Jack Kerouac, William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg fight against Cthulhu's minions. Joey Ramone travels through alternate Earths and saves each of them in a different way. A laid-off Long Island father builds his own nuclear weapon, hides it in a garden gnome and declares independence from the United States. Welcome to the dark, twisted and often bitingly satirical world of author Nick Mamatas. Born in Port Jefferson, Long Island, and raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, Mamatas, the son of a longshoreman and a fruit stand owner, went on to attend the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the New School University and, for his MFA in writing, Western Connecticut State University. Since 2000, he has published forty-five stories, with his work appearing in venues as disparate as zines like Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet and glossy mags like Razor . Also an accomplished non-fiction writer, he's had essays and articles published in The Village Voice, Rue Morgue, Writers Digest Books' On Writing Horror and more. Mamatas has received two Bram Stoker Award nominations (for his novella Northern Gothic and his novel Move Under Ground ) and an International Horror Guild Award nomination (also for Move Under Ground). He was kind enough to take a moment out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for Fear Zone.


Every author has his or her own story about how they got into writing. What's yours? And what drew you to the horror and dark science fiction genres in particular?


My story isn't all that interesting. On some level I always wanted to be a writer, but spent almost no time doing anything about it as it seemed impossible. I certainly didn't know anyone who ever published anything until I went to college. Seeing my name in print seemed as unfeasible as being an astronaut. I did publish a little article in a tiny zine called The Long Island Alternative in the summer between high school and college. It was a satirical essay called "Schmucks for World Peace" -- sort of a critique, from further on the left, of what would soon be called the "political correctness" movement. I didn't get a dime -- it was a zine after all -- but I did get a subscription to the magazine which was run by the guy who worked behind the counter at the local comic store. I was too embarrassed to introduce myself to him, but he did recognize my name once when I went to go pick up some comics that the store was holding for me, and he told me that "everybody" was talking about my essay.

I ended up getting into media arts in college and for several years worked in film and video -- I did everything from QVC segments to feature films as a freelance best boy, electrician, and gaffer, plus some camera operation. In grad school, I was asked by professors to turn a couple of my term papers into essays for publication and did so, and that was nice. When the media work dried up in the mid-1990s, during the "jobless recovery" of the Clinton mid-term years, I decided I would try to close the gap by writing. I knew a lot about the Internet, which was still an undiscovered country to a lot of people, so had an instant pitch for magazines -- "Hey, look at what people do on the Internet!" I also could write for websites, since I understood the web.

Also, I always read a fair amount of SF and fantasy. Not so much horror actually, except for the very old stuff (Poe, James) and a few thrillers. I got involved with playing some role-playing games with contemporary settings (White Wolf and the like) and enjoyed them and started reading some darker stuff. I also moved in with a woman who had a large collection of genre material and read all of that. So I took some time and started writing short stories mainly because she thought I could. I wrote SF and horror because it seemed a bit more feasible to me to write satire that way, and because I had no real experience with summer houses or extramarital affairs or trips overseas which would allow me to discover my "authenticity", which is what the stories in the non-genre magazines and journals I looked at seemed to be about. Two years later, I sold my first one. Then a year later, I sold another, and also a novella to a small publisher that, like me, had its start in the zine scene.

I suppose this all is a very roundabout way of saying, "I fell into it."


Your first collection, 3000 MPH In Every Direction At Once, focused more on your often satirical science fiction stories, while your new collection, which is coming out soon, looks like it collects more of your horror stories than 3000 MPH did, including a brand new horror novella. Do you find yourself moving away from science fiction and more toward the dark side these days, or are you happy to continue straddling genres?


Well, the novella "Seventh Son of a Seventh Son" is about a kid who works in his father's diner and decides to kill the President. There are satirical elements in it. I suppose that the main difference is that over the last four years, I've been more frequently solicited by horror publishers than by SF publishers, likely because of Move Under Ground . The few SF pieces I have written, like the novelette "The Uncanny Valley" or the story that appeared in Nature, "A Sudden Absence of Bees" also have horrific themes and set pieces. My main interest in writing stories for readers is that I want those readers to keep my stories in mind after reading. Horror is a good way to do that. SF seems to have a somewhat stronger tendency toward the beginning-middle-end strategy which leaves the reader completely satisfied. Of course, if one is completely satisfied, one spends no time afterward thinking about the story. Horror depends, in part, on leaving the reader with a question or a doubt, kindling some small anxieties afterward. That's my preference.


