Adam's Ladder

by Michael Bailey (Editor), Darren Speegle (Editor)

The future of humankind as an ever-changing organism is a subject of much debate. Where is our evolutionary path leading? Will the next rung take the form of mental transcendence, will it set humankind on a course toward divinity, or will this uncertain path involve a dark and terrible reversion? Co-editors Michael Bailey and Darren Speegle present eighteen tales of dark science fiction that explore the course of evolution, written by some of the best literary minds in the fields of science fiction and horror:

Laird Barron - "Swift to Chase"
Chaz Brenchley - "Ch-ch-changes"
Ramsey Campbell - "How He Helped"
Scott Edelman - "Pity this Busy Monster Not"
Brian Evenson - "Nameless Citizen"
Erinn L. Kemper - "A Laughing Matter"
John Langan - "My Father, Dr. Frankenstein"
Roberta Lannes - "Painting the Burning Fence"
Tim Lebbon - "Strings"
Rena Mason - "I Will Be the Making of You"
Paul Meloy - "The Serile"
Mark Morris - "Undersound"
Lisa Morton - "Eyes of the Beholders"
Gene O'Neill - "Spirits"
Mark Samuels - "An End to Perpetual Motion"
B.E. Scully - "The Mythic Hero Most Likely to Squeeze a Stone"
Jeffrey Thomas - "Sliced Bread"
Damien Angelica Walters - "Filigree, Minotaur, Cyanide, Bloom"

Genres: Horror, Science Fiction, Short Stories, Anthologies, Weird Fiction

304 pages, Hardcover

First published September 29, 2017

About the author

Michael Bailey is a recipient and ten-time nominee of the Bram Stoker Award, a five-time Shirley Jackson Award nominee, and a three-time recipient of the Benjamin Franklin Award, along with several independent publishing accolades. He has written, edited, and published many books of various genres. His latest is Righting Writing, a nonfiction narrative used as curriculum for aspiring writers, and Silent Nightmares: Haunting Stories to Be Told on the Longest Night of the Year, an anthology co-edited with Chuck Palahniuk to be published by Simon & Schuster in fall of 2026. He is also the screenwriter for Madness and Writers, a creative documentary series about writers, and a producer for numerous film projects. Find him online at nettirw.com, or on social media @nettirw. He is represented by Lane Heymont of the Tobias Literary Agency.

Reviews

[Keely · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up for Goodreads

[S.A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

As with all anthologies, there are hits and misses. The high point here is Laird Barron's "Swift to Chase", an insanely great read.

[Scott Rhee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Science fiction fans and horror fans don’t always see eye to eye, which is odd considering that both genres can mesh into something spectacular, if done well. Two stand-out examples are John W. Campbell’s novella “Who Goes There?” (the basis for John Carpenter’s 1982 classic film “The Thing”) and Ridley Scott’s 1979 film “Alien”, both superb fusions of sci-fi and horror.

Co-editors Michael Bailey and Darren Speegle have compiled a collection of short stories in “Adam’s Ladder” that successfully mesh the two genres, creating something new and weird. Indeed, many of the stories and authors in this collection are well-known to fans of the New Weird genre, a contemporary genre that blends numerous genres (noir, sci-fi, fantasy, horror, western, etc.)

As its over-arching theme, each story in this collection examines the potential next steps in man’s evolution. What will humanity look like in 10 years? 50 years? 500 years?

Stand-out stories: Damien Angelica Walters’s “Filigree, Minotaur, Cyanide, Bloom”. In this story, human evolution manifests itself as an apparent global pandemic, and, to those who are less evolved, seems to be more devolution than evolution.

John Langan’s “My Father, Dr. Frankenstein” is cleverly written in the form of endnotes to a longer work, a supposedly nonfiction book about a man dealing with addiction, schizophrenia, and the possibility that his father was a mad scientist bent on genetically jump-starting mankind’s next evolutionary leap.

In Lisa Morton’s “Eyes of the Beholders”, survivors of a failed colonization of an Earth-like planet return to Earth several thousand years later, only to find that humanity has evolved into something virtually unrecognizable.

Laird Barron’s “Swift to Chase” is part spy novel, part grade-B monster movie in which his heroine, super agent Jessica Mace, is recruited by a governmental agency to infiltrate a supervillain’s lair in northern New York State.

While only a few stories in this 18-story collection fell flat for me (even these weren’t bad; I just wasn’t sure how they connected to the over-arching theme of human evolution), each story in “Adam’s Ladder” demonstrates a fascinating—-and, in some cases, truly terrifying—-glance at the possible futures for humankind.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first read of dark science fiction and I found out it’s pretty darn interesting! I enjoyed all the stories here but there were a few I had to shake my head at. Several touched on the idea of making humans adaptable or modifying them to survive climate change and withstand nuclear radiation and acid rain.

I’d like to mention a few that made me think about them after I had finished reading-How He Helped by Ramsey Campbell, Spirts by Gene O’Neill, My Father, Dr. Frankenstein by John Langan, Eye of the Beholders by Lisa Morton and Swift To Chase by Laird Barron.

[Danielle Hennessy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some of these stories were really good and had me gripped. Others not so much. Some were more on the complicated side and they took a while for me to fully understand. Some if them I would happily read a full novel of or even a series of books.