What to read when your favorite writer is a monster?

by Jason Ridler

And now, a public service note. Neil Gaiman, one of the most popular and bestselling authors of fantasy fiction, is in the spotlight for allegations of decades of sexual abuse and assorted awfulness. Since so many of my generation of writers grew up with him as a hero, and since so many of his fans enjoyed his author identity as a gentle, Romantic feminist figure, the shock to everyone’s sensibilities about his fiction has been titanic and many people are looking for ways to recalibrate their love of the kind of fantasy he wrote. 

So, I’m offering a list of authors you should read if even thinking about Gaiman’s work gives you grief. All of them are better writers. All of them. I have no idea about their personal lives. How can I? Many are dead! This is strictly a list of writers who should have been celebrated for their work more than he who wrote the absolutely mediocre American Gods.

I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I do. 

1. Tanith Lee: the wild, Romantic, and surreally fun and dark fantasist whose work Gaiman aped and never credited (probably because she was less famous and successful than those he credited, but I digress). Night’s Master, the first of the Flat Earth series, is basically the Sandman comic as novellas. Any short story collection will also do you well. 
2. Elizabeth Hand: America’s best gothic fantasy writer who also writes amazing crime novels, Hand is the trippy, dark heir of Shirley Jackson and Wylding Hall and A Haunting on the Hill will show you why.
3. Theodora Goss: a rising star from my generation, Goss was a star of smart, sharp, short story collections for years. The Strange Case of the Alchemist Daughter is a must for those who want dark fantasy without the patriarchy and instead a sense of fun as well as enchantment. She is also a scholar of Victorian lit, and her anthology celebrating women of the fin-de-siecle era may be of interest, too!
4. Isabelle Allende: Chile’s most famous and prodigious magic realist, Allende’s body of work is stunning, from her now-classic debut The House of the Spirits to, believe it or not, a revival and reconstruction of the pulp hero Zorro!
5. Kelly Link: perhaps the most skilled and talented writer of short fantasy stories, Link is so good that I had to become a better reader to understand how she creates such wild and often unconventional tales! Magic for Beginners slayed when it came out, but her debut novel, The Book of Love, sounds like an apt selection for this list.  
6. Kathe Koja: the breakout star from the innovative Dell Abyss horror line of the 1990s, Koja writes across genres, but The Cipher was the award-winner that made everyone take notice that horror and dark fantasy was more than Stephen King pastiche and could be tough, nasty, and cool. She also does kids’ books!
7. Jane Yolen: Good god, Yolen is a breath of fresh air! She wrote one of the few “happy” books about being a writer (Take Joy), but she is a mean-hand when it comes to writing fantasy. If you have younger kids, or even early teens, check out her illustrated works and her retelling of Arthurian legends. But if you want her take on myths and fantasy, Finding Baba Yaga is a grand place to start.
8. Gemma Files: One of the best short storiests in horror and has been for over two decades. Gemma has a deep vein of talent for examining obsessions and surreal states of mind. Kissing Carrion is a great collection, but Experimental Film, about dark magic and old movies, speaks to the Gen-Xers who all got film degrees from VCR University. Gemma is also a legit film critic and authority, so her secret knowledge of the birth of silent movies makes this work arcanely detailed and fun to read.
9. Melanie Tem: Melanie came to horror fiction via literary and poetry roads, but her love of language and stories found dark places to go in such wild novels as Prodigal and Black River. Her novel with her husband Steven, The Man on the Ceiling, remains my favorite about grief and turning tragedy into fiction to reclaim your sanity when you lose a loved one. Fucking brilliant.
10. Silvia Moreno-Garcia: Mexican Gothic smashed records and changed hearts and minds when  it debuted, but Moreno-Garcia’s body of work is so eclectic and diverse that you can grab sinister pulp crime work or novels about a Mayan god and the teenage girl who has to put up with his bullshit, too.   

Those are the biggies. Here’s a shorter list of great writers and single works to keep you going:

• Nick Mamatas: Move Under Ground: imagine if American Gods was about Jack Kerouac fighting Cthulhu and the novel didn’t suck. See also The Damned Highway, written with Brian Keene, for more “better than American Gods” work via Hunter S. Thompson and Elder Gods!
• Graham Joyce: How to Make Friends with Demons: urban fantasy with a flawed protagonist trying to make good choices while cataloging demons hiding in England as his mind warps.
• Jonathan Caroll: Bones of the Moon: basically a more tender and considered version of the Sandman’s Game of You story, minus the Barbie bullshit.
• Steve Tem: Deadfall Hotel: the single-best haunted house novel since House of Leaves, wild, dark, funny and surreal. It’s also a father-daughter novel done well.
• Peter S. Beagle: The Last Unicorn: break-your-heart Romantic fantasy from one of the US’s best genre writers, and one who has been through hell to get his rights back for the book and to get out of abuse from various so-called friends.

And that’s just a sliver of wonderful work by writers of the dark fantastic that do what Gaiman did but much, much better.  

Jason Ridler is a writer, historian, and educator. He teaches history for Johns Hopkins University, has published seven novels and over seventy short stories, and is the author of the career guide Undefeated: Stay a Writer Against the Odds. A former punk musician and cemetery groundskeeper, he also teaches creative writing in Silicon Valley.