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Conceived as an annual publication, featuring the year’s best fantasy and horror fiction (selected from a variety of magazines and original anthologies). Demons and Dreams includes work by the like of Ursula K Le Guin, Ramsey Campbell, Harlan Ellison, M John Harrison, John Skipp and Craig Spector, and Lisa Tuttle. Also, there are summaries of the year’s events in horror and fantasy literature and cinema, as well as an obituaries column. The book is rounded off with a series of honourable mentions for those whose work, for one reason or another, didn’t quite make the selection.

Among the better stories is Joyce Carol Oates’ ‘Haunted’, a subtle and moving tale whose title refers not to any conventional haunting, but to an old lady ‘haunted’ by memories of her childhood. In a very different vein is ‘Splatter: A Cautionary Tale’ by Douglas E Winter, a Ballardian meditation on splatter movies, pornography and censorship. Stylistically, this is one of the most adventurous stories in this collection, being a series of ‘condensed’ novels under headings taken from the titles of well-known horror and gore pics. Also worthy of note are Lucius Shepard’s ‘Delta Sly Honey’, a ghost story set in the Vietnam War, Michael McDowell’s ‘Halley’s Passing’, an ultra-violent chiller told in detached, clinical prose, and Edward Bryant’s ‘Author’s Notes’, a black joke that plays on people’s preconceptions about horror writers. This anthology also features the first published short story by Alan Moore, ‘A Hypothetical Lizard’, more fantasy than horror, it’s a typically dense and complex Moore effort.

What marks out the stories collected in Demons and Dreams from those in other anthologies is their depth and richness. One cannot help but be impressed by the adventure and innovation shown by many of the writers here. Authors such as Susan Palwick (‘Ever After’), William F Nolan (‘My Name Is Dolly’), Edward Bryant and Douglas E Winter are not simply content to continually repeat and regurgitate established generic forms and themes, they are here shown to be restlessly experimental, looking for new visions, new sounds and alternative ways of portraying them.

As such, Demons and Dreams is a genuinely exciting and provocative collection. It gives the lie to the commonly held view that most, if not all, fantasy and horror writers are mercenary hacks only after cheap thrills and easy spills. To my mind, it proves that there are true artists working in the genres, producing imaginative and thoughtful work. I look forward, then, to the next edition and those that follow. I would urge you to do likewise.