Science Fiction and Horror Anthologies
The Penguin Book of Horror Stories (1984) Editor: J. A . Cuddon Redshift: Extreme Visions of Speculative Fiction (2001) Editor: Al Sarrantonio The Mammoth Book of Best Short SF Novels (2007) Editor: Gardner Dozois The Penguin Book of Horror Stories has some gems and a certain breadth but it suffers from a weak almost nerdy academic introduction filled with fact but weak on interpretation. It is a Wikipedia article before its time. The definition of horror is very wide. The brutal realism of Prosper Merimee's primitive and vengeful Mateo Falcone (a story that disturbed me as a child and disturbs me today) sits alongside a pulp tale of derring-do (the oft-anthologised Leiningen Versus The Ants ) and a sardonic and satirical horror tale like Robert Graves' Earth to Earth . But yet there is little true cosmic horror - no H P Lovecraft or Arthur Machen. What are the best stories in an average collection? Apart from decent works by Hogg, Merimee (see abo...