Read Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea Online
Authors: Caitlin R. Kiernan
False/Starts: Being a Compendium of Beginnings
2005, Subterranean Press
The Merewife (a prologue)
2005, Subterranean Press
The Little Damned Book of Days
2005, Subterranean Press
Highway 97
2006, Subterranean Press
The Black Alphabet (A Primer)
2007, Subterranean Press
Tails of Tales of Pain and Wonder
2007, Subterranean Press
B is for Beginnings
2009, Subterranean Press
Sanderlings
2010, Subterranean Press
The Crimson Alphabet (Another Primer)
2011, Subterranean Press
The Yellow Book
2012, “Ex Libris” and “The Yellow Alphabet,” Subterranean Press
False/Starts II: Being Another Compendium of Beginnings
2015, Subterranean Press
Novels
The Crow: The Lazarus Heart
(writing as Poppy Z. Brite) 1998, Harper Prism
Silk
1998, Roc/NAL
Threshold
2001, Roc/NAL
Low Red Moon
2003, Roc/NAL
The Five of Cups
2003, Subterranean Press
Murder of Angels
2004, Roc/NAL
Daughter of Hounds
2007, Roc/NAL
Beowulf
2007 (film novelization), Harper Entertainment
The Red Tree
2009 Roc/NAL
The Drowning Girl: A Memoir
2012, Roc/NAL
As Kathleen Tierney:
Blood Oranges
2013, Roc/NAL
Red Delicious
2014, Roc/NAL
Cherry Bomb
2015, Roc/NAL
Poetry
“Zelda Fitzgerald in Ballet Attire”
2000,
Tales of Pain and Wonder,
Gauntlet Publishing
“Aperçu”
2008,
Tales of Pain and Wonder
, Suterranean Press
“Atlantis”
2012,
Strange Horizons
(online publication); reprint 2015,
Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume Two)
2015, Subterranean Press
Comics and Graphic Novels
The Dreaming
(DC Comics/Vertigo; October 1997–May 2001)
The Dreaming
#17–19,
“Souvenirs”
(October ’97–December ’97)
The Dreaming
#22–24,
“An Unkindness of One”
(March ’98–May ’98)
The Dreaming
#26,
“Restitution”
(July ’98)
The Dreaming
#27,
“Stormy Weather”
(July ’98)
The Dreaming
#28,
“Dreams the Burning Dream”
(August ’98)
The Dreaming
#30,
“Temporary Overflow”
(September ’98)
The Dreaming
#31,
“November Eve”
(coauthored with Peter Hogan; December ’98)
The Dreaming
#33,
“Dream Below”
(February ’99)
The Dreaming
#34,
“Ruin”
(March ’99)
The Dreaming
#35,
“Kaleidoscope”
(April ’99)
The Dreaming
#36,
“Slow Dying”
(May ’99)
The Dreaming
#37,
“Pariah”
(June ’99)
The Dreaming
#38,
“Apostate”
(July ’99)
The Dreaming
#39,
“The Lost Language of Flowers
(August ’99)
The Dreaming
#40,
“New Orleans for Free”
(September ’99)
The Dreaming
#41,
“The Bittersweet Scent of Opium”
(October ’99)
The Dreaming
#42,
“Detonation Boulevard”
(November ’99)
The Dreaming
#43,
“The Two Trees”
(December ’99)
The Dreaming
#44,
“Homesick”
(January ’00)
The Dreaming
#45,
“Masques & Hedgehogs”
(February ’00)
The Dreaming
#46,
“Mirror, Mirror”
(March ’00)
The Dreaming
#47,
“Trinket”
(April ’00)
The Dreaming
#48,
“Scary Monsters”
(May ’00)
The Dreaming
#49,
“Shatter”
(June ’00)
The Dreaming
#50,
“Restoration”
(July ’00)
The Dreaming
#51,
“Second Sight”
(August ’00)
The Dreaming
#52–54,
“Exiles”
(September ’00–November ’00)
The Dreaming
#56,
“The First Adventure of Miss Catterina Poe”
(January ’01)
The Dreaming
#57–60,
“Rise”
(February’01–May ’01; series finale)
Vertigo: Winter’s Edge
#1,
“The Dreaming: Deck the Halls”
(’98; coauthored with Peter Hogan)
Vertigo: Winter’s Edge
#2,
“The Dreaming: Marble Halls”
(’99)
Vertigo: Winter’s Edge
#3,
“The Dreaming: Borealis”
(’00)
The Girl Who Would Be Death
(four-issue miniseries; 1998–1999)
The Sandman Presents: Bast: Eternity Game
(three-issue miniseries; 2002)
Alabaster: Wolves
(ed. Rachel Edidin, Dark Horse Comics; five-issue miniseries, 2012; hardback collection, 2013)
Alabaster: Boxcar Tales
(ed. Rachel Edidin, and Daniel Chabon, Dark Horse Presents; November 2012–December 2013; hardback released as
Alabaster: Grimmer Tales
, April 2014)
Alabaster: The Good, the Bad, and the Bird
(ed. Daniel Chabon, Dark Horse Comics, five-issue miniseries, 2015)
Scientific Publications
Wright, Kenneth R. 1985a.
