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It’s Fungi week at the Weird Fiction Review! They’re running marvelous mushroom photographs, a reprint of A.C. Wise’s fantastic story “Where Dead Men Go to Dream”, and an interview with the editors about the anthology. Head on over there:

• Interview with Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Orrin Grey
• Where Dead Men Go to Dream by A. C. Wise
• Taylor Lockwood’s fungi photos

In addition, we recently learned that Simon Strantzas’s “Go Home Again” will be reprinted in The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy and Horror: 2013 edited by Paula Guran.

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For the Fungi anthology, we asked contributors to tell us why they had written about fungi. Today, Chadwick Ginther answers this question. We also talk about how his story ended in our anthology.

Who is he?

Chadwick Ginther is a bookseller who lives in Winnipeg. His novel Thunder Road releases in Fall 2012. In addition to this anthology, his short fiction has appeared in On Spec and Tesseracts. He refuses to eat mushrooms.

Why write about fungi?

Why write about mushrooms? I’ve always had an antagonistic relationship with them as food. Turning them into monsters is sweet revenge for every time someone has ordered them on pizza or baked them in lasagna and then told me that I could “pick them out”. You never get them all, so they make perfect villains.

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For the Fungi anthology, we asked contributors to tell us why they had written about fungi. Today, Polenth Blake answers this question. We also talk about how her story ended in our anthology.

Who is she?

Polenth Blake lives where the mushrooms bloom in autumn. She has two pet cockroaches, except on Fridays, when they get to be in charge. Her fiction has appeared in Nature and ChiZine. Her website lurks at http://www.polenthblake.com

Why write about fungi?

When our fungal overlords finally reveal themselves, I’ll point them to my stories and say I was there for them. I understood. (And sorry for all those mushrooms I put into stir-fries, but they were meaty and delicious.)

Why Polenth?

We didn’t get that many funny fungal stories and the ones we did get did not have the sort of dark humour we were looking for. Polenth, however, got the mixture we wanted right. “Letters to a Fungus” is exactly date: a series of letters from a disgruntled home owner to a fungus that is wrecking havoc on her life.

As an aside, Polenth has a mushroom avatar on Twitter. That made her east to remember and she became the Mushroom Girl in our mind. We are still not certain she is not a gigantic mushroomwith a laptop.

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For the Fungi anthology, we asked contributors to tell us why they had written about fungi. Today, Ian Rogers answers this question. We also talk about how his story ended in our anthology.

Who is he?

Ian Rogers is a writer, artist, and photographer. His short fiction has appeared in several publications, including Cemetery Dance, Supernatural Tales, and Shadows and Tall Trees. He is the author of the Felix Renn series of supernatural-noirs (“supernoirturals”), including “Temporary Monsters,” “The Ash Angels,” and “Black-Eyed Kids” from Burning Effigy Press. His most recent book, a collection of dark fiction called Every House Is Haunted, will be available in Fall 2012 from ChiZine Publications.

Ian lives with his wife in Peterborough, Ontario. For more information, visit ianrogers.ca.

Why write about fungi?

Below is Ian’s answer to our question:

Because I’m a fun guy. Also because I was one of the first people Orrin Grey told about his idea for a fungus anthology years ago. He asked me to write him a Felix Renn story if he ever found a publisher interested in the project, and I was only too happy to be oblige. Specifically though, in terms of horror monsters, I think fungus is highly underrated. This is probably because fungus grows best in the dark, so people tend not to notice it. In essence, this book is really as much a fungus charity anthology as much as it is about fungus itself. I think all the proceeds should go toward fungi awareness. Is there such a thing as Fungi Aid? If not, there should be.

Why Ian?

As he mentioned, Ian was another of the Canadian trio (along with Simon Strantzas and Richard Gavin) who were present the first time Orrin ever pitched the idea that would become Fungi. When the time came to start putting the book together, we knew we wanted to explore some different types of fungal stories. One of Ian Rogers’ “supernoirtural” Felix Renn tales sounded like it would fit the bill perfectly, and he delivered us a story of detectives, blue fungus, and some real estate with a few unwelcome problems.

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For the Fungi anthology, we asked contributors to tell us why they had written about fungi. Today, A.C. Wise answers this question. We also talk about how her story ended in our anthology.

Who is she?

A.C. Wise was born and raised in Montreal, and currently lives in the Philadelphia area. Her work has appeared in publications such as Future Lovecraft, ChiZine, Clarkesworld, and The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 4. In addition to her fiction, she co-edits the online ‘zine, the Journal of Unlikely Entomology, along with Bernie Mojzes. The author can be found online at www.acwise.net

Why write about fungi?

