Here’s a small selection of the horror and genre news that caught our eye during the last week …
Out now from author John F.D. Taff and Trepidatio Publishing, Plastic Space House
Hundreds of years into the future, mankind has begun seeding habitable planets, sending out a fleet of enormous ships filled with eager colonists. Three survivors of the explosion of the colony ship Promise—Harlan, Jaime, and El—discover that everything they know, even reality, is pliable and transitional. Plastic.
As they attempt to either reach the colony or return to Earth, they learn the conscious universe wants to prevent humanity’s spread across the galaxies and that it uses our own fear to keep us isolated—a fear embodied in a literal haunted house they encounter in space. Once inside, they find nothing is as it seems, everything is liminal, and they must face their deepest fears if they hope to survive. Available now in eBook and paperback editions, you can grab your copy here.
Available tomorrow, 30 December from editor Sam Richard and Weirdpunk Books,
J.G. Ballard has held a tremendous influence on culture since he first started writing, much of which turned out to be prophetic. In Feral Architecture Joe Koch, Donyae Coles, Sara Century, Brendan Vidito, and editor Sam Richard plume the depth of that influence through the lens of horror fiction. The results are surreal, ominous, unexpected, unnerving, and a fitting tribute to the legacy of one of the 20th century’s most impactful and important writers. Featuring a foreword by Scott Dwyer of The Plutonian. Available to pre-order now in eBook, with other editions to follow, you can guarantee your copy here.
Arriving 12 January from writer Edward M. Erdelac, 13th: A Novel
In New Jersey in 1957 a little boy named Joshua Ian Hodder drowned in the waters of Diamond Lake while the camp counsellors charged with watching him made love. His distraught mother slaughtered nine young people in revenge before she was herself slain. Then, somehow, Joshua returned.
Driven to kill by a seemingly unending and unreasoning rage, Joshua has spilled enough blood to lap the shores of Diamond Lake. His savage crimes are legendary and span two decades. Twelve times he has been stopped, only to return. Now he is hunting down those few who have managed to defeat him, and with each new kill, he is growing stronger.
Joshua’s long estranged father steps out of the past to stand against his son with the last survivors; a pair of FBI agents tasked with hunting him down, a young telekinetic just coming into her own power, an FX artist who had thought all that bloodshed was behind him, an ex-heroin addict who last saw the face of evil in the sewers under Manhattan, a woman whose first encounter with Joshua in the woods at sixteen left her mind shattered, and Joshua’s own niece, trained as a human weapon by an obsessive bounty hunter whose clash with the killer left him wheelchair-bound, for according to legend, only by a Hodder may he die … Available for pre-order now in eBook, with other editions to follow, you can guarantee your copy here.
KEV HARRISON