Welcome to issue one hundred of Nightmare! It feels like a milestone of terror—and we couldn’t have made it without the support of all our supremely talented writers—and dedicated and loyal readers like you.
To celebrate, this issue is overflowing with original fiction from some of our most stalwart contributors over the years. Stephen Graham Jones commits the perfect—or at least a perfectly terrifying—crime in his new short “How to Break into a Hotel Room.” Adam-Troy Castro reports from the set of an unsettling television show in “Rotten Little Town: An Oral History.” If you’re hungry for a monster, Desirina Boskovich is glad to oblige with her story “I Let You Out.” Our ebook readers will also enjoy several bonus stories in this super-sized extravaganza: A tale of a viral threat from Sam J. Miller (“Darkness, Metastatic”) and a modern, dark fairy tale from Maria Dahvana Headley (“Wolfsbane”).
Our reprints this month include a fantastic scare from Tananarive Due (“Last Stop on Route Nine”), which will be available on our website. Thanks to the bonus original content on the website this month, the rest of our reprints are exclusive to our ebook edition. That issue—which you can still purchase for the regular issue price of $2.99—contains reprints from horror giants Gemma Files (“Thin Cold Hands”), Carmen Maria Machado (“The Things Eric Eats Before He Eats Himself”), Victor LaValle (“Up From Slavery”), and Laird Barron (“Jaws of Saturn”).
But wait, there’s more! Our nonfiction team has also gone the extra mile, for Team Nightmare. Orrin Grey returns to “The H Word” with an essay about the way the Vietnam War changed the state of horror. Plus, we have author spotlights with our authors, a book review from Terence Taylor, and a roundtable interview with your humble (outgoing) editor and our amazing (incoming) editor Wendy N. Wagner. On top of all that, we’ve also got a special treat for our ebook readers: Assistant editor Xander Odell collected some of our staff and writers’ favorite scares.
It’s been an honor and a privilege editing Nightmare for these past one hundred issues, but I’m really looking forward to seeing the exciting new directions Wendy takes it. Thanks again to everyone who’s made this wild, terrifying journey possible; I hope y’all stick with Nightmare for another hundred.
