Ellen Datlow

The narrator says, "...immortal, trapped, subject to any torment he could devise for us from the limitless miracles at his command." Now, on one hand, the situation here is, you know, certainly by modern standards and based on all the stuff that's come in the wake of this story, a pretty digestible post-apocalyptic scenario.

AI run amok, wipes out humanity, and acts endless revenge on five survivors.

But the prose does touch on, I think, more subtle aspects of the scenario as well.

Like, in one sense, there is the idea that Am has become the world and is, in a sense...

It's also worth pointing out that, again, Ted is our point of view character here.

He is our protagonist.

And while he tells us that he is the only one of the five survivors whose mind is still intact, I mean, obviously, he's an individual that has been highly traumatized and endlessly tortured for over a century at this point.

So I think there's some built-in, if not unreliable, Unreliability to the character at least we have to question whether he is in his right mind anymore on this in a number of topics.

There's always new anthologies and novels and stuff coming out centered around Halloween because it's so fun and everybody likes to dabble.

But Ellen Datlow's latest anthology, All Hallows' Eve, is just recently released.

So if you're looking for a new book of Halloween stories – Well, there you go.

And if you're late to the party, you still can pull out your copy of A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Lasny and get it read before the 31st.

As an aside, you've reminded me, back in the 1980s, I lived in New York for a while, and I used to go to this writer's workshop where it was run by, uh, the then editor of Asimov's Science Fiction magazine.

And, uh, and she, she got, um, Ellen Datlow to come in and to talk to us at some stage as well.

That feels then.

Back, back when Datlow was the, the editor, the fiction editor of Omni magazine.

And then there were ...

I, after that, I started getting, um, asked by, you know, different horror editors like Ellen Datlow to s-

Mm

... submit to anthologies, and those were stories where I was actually writing, um, you know, stuff about, you know, like post-apocalyptic horror and, um, zombies and vampires, and those ha- have not been collected yet.

Let's begin with the Fairy Reel.

This is a World Fantasy Award finalist anthology edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

A truly phenomenal collection.

I mean, you are looking at original contributions from the absolute vanguard of modern fantasy.

Mm-hmm.

So in this case we have this great opening set piece which Steven actually wrote as an, like a, a long short story, a novelette for Ellen Datlow, who wanted it for something.

And I don't know if it ever got used or not, and it was this guy Ricky, and so he does get killed by this.

Well, we don't know what he gets killed by, right?