As the editor of Best of British Science Fiction, I’m luckier than most in that I get to pick what is essentially a personal anthology each year. After all, reviewers often write, what is best? This is just one person’s best after all (and then they often go on to agree with me).
Anyway, I am a voracious reader of short stories. My routine with my own anthology series is to keep an eye out throughout the year for any stories I think might be a good fit. Are they well written? Am I still thinking about those stories a day later? A week? Longer? Then, in September, we open up for general submissions until January. After the closing date I check to see if there is anything missing from my subs pile. Are there other anthologies or new collections featuring British authors that I have not been sent? It is becoming a running joke with one or two authors that I seem to always end up chasing them. Some editors, too, double-check with me to make sure their favourite stories of the year have been sent in. I’m very grateful for that!
I tend to favour stories with a great sense of place, a compelling narrative voice, a coherent plot and great characterisation – believe me, having been published already is sometimes no indicator of this. I dislike stories where basic scientific principles or literal definitions have been misunderstood. I am suspicious of stories that open with numerous lines of dialogue, especially if that dialogue goes on to do the heavy-exposition-lifting. In other words, I can be very exacting in my editorial efforts. I’m picky. Luckily, my tastes are also quite eclectic.
I look for stories that resonate with me in the same way that some of my all-time favourite stories do. Is there a tug at the heart, a sweet spot? Will I be obsessing about the story, or telling anyone who’ll listen that they really need to read it?
As I said, I am quite lucky that I get to choose stories for my anthologies already, but if I could pick from the chaotic shelves of my memories and nostalgia, what short fictions would I like to pick? I’ve limited myself to twelve of them. I hope you get to read some of these. Enjoy!
‘Salvage Rites’ by Ian Watson (First published in Fantasy & Science Fiction #392, 1987)
I first came across a book of short stories with the same title by Ian Watson, in the library of my hometown Sedgley in the West Midlands, when I was a teen. I loved all of the stories, but the title story was especially captivating. I have read it over and over and it is basically imprinted on my brain now. ‘Salvage Rites’ is a wonderful little horror story following that most mundane of activities, a trip to the tip. However this recycling centre is no cosy little setting for a Sunday errand. Instead, the attendants are strange men, who unnerve the inhabitants of the car as it moves through each section, removing more and more items from the car. Unheimlich discomfort leads to outright horror. Lovely!
How to describe the genius of Ian Watson? He becomes more wonderfully eccentric the more you read and the better you get to know him. He has written many fine stories, often witty, sometimes funny, very often outré. They are a delight indeed.
‘Just His Type’ by Storm Constantine (First published in The Mammoth Book of Vampire Stories by Women, ed. Steve Jones, 2001. Collected in Splinters of Truth, NewCon Press, 2016)
It was Storm who introduced me to Ian, funnily enough: one writer I had been a fan of since I was a teenager introducing me to another such author. I had first met Storm back in 2000 at a signing of her novel Crown of Silence in the Andromeda bookstore in Birmingham. Too shy to speak, I asked her to sign my book and promptly left. I didn’t see Storm again until 2003 when I attended her Grissecon convention in Stafford (my first convention!), after which we became friends, and I did some work for her publishing company Immanion Press.
This particular story was one I read for the first time in between the book signing and the convention. It’s an intriguing vampire story, where a lecturer meets an attractive woman, who seems to be in tune with his intellectual interest in the occult. However, all his friends try to warn him off as she seems so odd. The characters seemed very recognisable, and it tickled me when I realised why. I believe I met them at Grissecon!
I picked this story because it is one that I have good memories of discovering and re-reading. Really, there are many avenues into Storm’s work. She wrote many stories set in the world of the Wraeththu, a race of hermaphrodite beings who rise to prominence in a post-apocalyptic world. There are gothic fantasies, creeping horrors, angels (Grigori, Nephilim…). There are science fiction stories, cyberpunk stories, and fairy tales. Her prose sparkles like rare gemstones. She was a very special writer indeed, and is much missed.
‘The Lady of the House of Love’ by Angela Carter (First published in The Iowa Review, 1975. Collected in The Bloody Chamber, Gollancz, 1979 and in Burning Your Boats: Collected Stories, Vintage, 1996)
I also fell in love with Angela Carter’s short stories and novels as a teenager. My copy of the slim short story collection The Bloody Chamber, which features this story, is very worn. I have picked this very sad vampire story because I have reread it so many times hoping for a different outcome for the Countess, much as she turns over the same cards on the table again and again. It is a delicious, hopeless love!
