Horror is a genre of speculative fiction that is intended to disturb, frighten, or scare. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which are in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. A. Cuddon, in 1984, defined the horror story as "a piece of fiction in prose of variable length ... which shocks, or even frightens the reader, or perhaps induces a feeling of repulsion or loathing". Horror intends to create an eerie and frightening atmosphere for the reader. Often the central menace of a work of horror fiction can be interpreted as a metaphor for larger fears of a society.
Montague Rhodes James was an English medievalist scholar and author who served as provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–1918), and of Eton College (1918–1936) as well as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge (1913–1915). James's scholarly work is still highly regarded, but he is best remembered for his ghost stories, which are considered by many critics and authors as the finest in the English language and widely influential on modern horror.
William Francis Nolan was an American author who wrote hundreds of stories in the science fiction, fantasy, horror, and crime fiction genres.
Ramsey Campbell is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for well over fifty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films.
Arkham House was an American publishing house specializing in weird fiction. It was founded in Sauk City, Wisconsin, in 1939 by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei to publish hardcover collections of H. P. Lovecraft's best works, which had previously been published only in pulp magazines. The company's name is derived from Lovecraft's fictional New England city, Arkham, Massachusetts. Arkham House editions are noted for the quality of their printing and binding. The colophon for Arkham House was designed by Frank Utpatel.
Algernon Henry Blackwood, CBE was an English broadcasting narrator, journalist, novelist and short story writer, and among the most prolific ghost story writers in the history of the genre. The literary critic S. T. Joshi stated, "His work is more consistently meritorious than any weird writer's except Dunsany's" and that his short story collection Incredible Adventures (1914) "may be the premier weird collection of this or any other century".
Michael Shea was an American fantasy, horror, and science fiction author. His novel Nifft the Lean won the World Fantasy Award, as did his novella Growlimb.
Weird fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction originating in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Weird fiction either eschews or radically reinterprets traditional antagonists of supernatural horror fiction, such as ghosts, vampires, and werewolves. Writers on the subject of weird fiction, such as China Miéville, sometimes use "the tentacle" to represent this type of writing. The tentacle is a limb-type absent from most of the monsters of European gothic fiction, but often attached to the monstrous creatures created by weird fiction writers, such as William Hope Hodgson, M. R. James, Clark Ashton Smith, and H. P. Lovecraft.
Theodore "Eibon" Donald Klein is an American horror writer and editor.
Dennis William Etchison was an American writer and editor of fantasy and horror fiction. Etchison referred to his own work as "rather dark, depressing, almost pathologically inward fiction about the individual in relation to the world". Stephen King has called Dennis Etchison "one hell of a fiction writer" and he has been called "the most original living horror writer in America".
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.
The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants is a collection of fantasy and horror short stories by British author J. Ramsey Campbell, who dropped the initial from his name in subsequent publications. It was released in 1964 by Arkham House in an edition of 2,009 copies and was the author's first book. The stories are part of the Cthulhu Mythos. Campbell had originally written his introduction to be included in the book The Dark Brotherhood and Other Pieces under the title "Cthulhu in Britain". However, Arkham's editor, August Derleth, decided to use it here.
Demons by Daylight is a collection of stories by English author Ramsey Campbell. Released in 1973, it was the author's second short story collection, after The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants. Like the earlier book, it was published by Arkham House.
David F. Case was an American writer of short stories and novels.
The Jaguar Hunter is a collection of science fiction, fantasy and horror stories by American author Lucius Shepard. Illustrated by J. K. Potter, it was released in May, 1987 and was the author's first book published by Arkham House. It was originally published in an edition of 3,194 copies, with a second printing later in 1987 of 1,508 copies. Bantam Books issued a trade paperback edition in 1989, and Four Walls Eight Windows reprinted the collection in 2001. The first British publication came as a Paladin Books trade paperback in 1988, followed quickly by a Kerosina Books hardcover. A Rumanian translation appeared in 2008.
Alone with the Horrors: The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell 1961–1991 is a collection of fantasy and horror stories by British author Ramsey Campbell. Released in 1993 in an edition of 3,834 copies, it was the author's fourth collection of stories to be published by Arkham House. The contents consist of 39 of Campbell's previously uncollected tales along with a selection of works drawn from each of Campbell's Arkham collections as well as the mass-market collections Dark Companions (1982), Scared Stiff (1986) and Waking Nightmares (1991).
Wilum Hopfrog Pugmire, was a writer of weird fiction and horror fiction based in Seattle, Washington. His works typically were published as W. H. Pugmire and his fiction often paid homage to the lore of Lovecraftian horror. Lovecraft scholar and biographer S. T. Joshi described Pugmire as "the prose-poet of the horror/fantasy field; he may be the best prose-poet we have" and as one of the genre's leading Lovecraftian authors.
Bryce John Stevens is a horror writer, illustrator and editor. He grew up in Christchurch, New Zealand and moved to Sydney in the mid-1980s. From childhood he was fascinated with the supernatural and terrifying consequences of events from stories such as "The Tinderbox", a predilection which continued through his high school years and beyond.
Gregory Frost is an American author of science fiction and fantasy, and directs a fiction writing workshop at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa. A graduate of the Clarion Workshop, he has been invited back as instructor several times, including the first session following its move to the University of California at San Diego in 2007. He is also active in the Interstitial Arts Foundation.
Scared Stiff may refer to:
