There were two issues of Dreams of Decadence: Vampire Poetry and Fiction edited by Angela Kessler, and Vampire Dan’s Story Emporium edited by Daniel Paul Medici featured interviews with Janet Fox and Jim Baen.
The premiere issue of Masque Noir from editor Rod Marsden billed itself as “The New Wave of Australian Avant-Garde”. Meanwhile, Eidolon 25–26 appeared a bit late, with stories by Terry Dowling and Rick Kennett, and Aurealis managed just one issue in 1998. Altair was the title of a new Australian speculative magazine edited and published by Rob Stevenson.
Issue 45 of Joe R. Christopher’s Niekas was a special “Dark Fantasy” number with essays about Stephen King, H. P. Lovecraft and others by such contributors as Mike Ashley, S. T. Joshi, Sam Moskowitz and Darrell Schweitzer (who was also interviewed). Issue 72 of Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction edited by Edward James included an article about Suzy McKee Charnas plus an interview with the author.
The 9th issue of Horror Magazine from Dark Regions Press featured interviews with Joe R. Lansdale, Yvonne Navarro, Darrell Schweitzer and Suzy McKee Charnas, plus a report on the 1997 World Horror Convention.
Still the leading news and reviews magazine of the F&SF field, Locus celebrated its 30th year of publication with interviews with Tim Powers, Tanith Lee, Joan Aiken, S. P. Somtow, Stephen Baxter, Paul J. McAuley, Nelson Bond, Lucy Taylor, P. D. Cacek, Peter Straub and many others. Andrew I. Porter’s news and reviews magazine Science Fiction Chronicle managed only five issues in 1998 (one up on the previous year), and included interviews with Charles L. Grant and Tanya Huff.
The Ghost Story Society’s excellent journal All Hallows published three perfect-bound editions edited by Barbara Roden and Christopher Roden that contained stories by Rhys Hughes, Paul Finch, Tina Rath and Simon MacCulloch. They also included reviews, news columns and non-fiction by Roger Dobson, Richard Dalby, David G. Rowlands and others about The Twilight Zone, Charles L. Grant, Robert Aickman, Arthur Conan Doyle, and The Innocents.
Given a welcome re-design by editor Debbie Bennett, The British Fantasy Society’s bi-monthly newsletter,Prism UK, featured articles by Mark Chadbourn, Mike Chinn, Meg Turville-Heitz, Simon Clark and Stephen Gallagher, interviews with Whitley Streiber, Peter Atkins, Graham Joyce and Stephen King, and regular columns from Nicholas Royle, Tom Holt and Chaz Brenchley, along with all the usual news and book and media reviews. Dark Horizons No. 37 was edited and produced for the Society by Peter Coleborn, Mike Chinn and Phil Williams and included fiction from Simon MacCulloch, Rick Cadger, Paul Finch, Mark McLaughlin and D. F. Lewis, plus an article by Storm Constantine. The BFS also published its first major paperback and hardback release, Manitou Man: The Worlds of Graham Masterton by Graham Masterton, Ray Clark and Matt Williams. Containing ten tales of sex, death and terror (three original), a critical analysis of the author and a complete Masterton bibliography, the book was limited to a 300-copy paperback edition and a 100-copy deluxe cased edition signed by the three authors plus cover artist Les Edwards, illustrator Bob Covington, editor David J. Howe, and Peter James, who supplied the introduction.
The Horror Writers Association Newsletter finally found its direction under editor Meg Turville-Heitz, appearing on schedule and with each issue packed with news, controversy and a lively letters column.
Issue 16 was the final edition of Aaron Sterns’ Severed Head: The Journal of the Australian Horror Writers, as AHW president Bryce Stevens decided to close down the organisation in February because of lack of finances.
The Governing Body of Britain’s The Vampyre Society agreed unanimously to wind down the Society in 1998. The action was taken following the resignation of six committee members in April. Meanwhile, The Vampire Guild continued to publish Crimson, which included an interview with Stephen Laws and an article on Mexico’s mythical Chupacabra.
Issue 8 of That’s Clive! the magazine of the official German Clive Barker fanclub, included interviews with Barker (who also contributed several pieces of artwork) and Peter Atkins, articles about Stephen Jones and the H. R. Giger museum, plus related news and reviews. An irregularly-published news magazine about Stephen King and his work, editor George Beahm’s Phantasmagoria changed its format with the eighth issue to a larger, more-easily readable layout, with extra photos and content.
George Beahm also published the non-fiction study Stephen King from A to Z: An Encyclopedia of His Life and Work, with an introduction by Michael R. Collings and illustrated with photos, movie stills and artwork. Stephen King: America’s Best-Loved Bogeyman was yet another biography of the author by Beahm, with an introduction by Stephen J. Spignesi plus sixteen pages of photos.
Spignesi’s own The Lost Work of Stephen King: A Guide to Unpublished Manuscripts, Story Fragments, Alternative Versions, and Oddities included more scrapings from the bottom of the barrel, published by Carol Publishing/Birch Lane Press. Part of the Chelsea House Modern Critical Views series, Stephen King edited by Harold Bloom collected fifteen essays about the author and his work by Clive Barker, Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and others, along with a bibliography.
Published by Borgo Press,Scaring Us to Death: The Impact of Stephen King on Popular Culture was a significantly expanded and updated second edition of a 1987 book by Michael R. Collings. Also from Borgo, Tony Magistrale substantially revised and updated his 1991 Starmount book The Shining Reader as Discovering Stephen King’s The Shining.
Discovering Dean Koontz edited by Bill Munster was Borgo’s revised edition of the 1988 volume Sudden Fear, collecting ten critical essays by Richard Laymon, Elizabeth Massie and others, with an introduction by Tim Powers and an afterword by Joe R. Lansdale.
Joy Dickinson’s travel guide Haunted City: An Unauthorized Guide to the Magical, Magnificent New Orleans of Anne Rice was published in a revised and updated edition. Manly Wade Wellman: The Gentleman from Chapel Hilclass="underline" A Working Bibliography was the third updated edition of the booklet from Galactic Central Publications edited by Phil Stephensen-Payne and Gordon Benson, Jr.
Joan Kane Nichols’ Mary Shelley: Frankenstein’s Creator: First Science Fiction Writer was a young adult biography, while Betty T. Bennett’s Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley: An Introduction was aimed at older readers who wanted to discover more about the woman who wrote Frankenstein.
A series of critical essays about the author of “The Yellow Wallpaper” were collected in A Very Different Story: Studies on the Fiction of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, edited by Val Gough and Jill Rudd for Liverpool University Press.
California’s Night Shade Books published The Necronomicon Files: The Truth Behind The Legend edited by Daniel M. Harms and John Wisdom Gonce III, which collected essays about the history and rumours surrounding H. P. Lovecraft’s fictional book of magic. Along the same lines, Armitage House offered Fred L. Pelton’s A Guide to the Cthulhu Cult, supposedly written in 1946 by a delusional paranoid. A revised and expanded second edition of Encyclopedia Cthulhiana by Daniel Harms was a reference guide to H. P. Lovecraft’s Mythos from Chaosium.