Horror: The 100 Best Books (44 page)

GRAHAM MASTERTON (b. 1946) was born in Edinburgh, exactly nine months after V.E. Day: "I was a typical, miserable 1950s British schoolboy (grey flannel shorts, short-back-and-sides) but I was interested in fantasy and horror from an early age, writing my first full-length horror novel at the age of fourteen. It was about a vampire who fed on himself." Trained as a newspaper reporter, Masterton moved on to edit
Mayfair
in the days of the mini-skirt, where his experience with tongue-in-cheek dialogue formed the basis of his first published book,
Your Erotic Fantasies
. Appointed to the executive editorship of
Penthouse
, he wrote more how-to sex books, such as
How To Drive Your Man Wild in Bed
(all of which are still selling phenomenally). His first horror novel was
The Manitou
(filmed in 1978), since when he has turned out a number of novels, including
Charnel House
,
Tengu
,
Mirror
,
Feast
,
Night Warriors
,
Death Dream
,
Death Trance
,
The Djinn
,
Ritual
,
Walkers
,
Night Plague
,
The Burning
,
Black Angel
,
The Hymn
and
Master of Lies
, amongst others. Masterton also writes historical sagas (
Solitaire
,
Maiden Voyage
,
Lords of the Air
) and in 1989 he edited
Scare Care
, an anthology of horror stories to benefit abused and needy children.

RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON (b. 1953) is the son of acclaimed fantasist Richard Matheson. Born in Santa Monica, California, he left high school to work as an advertising copywriter. He also wrote material for stand-up comedians, played the drums, taught creative writing, freelanced as a reviewer for innumerable magazines and worked as a researcher/investigator at the Parapsychology Labs at UCLA. At the age of seventeen he sold his first short story to a hardcover anthology and four years later he became the youngest TV writer ever employed by Universal Studios. Matheson has written more than 300 shows as diverse as
Knightrider
,
The Incredible Hulk
,
Three's Company
and
Tales from the Crypt
. He served as story editor on
The A-Team
,
Hardcastle and McCormick
,
Quincy
and
Hunter
, and wrote and produced the CBS-TV series
Stir Crazy
. Matheson has also scripted several Hollywood movies (including the comedy-thriller
Loose Cannons
with his father), and he is co-writer and co-executive producer on the werewolf movie,
Full Eclipse
. His often short, but very sharp fiction has appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies and was collected in
Scars and Other Distinguishing Marks
, while his first novel,
Created By
, is of course about the entertainment industry.

ROBERT R. McCAMMON (b. 1952) was born in Birmingham, Alabama, where he still lives with his wife Sally. He was only 26 years old when his first novel,
Baal
(1978), was published. Since then, he has followed it with a string of commercially successful books, including
Bethany's Sin
,
The Night Boat
,
They Thirst
,
Mystery Walk
,
Usher's Passing
,
Swan Song
,
Stinger
and
The Wolf's Hour
. More recently, he's moved away from the horror genre with the novels
Mine
,
Boy's Life
and
Gone South
. His short fiction has been collected in
Blue World and Other Stories
, and he edited the first Horror Writers of America anthology,
Under the Fang
. McCammon is a multiple winner of the Bram Stoker Award in both the novel and short story categories.

MICHAEL McDOWELL (b. 1950) was born in Alabama and currently lives in Los Angeles. His is the author of more than thirty books, either published under his own name or four different pseudonyms. His first horror novel,
The Amulet
, appeared in 1979, and it was followed by
Cold Moon Over Babylon
,
The Elementals
and the six-volume
Blackwater
saga. Other books under his own byline include the historical melodramas
Katie
and
Gilded Needles
, the macabre/surreal
Toplin
(illustrated by Harry O. Morris), and the
Jack and Susan
series of romantic adventures. He has written more than a dozen half-hour scripts for such anthology TV shows as
Tales from the Darkside
, and his movie screenplays include
High Spirits
, the box-office hit
Beetle Juice
and Stephen King's
Thinner
. His hobbies include collecting American sheet music, 18th and 19th Century death memorabilia, the documentation of American crime, and photographs of corpses, criminals and atrocities.

THOMAS F. MONTELEONE (b. 1946) was born in Baltimore, Maryland, and has been a professional writer and editor since 1972. His short stories and articles have appeared in more than a hundred anthologies and magazines. Monteleone's recent novels include
Night Train
,
Lyrica
,
The Magnificent Gallery
,
The Crooked House
,
Fantasma
, the
Dragonstar
trilogy (with David Bischoff),
The Apocalypse Man
and
The Blood of the Lamb
. Two of his stage plays have been produced professionally, and he has written several screenplays for television -- one of which,
Mister Magister
, won the Gabriel Award and the Bronze Award from the International Film and Television Festival of New York. In 1990 he began editing the acclaimed
Borderlands
series of anthologies, taking its name for his own small press specializing in limited hardcover editions of the work of such authors as Joe R. Lansdale and Harlan Ellison, and the Horror Writers of America anthology
Under the Fang
.

MICHAEL MOORCOCK (b. 1939) was born in London and is one of Britain's most popular and prolific authors. He became involved with science fiction and fantasy at an early age, editing
Tarzan Adventures
when he was seventeen, and was the guiding hand behind the British SF magazine
New Worlds
from 1964. A major influence in the growing development of "New Wave" fiction throughout the 1960s, Moorcock's enormous output includes more than sixty novels, innumerable short stories, a rock album, numerous individual rock songs, and the screenplay for
The Land That Time Forgot
(1974). Best known for his heroic fantasy series using the notion of a multiverse, his series characters include Elric of Melnibone, Corum, Dorian Hawkmoon, Count Brass, Jerry Cornelius and the Eternal Champion. His recent books include the latest instalment in the Eternal Champion saga,
The Dragon in the Sword
;
The Fortress of the Pearl
and
The Revenge of the Rose
(8th and 9th respectively in the Elric series); the collection
Casablanca;
the non-fiction study
Wizardry and Wild Romance
and the partly autobiographical
Mother London
. A multiple winner of the British Fantasy Award for his novels and short fiction, Moorcock has also won the Nebula Award (for
Behold the Man
), the Guardian Fiction Award (
The Condition of Muzak
) and the World Fantasy Award (
Gloriana
).

