Cinema Futura (edited by Mark Morris) Read online

  AMANDA HEMINGWAY has written a young adult fantasy trilogy – The Greenstone Grail, The Traitor’s Sword and The Poisoned Crown – under her own name, and three further fantasy novels – Prospero’s Children, The Dragon Charmer and Witch’s Honour – under the name Jan Siegel. She has also written two comic novels, Wishful Thinking and Kissing Toads, under the name Jemma Harvey.

  TREVOR HOYLE was born in Lancashire, where he still lives. After working as a copywriter he presented an arts programme for Granada TV before handing over to Tony Wilson. Since the mid-seventies he has published fiction with John Calder: The Man Who Travelled on Motorways, Vail (a dystopian vision of Britain as a police state) and Blind Needle, a chase thriller set in the Lake District. His novel The Last Gasp, an environmental disaster story, is currently under option in Hollywood. In 2003 Pomona reissued Rule of Night (originally published in 1975), about skinheads in a northern town, which was Time Out’s Book of the Week and was highly praised in the Guardian and City Life. More recently he has written for radio, winning the Radio Times Drama Award with his first play GIGO. The actor in the title role of his BBC Radio 4 play Randle’s Scandals, about the Wigan comedian Frank Randle, won the Sony Award. His latest novel Down the Figure 7 – a ‘fictional memoir’– was published by Pomona in April 2010.

  BILL HUSSEY has a Masters Degree in Writing from Sheffield Hallam University. He is the author of two acclaimed horror novels, Through a Glass, Darkly (2008) and The Absence (2009). In 2009, he signed a three book deal with Oxford University Press for Witchfinder, a major new Young Adult horror series written under the name William Hussey. The first in the series, Dawn of the Demontide, was published in March 2010; Gallows at Twilight and The Last Nightfall will follow in 2011. Together with fellow horror writers Joseph D’Lacey and Mathew F Riley, Bill co-founded Horror Reanimated, a website dedicated to celebrating the genre in all its forms.

  IAN IRVINE is a marine scientist who has developed some of Australia’s national guidelines for the protection of the marine environment and still works in this field. He has written twenty-five novels to date. Ian’s three fantasy series, The View from the Mirror, The Well of Echoes and Song of the Tears are published in many countries and languages. He has also written a near-future eco-thriller trilogy about catastrophic climate change, Human Rites, plus ten books for children in the Runcible Jones, Sorcerer’s Tower and Grim and Grimmer series. His next fantasy novel is Vengeance, Book 1 of The Tainted Realm, and his latest book for children is Grim and Grimmer 1, The Headless Highwayman. Ian can be contacted at [email protected] His website is www.ian-irvine.com

  BRIAN KEENE is author of the novels The Rising and its sequel, City of the Dead, The Conqueror Worms, Ghoul, Dead Sea, Dark Hollow, Ghost Walk, Castaways, Urban Gothic, Darkness on the Edge of Town, A Gathering of Crows, Kill Whitey and, co-authored with J. F. Gonzalez, Clickers II: The Next Wave and Clickers III: Dagon Rising. His novel-related short fiction has been collected in The Rising: Selected Scenes From the End of the World and Earthworm Gods: Selected Scenes From the End of the World, and his non-fiction in Sympathy for the Devil: The Best of Hail Saten Vol. 1. Brian has also written the graphic novels Dead of Night, The Last Zombie, Fear and The Rising: Death in Four Colors.

  NATE KENYON grew up in a small town in Maine. In 2005 his first novel, Bloodstone, was published in hardback by Five Star Publishing, and went on to gain a Bram Stoker Award nomination, before winning the P&E Horror Novel of the Year Award. Leisure Books published Bloodstone as a mass-market paperback in May 2008, and then followed that up with his second novel, The Reach, in December of that year. The Reach has recently been optioned for film. His third novel, The Bone Factory, was released in July 2009 and his fourth, Sparrow Rock, in May 2010. His science fiction novella, Prime, was released in July 2009 from Apex Books and he has recently had stories published in Shroud Magazine, Permuted Press’s Monstrous anthology and Legends of the Mountain State 2. Four more of his stories were featured in the Dark Arts anthology When the Night Comes Down, and he is currently writing a StarCraft: Ghost novel for Blizzard Entertainment and Pocket Books. He lives in the Boston area and his website can be found at www.natekenyon.com

