There was a time, a few decades ago, when horror fiction meant just a few names. Stephen King and Dean Koontz in the US, James Herbert and Clive Barker in the UK. It was a boom time for sales but not critical recognition: a sea of paperbacks passed beneath school desks. And then, in the mid 90s, horror largely disappeared. Writers of darkness were repackaged into more market-friendly categories – thriller, dark fantasy, or that neutering, catch-all classification: suspense.
Now horror is emphatically back, and it is no longer a dirty word. Publishing imprints such as Titan and Nightfire are devoted almost entirely to the genre, small presses are helping to introduce new names, and a thriving online community of readers, writers, critics and commentators champion literature’s most sinister impulses.