Angela Carter was known for her feminist, magical realism and picaresque stories, but she also specialized in the fairy story, collecting folk tales and subverting them in subtle ways. You feel like you are discovering something virgin fresh that also has the must of age about it. This collection inspired the film The Company of Wolves, but the story of ‘The Lady of the House of Love’ was unfortunately missed from that. The closest retelling I have seen is the video for Daisy Chainsaw’s ‘Hope Your Dreams Come True’.
‘A Sound of Thunder’ by Ray Bradbury (First published in Collier’s Magazine, 1952. Collected in The Stories of Ray Bradbury, Knopf, 1980; Everyman Library, 2010)
A classic in the science-fiction genre. A man called Eckles joins a time-travelling hunt to the late Cretaceous period where he is advised by the guide he can shoot a T-Rex, but to take care lest he affects history. During the expedition, the characters discuss the recent elections, and it seems their country has narrowly escaped a political catastrophe. On coming back to the year 2055 the hunters realise something has changed, a fascist is now President. Then Eckles discovers a crushed butterfly beneath his boot, potentially the cause of this disaster. There is horror in the idea that something could be inextricably altered in the past by a blundering boot, but a deeper threat is the nearness of the worse result in the present.
Ray Bradbury was perhaps the first proper science fiction I read, thanks to my uncle who donated his old books to me and my brother.
‘Lois the Witch’ by Elizabeth Gaskell (First published in Cousin Phyllis and Other Tales, 1865)
I first read this at university as part of my gothic module for English. It’s a story I’ve gone back to multiple times since. Lois, an English girl who is sent to live with her Puritan uncle in Salem after the death of her parents, is of course not a witch. The title foretells that Lois is going to be a fish out of water in that schismatic community, who follow beliefs and practices so alien to the Christianity she knew in England.
Lois is tolerated by her aunt and cousins to begin with, but gradually, as witch-fever spreads through the town, they learn they can use an accusation of witchcraft to get rid of anyone that threatens their ways or desires. Lois watches in horror as a young Native American girl called Hota is accused of witchcraft, not realising her fear of the girl and whatever powers she might have is misplaced. Jealous of the male attention Lois has been receiving, her cousins begin mimicking fits and attacks in a bid to pin the blame on Lois. Lois is like the frog, slowly being boiled alive, as her situation becomes more and more hostile. This is a powerful story about how the true horrors are found in human cruelty, rather than in anything supernatural. Although this was published in 1865, this story feels like it could have been written a hundred years later. Indeed, maybe it was… (cough, Crucible, ahem…)
‘Freecell’ by Chaz Brenchley (First published in Glorifying Terrorism, Rackstraw Press, 2006)
This story featured in an anthology that was deliberately and defiantly put together by editor Farah Mendlesohn in response to the Terrorism Act 2006, which was terribly worded and at the time seemed an obvious threat to artistic expression. Seventeen years later, as people remain generally and justifiably concerned by acts of terror, the conversation around ‘free speech’ has somewhat shifted. Latterly there is a school of shallow libertarianism, with its roots in US politics, that seems mostly troubled by threats to free speech, so younger readers may be surprised by this anthology of mainly left-leaning voices calling for a creative protest against the so-called socialist government of the day.
In my opinion, the ‘culture wars’ right now are nothing but a distraction. Most people are in support of free speech, but its suppression can take many forms, including finding dead cats to dominate the narrative.
Back in 2006 though, this anthology was a rallying cry in science fiction circles for those who would battle against a dumbing down of our literature, alongside a dumbing down of society.
This story by Chaz Brenchley was one of my favourites in this fantastic anthology. Brenchley fuses prose and poetry to create a story that depicts the tragedy of the protagonist in words as chiaroscuro does in art. A girl called Shami is a celebrated martyr depicted in “her pomp, in her clothes, in her skin”, sounding almost like a superhero in her costume, while also foreshadowing her violent death. The story is set in a technological future, where citizens are divided into high grade and low grade, to the dissatisfaction of those who find themselves low. Shami is young, and her friends, to some extent are like regular teenagers watching their multimedia screens and thinking about how to be famous, how to get the numbers – and by numbers Brenchley means viewing figures and numbers of victims simultaneously, of course.
Chaz writes beautifully, and deserves to be more widely known as an author.
‘Mr De Quincy and the Daughters of Madness’ by Liz Williams (First published in Visionary Tongue)
Liz Williams is a wonderful writer who can turn her pen to anything, be it hard SF, fantasy, detective fiction, or esoteric non-fiction. This particular story was one that we published in Visionary Tongue two decades ago, and it really appealed to me because of the protagonist, Thomas De Quincey, who was an early 19th century memoirist, whose work I had studied at university. Most people who read Thomas de Quincy’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater focus on the sections about the “pleasures” and “pains” of taking opium, but I liked how London is also seen as an enabling and corrupting city, almost personified – its malevolence indicated early on when it seems to swallow whole the young prostitute who first befriended Thomas on his arrival.