  GARRY KILWORTH was born in York during the early years of WW2. As his father was in the RAF, his childhood was spent travelling to various parts of the globe, and by the age of fifteen he had been to twenty-two different schools. He himself spent seventeen years in the RAF, during which time he was writing stories. His break came with Let’s Go to Golgotha, a short story which won the Gollancz/Sunday Times short story competition. At the age of thirty-five his first novel, In Solitary, was published by Faber and Faber. He has now had over seventy books published, including SF, fantasy and mainstream novels such as Theatre of Timesmiths, Witchwater Country, Spiral Winds, Cloudrock, Hunter’s Moon, House of Tribes and Brothers of the Blade, film novelisations such as Highlander, historical war novels set in the Crimean War (as Garry Douglas), children’s books such as The Wizard of Woodworld, The Rain Ghost, The Drowners, Billy Pink’s Private Detective Agency, The Electric Kid, Cybercats, Hey, New Kid!, The Silver Claw and Attica, and short story collections such as The Songbirds of Pain, In The Hollow Of The Deep-Sea Wave, Dark Hills, Hollow Clocks, In the Country of Tattooed Men and Hogfoot Right and Bird-Hands. He has won the British Science Fiction Award, the World Fantasy Award and the Lancashire Children’s Book of the Year Award, and has twice been shortlisted for the children’s Carnegie Medal Award.

  SARAH LANGAN grew up on Long Island, and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York. Her first novel, The Keeper, was published, to much acclaim, in 2006. Her second novel, The Missing (re-titled Virus in the UK) won the HWA Bram Stoker Award for Best Novel. A year later, her story, The Lost, won the HWA Bram Stoker Award for Best Short Fiction, and she recently gained her third Stoker in three years with her third novel, Audrey’s Door. Sarah’s short fiction has appeared in The Living Dead 2, Darkness on the Edge, Hellbound Hearts, Unspeakable Horror, Doorways Magazine, Cemetery Dance, and others. In addition to writing fiction, she is also pursuing her Master’s in Environmental Health Science/Toxicology at New York University.

  With more than thirty books to his credit, JOE R LANSDALE is the Champion Mojo Storyteller. He has been called ‘an immense talent’ by Booklist; ‘a born storyteller’ by Robert Bloch; and The New York Times Book Review declares he has ‘a folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace.’ He has won sixteen Bram Stoker Awards, the Grand Master Award from the World Horror Convention, a British Fantasy Award, the American Mystery Award, the Horror Critics Award, the Grinzane Cavour Prize for Literature, the ‘Shot in the Dark’ International Crime Writer’s Award, the Golden Lion Award, the Booklist Editor’s Award, the Critic’s Choice Award, and a New York Times Notable Book Award. His titles include Savage Season, Two-Bear Mambo, Zeppelins West, Flaming London, The Magic Wagon, The Nightrunners, The Bottoms and A Fine Dark Line. His stories have been collected in By Bizarre Hands, High Cotton, Bumper Crop and others. In 2002 his novella Bubba Ho-Tep was made into a movie directed by Don Coscarelli and starring Bruce Campbell.

  JOSEPH LIDSTER’s debut work was the Doctor Who audio drama The Rapture for Big Finish Productions in 2002. Numerous further audio dramas and prose short stories followed for Big Finish, not only for their Doctor Who and its various spin-offs range, but also for other series such as Sapphire & Steel, The Tomorrow People and Dark Shadows. His first TV script was for the Torchwood episode, A Day in the Death, in 2008. He has contributed scripts to seasons 2 and 3 of CBBC’s The Sarah Jane Adventures (The Mark of the Berserker and The Mad Woman in the Attic) and is currently working on another script for season 4 and other TV projects.

  Born in 1968, TOBY LITT grew up in Ampthill, Bedfordshire. He is the author of eleven books, released in alphabetical order – Adventures in Capitalism, Beatniks, Corpsing, Deadkidsongs, Exhibitionism, Finding Myself, Ghost Story, Hospital, I play the drums in a band called okay, Jou
rney into Space and King Death. In 2003 he was named one of the twenty ‘Best of Young British Novelists’ by Granta magazine. He edited the 13th edition of New Writing, the British Council’s annual anthology of the finest contemporary writing in fiction, non-fiction and poetry, and is currently a lecturer in Creative Writing at Birkbeck, University of London.

  IAN R. MacLEOD was born in Solihull in 1956, and now lives in Birmingham with his wife Gillian and daughter Emily. He sold his first short story to Weird Tales in 1990 (1/72nd Scale, which was nominated for Best Novella at that year’s Nebula Awards), since when he has sold several dozen more stories to most of the main SF markets, including Interzone, Asimov’s, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Amazing, Pulphouse, Pirate Writings and others. His stories are regularly reprinted in annual Best of anthologies, and are collected in Voyages By Starlight and Breathmoss and Other Exhalations. His first novel, The Great Wheel, was published in 1997 and won the Locus Award for Best First Novel, and his second, The Summer Isles, won the World Fantasy Award. His two most recent novels are The Light Ages and The House of Storms.

