Out There Screaming is another of my favourite anthologies of 2023. 

It contains stories by popular Black authors and new writers, in a wonderful mix of subgenres. 

We have some historical horror, sci-fi, weird fiction, comedy, and one story written as a play. The stories are creepy and demanding of the reader, thoughtful and bizarre at times.

My personal favourites were: 

Reckless Eyeballing by N.K. Jemisin
Wandering Devil by Cadwell Turnbull
The Other One by Violet Allen
The Rider by Tananarive Due
Flicker by L.D. Lewis
Origin Story by Tochi Onyebuchi

Not every story was to my taste, but the standouts were wonderful and will stick with me a long time.

Thank you to Penguin Random House and Netgalley for my review copy of this book.

I thoroughly enjoyed this overall, and I don’t think there was one bad story in the bunch. Per usual when reading any anthology there are stories I like more than others, but I remained engaged throughout the entire book. In my opinion, Out There Screaming is a wonderful mix of horror, science fiction, lore, and social commentary told from the perspective of Black experiences. These stories let us briefly glimpse into dealing with death, grief, racism, technology, and spirituality through their eyes.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me with a complimentary book to read and review in exchange for my honest opinion. #NetGalley

This anthology was a mixed bag of hit or miss, with the majority being either underwhelming, lacking in plot or just not my preferred writing style. The ones I did enjoy were new to me authors that I will be seeking out to read more of their work.
The favorite stories were “Eye & Tooth”, “The Other One” and “The Rider”.

Overall, a solid anthology but not one I’d be recommending to others as a whole.

It is definitely hard to write a review of an anthology because inevitably, some stories are going to work more for you than others.

For me, this collection had more misses for me than hits - I think I expected a bit more on the horror side of things, and was left wanting more scares from most of the stories. I also feel like the length was a little intense; I had a really hard time finishing this because there were so many stories, and as I said, a lot of them didn’t work for what I was in the mood for.

With that said, I did find quite a few new authors through this collection - I look forward to reading their novels!

Thank you Netgalley for this ARC!

Overall this was a great collection of stories. My scores were highly skewed towards 4 & 5 stars. The writing was excellent throughout all stories and the only 1* I gave out was because I really didn’t understand what was going on but I think if you understood, you’d like it (not meant for me and that’s ok 🙂).

I was really happy to see authors that I already had on my TBR list (N.K. Jemisen, Tananarive Due, P. Djeli Clark) and now I have some new ones to add.

Favourite stories:

- The Other One
- Lasirén
- Dark Home
- Flicker
- A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree
- Your Happy Place *** FAVE

Love this collection of shorts so much! This collection is a must read for everyone, especially since each story is written by a BIPOC author. Horror needs diversity and who better to give it to us than the new age master of horror himself Jordan Peele? I mean, with that name behind this collection, you know it's gonna be scary!

I wanted to love this, but I found the stories to be too uneven in quality. Found myself putting the book down too many times without wanting to pick it back up.

This collection of stories was mostly a hit! They went really well together and the visual of a man cutting eyeballs out of his own skin will haunt me forever.

OUT THERE SCREAMING
Edited by Jordan Peele

Summary, per @the.storygraph: "The visionary writer and director of Get Out, Us, and Nope, and founder of Monkeypaw Productions, curates this groundbreaking anthology of all-new stories of Black horror, exploring not only the terrors of the supernatural but the chilling reality of injustice that haunts our nation."

The fact that this is an anthology is a huge strong point of the book. I truly felt like there is a 'little something' for every type of horror-lover, including more 'classic' horror stories, but also speculative fiction, sci-if, and even folklore. There were some stories I'd love to read as a full length novel! If you are looking to diversify your horror bookshelf or if you are not the typical horror reader, I think this would be a strong pick for you!

My favorite 3 stories were: 'Dark Home' by Nnedi Okorafor, 'The Rider' by Tananarive Due, and 'A Grief of the Dead' by Rion Amilcar Scott.

Thank you to Random House and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

Many thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the advanced copy!

This is an excellent collection of horror stories showcasing the incredible talent of black authors. Jordan Peele put together a truly remarkable group. Highly recommend for all horror buffs out there!

This Anthology was really good! I sometimes have a hard time getting through anthologies but this book was really easy for me to get through. I enjoyed the stories! I also appreciate Jordan for getting something like this together. I always like learning about new authors I enjoy!

This is probably my biggest disappointment of the year. I was so excited to read this, it's full of things I should like but for whatever reason it just doesn't work for me. I'm really sad about it. While this wasn't for me, I hope that this finds readers who will enjoy the stories.

This was everything I expected and wanted plus more. Jordan Peele is a lyrical genius and this was a masterpiece.

This collection of stories was absolutely a joy to read. I have new authors that I will be looking at what else they have written.

Definitely one for the bookshelf!!

#NetGalley #OutThereScreaming

Out There Screaming is probably the best horror anthology that I have read. The authors really knocked this out of the park. Every story was strong, unique, and scary as hell. I made the mistake of reading this before bed the first night and had some pretty wicked nightmares. Very disturbing stuff, I loved it.

3.5⭐️

This anthology has a little something for everyone, and is a great read if you’re looking for new horror authors! My personal favorites include:

Reckless Eyeballing
Invasion of the Baby Snatchers
The Other One
The Rider
Dark Home
The Norwood Trouble

I personally found it difficult to sit down and try to tackle this book in one go, and found it better to read one or two stories a week instead to better space them out. I discovered some new authors to watch out for and genres of horror/sci fi that I might not normally read!

