BLAST FROM THE PAST

Issue #4 of the great horror anthology Terror Tales is now out from Rainfall Books. It's edited by John B. Ford and Paul Kane, and I'm delighted to say it carries a reprint of one of my best early stories. I was living in Bayswater, five minutes walk from Hyde Park, back in 1983. The UK was headed into the affluent times of the mid-Eighties, but not everyone was benefiting by a long shot. In fact, I'd noticed a growing number of homeless people on the streets of my neighborhood ... I suppose the park was a big draw for them. And it struck me, very forcefully, that they had been shunted out of normal society so completely they were almost like a separate race. Which inspired me to sit down and write, fairly quickly I recall, a short tale called 'Discards,' in which I dealt with the whole subject in fantasy terms. I posted it -- yup, there was only snail mail in those days -- to Ed Ferman in New York, who wrote back a few days later telling me he was accepting it for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. And it appeared in the September of that year. How very good to see it in print again after all this time.

One thing, though. As regards those people living on the streets, the story hasn't dated in the least little bit. It is just as accurate and relevant today as it was twenty-seven years ago.

On a lighter note, Black Static magazine's distinguished fiction critic, Peter Tennant, has just released his list of the Best Horror and Dark Fantasy books of 2009, and Night of Demons is on it.