I’m very proud to announce the official table of contents for Fungi, the anthology of fungus-themed stories that I’ve been co-editing with Silvia Moreno-Garcia for Innsmouth Free Press. We had a lot of great writers contribute a lot of great stories, and if logistics had permitted we could have put together an anthology twice as thick as this one. As it was, we had to leave more great stories than we’d have liked on the cutting room floor, but I think the final table of contents is really awesome, if I do say so myself.

The book will be released in paperback and e-book varieties, as well as in a limited-edition hardcover which will feature three extra stories. Without further ado, here’s the lineup:

• Ann K. Schwader, “Cordyceps zombii” (poem)
• A.C. Wise, “Where Dead Men Go to Dream”
• Andrew Penn Romine, “Last Bloom on the Sage”
• Camille Alexa, “His Sweet Truffle of a Girl”
• Chadwick Ginther, “First They Came for the Pigs”
• Daniel Mills, “Dust From a Dark Flower”
• Ian Rogers, “Out of the Blue”
• Jane Hertenstein, “Wild Mushrooms”
• Jeff Vandermeer, “Corpse Mouth and Spore Nose”
• John Langan, “Hyphae”
• Julio Toro San Martin, “A Monster In The Midst”
• Kris Reisz, “The Pilgrims of Parthen”
• Laird Barron, “Gamma”
• Lavie Tidhar, “The White Hands”
• Lisa M. Bradley, “The Pearl in the Oyster and the Oyster Under Glass”
• Molly Tanzer and Jesse Bullington, “Tubby McMungus, Fat From Fungus”
• Nick Mamatas, “The Shaft Through The Middle of It All”
• Paul Tremblay, “Our Stories Will Live Forever”
• Polenth Blake, “Letters to a Fungus”
• Richard Gavin, “Goatsbride”
• Simon Strantzas, “Go Home Again”
• Steve Berman, “Kum, Raúl (The Unknown Terror) – b. 1925, d. 1957”
• W.H. Pugmire, “Midnight Mushrumps”

The three extra stories included in the hardcover edition are:

• E. Catherine Tobler, “New Feet Within My Garden Go”
• J.T. Glover, “The Flaming Exodus of the Greifswald Grimoire”
• Claude Lalumière, “Big Guy and Little Guy’s Survivalist Adventure”

It was a couple of years ago at Readercon when I first pitched the idea of a weird fungus anthology. Not to a publisher or anything, just to the writers around one of the tables in the bar. But even before that, I’d been thinking about it for a long time.

There’s a rich vein of fungal stories that runs through weird fiction, from Hodgson’s “Voice in the Night” through Lovecraft’s “Fungi from Yuggoth” all the way up to Jeff VanderMeer’s Ambergris books and others, but, to the best of my knowledge, it’s never been mined into an anthology gathered around that theme. Until now.

When I first started writing columns for Innsmouth Free Press, one of the first movies I mentioned to Silvia was the Japanese mushroom-person classic Matango, which she said traumatized her for life. The rest, as they say, is history.

Which is all an incredibly long-winded way of saying that, after talking about it and thinking about it for years, I’m finally going to be co-editing an anthology of weird fungus stories, alongside Silvia, for Innsmouth Free Press. To say that I’m excited about this project would be the worst kind of understatement. We’ve solicited some exciting authors, the official guidelines have gone up as of yesterday, and I’m looking forward to hopefully seeing lots and lots of awesome fungus stories come pouring in once the reading period begins. Between now and then–and throughout as well, I’m sure–I’ll be posting more about the anthology, about what I’m looking for as an editor, about some of my favorite fungus monsters, and so on, so stay tuned!

For years (since at least 2007) I’ve wanted to edit an anthology of dark fungus stories. I love fungus monsters, from William Hope Hodgson’s “Voice in the Night” to Matango to various comic books and video games to the “moldy corpse” enemies from Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. Fungus monsters are (some of) the best monsters, and they’re near and dear to my monster-loving heart.

Well, after all this time, I’m pleased to announce that that anthology is really happening! Back when I first started writing columns for Innsmouth Free Press, Silvia Moreno-Garcia and I had a discussion about Matango, in which I revealed that it was a favorite of mine, and she revealed that it scarred her for life. This, as they say, was the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I won’t trouble you with the specifics, but suffice it to say that somehow between then and now I tricked convinced them to let me co-edit (with Silvia) an anthology of fungus stories.

This’ll be my first anthology as co-editor, and I’ve already learned things I didn’t know about the process, but Silvia has been awesome and patient with me so far. It’s early days yet, so there’s not a lot I can announce, but it is really going to happen! We’ve got some really amazing writers who’ve already agreed to contribute pieces (again, sorry to tease, but they’ll have to stay under wraps for now) and big plans for the anthology, including possibly releasing a limited edition as IFP’s very first hardcover! That may not be much for now, but I promise you’ll be hearing a lot more about this one as it develops!