  KEN MacLEOD was born in Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, Scotland, on August 2, 1954. He is married with two children and lives in West Lothian. He has an Honours and Masters degree in biological subjects and worked for some years in the IT industry. Since 1997 he has been a full-time writer, and is currently Writer in Residence at the ESRC Genomics Policy and Research Forum at Edinburgh University. He is the author of eleven novels, from The Star Fraction (1995) to The Restoration Game (2010), and many articles and short stories. His novels have received two BSFA awards and three Prometheus Awards, and several have been short-listed for the Clarke and Hugo Awards. Ken MacLeod’s weblog is The Early Days of a Better Nation. http://kenmacleod.blogspot.com

  PAUL MAGRS was born in 1969 in the North East of England. He has written novels for adults, teenagers and children, as well as several original Doctor Who novels for the BBC and Doctor Who audio dramas for Big Finish Productions. His most recent Doctor Who project is the five-part audiobook series Demon Quest, sequel to 2009’s Hornet’s Nest, starring Tom Baker and published by BBC Audio. His most recent novel is The Bride That Time Forgot, the fifth in his Whitby-set Brenda and Effie series, published by Headline. Salt Books have recently published a collection of his short fiction, entitled Twelve Stories. The first science fiction movie he remembers seeing was Dr Who and the Daleks, starring Peter Cushing.

  ELIZABETH MASSIE is a two-time Bram Stoker-winning author of horror novels, short fiction, and media tie-ins. Her works include Sineater, Wire Mesh Mothers, Welcome Back to the Night, The Little Magenta Book of Mean Stories, Homeplace, Dark Shadows: Dreams of the Dark (co-authored with Stephen Mark Rainey), Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Power of Persuasion, The Tudors: King Takes Queen, The Tudors: Thy Will Be Done, DD Murphry – Secret Policeman (co-authored with Alan M. Clark), The Phantom: Julie Walker: Race Against Death, and more.

  JULIET E. McKENNA was born in Lincolnshire in 1965, and now lives in West Oxfordshire with her husband, Steve, and her two sons, Keith and Ian. Her first novel, The Thief’s Gamble, was the first of her ‘Tales of Einarinn’ series, and it was followed by The Swordsman’s Oath, The Gambler’s Fortune, The Warrior’s Bond and The Assassin’s Edge. Opting for a new direction within the same world, Juliet then wrote the four-book The Aldabreshin Compass series – Southern Fire, Northern Storm, Western Shore and Eastern Tide. She is currently writing a new fantasy trilogy focusing on ‘The Lescari Revolution’. Her short fiction has appeared in many anthologies and magazines, including Fear The Alien, Subterfuge, Imaginary Friends, The Solaris Book of New Fantasy, The British Fantasy Society – A Celebration, Postscripts 5 and 6, and Doctor Who – Short Trips: A Universe of Terrors.

  GARY McMAHON’s short fiction has appeared in numerous acclaimed magazines and anthologies in the UK and US and has been regularly reprinted in yearly Best of collections. He is author of the novels Rain Dogs and Hungry Hearts, the novellas Rough Cut and All Your Gods Are Dead, and the collections Dirty Prayers, How to Make Monsters and Pieces of Midnight. His most recently published and forthcoming work includes Different Skins (Screaming Dreams), The Harm (TTA Press), two novels from Angry Robot Books, Pretty Little Dead Things and Dead Bad Things and the Concrete Grove trilogy for Solaris. He has been nominated for seven British Fantasy Awards, and his website can be found at www.GaryMcMahon.com

  Known primarily for his short fiction, PAUL MELOY’s first collection, the highly-acclaimed Islington Crocodiles, was published in 2008. His work has appeared in The Third Alternative, Nemonymous, Interzone, British Invasion, Killers, Black Static and Paper Cities: An Anthology of Urban Fantasy. In 2005 his story, Black Static, from which the magazine took its name, won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction.