A New Specimen of
Globidens alabamaensis
from Alabama.
Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science
56(3):102.
Wright, K. R. 1985b.
What (If Anything) is
Tylosaurus zangerli
?
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 45th Annual Meeting, Rapid City, SD, poster session with abstract.
Kiernan, K. R. 1985c.
A New Specimen of
Globidens alabamaensis
from Alabama.
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 45th Annual Meeting, Rapid City, SD, platform session with abstract.
Wright, K. R. 1986a.
A Preliminary Report on the Biostratigraphic Zonation of Alabama Mosasaurs.
Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science
57:146.
Wright, K. R. 1986b.
On the Stratigraphic Distribution of Mosasaurs in Western and Central Alabama.
Abstracts, North American Paleontological Convention
I
V
, Boulder, CO: A51.
Wright, K. R. 1986c
. On the Stratigraphic Distribution of Mosasaurs in Western and Central Alabama.
Society of Vertebrate Paleontology 46th Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, platform session with abstract.
Wright, K. R. 1987.
The Mosasaur
Clidastes
: The Specimens and New Problems.
Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science
58:99.
Wright, K. R. 1988a.
The First Record of
Clidastes liodontus
(Squamata, Mosasauridae) from the Eastern United States.
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
8:343-345.
Wright. K. R. and Shannon, S. W. 1988b.
Selmasaurus russelli,
a New Plioplatecarpine Mosasaur from Alabama.
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
8:102-107.
Wright, K. R. 1988
c. On the Taxonomic Status of
Moanasaurus mangahouangae
Wiffen (Squamata: Mosasauridae).
Journal of Paleontology
61(1):126-127.
Wright, K. R. 1988d.
A New Specimen of
Halisaurus platyspondylus
(Squamata: Mosasauridae) from the Navesink Formation (Maestrichtian) of New Jersey.
Journal of Paleontology
8(3):A146.
Wright, K. R. and Varner, Daniel 1988.
Fleshing-Out the Mosasaurs (Squamata: Mosasauridae).
Journal of Paleontology
8(3): A147.
Wright, K. R. and Williams, G. Dent 1989.
Vertebrate Fossils of the Blufftown Formation.
Journal of the Alabama Academy of Science
60(3):
Kiernan, C. R. 1992.
Clidastes
Cope, 1868 (Reptilia, Sauria): proposed designation of
Clidastes propython
Cope, 1869 as the type species.
Bulletin of Zoological Nomenclature
49:137–139.
Schwimmer, D. R. and Kiernan, C. R. 2001
. Eastern Late Cretaceous theropods in North America and the crossing of the Interior Seaway.
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
21(3):99A.
Kiernan, C. R. 2002.
Stratigraphic distribution and habitat segregation of mosasaurs in the Upper Cretaceous of western and central Alabama, with an historical review of Alabama mosasaur discoveries.
Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology
22(1):91-103.
Kiernan, C. R., and Schwimmer, D. R. 2004.
First record of a velociraptorine theropod (Tetanurae, Dromaeosauridae) from the Eastern Gulf Coastal United States.
The Mosasaur
7:89-93.
Miscellany (Non-Fiction)
“Transmeditations”
1992-1993,
The Alabama Forum
(monthly column), Lambda, Inc.
