“The Adakian Eagle” by Bradley Denton will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2012 edited by Rich Horton. Jennifer Konieczny interviews DeNiro on the story.

The protagonist notes, “And meeting Pop was how I wound up seeing the future. Trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to do that. Especially if the future you see isn’t even your own. Because then there’s not a goddamn thing you can do to change it.” If the opportunity presented itself, would you look into the future? Do you think your reaction to the future would be more like the Private’s or more like Pop’s?

Planning for the future is a good thing . . . but seeing every important detail of one’s own personal future life would be (in my opinion) awful. That would be the ultimate spoiler, wouldn’t it? We all see ourselves as the protagonists of our own stories–and nobody likes to be told the end of a story while the story’s in progress!

In that regard, I share the Private’s opinion. But if I did happen to see future events in the sort of detail that Pop does in “The Adakian Eagle,” I hope I would respond with the same kind of stoicism that he displays. (But I think Pop might have more strength of character than I do.)

MORE: Read the entire interview here!

for The Year’s Best Dark Fantay & Horror: 2013 posted here. Spread the word!

It’s too late! The living dead have already taken over the world. Your brains have been devoured. Nothing is left but spasms of ravenous need—an obscene hunger for even more zombie fiction. Forget the metaphors and the mildly scary. You want shock, you want grue, you want disturbing, gut-wrenching, skull-crunching zombie stories that take you over the edge and go splat. You want the bloody best of the ultimate undead. You have no choice…you…must…have…Extreme Zombies!

“Charlie’s Hole” by Jesse Bullington
“At First Only Darkness” by Nancy A. Collins
“The Blood Kiss” by Dennis Etchison
“We Will Rebuild” by Cody Goodfellow
“Dead Giveaway” by Brian Hodge
“Zombies for Jesus” by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
“An Unfortunate Incident at the Slaughterhouse” by Harper Hull
“Captive Heart” by Brian Keene
“Going Down” by Nancy Kilpatrick
“On the Far Side of the Cadillac Desert With Dead Folks” by Joe R. Lansdale
“Susan” by Robin D. Laws
“Makak” by Edward Lee
“The Traumatized Generation” by Murray Leeder
“Meathouse Man” by George R.R. Martin
“Abed” by Elizabeth Massie
“For the Good of All” by Yvonne Navarro
“Home” by David Moody
“Jerry’s Kids Meet Wormboy” by David J. Schow
“Aftertaste” by John Shirley
“Viva Las Vegas” by Thomas Roche
“In Beauty, Like the Night” by Norman Partridge
“Romero’s Children” by David A. Riley
“Tomorrow’s Precious Lambs” by Monica Valentinelli
“Provider” by Tim Waggoner
“Chuy and the Fish” by David Wellington

[More]

“Walking Stick Fires” by Alan DeNiro will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2012 edited by Rich Horton. Andrew Liptak interviews DeNiro on the story.

The Being in this story is slowly stripping away North America of its resources: do you see Walking Stick Fires as a cautionary tale?

Absolutely–and those kinds of issues came out more in a second draft, were sharpened that way. I wanted, in a humorous but poignant way, to show what an occupying force was thinking and feeling. That they were existing in a gray area rather than something black or white. That is to say, they had opinions of Earth culture but didn’t really know it particularly well, even if they were well-intentioned.

MORE: Read the entire interview here!

“The Last Sophia” by C.S.E. Cooney will be appearing in Prime’s forthcoming Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy: 2012 edited by Rich Horton. T.J. McIntyre interviews Cooney on the story.

“The Last Sophia” alternates between a first person narrative and letters. What inspired you to use this format?

Well, I love epistolary stories. I can’t help myself. If a letter is kind of like an act of complicit voyeurism and reading like that of telepathy, I think an epistolary story satisfies our human appetite both for the amazing mysteries of mentalism and for plain old vice. Also, structurally, alternating letters with stream of consciousness was a way to differentiate between the protagonist’s lucid moments and her febrile ones. Then again, she’s not–as she’d be the first to tell you–the world’s most reliable narrator. Was she ever really writing letters, or just dreaming them? Is she thinking her thoughts or speaking them aloud? Who can say? No one. Except, perhaps, the last Sophia.

MORE: Read the entire interview here!