. During the late 1930s and early '40s she had three stories published in
Weird Tales
and another in
Amazing Stories
. After retiring from her job as a secretary in a school of public health, she kept thinking up ideas for horror stories and telling them to Wellman. He said they were "women's stories" and she would have to write them herself. So Garfield returned to her typewriter, and over the past fifteen years the results have appeared in such magazines as
Fantasy Tales
,
Whispers
,
Fantasy Book
,
Kadath
and
The Tome
, as well as several anthologies, including
The Year's Best Horror Stories
,
The Best Horror from Fantasy Tales
and
The Mammoth Book of Vampires
.

DAVID (S.) GARNETT (b. 1947) was born in Liverpool and currently lives in West Sussex. He has published five science fiction novels (the first,
Mirror in the Sky
, when he was nineteen) and a collection of short stories under his own name. Garnett is also the author of numerous other books under various pseudonyms, including novelizations of the movie
The Hills Have Eyes Part II
and the role-playing game
Warhammer: Shadowbreed
(as "David Ferring"). His short fiction has been published in
Interzone
,
Penthouse
,
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
and such anthologies as
Other Edens
,
Shadows
and
The Year's Best Horror Stories
. As an editor, he produced three volumes of
The Orbit Science Fiction Yearbook
, two volumes
of Zenith
, and is currently editing the latest incarnation of
New Worlds
. He is not the same David Garnett who wrote
Aspects of Love
.

CHARLES L. GRANT (b. 1942) has lived most of his life in north-western New Jersey. In 1964 he graduated from Trinity College, Connecticut, with a B.A. in History and English. A prolific editor, short-story writer and novelist, he sold his first story, "The House of Evil", to
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
in 1968. After publishing a number of science fiction novels like
The Shadow of Alpha
,
Ascention
and
The Ravens of the Moon
, he began to develop his unique brand of "quiet" horror in more than thirty novels, such as
The Curse
(1977),
The Hour of the Oxrun Dead
,
The Grave
,
The Bloodwind
,
The Soft Whisper of the Dead
,
The Nestling
,
The Tea Party
,
The Orchard
,
The Pet
,
For Fear of the Night
,
In a Dark Dream
,
Dialing the Wind
,
Stunts
,
Fire Mask
and
Something Stirs
. His stories have been collected in
Tales from the Nightside
,
A Glow of Candles
and
Nightmare Seasons
, and he was the editor of the popular
Shadows
(twelve volumes),
Midnight
and
Greystone Bay
anthologies, amongst others. As "Geoffrey Marsh", Grant is the author of the "Lincoln Blackthorne" series of fantasy adventures, and the "Kent Montana" series of movie spoofs are published under his pseudonym "Lionel Fenn". He has won the Nebula Award, the British Fantasy Award and the World Fantasy Award and published more than 125 short stories.

COLIN GREENLAND (b. 1954) was born in Dover, England, and lives in Harrow. From 1980 to 1982 he was the Arts Council Writer in Residence at the Science Fiction Foundation.
The Entropy Exhibition
, his Oxford University doctorate study of Michael Moorcock's magazine
New Worlds
, was given the University of California's Eaton Award for science fiction criticism in 1985. Greenland's novels include
The Hour of the Thin Ox
,
Other Voices
,
Harm's Way
, and
Take Back Plenty
, which in 1991 became the first book ever to win both the Arthur C. Clarke Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best SF Novel. His book and film reviews appear frequently in
The Sunday Times
,
The Face
and elsewhere. He is also the reviews editor of
Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction
.

R. S. (ROBERT STEPHEN) HADJI (b. 1953) was born in London, Ontario, Canada, where he admits he enjoyed "an idyllic childhood roaming the woods in search of salamanders". Eventually moving to Toronto, Hadji has become a noted authority on horror fiction, with articles published in, amongst others,
Myriad
,
Rod Serling's Twilight Zone Magazine
,
American Fantasy
and
The Penguin Book of Horror and the Supernatural
. He was also the founding editor of the Canadian magazine
Borderland
and was a judge for the 1988 World Fantasy Awards.