Creeping, crawling, slithering horror, science fiction and fantasy stories. Edited by Allen Ashley. Cover artwork by Peter Coleborn.
ISBN 978-0-9572962-2-0. Paperback 390 pages, £11.99.
 
What is this lingering fear of insects, arachnids, arthropods, crustaceans and those that slither... is it a hangover from the survival battles in the savannah or does it go deeper and further back than that in our evolutionary heritage?
Unchallenged, the locusts, the maggots, the worms, the flies, the aphids and the termites may consume and destroy all that we have and hold dear.
 
Creeping, slithering, crawling horror, science fiction & fantasy stories by nineteen of today’s top authors.
 
David Birch, Gary Budgen , Adrian Cole, Storm Constantine, Andrew Darlington, Pauline E. Dungate, Dennis Etchison, Edmund Glasby, John Grant, Terry Grimwood, Andrew Hook, Mark Howard Jones, Alan Knott, Robin Lupton, Ralph Robert Moore, Richard Mosses, Marion Pitman, David Rix, David Turnbull
 
"Storm Constantine’s ‘In the Earth’ is told from the viewpoint of the child Mawde, who comes to realise that there is something very sinister about her cousin Jeryl, manifested in her cruelty to insects. The story captures perfectly the wonder of country life and the magic of the natural world when seen through the eyes of an impressionable child, but equally it renders true the dark and malevolent powers that reside in such a setting, and the ways in which they can be manipulated. Everything here is suggestion, a chain of coincidence inflated into something terrible, but with the possibility that just maybe there is something to it, that Jeryl has secret powers, and this ambiguity is what makes the story work so well." (From the review in Black Static magazine)