Your 2004 novel Move Under Ground was probably the most original novel I read that year, dropping real life Beat writer Jack Kerouac into the cosmic horror milieu of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, but that's not the only time you've touched on Lovecraft's work. You have a number of stories that dip into the Mythos, in fact, and if I recall, one that actually includes Lovecraft himself as a character. Would you consider old Howard Phillips one of your biggest influences, or is it something else that keeps you drawing from his tenebrous, unnamable well?


It's funny; I'd name people like John Fante as strong influences, despite writing almost nothing at all like Fante, before Lovecraft. I don't write like Lovecraft unless I'm writing as Lovecraft -- I do that trick in two stories that don't appear in the collection: "Jitterbuggin'" and "The Dude Who Collected Lovecraft", which I wrote with Tim Pratt. I like Lovecraftian stuff, absolutely, and like many people around my age I heard about Lovecraft -- Cthulhu references in everything from Dungeons & Dragons and GHOSTBUSTERS cartoons, hearing jokes from nerdy friends, etc.-- long before I sat down to read him. I do think he's a good writer with a powerful command of voice, and I always enjoy how he "builds a case" in his narratives by giving us a narrator and journal entries, and newspaper articles, and testimonies from others, etc. It's harder than it looks and many people don't get just how many voices Lovecraft uses.

The Lovecraft themes are handy for two reasons: readers are familiar with them and eager to read them (so why not fill that need) and because they happen to be true. Humanity is a tiny little bit of pond scum smeared on a tiny marble in an infinite and uncaring universe. Themes that reflect reality actually help the fantasy elements go down.


In addition to being a critically acclaimed author, you're also quite an accomplished editor. You've edited two anthologies so far, The Urban Bizarre and Spicy Slipstream Stories (co-edited with Jay Lake), and were an acquiring editor for the online zine Clarkesworld Magazine for two years before finally taking a position with VIZ Media, where you're editing a new line of Japanese science fiction novels in translation. What's it like working on both sides of the desk? Has being an editor helped you refine your writing skills, or vice-versa?


I like editing fine. It's much easier than writing, I think. It's also fun to be able to send people money (especially when it isn't coming out of my own bank account), but editing has its frustrations as well -- mostly business-related. I'm enjoying myself at VIZ, which is my first full-time day job ever. Editing hasn't really helped my writing much, except insofar that looking at a slushpile revealed to me more fully why the stories I wrote in the first two years of my attempts didn't get published. I'd certainly recommend some participation in the slushpile to anyone who wishes to be a writer. You'll learn the importance, very quickly, of needing a voice and theme that stands out, and that you must signal to the editor and reader immediately -- in the very first paragraph! -- that you actually know what you are doing with words and sentences. Editing won't teach you how to do those things, but just that they are mandatory.


You're currently editing another anthology, due out in 2010, this time from a major publisher, Tor. Tell us a bit about it, and what we can expect to find between its pages.


It's called Haunted Legends , and I am editing it with Ellen Datlow. The concept is that regional ghost stories remain popular, but most books relating the stories of these "true" apparitions tend to be boring reads. Not a surprise, really, as most of them are written by folklorists or professors or local hobbyists, and not by skilled writers. So in Haunted Legends , the writers chose a story and made it their own. We have some great stories by well-known horror writers such as Ramsey Campbell and Joe Lansdale, by newer writers including Carrie Laben and Ekaterina Sedia, and even from people who operate outside the genre, such as the avant-garde writer Lily K. Hoang. The stories themselves are from all over the world: Japan, Vietnam, Australia, Russia, the UK, you name it.


What's on the horizon for Nick Mamatas? Any new novels or stories we can look forward to in the near future?


Well, the big news I suppose is that the imprint of Japanese SF I am working on for VIZ, Haikasoru, will be launched in 2009. We should have a website by the spring and our first titles in the summer. Anyone who liked the VIZ novel Battle Royale definitely wants to keep an eye on the new stuff we're doing.

Coming up for myself, I should have essays on the Poe bicentennary in The Smart Set and Weird Tales in the first half of 2009. My short story, "Five Percent Dilation", which is written in the odd and semi-secret code language of the radical post-black Muslim sect the Nation of Gods and Earth, is going to appear in the religion-themed issue of subTERRAIN , a Canadian literary journal. I have another Lovecraftian story, this one a Lovecraft/Raymond Carver mashup called "That Of Which We Speak When We Speak Of The Unspeakable" coming out in Ellen Datlow's anthology Lovecraft Unbound , which is being published by M Press in either 2010 or 2011. I forget which. But more should be coming up soon as well!

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Check out what else Nick has to say at www.nick-mamatas.com