Reception
Mario Guslandi at the SF Site calls the anthology "a book well worth reading," though "not everyting is quite 'the best.'" He notes that "[m]ost of the included material was already part of my own, private 'year's best' and I was pleased to find it included therein." These include the stories by Hodge ("extraordinary, insightful"), Bobet ("creepy, atmospheric"), King ("very horrific, vivid"), Taborska ("adrenaline-rising") and Lamsley ("weird, superb"), which are singled out for particular praise, as are "a few outstanding stories which had escaped my radar and that I enjoyed very much, including those by Bestwick ("the very best tory in the book"), Barron ("extremely dark"), and Llewellyn ("a story of terrible beauty"). Other stories "failed to impress me the first time and still don't, despite the inclusion by Datlow in the present anthology." [2]
The book was also reviewed by Stefan Dziemianowicz in Locus #618, July 2012. [1]
Nemonymous was an experimental short fiction publication that labeled itself a "megazanthus". It was published and edited in the United Kingdom from 2001–2010 by D.F. Lewis.
Ellen Datlow is an American science fiction, fantasy, and horror editor and anthologist. She is a winner of the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award.
Laird Samuel Barron is an American author and poet, much of whose work falls within the horror, noir, or horror noir and dark fantasy genres. He has also been the managing editor of the online literary magazine Melic Review. He lives in Upstate New York.
Stephen Dedman is an Australian writer of dark fantasy and science fiction stories and novels.
Black Static, formerly The 3rd Alternative, was a British horror magazine edited by Andy Cox. The magazine twice won the British Fantasy Award for "Best Magazine" while The 3rd Alternative twice won the same award for Best Small Press. In addition, individual stories published in the magazine won other awards and were reprinted in a number of collections of the year's best fiction.
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.
Martin Livings is an Australian author of horror, fantasy and science fiction. He has been writing short stories since 1990 and has been nominated for both the Ditmar Award and Aurealis Award. Livings resides in Perth, Western Australia.
Terror Australis: The Best of Australian Horror was Australia's first original mass-market horror anthology for adults. It was edited by Leigh Blackmore..
Angela Slatter is a writer based in Brisbane, Australia. Primarily working in the field of speculative fiction, she has focused on short stories since deciding to pursue writing in 2005, when she undertook a Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing. Since then she has written a number of short stories, many of which were included in her two compilations, Sourdough and Other Stories (2010) and The Girl With No Hands and other tales (2010).
Bill Congreve is an Australian writer, editor and reviewer of speculative fiction. He has also published the work of Australian science fiction and horror writers under his MirrorDanse imprint.
Exotic Gothic is an anthology series of original short fiction and novel excerpts in the gothic, horror and fantasy genres. A recipient of the World Fantasy Award and Shirley Jackson Awards, it is conceptualized and edited by Danel Olson, a professor of English at Lone Star College in Texas.
The Best Horror of the Year: Volume One (ISBN 978-1-59780-161-4) is a horror fiction anthology edited by Ellen Datlow that was published on January 1, 2009. It is the first in The Best Horror of the Year series.
The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Two (ISBN 978-1-59780-173-7) is a horror fiction anthology edited by Ellen Datlow that was published on March 10, 2010. It is the second in The Best Horror of the Year series.
The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Three (ISBN 978-1-59780-217-8) is a horror fiction anthology edited by Ellen Datlow that was published on June 1, 2011. It is the third in The Best Horror of the Year series.
The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Six (ISBN 978-1-59780-503-2) is a horror fiction anthology edited by Ellen Datlow that was published on June 3, 2014. It is the sixth in The Best Horror of the Year series.
Abyss & Apex Magazine (A&A) is a long-running, semi-pro online speculative fiction magazine. The title of the zine comes from a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), "And if you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." The stories and poetry therefore follow the pattern of "how would humans react?" if a new technology or a type of magic or supernatural power affected them.
Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural is an anthology of horror stories edited by Ellen Datlow. It was published by Tor Books in December 2007. The anthology itself won the 2008 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology.
Usman T. Malik is a Pakistani speculative fiction author. His short fiction has been published in magazines and books such as The Apex Book of World SF, Nightmare, Strange Horizons, Black Static, and in a number of "year's best" anthologies. He is the first Pakistani to win the Bram Stoker Award for Short Fiction (2014) and has won the British Fantasy Award (2016). He has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award (2016), nominated again for the Stoker Award (2018), has twice been a finalist for the Nebula Award, and has been nominated for multiple Locus Awards.
The Cambist and Lord Iron: A Fairy Tale of Economics is a 2007 novelette by Daniel Abraham. It was originally published in the anthology Logorrhea: Good Words Make Good Stories, and subsequently republished in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008: 21st Annual Collection (2008), in Fantasy: The Best of the Year (2008), in The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Two (2008), and in Lightspeed (2013); as well, an audio version was made available via PodCastle in 2009.
The Best Horror of the Year: Volume Five (ISBN 978-1-59780-475-2) is a horror fiction anthology edited by Ellen Datlow that was published in August 2013. It is the fifth volume in The Best Horror of the Year series.
