“Like everyone in the field, I went through a period, at about thirteen, reading H.P. Lovecraft,” he reveals. “His Cthulhu Mythos (actually worked into something systematic by August Derleth) is one of the pervasive ideas of horror and science fiction.
“With a last line in the tradition of Lovecraft disciple Robert Bloch, my story is a fond homage to one of my favourite HPL stories, ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’.
“‘One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)’, by Johnny Mercer and Harold Arlen, was introduced in 1943, not by Frank Sinatra (who sang it in 1958 on the Only the Lonely album) but by Fred Astaire in the otherwise forgettable movie The Sky’s the Limit. I apologise for mutating the song.”
JIM PITTS made his debut as an illustrator in David A. Sutton’s Bibliotheca: H.P. Lovecraft and Jon Harvey’s Balthus in 1971. Over the subsequent four decades, his artwork has appeared extensively in British, European and American publications such as Fantasy Tales, Whispers, Shadow and numerous British Fantasy Society publications, including Dark Horizons and Chills.
He has also illustrated various hardcover and paperback collections, such as Michel Parry’s Savage Heroes and Spaced Out, and Brian Lumley’s The Compleat Khash: Volume One. Other aspects of his work include paperback covers, a record sleeve and the odd sculpture.
He was awarded the Ken McIntyre Award in the early 1970s and, after years of being nominated, he received the British Fantasy Award for Best Artist in both 1991 and 1992.
Influences he acknowledges include the Weird Tales artists such as Virgil Finlay, Lee Brown Coye and, more importantly, Hannes Bok, without whose inspiration he admits things could have turned out very differently.
“The stories of Howard Phillips Lovecraft have always been an enthusiasm of mine,” reveals the artist, “and having the opportunity to join forces with Dave Carson and Martin McKenna, two of the best illustrators working in the British fantasy scene today, to work on this book was a dream come true.
“Our first collaboration sprang independently of this project in 1993 at a convention in Scarborough on England’s north-east coast (curiously enough, a region well known for its fishing industry). Within a couple of months, Martin came up with the central figure of Cthulhu, I then took the bottom centre and left side and Dave completed the bottom right and upper right side. Hopefully our efforts to capture the wormy, crumbling buildings and degenerate fishy folk of Innsmouth will be worthy of Lovecraft’s wonderful story and so justify the long hours the three of us have spent at the drawing boards.”
NICHOLAS ROYLE is the author of six novels, two novellas and two collections (the most recent being London Labyrinth). He has also published more than 100 horror short stories and has edited fifteen original anthologies, including Darklands, Darklands 2, The Tiger Garden: A Book of Writers’ Dreams, The Best British Short Stories 2011 and Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories About Birds.
Born in Manchester in 1963, Royle is a senior lecturer in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University and he also runs Nightjar Press, publishing original short stories in the form of signed, limited-edition chapbooks.
His first short story collection, Mortality, was short-listed for the inaugural Edge Hill Prize, and he is a past winner of the British Fantasy Award and the Bad Sex Prize - and hopes to win both again.
About his story in this book, he recalls: “I travelled widely in Eastern Europe between 1987 and 1989, and pre-revolutionary Bucharest remains the most depressing place I have ever visited. With its tangible atmosphere of fear and paranoia it was like something out of a nightmare.
“I was not lucky enough to set eyes on the reviled dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, but then I lived in London for eight years and I never saw Margaret Thatcher either. Come the revolution.”
GUY N. SMITH was born and raised in the village of Hopwas in Staffordshire. His mother was a historical author, and she encouraged her son to write from an early age. He was first published at the age of twelve in a local newspaper.
While working as a bank manager, he wrote his first three novels— Werewolf by Moonlight, The Sucking Pit and Slime Beast—but it was the publication in 1976 of Night of the Crabs that gave him his first best-seller. A further five books in the series followed.
In addition to the 116 books he has written since 1974, the author also runs Black Hill Books, selling vintage and modern editions. The Guy N. Smith Fan Club was formed in 1992.
MICHAEL MARSHALL SMITH was born in Knutsford, Cheshire, and grew up in the United States, South Africa and Australia. He currently lives in Santa Cruz, California, with his wife and son.
Smith’s short fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and, under his full name, he has published the modern SF novels Only Forward, Spares and One of Us. He is the only person to have won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story four times—along with the August Derleth, International Horror Guild and Philip K. Dick awards.
Writing as “Michael Marshall” he has published six international best-selling novels of suspense, including The Straw Men and The Intruders, currently in development with the BBC. His most recent novels are Killer Move and We Are Here.
“As regards me and Lovecraft,” admits the author, “there’s probably not much of interest. ‘The Shadow Over Innsmouth’ is certainly up there in my favourites of his, along with ‘The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath’ and ‘The Colour Out of Space’. One of my all-time favourite phrases comes from the latter: ‘... and the bloodworts grew insolent in their chromatic perversity.’ Top of the list is At the Mountains of Madness, which—and this is going to sound massively pretentious—I religiously read on transatlantic flights, timing it so that the plane is over Newfoundland or similarly bleak and arctic-looking territories for the climax of the story.
“As for ‘To See the Sea’, there’s not much to say, except that (a) it leapt full-grown into my head and (b) I’m glad to finally have got my feelings about a particular car park I know off my chest.”
BRIAN STABLEFORD was born in 1948 in the Yorkshire town of Shipley. He lectured in sociology at the University of Reading until 1988, before becoming a full-time writer, editor, critic and translator.
His more than seventy novels include Cradle of the Sun, The Blind Worm, To Challenge Chaos, The Halcyon Drift, Swan Song, Man in a Cage, The Mind-Readers, The Realms of Tartarus, The Walking Shadow, Optiman (aka War Games), The Castaways of Tanagar, The Gates of Eden, The Empire of Fear, The Werewolves of London, The Angel of Pain, Young Blood, Firefly, The Carnival of Destruction, Serpent’s Blood, The Hunger and Ecstasy of Vampires, Warhammer 4000: Pawns of Chaos (as “Brian Craig”), Salamander’s Fire, Chimera’s Cradle, Architects of Emortality, The Fountains of Youth, Year Zero, The Eleventh Hour, The Cassandra Complex, Dark Ararat, The Omega Expedition, Kiss the Goat, Streaking, The Wayward Muse, The Stones of Camelot, The Shadow of Frankenstein, Frankenstein and the Vampire Countess, Frankenstein in London and The Cthulhu Encryption: A Romance in Piracy.