“Carl E. Reed has only begun to reveal to the world what he has to say in the weird mode. We can relish it thoroughly with the knowledge that further baleful delights are to come in the future.”—From S. T. Joshi’s Foreword
Carl E. Reed is a vibrant new voice in weird fiction. But Reed has in fact been writing for more than twenty years, and as such he exhibits an assurance and panache rarely found in authors who are offering their first short story collection to the public.
Reed is well versed in the heritage of weird fiction, as his tributes to Poe (“A Matter of Debt Concerning the Gentleman from Baltimore”), Lovecraft (“Cold Tickle”), and others attest. But Reed goes back even further, resurrecting Celtic and Native American myth into the present day.
But Reed’s greatest virtue is his sensitivity to the nuances of our muddled age—a parent’s torment at the loss of a child, the breakdown of social norms in modern society, and the baleful nature of politics in the contemporary world. The book concludes with a staggeringly imaginative novella, “The Möbius Strip Trip.” And the volume is also graced with an array of Reed’s vibrant poetry.
Dark Matter introduces a weird artist whose voice will be heard for many years.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Foreword, by S. T. Joshi
Night Terror
One Who Walks Alone
The Candidate
Lycanthropic Howl
Haunted House
Father’s Bullet
Not a Vampire
Märchen (Fairy Tales)
The Water Is Warm, Mommy
Fat Man and Yellow-Eyes
Come Haltingly, on Lame Feet
The Instructive Pleasures of Horror Fiction
The Final Flight of Major Havoc
A Whisper to Rock
Motauqwa Means Mountain
A Little Song of Death
A Matter of Debt Concerning the Gentleman in Baltimore
Let There Be Light
Samhain Eve: A Celtic Tale
The Call of Lizzie
Cold Tickle
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
The Strange and Curious Tale of Prof. Robert Howard Wilson
The Return of Pumpkin Jack
Pulp Writer
The Philosophy & Aesthetics of Horror
The Möbius Strip Trip
Black-Winged Battle Cry
Acknowledgments
