THE ANNIVERSARY OF NEVER - Joel Lane

The Swan River Press have announced the publication of a collection of stories by Joel Lane. The Anniversary of Never offers thirteen stories (one with Mat Joiner), with an introduction by Joel's long-time champion, Nicholas Royle.

The announcement tells us: "The Anniversary of Never is a group of tales concerned with the theme of the afterlife,” observed Lane, “and the idea that we may enter the afterlife before death, or find parts of it in our world.” These stories of love and death, sex and solitude, decay and dementia will burrow deep into the reader’s mind and impregnate it with a vision often as bleak as the night is black."

It was a great privilege to know Joel and to publish some of his early stories in Aklo, the journal of the fantastic I co-edited with Roger Dobson. So I can't pretend to be objective here. For me, Joel Lane was one of the most thoughtful and questioning authors in the supernatural fiction field. Deeply versed in the traditions of the form - he contributed remarkably original and perceptive essays on many of its major figures to Wormwood - he also understood the need to give it a contemporary resonance.

His stories have all the brooding power of the most memorable classics, while also having an extra edge because they are about the world we live in now. They always make us think about that world, gently and allusively showing just how wrong things can be. But they are also movingly written meditations on perennial human concerns, in which fully real characters experience love, longing and loss. Joel's ghosts are the spirits of dust, empty houses, abandoned places, wastelands. Anyone who cares at all about modern dark fiction - or about our society today - needs to read his work.

Mark Valentine

Joel Lane (1963-2013) - John Howard

Joel Lane was a good friend for nearly thirty years. Never in robust health, he raged against the dying of the light – many different and varied lights, all sorts of dying – and now his published work must continue to do that for him.

Joel encouraged and mentored numerous writers, providing incisive and positive feedback that could only improve their work. He was loyal and unstinting with praise where he believed it to be due.

Joel was politically committed and active: he saw the lights going out and raged – but also tried to do something about it. What he was against was usually worth being against; the world he wished to live in was the sort of world that anyone should wish to live in. Joel took people and their views seriously, perhaps sometimes too seriously. He was painstaking and generous with friends and strangers alike, whatever was asked of him.

(‘For me, he was more like a conscience. He reminded me of battles unfought and pain unfelt.’ Joel Lane, “The Circus Floor”.)

Joel was a sound critical voice. In an often bloated field he knew what would endure, and why. He provided new insights on classic works and authors, especially H.P. Lovecraft, Robert Aickman, Ramsey Campbell, Fritz Leiber, and Theodore Sturgeon. Returning to these authors after Joel had written about them was to see them from fresh, and refreshing, angles.

Joel relished evenings in the pub (the particular one changed as things such as the owner, the quality of the beer, the policy on music, and opening times changed) discussing new and old stories, famous and unknown authors, current lunacies at large in society, and anything… His puns and limericks were atrocious, and often even spontaneous.

A few random recollections: Those garish shirts. The infinite supply of carrier bags. His utter unselfconsciousness. The ability to quote song lyrics by the yard. Puns again. Printouts of draft poems.

A brick has been removed from the wall, from near the foundations. It won’t collapse, but there’s a gap now.


John Howard

R.I.P. - Joel Lane, Author, Poet, Scholar

"...Your words
reach out from the dark like branches,
complex and definite."

Joel Lane, 'Matt', from Instinct (2012)

I have heard with great sadness that author, poet and scholar Joel Lane, a regular contributor of fine critical essays to Wormwood, has died. I have also lost a friend. I first met Joel at the British Fantasy conventions held in Birmingham in the Nineteen Eighties. He became part of an informal circle of keen enthusiasts of fantasy and horror, the Doppelgangers: he was one of the most well-read and thoughtful characters in our group.

Joel contributed his short stories of bleak but poetic urban horror to Aklo, the journal of the fantastic I co-edited with the late Roger Dobson, and also to Dark Dreams, the journal of the macabre edited by Jeff Dempsey and David Cowperthwaite. Despite the darkness of his vision in these stories, Joel enjoyed as much as anyone the flippancy and japing of Doppelganger gatherings and publications, and there was always a side of him that relished bad puns, improbable book titles and persiflage.

But in his work, from the first, his was a sombre, powerful but compelling voice. I was pleased to publish his short story ‘The Foggy, Foggy Dew’, in a chapbook (1986, with a poem, 'Lifting the Cover') which, to our delight, was selected by Karl Edward Wagner for his Year’s Best Horror series, the first of many such tributes to his fiction. Joel’s reputation as a master of urban horror continued to build over the years, culminating in the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection (for Where Furnaces Burn), a fully-deserved accolade, which he received only weeks ago. Amongst his notable publications were The Earth Wire (1994), From Blue to Black (2000), The Blue Mask (2003), The Lost District (2006), The Terrible Changes (2009), The Witnesses Are Gone (2009) and Do Not Pass Go: Crime Stories (2011).

While it will be his short stories that will prove an enduring legacy, Joel was also a fine poet, who used modern forms and imagery while at the same time expressing concisely and acutely the perennial concerns of love, mortality, longing and loss. And Joel was furthermore an exceptionally pensive and insightful critic of the fantasy and horror fields. For Wormwood he contributed a series of essays on major figures in the field, including H P Lovecraft, Thomas Ligotti, Fritz Leiber, Ray Bradbury and (most recently) Robert Aickman. We had recently discussed an essay by him for next year on Shirley Jackson.

Joel never relied on past evaluations or readings of these figures: he read everything of importance by them with great care and focus, and thought through his own original perspective on their work. I know from our correspondence how much concentration and creative energy he put in to these studies, which should also stand as a testament to his devotion to our literature. He would, incidentally, give the same respect and acumen to other arts too: I remember, and wish I'd kept, his remarkable insights into the lyrics of Joy Division and New Order, some of whose words he made use of in his book titles, epigraphs and themes.

Joel was never in good health, and had also faced tragedy in his life, and when I think of him, I see a vulnerable, slightly tentative figure, for whom words were worth serious weight. That image, however, must be balanced with the extraordinary determination and depth of thought that characterised everything he wrote, the intense, vital intelligence that gave us so much that was so strong and unique in his commentary, poetry and stories.

"then walk out into a fractured night
that aches with the promise of winter:
the ceasefire, the falling snow,
an album whose every track is silence."

Joel Lane, 'Autumn Light', from Instinct (2012)