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cycle of the seasons, and the harsh laws of economics. Society would alter radically: utopias were glimpsed in many stories of this kind, whether socialist, anarchist, arcadian, or aristocratic. Grand visions indeed, promising so much . . . And yet Prometheus suffered dreadfully for bestowing the gift of fire upon mankind; and the scientific romancers were only too conscious of the perilous downside of technology run amok. For every victorious adventure there was a waiting catastrophe: the world devastated by novel weapons, political tyranny augmented with new instruments of oppression, aliens invading, Homo sapiens speciating into warring tribes of hominids. Early science fiction indeed illuminated the future, but black clouds of war and chaos cast warning shadows across the prospect. Current steampunk writing reflects this balance faithfully: in the stories that follow are to be found such things as death in well-built cities, gear-shifting mummies, ghosts in Faraday cages, the dark matter of balloons, and, of course, machines . . . machines that trap nightmares, machines that trap ghosts, machines that trap and enslave souls.

GASLIGHT AND ITS successor, electrical lighting, lit up immense panoramas for the Victorians and Edwardians, in real life, in reason, and in the imagination. Indeed, the ghost story, as a form of psychological fiction, was a part of the general enlightenment, inasmuch as it shone a torch on the nature of the psyche, permitting expanded understanding of how we ourselves work. Equally, the vast threats unveiled by the scientific romance were necessary, instructive premonitions of the imminent upheavals of world war, revolution, and economic depression. We need light to see our ghosts by, even if it is merely some sort of ectoplasmic refulgence. Ghosts of the past and ghosts from the future unite in the chilling glow of this anthology, extending wisdom as well as fright, fateful comprehension as well as blind terror; and all in highly entertaining form, in some cases as pure fuliginous horror, in others as awestruck observation, or as yearning towards otherworldly radiance, or as cunning satirical fun.

So let there be light . . . and ghosts yet to be revealed.

—JACK DANN AND NICK GEVERS

James Morrow

Shortly after his seventh birthday, James Morrow dictated a loopy fantasy called “The Story of the Dog Family” to his mother, who dutifully typed it up and bound the pages with yarn. Upon reaching adulthood, the author again endeavored to write fiction, eventually winning two Nebula Awards, two World Fantasy Awards, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. Recent projects include a postmodern historical epic, The Last Witchfinder, praised by the New York Times for fusing “storytelling, showmanship and provocative book-club bait,” and a phantasmagoric tragicomedy, The Philosopher’s Apprentice, which NPR called “an ingenious riff on Frankenstein.” Jim’s most recent book is a stand-alone novella, Shambling Towards Hiroshima, set in 1945 and dramatizing the US Navy’s attempts to leverage a Japanese surrender via a biological weapon that strangely anticipates Godzilla.

JAMES MORROW

The Iron Shroud

JONATHAN HOBBWRIGHT CANNOT discourse upon the formic thoughts that flicker through the minds of ants, and he is similarly ignorant concerning the psyches of locusts, toads, moles, apes, and bishops, but he can tell you what it’s like to be in hell. The abyss has become his fixed abode. Perdition is now his permanent address.

Although Jonathan’s eyes deliver only muddy and monochromatic images, his ears have acquired an uncommon acuity. Encapsulated head to toe in damnation’s carapace, he can hear the throbbing heart of a nearby rat, the caw of a proximate raven, the hiss of an immediate snake.

Not only is the abyss acoustically opulent, it is temporally egalitarian. Here every second is commensurate with a minute, every minute with an hour, every hour with an aeon. Has he been immured for a week? A month? A year? Is he reciting to himself the tenth successive account