The Year's Best Horror 21

This impressive anthology incorporates the genuine horror of nuclear devastation, as well as issues of race and gender. W. M. Shockley presents a chilling account of a father who has a vision of one of his sons giving the command to detonate a nuclear bomb. He decides to prevent the scenario by taking his own life and the lives of both of his sons, not knowing that his surviving wife is pregnant with their third son. Yvonne Navarro satirically describes the government's attempt to deal with the aftereffects of nuclear war. For one character, who has lost his wife and children and suffers from radiation sickness, this means a visit from the IRS trying to collect back-taxes. The horror deepens when it is learned that the state is offering money and shortened sentences to prisoners in exchange for blood donations used to feed the starving masses. In a humorous, but nevertheless eerie interpretation of how daughters learn to become young ladies, Rand Soellner describes underground gremlins who kidnap teenage girls during the night. Forced to chant a litany of gender-specific societal rules, they are brainwashed into their proper roles. (Oct.)