In this story, London is given a human-like physical presence that, like the city itself, is both beguiling and debilitating to De Quincey – that of a succubus. The demon latches onto the young man and forces him to lie with her. Knowing that the demon will wreak revenge on those he loves if he does not, the young man submits. The drug becomes the prop de Quincey clings to in order to get through each repeated encounter. This is an imaginative retelling of the memoir and I love it.
‘Flowers for Algernon’ by Daniel Keyes (First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, 1959)
A sweetly sad story. Charlie Gordon, who has learning difficulties, has a job as a janitor in a factory, but attends night classes to try to improve his understanding. His teacher, feeling sorry for him, proposes him for an experimental surgery. The surgery has previously only been tried on mice – one mouse in particular: Algernon.
Charlie’s progress reports show his changes in language, personality and emotions following the surgery, as he is tested against Algernon to see who can solve puzzles faster. To begin with, the mouse always wins, but soon Charlie realises changes are happening within his brain. First, he realises his friends at the factory are not true friends; that they have been making fun of him all this time. Then, trying to form an affectionate but intellectual relationship with his teacher, he realises he has unfortunately surpassed her level of understanding. His sense of isolation and despair is complete when his mouse friend deteriorates, losing its intelligence and memory, and Charlie realises he will likely share the same fate.
The unique narrative voice in this story really hooks you in, and though his writing is initially limited, Charlie paints a bigger world than he himself is capable of describing.
‘The Sandman’ (Der Sandmann) by ETA Hoffman (First published in The Night Pieces (Der Nachtstücke), 1816, and widely collected; available to read here)
‘The Sandman’ by ETA Hoffmann concerns madness, horror, and the unheimlich. It tells the story of Nathanael, a young poet, who is haunted not only by his father’s death, but also by his childhood terror of ‘the Sandman’, an evil creature that steals children’s eyes in the night. Nathanael's life is disrupted when he encounters a mysterious salesman named Coppola, who reminds him of this story. Nathanael then meets Coppola’s daughter Olimpia at a grand party hosted by his tutor Spallanzani. She is a gifted harpsichordist, but her movements are rather stiff, and she can only say, “Ah, Ah!” – nonetheless Nathanael is smitten. It later transpires that Olimpia is an automaton, created by Coppola with the aide of Spallanzani, and revelation of this knowledge drives Nathanael mad!
This is another story I first read at university, and I am uncannily still haunted by my struggles at trying to pin down all the metaphors and relate them to some of Freud’s theories, which the tutor seemed very keen for us to do. I know some people do not get on with these, but I love stories with an unreliable narrator. They are tricky things to make convincing. This story is still making my cogs whir to this day.
‘Rotten Things’ by Kim Lakin (First published in ParSec, 2022. Collected in Sparks Flying, Newcon Press, 2023)
Another awesome writer (and awesome human) I met through Storm. I worked with Kim on her novel Tourniquet for Immanion Press. I had thought I knew Kim’s writing: gothic wonderment; strange steampunk circuses; muscle cars; the smell of diesel and worlds burning… but ‘Rotten Things’ was a total surprise and an utter delight. I read this story a while before it was published and loved it immediately.
Set in the gothic wild of the Louisiana swamp, young Edmée is an unwanted child, too loud and bothersome for her aunt and uncle. When she comes home making a noise about a yellow house on legs, instead of listening to her strange tale they have murder on their minds and throw her under the trailer to where an alligator lies waiting.
The inhabitant of the yellow house, Marie St Angel, hears her death cries and works her magic to bring the child out of still lifelessness in the swamp and instructs her to seek out those she has wronged to enact revenge and clean her spirit.
There is a lushness and verdancy running through the prose. The characterisation is deftly done, and you find yourself rooting for the little monster as she wreaks her horrid vengeance with sharp teeth and tricks those who would be tricksters.
‘Clockatrice’ by Tanith Lee (First published in Fantasy Magazine, 2010, and available to read here. Collected in Colder Greyer Stones, NewCon Press, 2013)
Tanith Lee was an extremely prolific writer, accomplishing over 90 novels and 300 short stories. Her stories feature fairy tale, magical, vampiric, gothic, and mythical tropes; strongly feminist and often spicy. Again, how do you pick a story from a writer who has produced so much?
