Tucked up in bed after dark, the assembled Revelatorium bookworms have been lately bewitched by Joe Hill’s wonderful collection of short stories 20th Century Ghosts, originally published in 2005 by PS Publishing, reissued last autumn by Gollancz.

Mr Hill is a master of what they call ‘slipstream’ – speculative and weird tales freighted with the emotional resonance and character depth of mainstream fiction (y’know, the kind that wins prizes and doesn’t get ghetto-ised as ‘genre’). His Locke & Key comics sell out as fast as IDW Publishing can get them on the stands.

Anyway, 20th Century Ghosts is one of the most purely entertaining and imaginative short story collections we’ve read since Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things. The title tale is a lovely haunted cinema allegory. There’s a bloodcurdling child abduction chiller called ‘The Black Phone’. ‘Last Breath’ is the kind of story that follows you around after lights out and makes the floorboards creak. There’s a Metamorphosis-meets-atomic-monster B movie riff called ‘You Will Hear The Locust Sing’. ‘My Father’s Mask’ is one of the plain weirdest things we’ve ever read. And if ‘Pop Art’ doesn’t tenderise you at least a little bit, you’ve got a bag of nails for a heart.

Here’s an interview we did last year, to mark the publication of Joe’s excellent debut novel Heart-Shaped Box.

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