Spores of Doom

An anthology exploring a popular trope of modern horror media, tracing its roots in classic literature. Featuring classic stories from Edgar Allan Poe, William Hope Hodgson, Ray Bradbury and H. P. Lovecraft alongside obscure finds from the British Library collections. Including mushroom imagery from the British Library collections by the master of the fungal illustration, Fritz Leuba. From the fungus-webbed House of Usher to the maddening, fungus-like wallpaper of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's classic tale of madness, and Ray Bradbury's account of insidious mushroom dispersal via the US postal system, weird fiction has harboured a thriving culture of fungal horrors throughout the past two centuries. With stories of mycological possession alongside dark, pulpy science fiction monstrous fruiting bodies run amok, this new anthology collects the classic with the lost and obscure to trace our fascination with a spore-infested branch of British and American fiction.