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When I first conceived of the idea for this anthology, I knew I’d have no trouble filling the pages, because just about every writer of weird short fiction has taken a crack at the Devil at some point (even I have, though modesty forbade me including any of my stories here), and I had to leave out as many good stories as I put in. It seemed appropriate-after all, the Devil appears in many guises, from long-suffering employee of God to prideful fallen angel to pure malevolent force of nature to suave collector of souls. Glover’s “MetaPhysics.”įor the sake of variety I included a few edge cases-the Devil as seen through a glass darkly, say-like Michael Chabon’s dark oppositional deities in “The God of Dark Laughter”, the self-proclaimed Great Beast 666 (better known as Aleister Crowley, or “Alick” to his friends) in “Summon, Bind, Banish” by Nick Mamatas, and the mysterious furious unnatural force at work in China Miéville’s “Details”. And consider the scientifically-savvy title character of Mark Twain’s “Sold to Satan” as compared to the scientifically-thwarted villain of Elizabeth M. There were a few narrative pairings I couldn’t resist, like putting Stephen King’s “The Man in the Black Suit” next to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “Young Goodman Brown,” the story King says inspired the piece.
There are even a few deal-with-the-devil stories, though not as many as you might expect I could have filled another book with the best of those easily, though. There are classics here (“That Hell-Bound Train” by Robert Bloch, “Thus I Refute Beelzy” by John Collier, “The Bottle Imp” by Robert Louis Stevenson), and stories published within the last few years (“Nine Sundays in a Row” by Kris Dikeman, “The King of the Djinn” by David Ackert and Benjamin Rosenbaum). There are funny devils (“A Reversal of Fortune” by Holly Black, “The Power of Speech” by Natalie Babbitt, “Faustfeathers” by John Kessel), scary devils (“The Professor’s Teddy Bear” by Theodore Sturgeon, “The Price” by Neil Gaiman) and just plain weird devils (Kelly Link’s “Lull”, Jonathan Carroll’s “The Heidelberg Cylinder”, Richard Butner’s “Ash City Stomp”). Most of the stories in this book are about the Capital-D-Devil in his various guises, from the fiddle-playing trickster of Charles de Lint’s “Ten for the Devil” to the hard-nosed businessman of Carrie Richerson’s “… With By Good Intentions” to the hitchhiking prankster of Jeffrey Ford’s “On the Road to New Egypt” to the mindless gnawing monster of Dante’s Inferno. I like stories about the Adversary in all his incarnations. And, as always, much love to my wife Heather Shaw for her support and help in carving out time for me to do projects like this.Īnd, most importantly: Thank you, Satan! I couldn’t have done it without you. Special thanks to John Joseph Adams for giving me advice (both theoretical and practical) on the care and feeding of anthologies, and to the many readers and writers who suggested devil-related stories for me to consider-I wish I could have included more of them. Many thanks also to the authors (and their representatives) who were kind enough to allow me to reprint their work. Thanks to my publisher Jeremy Lassen for agreeing to let me turn my love of devilish things into a book, and to my agent Ginger Clark for expediting the deal. Glover, Charles Stross, Scott Westerfeld, Jan Wildt, James Morrow, Elizabeth Bear, Jay Lake, Jeffrey Ford, Robert Bloch, Michael Chabon, David Ackert, Benjamin Rosenbaum, Nick Mamatas, Robert Louis Stevenson, Kage Baker, Carrie Richerson, Kris Dikeman, Kelly Link, China Miéville, Scott Bradfield, John Kessel, Theodore Sturgeon, Jonathan Carroll, David J. Tim Pratt, Neil Gaiman, Andy Duncan, Richard Butner, Charles de Lint, Holly Black, Stephen King, Natalie Babbitt, Sarah Zettel, Mark Twain, Elizabeth M.