There are so many reasons: it’s beautiful, it’s deadly, it’s delicious, it can induce dreams and nightmares, and if you eat the right kind, I understand you’ll end up ten feet tall. There’s something endlessly fascinating about fungi; it’s other-worldly, and rich with fictional possibilities, yet the truth of fungi is frequently stranger than fiction. Aside from all that, this particular story is one I’d been wanting to write, and trying to write, for years, and it finally kicked loose. Fruiting bodies, indeed!

Why A.C. Wise?

There were several stories in our inbox that dealt with hallucinations. Fewer of them that dealt with dreams. “Where Dead Men Go To Dream” tackled the oniric world, but rather than taking the path of exploring nightmares, it was a story focused on love and regret. It is a bittersweet story rather than the straight horror found in some of the other tales.

A.C. Wise was not unknown to us. She had already appeared in Future Lovecraft with “Venice Burning,” which will be adapted as an audio- recording by Pseudopod. Her fiction has a fragile, moving quality to it.

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For the Fungi anthology, we asked contributors to tell us why they had written about fungi. Today, Laird Barron answers this question. We also talk about how his story ended in our anthology.

Who is he?

Laird Barron is the author of several books, including The Imago Sequence, Occultation, and The Croning. His work has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. An expatriate Alaskan, Barron currently resides in Upstate New York.

Why write about fungi?

Below is Laird’s answer to our question:

I’ve always suffered an acute fascination with the vampiric or parasitical properties of certain insects and fungi.In response to this fascination, I’ve written stories such as “Bulldozer” and “a strange form of life” that explore the carnivorous and insidious nature of lifeforms that are neither plant nor animal. “Gamma” is another piece of the creepy mosaic.

Why Laird?

In a very short time, Laird Barron has established a reputation as one of the finest modern purveyors of contemporary Lovecraftian horror, and, as he mentions, he’s written stories about fungal terrors before, so he was one of the first people we approached to do a story for Fungi. We were expecting something brilliant, but not anything as brutal as “Gamma,” a beautiful gut-punch of cosmic decay that closes out the paperback and e-book versions of Fungi.

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For the Fungi anthology, we asked contributors to tell us why they had written about fungi. Today, Daniel Mills answers this question. We also talk about how his story ended in our anthology.

Who is he?

Daniel Mills is the author of Revenants: A Dream of New England (Chomu Press, 2011), selected by Booklist as one of the Top 10 Historical Novels of 2011. His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in a variety of venues, including Delicate Toxins (Side Real Press, 2011), Supernatural Tales 20 (Supernatural Tales Press, 2011), Dadaoism (Chomu Press, 2012), A Season in Carcosa (Miskatonic River Press, 2012), The Grimscribe’s Puppets (Miskatonic River Press, 2012) and The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 23 (Robinson, 2012). He lives in Vermont.

Why write about fungi?

Below is Daniel’s answer to our question:

Fungi are detritivores. They feed upon the dead, deriving their principal nourishment from decaying organic matter. In this respect, they are not unlike the ghouls of Arabian folklore, or indeed, their counterparts in Lovecraft’s Dream Cycle — and Lovecraft’s ghouls, though first presented to the reader as objects of terror in “Pickman’s Model,” had ceased to horrify even HPL by the time he wrote “The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath.”

 

Likewise, I’ll admit that I’m not especially terrified by bodily decay or by the prospect of postmortem desecration. “Dust from a Dark Flower” began, for me, with a question: what if a species of fungus were to feed not only on the body but on the soul, thereby annihilating all hope of the eternal? Could that be employed as a metaphor, perhaps, for a kind of Calvinist despair, one in which the individual is helpless to escape from the trap of Double Predestination?

 

In “Dust from a Dark Flower,” set in the New Hampshire Grants in the days before the American Revolution, an infestation of monstrous fungi is discovered to be intimately connected to the village meetinghouse. Elements of body horror are present throughout, but here, fungi serve primarily as agents of spiritual terror — harbingers of death or the Last Day and “the final passing of this world into a night unending.”

Why Daniel?

Daniel’s story was one of the first ones we received during our open reading period, and it was one of the first ones that we decided to buy for inclusion in Fungi. We’ve rapidly become a fan of Daniel’s creepy, quiet stories (often set in historical New England), and “Dust from a Dark Flower” is one of his best, an ominous story of corruption and faith that features a singular fungal infestation invading an old churchyard.

“Dust from a Dark Flower” is one of ten stories that was illustrated for the hardcover edition.

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For the Fungi anthology, we asked contributors to tell us why they had written about fungi. Today, Simon Strantzas answers this question. We also talk about how his story ended in our anthology.

Who is he?

