Spotlight: Long Division: Stories of Social Decay, Societal Collapse, and Bad Manners

Long Division is a compendium of stories highlighting the fractures in our society. Running the gamut from Chuck Palahniuk’s body fluid-heavy yarn about a porn star’s vengeful ghost, Celeste, to Mason Ian Bundschuh’s generational tale of surviving the apocalypse, Broken Sky Road, the sheer variety of the stories keeps this anthology humming along. 

The tales are nicely balance, spinning yarns that vary in tone from the outright comedic to the downright nihilistic. Some highlights include Laird Barron’s apocalyptically Lovecraftian Versus Versus and Clay McLeod Chapman’s achingly down-to-earth The Nocturnal Gardener. Ngo Binh Anh Rhoa’s S.A.M dissects how sexbots might to rupture family dynamics in the near future and Elizabeth Massie’s Two Schools shines a light on how anonymity has allowed people to indulge in their worst impulses.

Poetry punctuates the fiction, adding breadth to volume’s thorough exploration of the schism that divide us. The anthology kicks off with Zoe Stage’s The Mean Season, setting the tone for the anthology’s incisive look at the fault lines threading to tear society apart. While Jamal Hodge’s The Third Seal bookends the anthology with a look the end results of these divisions.

Editors Doug Murano and Michael Bailey have created a great introduction to an array of talent writers. Anyone wanting to discover some of the best horror writers working today should pick this volume up.

Long Division is available on Amazon and Badhand Book’s website.