Inconsequential Tales

Illustrated by Jason C. Eckhardt.

Ramsey Campbell is the most distinguished and highly acclaimed writer of horror and supernatural fiction of our time. In more than a score of novels and hundreds of stories, Campbell has demonstrated mastery in every facet of the weird tale.

This volume gathers tales, written over a period of more than thirty years, that have not yet been included in any of Campbell's dozen or more short story collections. Among them are such dark jewels of the supernatural as The Reshaping of Rossiter, an early version of the celebrated tale The Scar; Broadcast, which invests terror in a microphone; Writer's Curse, in which horror writing itself is made a subject of terror; Murders, a bizarre mix of horror and science fiction; Snakes and Ladders, a powerfully cosmic vignette that served as an early version of Playing the Game.

Also included are two previously unpublished tales, The Precognitive Trip and Pet. Campbell's distinctive vision, fecund imagination, and meticulous prose shine through every sentence, making the slightest of these tales a literary treasure.

British writer Ramsey Campbell is the author of such acclaimed works as The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Midnight Sun, The House on Nazareth Hill, and The Grin of the Dark. The best of his tales have been gathered in Alone with the Horrors, while his essays and reviews are collected in Ramsey Campbell, Probably.

"We have all seen the widening and deepening of [Campbell's] mastery, the way in which he has claimed more and more fictional territory... I think of Ramsey Campbell as one of my essential brothers, one of that little band travelling fast and hard over territory no one had ever seen before." – Peter Straub