Spores of doom

From the fungus-webbed ‘House of Usher’ to the maddening, fungus-like wallpaper of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s classic tale of madness, and Ray Bradbury’s account of insidious mushroom dispersal via the US postal system, weird fiction has harboured a thriving culture of fungal horrors throughout the past two centuries. With stories of mycological possession alongside dark, pulpy science fiction monstrous fruiting bodies run amok, this anthology collects the classic with the lost and obscure to trace our fascination with a spore-infested branch of British and American fiction.