Exorcisms and Ecstasies

Karl Edward Wagner was 49 when he died in 1994. Horror readers treasured him as a superb craftsman in the short story form, as an anthologist for a decade's worth of the DAW Year's Best Horror Stories series, the maestro of Carcosa Press, a champion of the works of Manly Wade Wellman, and the creator of Kane, an immortal warrior-necromancer who swings his sword through stories thick with supernatural dread. This lovingly assembled book, planned before Karl died, serves both as a memorial volume and a last collection of his fiction. Included are a gallery of photos and poignant reminiscences by those who knew him, such as Stephen Jones, Peter Straub, Frances Wellman, Ramsey Campbell, and David J. Schow. There are 19 excellent horror tales, a long Kane tale and 4 shorter ones, 3 tales from his Adrian Becker (dark gunslinger) series, other uncollected pieces, and a bibliography. At the end of Exorcisms and Ecstasies there's a poem about a man who's obsessed by a demonic shadow: it concludes, "The shadow has ever haunted me, / As I walk the earth so alone-- / And when I turned, no face I saw, / For the shadow was my own. / Death Angel's Shadow."


Genre: Horror