Title: Gathering the Bones
Author: Jack Dann

INTRODUCTION
TALES OF TERROR FROM THREE CONTINENTS!

This was a subtitle we three editors discussed for this anthology, and it pretty much sums up our intentions for the book.

We set out to illustrate how vast and international the scope of the genre has become and the vitality of writing to be found in t as the new century begins. To that end, each editor solicited a third of this volume’s contents in his own country of residence – Ramsey Cambell in Great Britain, Jack Dann in Australia, and Dennis Etchison in the United States. Our intention was to present the familiar and the experimental, the traditional and the avant-garde, the quiet and the vividly shocking, in a field whose boundaries are no longer rigidly defined and where literary values coexist with the leading edge of popular culture. There is no need for a narrow, constricted theme to inhibit the imagination, for dark fantasy is truly an international fiction without limits.

We were struck not only by the range of the tales we’ve collected, but also by how some of their themes echo across the world. The big city and its fears are present in tales by Tony Richards and Scott Emerson Bull, while Aaron Sterns discovers the supernatural under the masks of a familiar urban profession. Russell Blackford shows us how vampires have grown up with the city; the late Cherry Wilder has fun with a related and perhaps more civilised species. As Michael Marchsall Smith reminds us, however, urban menace need have no supernatural excuse, and Gary Fry elucidates some of the moral horrors involved.

Some of our authors touch on science fiction. Robert Devereaux and Fruma Klass are speaking of the future, we hope, although in both cases it’s uncomfortably close to the world we know. Kim Newman’s satirical nightmare also illuminates the way we live now. Peter Crowther and Melanie Tem warn us that our childhoods may still lie in wait for us, and George Clayton Johnson finds another dark route they can take to adulthood, while Joel Lane deals with a generation gap that has turned cultural too. Nor is old age necessarily a refuge from anything – Steve Rasnic Tem’s surreal piece tell us that – but Ray Bradbury, unpredictable as ever, suggests how even death can be an occasion for fun.

Ghosts are here. They appear in the trenches of the First World War in the story by Chris Lawson and Simon Brown, and in Graham Joyce’s they offer the protagonist a second chance. They revenge themselves on a racist in Stephen Dedman’s contribution, and steal identity itself in Donald Burleson’s, but despite her title it is no traditional spectre Lisa Tuttle has for us. Sara Douglass tells us of the power of witchcraft to exact a fitting revenge.

Not all our contents are fantastic – Thomas Tessier and Terry Dowling demonstrate the continuing vitality of the conte cruel – but the bizarre has been our keynote, whether in the marine upheval Rosallen Love envisions, the backyard ogre Gahan Wilson depicts, or Adam L.G. Nevill’s household that might almost have been dreamed by a fevered Mervyn Peake. Simon Brown’s femme fatale is a rare example of her species, and Janeen Webb’s angel brings visions, as tales of terror should. Time Waggoner’s terrible old lady undermines reality itself, as do the cosmic horrors conjured up by Andrew J. Wilson, literary gamesmanship by no means lessening their power. Stephen W. Nagy might even make us wary of playing the recent DVD of a famous musical, just as Mike O’Driscoll leaves us afraid to hear. On the other hand – we have six between us – Isabelle Carmody offers the unrivalled pleasures of the enigmatic.

And now, having stirred the cauldron, we three depart into the gloom. We only chose the ingredients, the authors – their magic did the rest. Their dreams and nightmares have lit up our imaginations, and now we cast their spell on the world.