The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror

"Well, I didn’t want to give people the impression that it was just the writing published 50 years ago that was good, and there is nothing good being done now—because that is not the case. I was initially the co-editor of this series with Stephen Jones, but I found that there was so much dross to be gone through to get to the good stuff that I didn’t have the time. Now we’re on volume 22, but two years ago Stephen decided to select the best stories from the first two decades, and that’s The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror . There are stories in there that stack up against the classics of the field, in very different ways. For instance, there’s a very striking story by Lisa Tuttle called “My Death”. It’s about someone trying to track down an unknown writer, and finding that there’s more about the author and their relationship to the narrator than they thought. The story is an enigma, and I’ve always felt that an enigma in this field can be more satisfying that any explanations. Neil Gaiman is in there too, as is Mark Samuels with his story “The White Hands”. I would argue that Mark Samuels and the American Thomas Ligotti are the two contemporary writers who have picked up on the tradition of Machen and of HP Lovecraft, and are doing new things with it. Lovecraft had an ambition to convey “cosmic terror”. He invented as he went along an entire mythology, whose purpose was partly to get beyond what he saw as the excessively conventionalised paraphernalia of Victorian occult fiction, and invent something completely new while still drawing on the traditions. The Dark Descent includes his story “The Call of Cthulhu”, in which he first brings on this mythology of alien creatures that have visited and sunk into hidden places in the world, and who are waiting to reappear and manifest themselves. They are worshipped by the odd cult, but the aliens themselves have very little interest in humanity. Their purpose in Lovecraft is to represent cosmic indifference and that perspective on the universe. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Lovecraft’s masterpiece is The Colour Out of Space , where again he finds the perfect metaphor for what he wants to convey. It’s not an alien creature, it’s an indescribable colour not known to our human spectrum. Which is of course unfilmable—although lots have tried! The novel is built up—by an enormous amount of hints, allusions and gradual orchestration of prose and effect—to by far the most powerful conclusion in Lovecraft’s work. It has moments of physical horror in the middle, but it is mostly built on awe and terror. Back to the Gothic novel, really. There are folk who would quite reasonably argue it goes back as far as Beowulf , maybe even further. But in terms of the development of the modern horror story, I would say it begins with Edgar Allan Poe. He is the first horror writer we can recognise as contemporary, in terms of his psychological preoccupations. Poe was refining and intensifying the effects of the Gothic novel, but focusing much more on the psychological element. Halloween is a fun time to read these stories. Then again, any day is, as far as I’m concerned. If you want a classic Halloween film, I’d watch Jacques Tourneur’s Night of the Demon , which has never been beaten for atmosphere as far as I’m concerned."