Screaming Science Fiction: Horrors from Out of Space

I have been asked on several occasions why I cross genres. In fact on one occasion I was asked why I "stagger" between them. But you know, that's how it was when I was coming up. I was seeing the movies, reading the comics, and I was into the pulp magazines; so that even before I knew what a "genre" was, it seemed to me that everyone was crossing them. Take a gander at those old EC Comics, you'll soon see what I'm getting at. The Haunt of Fear and Tales from the Crypt were "horror" horror, but a good many of the tales in Weird Fantasy were "fantasy" horror, and many of those in Weird Science were horror "SF."

Even H. P. Lovecraft – the Old Gent of Providence himself, known primarily for his superb horror stories – had mixed his genres: The Shadow Out of Time and At the Mountains of Madness in Astounding Science Fiction, for example. And then there was Ray Bradbury's won­derful Martian Chronicles: whimsical, yes, and written as only Bradbury can write them, but the horror undertones were there. In fact those stories were quite literally literary miscegena­tion, hybrids of all three species of our favorite fictions: Horror, Fantasy, and SF. And, I might add, classics at that.

It appears to my mind that a large percentage of spec­ulative and fantastic fiction benefits hugely from this misceg­enation, the incorporation of horror motifs, and I'm not at all unhappy to admit that most of my weird fiction has at least an element of SF in it, and often a lot more than just an element. "Hard Science Fiction" it most certainly isn't; "weird science" it may well be – but so what? I've always believed that it's my job to entertain, not to edify, though I would like to believe that every so often along the way I may even have been "guilty" of a little of that, too.

Anyway, here it is: a sampler of my Screaming Science Fict­ion from across the years, a large handful of my Horrors Out of Space.

– Brian Lumley

Screaming Science Fiction is a full-length collection by horror master Brian Lumley, and includes a nearly 20,000 word novella ("Feasibility Study") appearing for the first time anywhere.

Bob Eggleton has graced us with the pitch-perfect cover, as well as numerous black and white interior illustrations.

Contents:

• Snarker's Son
• The Man Who Felt Pain
• The Strange Years
• No Way Home
• The Man Who Saw No Spiders
• Deja Viewer
• Feasibility Study
• Gaddy's Gloves
• The Big 'C'