999_ Twenty-Nine Original Tales of Horror and Suspense - Al Sarrantonio [356]
“Angie” copyright © 1999 by Ed Gorman
“The Ropy Thing” copyright © 1999 by Al Sarrantonio
“The Tree Is My Hat” copyright © 1999 by Gene Wolfe
“Styx and Bones” copyright © 1999 by Ed Bryant
“Hemophage” copyright © 1999 by Steven Spruill
“The Book of Irrational Numbers” copyright © 1999 by Michael Marshall Smith
“Mad Dog Summer” copyright © 1999 by Joe R. Lansdale
“The Theater” copyright © 1999 by Bentley Little
“Rehearsals” copyright © 1999 by Thomas F. Monteleone
“Darkness” copyright © 1999 by Dennis L. McKiernan
“Elsewhere” copyright © 1999 by William Peter Blatty
Copyright
This is a collection of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the authors or the publishers.
A hardcover edition of this book was published in 1999 by Avon Books, Inc.
999. Collection copyright © 1999 by Al Sarrantonio.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © AUGUST 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-04632-1
First Perennial edition published 2001.
The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
999 : new stories of horror and suspense / edited by Al Sarrantonio.—
1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Horror tales, American. 2. Detective and mystery stories,
American. I. Sarrantonio, Al. II. Title: Nine hundred ninety-nine.
PS648.H6A16 1999
813′.08738—dc21
99-20895
CIP
ISBN 0-380-80518-9 (pbk.)
05 JT/RRD 10 9 8 7 6 5
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Notes
* To be fair, and with the comfort of retrospection. I think McCauley’s precursor, Harlan Ellison, had the tougher row to hoe: wrenching the reins of science fiction from the philistines and hacks who had dominated the sf genre from the beginning (indeed, had invented it) was much more difficult than Kirby’s (and, by extension, my own) goal of establishment—after all, horror already had a much more definite literary heritage to draw on. See Hawthorne and Poe for appropriate examples.
* Faddists, anyone?—though I’m not completely at ease with the faddist theory, which might actually put the cart before the horse. There might be a core audience that will read anything, but I think there is a much larger one that will read quality work, literature, when it’s given to them.
** If you haven’t figured it out already, the tide’s meaning is twofold: a contraction of the year the book was originally published, at the cusp of the millennium; and 666 inverted—which means that the tide makes sense even if the booksellers suck it upside-down!
Table of Contents
Introduction
Kim Newman
AMERIKANSKI DEAD AT THE MOSCOW MORGUE
Joyce Carol Oates
THE RUINS OF CONTRACOEUR
Thomas M.