Reading horror fiction has surely always been, at least in part, about experiencing that frisson of fear. And in the mid ’90s, as computer games and hand-held consoles became both more widespread and more sophisticated, mass-market consumers could get that frisson – that adrenalin hit – from a much more immediate, multi-coloured stereo-surround sound source than books.

Games like the House of the Dead series, which literally threw zombies at you and let you blast them into greasy lumps with large-calibre weapons, provided an instant and repetitive hit without the (for many, or even most) tedious chore of having to wade through a few hundred pages of prose for the payoffs.

There are lots of other factors that contributed to the decline of mainstream horror at the time – not least of which was publisher’s appalling record for supporting horror authors with effective marketing spend – but House of the Dead was a definite book-killer, I reckon.

Fantasy, of course, has moved on from the post-Tolkien days, with George R R Martin, China Mieville and others broadening the genre. Again, UK publishers aren’t looking for a new Brooks or Eddings, any more than they’re looking for a new King or Herbert. They are dealing with where the genre is now, not where it was ten or twenty years ago.

As a publisher for fifteen years and an agent more recently, I’m aware that things can move quickly in the industry, although there is often a more organic change, and one thing for sure: no new author being considered by a UK publisher in 2006 will be compared with long-term bestsellers, but with those writers who have become successful in the last few years. Those are the people with whom a publisher’s sales director can make comparison when they speak to W H Smiths head office…

Horror isn’t really my thing (except Phil Rickman, who is great) but I think it has suffered very badly from the whole “target market is 15 year old boys” problem that has plagued fantasy until very recently. The idea of horror for grown-ups appears to have temporarily eluded the feeble minds of marketting departments in the publishing world.

Most non-genre, mainstream readers need horror that is only slightly tangential to the real world, like The Shining, say, rather than a world where vampires and werewolves are the norm, imo.

And you know why? Buffy the Vampire Slayer. That show made such an impact on the mass-consciousness of the horror-reading public that now vampires, werewolves and the like are seen as alternative lifestyle choices rather than things that go bump in the night… well, depending on your interpretation of ‘bump’ obviously (Laurell K. Hamilton, anyone?)

And Orbit are riding that particular wave in a Big way…