  JAMES MILLER was born in 1976 and educated at Oxford, University College London and King’s College London where he has a PhD in American literature. His highly acclaimed debut novel, Lost Boys (Little, Brown 2008), a dark literary novel about the War on Terror and childhood imagination was selected as one of Time Out’s best books of 2008. His second novel, Sunshine State (Little, Brown 2010), is a post-apocalyptic thriller set in a world ravaged by global warming and religious extremism. His website is at www.jamesmillerauthor.com

  JAMES A. MOORE is author of the novels Deeper, Blood Red, Newbies, Fireworks, Under the Overtree, Possessions, Rabid Growth, The Haunted Forest Tour (co-authored with Jeff Strand), Bloodstained Oz (co-authored with Christopher Golden) and Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds. His short fiction has been collected in Slices and he has also written many gaming-related works for White Wolf, including manuals, storyteller’s guides, short stories, modules and novels.

  JAMES MORAN is a British screenwriter for television and film, whose first produced work came as a result of a UK Sci-Fi Channel competition, when he had his winning script, Cheap Rate Gravity, made into a short film. His first feature-length screenplay was Severance, a horror movie starring Laura Harris, Danny Dyer, Toby Stephens and Andy Nyman. He has written for Torchwood (season 2 episode Sleeper and the season 3 – Children of Earth – episode Day Three with Russell T. Davies), Doctor Who (season 4 episode The Fires of Pompeii), Primeval, NBC’s Crusoe, Spooks and its spinoff show Spooks: Code 9. He recently wrote Girl Number 9, a 6-part web thriller starring Gareth David-Lloyd, Joe Absolom and Tracy-Ann Oberman, and directed the final 3 episodes. The series was nominated for 5 Streamy Awards. James has had short stories published in the Big Finish Short Trips collections Transmissions and Christmas Around the World, the 2009 and 2010 Doctor Who Storybooks, and Torchwood: Consequences. He currently has several movies and TV shows in various stages of development, including Cockneys Vs Zombies, a comedy horror movie shooting in Summer 2010.

  STEVE MOSBY lives and works in Leeds. He is the author of five crime novels – The Third Person, The Cutting Crew, The 50/50 Killer, Cry For Help and Still Bleeding. His website can be found at www.theleftroom.co.uk

  STAN NICHOLLS is the author of thirty books, most of them in the fantasy and science fiction genres, and is currently published in 26 countries. Titles include Strange Invaders, Fade to Black, The Nightshade Chronicles series, Wordsmiths of Wonder: Fifty Interviews With Writers of the Fantastic, and the Quicksilver trilogy. He adapted David Gemmell’s Legend and Wolf in Shadow into graphic novel form, novelised TV series Dark Skies, and wrote the authorised biography of Gerry Anderson of Thunderbirds fame. Stan’s Orcs: First Blood trilogy, published in the UK by Gollancz, is a worldwide bestseller, with one and a quarter million copies sold as of 2009. The associated Orcs story, The Taking, was shortlisted for the 2001 British Fantasy Award. The second trilogy, Orcs: Bad Blood, is ongoing. Its first two volumes, Weapons of Magical Destruction and Army of Shadows, are published. Volume three, Inferno, appears in 2010. An Orcs graphic novel and audio versions of the two trilogies are in production. Before taking up writing full-time in 1981, he co-owned and managed Notting Hill bookstore Book
ends, and was manager of specialist sf bookshop Dark They Were and Golden Eyed. He was the first manager of Forbidden Planet’s original London store, and helped establish and run the New York branch. A journalist for national and specialist publications, and the Internet, Stan was for six years the science fiction and fantasy book reviewer for London listings magazine Time Out. He was the recipient of Le’Fantastique Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions to Literature, presented at the Trolls & Legendes Festival in Mons, Belgium, in 2007. Stan is also Chair of The David Gemmell Awards for Fantasy.

  PHILIP PALMER is a novelist and screenwriter. His first novel, Debatable Space, was published in 2008, and his second, Red Claw, a year later. His third novel, Version 43, will be published later this year. His film and TV work – as, variously, writer, script doctor, script editor and development person – includes fourteen episodes of The Bill, Rebus, The Many Lives of Albert Walker, A Many Splintered Thing, Taggart, McCallum, The Paradise Club, Wah Wah and Guantanamero.

  SARAH PINBOROUGH is the author of six horror novels – The Hidden, The Reckoning, Breeding Ground, The Taken, Tower Hill and Feeding Ground. Her supernatural thriller, A Matter of Blood, was released by Gollancz in March 2010, and is the first of The Dog-Faced Gods trilogy. Her first YA novel, The Double-Edged Sword, will be out under the name Sarah Silverwood from Gollancz later this year. Sarah was the 2009 winner of the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story, and has three times been short-listed for Best Novel. She has also been short-listed for a World Fantasy Award. Her novella, The Language of Dying, is currently short-listed for the Shirley Jackson Award.