Simon Strantzas is the critically acclaimed author of Nightingale Songs, Cold to the Touch, and Beneath the Surface — three collections of the strange and supernatural from Dark Regions Press. His award-nominated fiction has appeared previously in the Mammoth Book of Best New Horror series, Postscripts, and Cemetery Dance. He still lives in Toronto, Canada, with his ever-patient wife and an unyielding hunger for the flesh of the living.

Why write about fungi?

Below is Simon’s answer to our question:

There is something inherently off-putting about fungus. Certainly, it could be the unconscious connection to rot, to decay, but that does not seem to be enough to explain it. The bizarre patterns of the slime mould, the bulbous shape of the mushroom, the crepuscular nature of their blooms… Despite what the so-called scientists tell us, these are not natural things. They cannot be. Instead, the fungus seems more likely a messenger from elsewhere, some malformed alien explorer sent to infiltrate our world. Why else lurk only in the damp forgotten shadows, those places life — true life — fears to tread? No, I do not trust the fungus. I do not trust it at all. This is why I write about it; in hope to reveal the true nature of this uncaring infestor before it lays waste to us all. The pod people were fungus, you know. So were the triffids. Do not say you were not forewarned.

Why Simon?

Way back at Readercon in 2009, when Fungi was still just a fevered idea in Orrin’s mind, Simon was one of the authors sitting around the table who first got to hear about the concept of an all-fungus anthology. He immediately said that he’d contribute something to it if it ever got off the ground, so when the time came to solicit authors, Simon was de facto on the list. When he sent in the haunting “Go Home Again,” he claimed that, while it might not be the fungus story we wanted (it turns out that it was), it was the fungus story we deserved.

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For the Fungi anthology, we asked contributors to tell us why they had written about fungi. Today, Lisa Bradley answers this question. We also talk about how her story ended in our anthology.

Who is she?

Lisa M. Bradley’s fiction has appeared in Cicada, Brutarian, Escape Pod, and other venues. Originally from South Texas, Lisa has now lived in Iowa for almost twenty years. She believes, as Oscar Wilde wrote, “The truth is rarely pure and never simple.” She tells her impure, tangled truths at cafenowhere.livejournal.com and tweets little white lies @cafenowhere.

Why write about fungi?

Below is Lisa’s answer to our question:

I’m in a committed relationship with mycoprotein. As a vegetarian who eats Quorn products at least twice a week, I’ve grown accustomed to the suspicious looks I get from people who don’t understand how a human can love Fusarium venenatum. I thought if I wrote about how some fungi live in selfless service to humans, I could combat prejudice.

Why Lisa?

Among the many bizarre stories we received, Lisa’s was one of the weirder ones. Bradley, a Hispanic-American author, focused on the tale of a bear disguised as a human, cleaning an oilspill with mushrooms. It was easy to identify in the slush. Bear-as-human is probably the easiest tag you can apply to a story. Although it sounds funny when we describe it, “The Pearl in the Oyster, and the Oyster Under Glass” is a tale about the environment, the way we are connected to it, and the alienation we sometimes feel from our surroundings.

“The Pearl in the Oyster, and the Oyster Under Glass” is one of ten stories that was illustrated for the hardcover edition.

Mignola has always proudly displayed his influences for all to see, and he’s talked about his enthusiasm for William Hope Hodgson more than once over the years. The Hellboy collection Strange Places is dedicated in part to Hodgson, and in the author’s notes for one of the stories in it Mignola says that it was intended to be “inspired by the Sargasso Sea stories of William Hope Hodgson,” featuring “a graveyard of ships and a strange island overrun with weird fungus and monsters.” The graveyard of ships and the strange island made it into the final version of the Hellboy story The Island, but as Mignola continues in that same author’s note, “I had to scrap the fungus people (though I dearly love fungus people).” Fortunately for those of us who’re fans of both fungal monsters and Mignola’s work he did draw at least a few pages of them, which can be found in the back matter of Strange Places.

The influence of Hodgson’s Sargasso Sea stories on Mignola’s comic universe didn’t end with The Island, though. In The Plague Ships, the first volume of the comic series that spun off from Mignola and Christopher Golden’s novel collaboration Baltimore, the titular Lord Baltimore and his companion find themselves amid a familiar graveyard of ships, on a strange island, and this time corpses animated by a strange fungus do make their way into the final story.

Even if the fungus people had made their debut in The Island, though, they wouldn’t have been the first time that Mignola worked fungus into his universe. He beat himself to the punch roughly a year earlier with the opening of his Plague of Frogs storyline in B.P.R.D. The story opened with a fungus discovered on the grave of one of the Ogdru-Hem (Mignola’s answer to Lovecraft’s unpronounceable Old Ones). A fungus that grew to monstrous size and then spread the titular plague, transforming its first host into a towering, Elephant Man-like fungus person.