Dark Mill South’s Reunion Tour began on December 12th, 2019, a Thursday. Thirty-six hours and twenty bodies later, on Friday the 13th, it would be over…
We’re thrilled to share an excerpt from Stephen Graham Jones’ Don’t Fear the Reaper, the sequel to My Heart is a Chainsaw—out from Saga Press on February 7.
It’s been two years since Jenna’s ex-boyfriend left her alone in East Texas heartbroken. Now he’s back in town and she wants to payback. One night, she stumbles upon a bloodthirsty Camaro that may be the key to carrying out her revenge.
Indians Aren’t Furniture. You don’t have to put us all together over in the corner like a set. And understand that “corner” here means the All-Native panel you think makes perfect sense. Conventions like to group like writers together for better discussion, we know—all you second-world fantasists, over here, all you splatterpunks, over there. Talk amongst yourselves, yes, go, go. But those groupings are significantly different than grouping writers by cultural heritage. In fact, it’s just a step away from organizing by skin color. And? Herding us onto a little postage stamp in the big, big program is…I have to say it…it’s putting us on a reservation. Just, this one feels more like a petting zoo.
A day laborer hired to clean up a flooded creek outside of Boulder, Colorado uncovers what could be a valuable find—if it doesn’t kill him first.
Jim Shooter wrote the book that changed my life, the book that, I’m confident, landed me here. Here’s how it happened.
I’m twelve years old. We live way out in the country in West Texas, maybe fifteen miles east of Midland, an actual city—probably ninety thousand people then, thanks to the oil boom—but we’re not quite to Stanton, a little place of about three thousand. Stanton’s big compared to where we live, Greenwood. No post office, no mention on the map. Just a school and church on the same grounds, and lots of cotton fields, lots of pumpjacks, lots of pastures, and, every few miles, a house, a trailer out in the mesquite.
Every couple weeks, my mom would load me and my two little brothers up and we’d head into Midland, for groceries. It was a big event. Just shy of Midland, there was this gas station, Pecan Grove. We’d each get fifty or seventy-five cents and get to go in, buy a coke. Cokes were very rare in our lives.
One of those times—the Jim Shooter time—on the race back to the cooler for a Big Red or a Dr. Pepper, I saw something I hadn’t seen before.
Comic books.
In this ongoing series, we ask SF/F authors to describe a specialty in their lives that has nothing (or very little) to do with writing. Join us as we discover what draws authors to their various hobbies, how they fit into their daily lives, and how and they inform the author’s literary identity!
Growing up in West Texas, I figured out pretty fast that the ranchers and farmers, they’d always have a certain part of some pasture where they would shoot the animals of theirs that needed to be put down, where they’d drag their cows and horses after they’d wondered out into the road, got hit.
I would spend hours crawling through those corpses. I had cigar boxes where I’d keep collections of all the elbow callouses I’d peeled up, that felt like shallow little stone cups. For a while I had a jar filled with what I’d convinced myself was the shiny disc that made cows’ eyes flash green in headlights.
It wasn’t biology or anything forensic that interested me. What interested me was pretending this was all much older. Pretending this was ancient.
So two guys are walking across the moors.
Yeah, you’ve heard this one.
Couple of young Americans are backpacking through Europe, and they duck in out of the cold, find themselves in the newly made quiet of a very local bar, where they get what turns out to be some pretty sage advice: beware the moon, keep clear of the moors, and, most important, stay on the road.
“The Night Cyclist” by Stephen Graham Jones is a horror novelette about a middle-aged chef whose nightly bicycle ride home is interrupted by an unexpected encounter.
Cyberpunk. It’s about cybernetics, neuroscience, nanotech, and transhumanism—and much more than that. The upcoming anthology from Hex Publishers, Cyber World, looks at how the technological changes we all face have inspired new stories to address our fears, hopes, dreams, and desires. All this as Homo sapiens evolves—or not—into its next incarnation.
Some of the most talented science fiction writers of today contributed to Cyber World, which presents diverse tales of humanity’s tomorrow. Today six of those authors answer the question “What are the best and worst aspects of cyberpunk, as either a reader or a writer?” Read their answers and tell us your own thoughts in the comments!
“Chapter Six,” by Stephen Graham Jones, is an anthropological zombie story about Crain, a grad student, who has a theory of mankind’s evolution. As he and his former professor scavenge on bone marrow left behind by the local zombie horde, he makes his well-reasoned argument.
This short story was acquired and edited for Tor.com by consulting editor Ellen Datlow.
