On the evening of Friday 22 July 2011, a day which, aptly, had been hellishly hot (the temperature in New York City broke 100… Fahrenheit, but it felt like Celsius), the KGB Bar in Manhattan’s East Village, the venue for the Fantastic Fiction Readings Series (one of which had been held two days earlier), hosted a special event, a reading from Ellen Datlow’s newest anthology, Supernatural Noir. (Likewise fittingly, the Bar is as dimly lit as a film noir set.)
The volume (published by Dark Horse Books) features 16 original crime and dark fantasy tales from, among others, Laird Barron, Elizabeth Bear, Richard Bowes, Jeffrey Ford, Gregory Frost, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Joe R. Lansdale, John Langan, Nick Mamatas, Tom Piccirilli, and Lucius Shepard. (Fans of the Hugo- and Bram Stoker Award-winning editor’s 2009 anthology Poe will be pleased to see that the raven from that cover has found gainful employment on the cover of this collection. The economy is picking up!)
The first reader of the evening, Jeffrey Ford, has won the World Fantasy Award, the Nebula Award, the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and le Gran Prix de l’Imaginaire. He read from his contribution to the anthology, “The Last Triangle,” in which an addict is taken in by an old lady and enlisted in her quest for a magician’s protective zone of immortality.
As he had previously read from “The Dingus” at a KGB Reading, Gregory Frost’s selection was brief. A retired pugilist-turned-cabbie looks into a horrific massacre at a roadhouse, one of whose victims had been a friend.
After a short break, Richard Bowes, a recipient of the World Fantasy, Lambda, International Horror Guild, and Million Writers Awards, read from his “Mortal Bait.” Set, as most of his stories are, in Greenwich Village, a private eye’s missing person case—a Rutgers co-ed—involves the Kingdom of Faerie and (it is hinted) will draw him into a war between realms. (Later, Bowes noted the coincidence of both his and Frost’s stories, set in 1951, alluding to Douglas MacArthur.)
Novelist and short-story writer John Langan read from “In Paris, in the Mouth of Kronos,” in which something supernatural is imprisoned below the City of Lights, and two American operatives’ mysterious boss seemingly partakes of the demonic. (The guy’s defensive ordering of a cheeseburger and Coke at a French café put me in mind of the “in Paris a Big Mac is called a Royale” bit in Pulp Fiction, and a white-clad character’s name being Mr. White of Tarantino’s earlier Reservoir Dogs; such, as Langan conceded, is the way of subconscious influence.)
A fifth scheduled reader, Paul G. Tremblay, was unable to attend (due to a family matter), so Langan read very briefly from the opening of Tremblay’s story “The Getaway,” in which a gang of robbers are fleeing a pawnshop and gun battle.
Copies of the book were available for sale from Bluestockings.
The audience was noticeably smaller than at a standard Fantastic Fiction Reading, due either to the oppressive heat, or it not being the Series’ usual night (and that, as noted above, there had been one on Wednesday). Afterward, Datlow, the readers, and a portion of the audience adjourned to a nearby diner (rather than the usual Szechuan restaurant) to continue conversations.