“Approximately 2,000 Words About Poppy Z. Brite”
1997
World Horror Convention Program Book,
Horror Writers of America
“...And in Closing (For Now)”
1998 afterword for
Are You Loathsome Tonight
, Poppy Z. Brite; Gauntlet Press
“Foreword”
to
Gloomcookie Vol. 1
2001, Serena Valentino and Ted Naifeh, Slave Labor Graphics Pub.
“Introduction”
to
Kissing Carrion
2003, Gemma Files, Prime Books
“
Skin
by Kathe Koja”
2005
Horror: Another 100 Best Books
, Carroll & Graf
“Notes From A Damned Life”
2007
Weird Tales
(Apr.-May #444)
“Awful Things”
2007
Locus
(May #556)
“The Most Beautiful Music I’ve Ever Read”
2008 Introduction for Ray Bradbury’s
The Day It Rained Forever
, PS Publishing
“Lovecraft and I”
2011
Lovecraft Annual
(August #5), Hippocampus Press
Copyright © 2015 by Caitlín R. Kiernan
Acknowledgements
As I said in the acknowledgements to
Volume One,
given the scope of a book of this nature, there really is no way to thank everyone who ought to be thanked or to recognize the efforts of everyone who should be recognized. But here’s a special thank you to the editors and publishers who solicited a number of these stories and first gave them homes: Lou Anders, Neil Clarke, Ellen Datlow, and Jonathan Strahan. And
very
special thanks to the many subscribers of
Sirenia Digest,
as most of these stories would not exist without you. Indeed, it is worth noting that twenty of the twenty-eight stories in the book were written for and first appeared in
Sirenia Digest.
Once again, Lee Moyers has provided a portrait of a truer me than is visible with the naked eye (and has given me
Selmasaurus kiernanae,
realized). Neil Gaiman lent me a beautiful cabin in the Catskills in which to hang with the ghost of Bob Dylan and survive the editing and proofreading of this volume; thanks also to Augusta Ogden and Philip Marshall, who together insured that my two stays in Woodstock during the winter of 2014-2015 were comfortable. I am beholden to S. T. Joshi for his introduction, as I simply could not seem to pull one together for this book. Vince Locke, Richard Kirk, Steve Lieber, and Dark Horse Comics permitted me to reprint the artwork in the limited edition. Thanks to my agent, Merrilee Heifetz of Writers House, for sticking with me all these years. Greer Gilman read an early draft of “Atlantis” and offered valuable criticism. Sonya Taaffe assisted with the proofreading. A special thanks to the Jenks Society for Lost Museums, Brown University and to Christopher Geissler of the John Hay Library, Brown University. And of course, I am grateful to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press who suggested and published these two volumes. But above all, thank you, Kathryn, still my bear, my goat girl, my cranky, melancholic love.
About the Author
T
he New York Times
recently called Caitlín R. Kiernan “one of our essential writers of dark fiction” and S. T. Joshi has declared “…hers is now the voice of weird fiction.” Caitlín’s novels include
Silk, Threshold, Low Red Moon, Daughter of Hounds,
The Red Tree
(nominated for the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy awards), and
The Drowning Girl: A Memoir
(winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. and Bram Stoker awards, nominated for the Nebula, World Fantasy, British Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Locus, and Shirley Jackson awards). To date, her short fiction has been collected in thirteen volumes, including
Tales of Pain and Wonder, From Weird and Distant Shores, Alabaster, A is for Alien, The Ammonite Violin & Others, Confessions of a Five-Chambered Heart, Two Worlds and In Between: The Best of Caitlín R. Kiernan (Volume One),
and the Fantasy Award winning
The Ape’s Wife and Other Stories.
She has also won a World Fantasy Award for Best Short Fiction for “The Prayer of Ninety Cats.” During the 1990s she wrote
The Dreaming
for DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint, and has recently completed
Alabaster
for Dark Horse Comics. The first volume,
Alabaster: Wolves,
received the Bram Stoker Award. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her partner, Kathryn Pollnac.
But all she ever
wanted
was to be a paleontologist…
About the Font
This book was set in Garamond, a typeface named after the French punch-cutter Claude Garamond (c. 1480–1561). Garamond has been chosen here for its ability to convey a sense of fluidity and consistency. It has been chosen by the author because this typeface is among the most legible and readable old-style serif print typefaces. In terms of ink usage, Garamond is also considered to be one of the most eco-friendly major fonts.