This year was a strange one for science fiction and fantasy (particularly dark fantasy), as horror books got a lot of the fleeting media attention normally given to the robots-and-lasers crowd. But there was some amazing speculation in 2009, and here’s the best of the best.
5. THE QUIET WAR by Paul McAuley — Released in the UK in 2008, but brought to the U.S. by the amazing geniuses at Pyr this year, McAuley’s solar-system-spanning political thriller farms the space-opera fields normally tended to by the likes of Iain M. Banks. From high-level diplomats to rank-and-file “caught in the political whirlwind” normal people, the disparate actions of the characters in THE QUIET WAR slowly, but inexorably sow the seeds for war.
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Descriptions of human sacrifice and the power of blood magic are commonplace throughout history, but one — Clement Clarke Moore’s ‘TWAS THE NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS — takes place on the eve of a holiday that most consider a time of joy, happiness and generosity. This makes a poem that would be unsettling in any circumstances an intense, dark and enduring tale of supernatural horror.
Set on the eve of the eponymous Christian feast day, the book begins innocently enough, with a desperately poor family bedding down for the night in their rodent-infested hovel. The home’s malnourished children sleep, dreaming not of extravagant gifts, but paltry sweets that might ease the pain of their bloated bellies; they hope against hope that simple balls of sugar might replace their hunger pangs with, for at least a little while, a pittance of holiday cheer before they have to set out on another day of begging on street corners.
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Feeling a bit too optimistic as of late? Thinking that nothing can get you down? Try David Oppegaard’s THE SUICIDE COLLECTORS on for size! It’ll get you back to earth like the rest of us.
It’s set in a future in which the apocalypse took the form of “The Despair,” an overwhelming urge among 90 percent of the world’s population to commit suicide. Our hero, Norman, and his wife are managing to survive in a slowly dwindling Florida community, when she finally gives into the suicidal despair that’s infected nearly everyone else. One note about these suicides: When people off themselves, the relatives aren’t allowed to bury the bodies — vehicles with strangely garbed creatures called “Collectors” show up soon after to take the corpse somewhere. So the Collectors show up to take Norman’s spouse, and he’s got no time for complicated plot devices — he just wastes them with a shotgun and buries his bride.
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Set in a dystopian future in which genetically engineered animals have devoured humanity, GOODNIGHT MOON is told from the perspective of a unseen, dying victim of the ravenous hordes. As he reflects on the scene with his last breaths, MOON provides a terrifying eulogy for the human race.
Margaret Wise Brown’s approach to the apocalypse is a minimalist one. Leaving only vague hints about the world in the wake of DR. MOREAU-style takeover by anthropomorphic animals, the slowly expiring narrator describes his deathbed — a seemingly normal bedroom and its mundane, but symbolically sinister furnishings.
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With every genre literary fad (the singularity, zombies, armaggeddon or, in this case, vampires) it’s easy for veteran (read: jaded) readers to disregard all but established writers when looking for novels regarding that particular subject. There’s heaps of “me, too” junk and empty hype out there, making it tough to pick a gem out of a garbage pile without help (hello there!).
As of Oct. 12, a quick, dirty and totally unscientific search for “vampire” in Amazon’s books section reveals 102 titles released in the last 30 days, 319 released in the last 90 days, and 67 coming soon. So just in time for Halloween, amid a frenzy of awful cash-ins and TWILIGHT rip-offs, is BITE MARKS: A VAMPIRE TESTAMENT by Terence Taylor, and it’s surprisingly pretty great.
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