Dark Terrors 5: The Gollancz Book of Horror

INTRODUCTION

It is another dark and stormy night… and for many of us, there is nothing more welcome than getting comfortable with a big book of stories specifically designed to induce the hairs on the back of our neck to stand on end and make our flesh creep.

The horror genre has a long and proud tradition of weighty tomes of terror, ranging from Dashiell Hammett’s Creeps By Night, J.M. Parrish and John R. Crossland’s The Mammoth Book of Thrillers, Ghosts and Mysteries, Dennis Wheatley’s A Century of Horror and Christine Campbell Thompson’s The ‘Not at Night’ Omnibus, through Herbert A. Wise and Phyllis Fraser’s Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, Boris Karloff’s And the Darkness Falls and August Derleth’s The Sleeping & the Dead, to more contemporary collections such as Kirby McCauley’s Dark Forces, Douglas E. Winter’s Prime Evil and Al Sarrantonio’s 999: New Stories of Horror and Suspense.

The bigger the book, the wider the spectrum of fears which can be explored.

For more than a decade we have been fortunate to have the opportunity to compile a number of well-received volumes of contemporary horror. Within these various titles we have been able to present some of the best and most iconoclastic work by established authors in the genre, as well as introducing a number of new and talented writers to a wider readership. But no matter how many different authors we selected, no matter how much we convinced our publishers to allow us to massage the page-count and squeeze the budget, there were always stories we admired which we had to leave out when making our final selection.

When you receive literally hundreds of submissions, as we do when we begin compiling a volume, it is only ever possible to accept a small percentage of the best manuscripts — and trust that those you have regretfully had to reject will find a home in some other anthology or magazine.

Which is why, when we were offered the opportunity to double the size of Dark Terrors, we jumped at the chance. A huge volume of modern horror and dark suspense, published on a regular basis, is exactly what the genre (and we hope the reader) wants. Now we would be able to include more stories by some of our favourite writers; we would be able to give more newcomers a professional forum for their fiction, and we would finally be able to incorporate more of those troublesome novellas, which fall between short story and novel length but which allow writers to flex their creative muscles.

Sure we would.

No sooner had we announced that we were reading than the manuscripts began flooding in. There is no better way than editing an anthology to make you realise that there are simply not enough markets for horror fiction available out there. Of course, much of what we received was unsuitable for one reason or another. But there were still more than enough outstanding stories to fill a big book. And another… and another. In fact, a list of some of the authors we had to reject would make many other editors green with envy.

And in the end, despite having many more words to work with, we once again found ourselves massaging the page-count and squeezing the budget so that we could include just one more story by a favourite author or a talented newcomer.

Which is why we are so proud of this particular volume. As we have said before, we do not expect our readers to agree with all our choices, but we truly believe that this is as powerful and representative a selection of modern horror as we could compile.

So sit back and relax as the night draws in and the wind begins to howl outside. It is time to feel those nape hairs stiffen and the goosebumps tingle as you once again prepare to lose yourself within those dark terrors which follow…

Stephen Jones and David Sutton

April, 2000