This article needs additional citations for verification .(September 2009) |
Editor | John Skipp and Craig Spector |
---|---|
Genre | Horror |
Publisher | Mark V. Ziesing |
Book of the Dead is an anthology of horror stories first published in 1989, edited by John Skipp and Craig Spector and featuring a foreword written by George A. Romero (erroneously credited as George R. Romero in first print editions of the book). All the stories in the anthology are united by the same premise seen in Romero's apocalyptic films, depicting a worldwide outbreak of zombies and various reactions to it. The first book was followed three years later by a follow-up, Still Dead: Book of the Dead 2, with a new group of writers tackling the same premise, though the second book put the stories in order according to their imagined chronology of the zombie takeover.
The Book of the Dead compilations are regarded as classic anthologies in the horror and splatterpunk genres, featuring a great number of famous names including Stephen King, Joe R. Lansdale, Robert R. McCammon and foreworded by George A. Romero and Tom Savini. They are likely the first anthologies of zombie-themed tales ever printed, and have been cited as perhaps the first true "zombie literature" as such. [1] [2]
According to author Ian McDowell, a third anthology was planned back in 1991. However, bad luck led to it going "through many permutations and publishers over the years. I've been paid for my story by two different publishers and I've proofed two different sets of galleys." Cemetery Dance finally released it under the title Mondo Zombie in 2006. [3]
George Andrew Romero Jr. was an American-Canadian film director, writer, editor and actor. His Night of the Living Dead series of films about a zombie apocalypse began with the original Night of the Living Dead (1968) and is considered a major contributor to the image of the zombie in modern culture. Other films in the series include Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Day of the Dead (1985).
Splatterpunk is a movement within horror fiction originating in the 1980s, distinguished by its graphic, often gory, depiction of violence, countercultural alignment and "hyperintensive horror with no limits." The term was coined in 1986 by David J. Schow at the Twelfth World Fantasy Convention in Providence, Rhode Island. Splatterpunk is regarded as a revolt against the "traditional, meekly suggestive horror story". Splatterpunk has been defined as a "literary genre characterised by graphically described scenes of an extremely gory nature."
Land of the Dead is a 2005 post-apocalyptic horror film written and directed by George A. Romero; the fourth of Romero's six Living Dead movies, it is preceded by Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead and Day of the Dead, and succeeded by Diary of the Dead and Survival of the Dead. It was released in 2005, with a budget of $15–19 million, the highest in Romero's Dead series, and has grossed $46 million.
Night of the Living Dead is a 1990 American horror film directed by Tom Savini and starring Tony Todd and Patricia Tallman. It is a remake of George A. Romero's 1968 film of the same title; Romero rewrote the original 1968 screenplay he had originally co-authored with John A. Russo.
Thomas Vincent Savini is an American prosthetic makeup artist, actor, stunt performer and film director. He is known for his makeup and special effects work on many films directed by George A. Romero, including Martin, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Creepshow, and Monkey Shines; he also created the special effects and makeup for many cult classics like Friday the 13th, Maniac, The Burning, The Prowler, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2.
Shadows was a series of horror anthologies edited by Charles L. Grant, published by Doubleday from 1978 to 1991. Grant, a proponent of "quiet horror", initiated the series in order to offer readers a showcase of this kind of fiction. The short stories appearing in the Shadows largely dispensed with traditional Gothic settings, and had very little physical violence. Instead, they featured slow accumulations of dread through subtle omens, mostly taking place in everyday settings. While Grant himself was very adept at this kind of fiction, he contributed no stories to the anthologies, writing only the introductions and author profiles. The first volume in the series won the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology.
Living Dead, also informally known as Of The Dead is a blanket term for the loosely connected horror franchise that originated from the 1968 film Night of the Living Dead. The film, written by George A. Romero and John A. Russo, primarily focuses on a group of people gathering at a farmhouse to survive from an onslaught of zombies in rural Pennsylvania. It is known to have inspired the modern interpretation of zombies as reanimated human corpses that feast on the flesh and/or brains of the living.
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror was a reprint anthology published annually by St. Martin's Press from 1987 to 2008. In addition to the short stories, supplemented by a list of honorable mentions, each edition included a number of retrospective essays by the editors and others. The first two anthologies were originally published under the name The Year's Best Fantasy before the title was changed beginning with the third book.
Mark V. Ziesing is an American small press publisher and bookseller, founded by Mark Ziesing. Active as a bookseller, from 1972 to present; Ziesing was in publishing, from the mid-1980s into 1998. The Ziesing publishing imprint specialized in science fiction, horror, and other forms of speculative fiction. Originally based in Willimantic, Connecticut and in partnership with his brother Michael, he published two books by Gene Wolfe under the name Ziesing Brothers.
Cemetery Dance Publications is an American specialty press publisher of horror and dark suspense. Cemetery Dance was founded by Richard Chizmar, a horror author, while he was in college. It is associated with Cemetery Dance magazine, which was founded in 1988. They began to publish books in 1992. They later expanded to encompass a magazine and website featuring news, interviews, and reviews related to horror literature.
Electric Gumbo: A Lansdale Reader is one of the rarer compilations of Joe R. Lansdale's short works. It has only been published once, exclusively by the Quality Paperback Book Club in trade paperback form in 1994.
The Long Ones is a rare compilation of novellas by American writer Joe R. Lansdale, which are too long to be "short stories", but too short to be "novels". It was apparently only printed once, in hardcover form, in 1999.
A Cthulhu Mythos anthology is a type of short story collection that contains stories written in, or related to, the Cthulhu Mythos genre of horror fiction launched by H. P. Lovecraft. Such anthologies have helped to define and popularize the genre.
John Skipp is a splatterpunk horror and fantasy author and anthology editor, as well as a songwriter, screenwriter, film director, and film producer. He collaborated with Craig Spector on multiple novels, and has also collaborated with Marc Levinthal and Cody Goodfellow. He worked as editor-in-chief of both Fungasm Press and Ravenous Shadows.
Alan Marshall Clark is an American author and artist who is best known as the illustrator and book cover painter of many pieces of horror fiction. He was nominated for the Bram Stoker Award for Best First Novel for his 2005 book Siren Promised.
Steven R. Boyett, also known as DJ Steve Boyett, is a writer and disc jockey based in Northern California.
October Dreams is an anthology of Halloween-themed memories and short stories edited by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish. Jack Ketchum's "Gone" was nominated for the 2000 Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Fiction.
Simon McCaffery is an American author of speculative fiction. Trained as a journalist and magazine editor, he was an Honorable Mention recipient in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future contest twice before he began publishing short fiction in a variety of professional science fiction, horror and mystery publications in the 1990s, including Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Tomorrow SF, and Space and Time. He was a contributor in the anthology, Other Worlds Than These, edited by John Joseph Adams, alongside authors Stephen King and Ian McDonald. His fiction has also been collected in anthologies including the "Book of the Dead" series edited by Splatterpunk authors John Mason Skipp and Craig Spector, 100 Wicked Little Witch Stories, ''Mondo Zombie", and The Haunted Hour.
Creepshow is an American horror anthology television series that was released on Shudder in 2019. The series serves as a continuation of the 1982 film of the same name and features twenty five episodes with two horror stories per episode. The series premiered on September 26, 2019.