PETER NICHOLLS (b. 1939) was born in Australia and he currently lives in Melbourne after living in London for nearly two decades. His adult life has oscillated cunningly between academic work (lecturing in English Literature at several Universities, the first administrator of the Science Fiction Foundation, 1971-77), media work (award-winning television documentary scripts, studied film writing in Hollywood), and freelance writing and editing. He edited
Foundation: The Review of Science Fiction
from 1974-78, and his books as editor or part-author include
Science Fiction at Large
(aka
Explorations of the Marvellous
),
The Science in Science Fiction
and
The Science Fiction Encyclopedia
(recently updated); he is also the author of
Fantastic Cinema
. Nicholls was a regular reviewer of science fiction, fantasy and horror, in books and films, for BBC radio for several years.

WILLIAM F. (FRANCIS) NOLAN (b. 1928) was born in Kansas City and moved to California when he was nineteen. The author of more than fifty-five books and over 100 short stories, he has been a commercial artist, racing car driver, publisher of the
Ray Bradbury Review
, managing editor of
Gamma
and a friend of Steve McQueen. Nolan's first SF story, "The Joy of Living", appeared in
If
(1954), and his books include
Logan's Run
(co-written with George Clayton Johnson) and its two sequels,
Space for Hire
,
Helltracks
,
The Demon Within
, and such collections as
Impact 20
,
Alien Horizons
,
Wonderworlds
,
Things Beyond Midnight
and
Nightshapes
. He is the author of
How to Write Horror Fiction
for Writer's Digest, and has edited the anthologies
The Work of Charles Beaumont
,
Urban Horrors
and
The Bradbury Chronicles: Stories in Honor of Ray Bradbury
(the last two in collaboration with Martin H. Greenberg). He has twice won the Mystery Writers of America Edgar Allan Poe Award, and his biographies include McQueen, Dashiell Hammett and racing speed king Barney Oldfield. Nolan has written more than forty scripts for both the cinema and television, including
Logan's Run
,
Burnt Offerings
,
Trilogy of Terror
,
The Norliss Tapes
and
Bridge Across Time
(aka
Terror at London Bridge
or
The Arizona Ripper
). His short fiction has also been adapted for the horror comic
William F. Nolan's Beyond Midnight
.

GERALD W. PAGE (b.1939) was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but has lived most of his life in Atlanta, Georgia. He has been interested in fantastic fiction for as long as he can remember and sold his first story to John W. Campbell's
Analog
in 1963. He continued to turn out the occasional SF and horror story for a variety of magazines while being employed for several years as a programming editor in
TV Guide's
Atlanta office and teaching a course in Modern Science Fiction at the Atlanta College of Art. In 1970 Page became editor of
Witchcraft & Sorcery
(a short-lived magazine that had started life as
Coven 13
), and went on to edit the original Arkham House anthology
Nameless Places
(1975) and volumes IV-VII of DAW Books'
The Year's Best Horror Stories Series
.

MICHEL PARRY (b. 1947) was born in Brussels, Belgium, of a Welsh father. His first published writings were contributions to magazines such as
Castle of Frankenstein
and
Famous Monsters of Filmland
in the early 1960s. In 1969 he produced his own short surreal film,
Hex
, and his script for
The Uncanny
was filmed in 1977 with an all-star cast. A prolific anthologist, his numerous books include six volumes of
The Mayflower Book of Black Magic
(1974-77), the four-volume
Reign of Terror
(1976-78),
Rivals of Dracula
,
Rivals of Frankenstein
,
Rivals of King Kong
,
Christopher Lee's "X" Certificate
,
Christopher Lee's Omnibus of Evil
,
Savage Heroes
,
Strange Ecstasies
,
Dream Trips
,
Spaced Out
,
Jack the Knife
, and two books of sex and horror stories,
The Devil's Kisses
and
More Devil's Kisses
, edited under the pseudonym "Linda Lovecraft". Parry has also written the novelization of Hammer's
Countess Dracula
, several western novels under the pen name of Steve Lee, and a non-fiction book about mercenaries,
Fire Power
. His most recent scripts include a short fantasy,
The Zip
, and a supernatural adventure set in Mexico,
Falco
. He is currently revising his screenplay based on the horror classic,
Sweeney Todd
.

DAVID PIRIE (b. 1946) was born and grew up in Scotland. He began his writing career as a film critic for the London listings magazine
Time Out
and he is the author of several critical studies like
A Heritage of Horror
(about British Gothic cinema),
The Vampire Cinema
and
Anatomy of the Movies
(about Hollywood finance). He began writing screenplays in 1984 with the prize-winning BBC-TV film
Rainy Day Women
starring Charles Dance and Lindsay Duncan. His subsequent scripts have included an adaptation of his own novel,
Mystery Story
, for Barry Hanson,
Total Eclipse of the Heart
for David Puttnam and Warner Bros.,
Love-Act
for producer Michael White and MGM,
Treasure
for HBO,
Wild Things
for BBC-TV's
Screen Two
series and the serial
Ashenden
.