cover image Fungi

Fungi

Edited By Orrin Grey and Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Innsmouth Free (www.innsmouthfreepress.com), $28 (346p) ISBN 978-0-9916759-1-3

Grey and Moreno-Garcia have assembled an unexceptional collection of 26 weird fiction tales starring fungi. The stories, which lack diversity both in their characters—the protagonists are overwhelmingly male—and in theme—most feature body horror or mind hijacking, or both—pass in a blur, leaving little doubt why no one has created such a collection before. There are standouts, including Polenth Blake’s darkly humorous “Letters to a Fungus,” in which a beleaguered homeowner writes letters to her nemesis, and receives one in return; Nick Mamatas’s “The Shaft Through the Middle of It All,” which presents an unexpected response to gentrification; and Jane Hertenstein’s “Wild Mushrooms,” with its moving portrait of a family of Czechoslovakian immigrants. But more typically the selections, particularly John Langan’s “Hyphae” and Jeff VanderMeer’s “Corpse Mouth and Spore Nose,” emphasize gruesomely horrifying endings, a device that becomes numbingly predictable with repetition. (Dec.)