The Terrible Changes

Sewn hardcover, limited to 300 copies, 147 pp (xii,131),with end papers and frontispiece.

In midwinter, an aspiring politician finds himself suddenly deprived of human contact. A group of newcomers to a town are strangely reminiscent of people lost in a recent flood. In a world where grief is forbidden, a young man builds a mound to commemorate his lover. An obsessive reader of Poe enters the world of his idol's stories. Demonstrators on a peace march see the faces of sleeping children in the snow. A failed musician meets his own ancestors getting off a midnight train.

Joel Lane's short stories combine the supernatural with themes of human loss, passion, solitude and despair. The complexity of the urban landscape provides a background to stories in which nothing can be relied upon. Ghosts and visions are an inevitable part of a reality where facts are uncertain, loyalties are divided, and the unknown is always close at hand. In Lane's fiction, the weird is a symbolic language that expresses the chilling beauty, sadness and mystery of real life.

From "The Brand" (written in 1983) to "Alouette" (written in 2008), these stories are selected from a quarter-century of writing. Twelve previously uncollected stories are reprinted from magazines and anthologies, bridging various strands of the weird fiction genre: urban horror tales, elegiac ghost stories, erotic reveries and psychological fugues. Two brief new tales offer different perspectives on the theme of mortality. Influences on these stories include Robert Aickman, John Metcalfe, Ramsey Campbell, M. John Harrison, Jean Genet, Sylvia Plath and Robert Smith.

The Terrible Changes is a journey through a shadow-realm between reality and dream, between clarity and madness, between the living and the dead. Enjoy.

ContentsIntroductionAfter the FloodPower CutEmpty MouthsThe Last CryEvery Form of RefugeThe Hard CopyFace DownTell the DifferenceBlue TrainThe City of LoveAll Beauty SleepsThe BrandAlouetteThe Sleepers