This collection of short horror edited by Jordan Peele has a story for very mystery/horror fan. From magic to technology to just old fashioned human meanness, this collection covers multiple topics, and every contributor’s writing is detailed and immersive even in this short format. Readers who are in the mood to be scared shouldn’t look any further than this collection.

Like most anthologies some stories will hit it out of the park and some will fall a bit flat. For me, many of these stories are around a 3 or a 3.5. But the ones that were 5's bumped this up to a 4 star rating. Nice to see familiar authors in there and also great to be introduced to some talented new ones too!

Out There Screaming has a little bit of every type of horror: sci fi, gothic, folktale, as well as, psychological amongst others. The focus is on black authors writing terror filled stories surrounding the injustices that they have experienced.

I tended to really enjoy the scarier ones: A Bird Sings by the Etching Tree is a violent ghost story that lends itself to folk horror with its Cryptid reference. The Rider filled me with goosebumps: a bit of a historical
horror story set during the civil rights era. It was tense and terrifying. Lasirén is an utterly beautiful and devastating aquatic horror tale. Finally, Hide & Seek is filled with magic and monsters.

Like any anthology, there are highs and lows, but Out There Screaming tends to have more highs. The stories are really relevant, especially because of all the racial strife prevalent. Ultimately, in my mind, an anthology is successful if it has me seeking out the authors and their previous work to devour.

Jordan Peele is one of my absolute favorite directors and I think his horror films are some of the cleverest and most thoughtful contributions to the horror genre in recent years. So when I saw his name on an anthology of short horror fiction, I knew I needed to pick it up. Out There Screaming: An Anthology of New Black Horror, edited by Jordan Peele and John Joseph Adams, came out last month, right on the heels of another great horror anthology centering marginalized voices: Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology. Judging by the quality of tales in these two collections, this diversity of voices is definitely here to stay in the horror genre!

Out There Screaming starts with a quite short, yet thoughtful foreword by Jordan Peele in which he compares horror to both the Sunken Place from his 2017 film Get Out and a type of medieval torture dungeon known as an oubliette, which comes from the French word to forget. But contradictorily, as the authors air out their own fears and personal Sunken Places in these stories, the anthology functions as an anti-oubliette by making sure that they are not forgotten. Peele’s foreword is followed by nineteen tales by different authors, ranging from recognized titans of the horror genre like Tananarive Due and P. Djèlí Clark, to authors better known for their science fiction and fantasy such as N.K. Jemison, Rebecca Roanhorse, Nnedi Okorafor, and Tochi Onyebuchi. There were also quite a few newer authors that I was not familiar with. The stories themselves cover a broad range of the horror genre, many with strong sci-fi or fantasy elements in them. There were new takes on classic narratives like alien invasions, climate apocalypses, and zombie attacks, as well as stories unlike any horror I’ve read before. Many of the stories drew on specific elements from African cultures or the cultures of the African diaspora. Some were set in the near future, while others took place during pivotal moments of Black American history. But each story in the collection highlights some element of the experience of being Black in today’s world.

Two of my favorite stories in the collection were both rather bleak apocalypse tales. “Pressure” by Ezra Claytan Daniels is set in a near future where an increasingly erratic climate serves as a subtle backdrop to an intricate family drama up until the moment when it all explodes … or perhaps implodes? The story is written in the second person, which forces the reader to closely identify with the protagonist, a Black man who risks the flash storms and pressure pockets that are now daily hazards of air travel to reunite with his two white cousins. As has been a pattern since childhood, he butts heads with the golden child Andrew, whose arrogance and casual racism always seem to undermine the narrator’s bids for connection. The growing tension between the cousins is reflected in a very literal increase in air pressure which is innocuously hinted at throughout the story until it culminates in a terrifying moment at the end. “Flicker” by L.D. Lewis depicts another sort of apocalypse by slow degrees. In this story the world is plagued by total blackouts in which darkness engulfs the world for increasingly long periods of time. Along with the chaos, plane crashes, and rampant looting that naturally accompany them, the blackouts also coincide with other strange glitches in reality that seem to imply that life as we know it is a simulation which now appears to be degrading. Kam, a young woman who loses her brother in the first blackout and tries to flee to safety with her friends after the second, is forced to face the hopelessness and inevitability of the end of the world.

As terrifying as these apocalypses can be, I think the scariest stories in the anthology are “Reckless Eyeballing” by N.K Jemison and “Your Happy Place” by Terence Taylor. “Reckless Eyeballing” is the very first story and much of its horror comes from the fact that it is told from the point of view of a deeply corrupt traffic cop whose internal monologue contains self-justifications for all sorts of heinous behavior. But while Carl rationalizes away any guilt he might feel, it manifests instead as a strange phenomenon he mistakenly believes to be a new superpower: the headlights on certain cars appear to him as uncannily realistic human eyes. Carl targets the owners of these cars on increasingly flimsy pretexts, convinced that he is being given some secret insight into their guilt. He remains in denial about his own crimes right to the end of the story, which climaxes in a stomach-twisting scene of visceral body horror. Guilt is also a central theme in “Your Happy Place,” though Taylor’s protagonist is much more sympathetic. It’s hard to talk about this one without completely spoiling it, so I’ll just say that it uses the framework similar to the Matrix films to explore the ethical issues of the for-profit prison industrial complex and how a loophole in the Thirteenth Amendment allows prison labor to be exploited as a modern form of slavery.

If you love Jordan Peele’s horror films, you don’t want to miss out on this anthology of Black horror.