Wagner was already recognized as a sword-and-sorcery wunderkind for his Howardesque tales of the warrior Kane when he published the book’s lead-off story, ‘‘In the Pines’’, in a 1973 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Where the Summer Ends collects nine long stories, most of which not only represent Wagner’s best work but also some of the most distinguished horror fiction written in the last quarter of the twentieth century. The contents of the two volumes – 35 stories – span 20 years and are arranged largely in chronological order of their publication. The books also include several colleague tributes to Wagner, who died in 1994 at the age of 49, among them ‘‘The Truth Insofar as I Know It’’, David Drake’s illuminating and very sad eulogy to his friend and business partner. For this comprehensive two-volume retrospective of his short horror fiction, editor Stephen Jones gathers the full contents of Wagner’s collections In a Lonely Place (1983) and Why Not You and I? (1987), plus most of the contents of Exorcisms and Ecstasies, a compilation of Wagner’s previously uncollected short fiction that Jones assembled in 1995.
Karl Edward Wagner was among the most talented writers of the generation that helped to put horror on the popular fiction map in the 1970s and ’80s.
