The Nightmare and Other Tales of Dark Fantasy

Slithering from these pages are never-before-collected tales of suspense and wonder by the woman who invented modern-day dark fantasy: A man goes quietly to bed aboard the doomed Lusitania and awakens on a magical South Pacific Island just as the passenger liner is torpedoed. In a future where women rule the world, a sentient island becomes murderously jealous of a shipwrecked couple. Dire consequences await a human swept into the dark, magical world of elves. A deadly labyrinth coils around the dark heart of a picturesque landscape garden. Within an Egyptian sarcophagus lies the horrifying price of infidelity. Swirling unseen around us are loathsome creatures giving form to our basest desires and fears. A beautiful, veiled medium may hold the key to preventing unspeakable evil from slipping through the borderlands between life and death. On a lost island a woman pipe player and her monstrous dancing partner bring death and terror to five adventurers. The stories in this collection have played an integral role in the development of modern dark fantasy, greatly influencing such writers as H. P. Lovecraft and A. Merritt. Francis Stevens, a pseudonym for Gertrude Barrows Bennett (1883–1948), is the author of such classics as The Citadel of Fear and The Heads of Cerberus. Gary Hoppenstand is a professor of American studies at Michigan State University. He was nominated twice for the World Fantasy Award and won the Popular Culture Association's National Book Award for editing Popular Fiction: An Anthology. He serves as the editor in chief of The Journal of Popular Culture. Stevens was an interesting, highly original author who brought new motifs into pulp fiction. --Everett F. Bleiler, Science Fiction Studies Contents: Francis Stevens: The Woman Who Invented Dark Fantasy, by Gary Hoppenstand 1. The Nightmare (1917) • novella 2. The Labyrinth (1918) • novel 3. Friend Island (1918) • shortstory 4. Behind the Curtain (1918) • shortstory 5. Unseen—Unfeared (1919) • shortstory 6. The Elf Trap (1919) • shortstory 7. Serapion (1920) • novel 8.  Sunfire • (1926) • novella