I have picked this tale which was selected as the lead in Colder Greyer Stones, which was published by NewCon Press to celebrate Lee being honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at that year’s World Fantasy Convention.
Like Lee, I’m fascinated by old clocks, but I don’t trust myself around them. I’m liable to break them, or cause them to warp, or for something to unravel inside. My husband has developed a fascination with watch repair and attempted to try it for himself, but strangely enough it takes… time.
I have one ancestor in my family tree that managed to briefly lift that line of the family from poverty and servitude by becoming a clock maker in the 18th century, and so who knows, maybe there is clock-making in my blood, but I rather fear I would accidentally conjure something as beastly as the cockatrice/clockatrice in this story, who turns hapless onlookers to stone.
Such is rumoured to be the fate of Diana, an Elizabethan girl who was the erstwhile paramour of Robert Trenchall’s ancestor, Robert Southurst, and therefore the statue in the garden is no statue at all. The modern day Trenchall’s girlfriend, Dru is fascinated by the statue, and also by the story of how Southurst had made a clock featuring these mythical beasts in order to warn visitors to his mansion, and to preserve the story of Diana’s fate. When Trenchall ditches her for a new love interest, Dru has no qualms about repurposing his family history to sell an article with a piece of accompanying art. She has her friends help her build a clock model that she can photograph and enhance digitally. However, her thoughts and dreams have been infected by the story, and she has unwittingly given rise to the mythical monster through the power of dreams.
A story of lost loves, stone hearts, and gothic creepiness.
‘The Masque of the Red Death’ by Edgar Allan Poe (First published in Broadway Journal, 1845, revised from a version in Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, 1842. Widely available, including online, here)
I’m unsure which edition of Poe’s collected stories I first read this in, as I borrowed it from a friend, but I do remember that the word used in the title was “masque”, as in a type of masked ball, and not “mask”, what one would wear to such a dance. Apparently the first version published used mask.
During the pandemic, when I got sick and my neighbour texted me to say her app had likely picked me up through the walls as a ‘close contact’, this story popped into my head again. Was there no escape from this dreaded plague?
The story’s protagonist, Prince Prospero, hearing of a terrifying “red death” sweeping the land, causing people to bleed to death through their very pores, retreats to his suitably gothic castellated abbey. He invites a thousand wealthy nobles to wait out the disease’s passing through the populace with him. Ensconced behind the walls of the abbey, they think they are safe! They indulge in luxurious parties. For these, Prospero has had each room in the abbey decorated in a different colour, the last of which is black, illuminated in red light, which creeps his guests out so they don’t go in there.
Then a mysterious figure is seen at the party, in a shroud-like robe, looking like they are wearing the costume of a victim of the red death. The sight of this angers Prospero. The figure passes through each room, and Prospero follows them into the last room to confront the figure before dropping dead. The figure is not a human, but death itself, who was not invited but who came anyway.
With all the emphasis on blood and the sickly colours, the abbey never feels like a sanctuary. It’s claustrophobic and oppressive. The story feels like it should be an allegory, full of heavy symbolism, but what might it mean? That is not so clear. Perhaps that wealth cannot protect you from plague. Perhaps the inevitability of death. It’s also one of the few stories I like that only has thin archetypes rather than rounded characters, but it doesn’t need anything more. These characters come from a dark age, and speak to us with the clarity of long-dead ghosts.
***
Donna Scott is a writer and comic performer, being a cast member of the multi-award-winning children’s comedy group The Extraordinary Time-Travelling Adventures of Baron Munchausen, and was the first official Bard of Northampton. As an editor she has worked on seven volumes of Best of British Science Fiction from NewCon Press, Alan Moore’s Jerusalem and many other notable works. Her short stories have appeared in various anthologies from NewCon Press, Immanion Press, Norilana, Pink Narcissus, PS Publishing and Synth.
* You can browse the full searchable archives of A Personal Anthology, with over 2,500 story recommendations, at www.apersonalanthology.com.
* A Personal Anthology is curated by Jonathan Gibbs, author of two novels, Randall, and The Large Door, and a book-length poem, Spring Journal. His story 'A Prolonged Kiss' was shortlisted for the 2021 Sunday Times Audible Short Story Award. He is Programme Director of the MA/MFA Creative Writing at City, University of London.
* And if you are interested in contributing your own Personal Anthology to the project, then please let me know by replying to this email. I’m always on the lookout for guest editors!
* Finally, if you enjoy this Substack you might enjoy Creative Digest, a new Substack originating from the Creative Writing team at City. You can read the first edition here:
This sounds like an interesting collection of stories. I ain't read most of them. I like stories that look at strange existence and perception of 'realities' from a bent perspective.