I’VE been a fan of Shirley Jackson’s work since I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle as a pre-teen. My appreciation of her uncanny fiction perfectly dovetailed with my love of Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, and so many other writers of weird, fantastic, and horrific literature.
July 2019, I attended Readercon, a literary sf/f convention outside of Boston, and got into a discussion about literary influences. Because the Shirley Jackson Awards are given out at Readercon, Jackson’s name of course came up, and it occurred to me to edit an anthology of stories influenced by her work—but I never followed through.
Until… a few months later, I met a Titan editor at the World Science Fiction convention in Dublin. Although our initial conversation was about anthologies in general, by November—out of the blue—he and his colleagues suggested I edit an anthology of stories influenced by Jackson. So of course I said yes.
I’ve come to realize that Jackson’s influence has filtered—consciously or subconsciously—into the work of many contemporary fantasy, dark fantasy, and horror writers. Some more obviously than others, so they were the writers I initially approached for submissions. Then other writers, writers I would not have pegged as being influenced by her, surprised me with their interest in contributing to such a book.
What is a Shirley Jackson story? She wrote the charming fictionalized memoir Life Among the Savage, a series of collected stories originally published in women’s magazines about her family, living in domestic chaos in rural Vermont. But what sticks in most readers’ minds today is her uncanny work such as “The Lottery,” The Haunting of Hill House, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. The brilliant 1963 movie The Haunting, based on The Haunting of Hill House, brought Jackson a whole new audience.
Her stories, mostly taking place in mid-twentieth-century America, are filled with hauntings, dysfunctional families and domestic pain; simmering rage, loneliness, suspicion of outsiders; sibling rivalry and women trapped psychologically and/or by the supernatural. They explore the dark undercurrent of suburban life during that time period.
For this anthology, I did not want stories riffing on Jackson’s own. I did not want stories about her or her life. What I wanted was for the contributors to distill the essence of Jackson’s work into their own work, to reflect her sensibility. To embrace the strange and the dark underneath placid exteriors. There’s a comfort in ritual and rules, even while those rules may constrict the self so much that those who must follow them can slip into madness.
To, as Jackson said, “use fear, to take it and comprehend it and make it work.”
And this is what the contributors have done.
Some of the stories herein take place—or end up—in that most domestic of rooms, the dining room, and they center on meals.
Others feature uncanny encounters with ghosts or the inexplicable: misfits finding comfort in one another despite the inevitable destruction their relationship engenders on themselves and others outside their circle of safety; family members turning on each other; women trapped by expectations; people punished for being outside the norm.
So here for your enjoyment are stories that I believe provide the flavor of some of Shirley Jackson’s best fiction. And I would like to think that Jackson, were she still alive, might recognize and appreciate what she birthed.