Spores of Doom: Dank Tales of the Fungal Weird

by Aaron Worth (Editor), Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Clark Ashton Smith

"There was a slight, sickening noise of tearing… one of the branch-like arms was detaching itself from the surrounding grey masses… The head of the thing — a shapeless grey ball, inclined in my direction."

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 new anthology collects the classic with the lost and obscure to trace our fascination with a spore-infested branch of British and American fiction.

Stories included:
• Sylvia Plath - Mushrooms
• William Hope Hodgson - The Voice in the Night
• Edgar Allan Poe - The Fall of the House of Usher
• Charlotte Perkins Gilman - The Yellow Wall-Paper
• H.P. Lovecraft - The Shunned House
• H.G. Wells - The Purple Pilaeus
• Julia Horatia Ewing - The Fiddler in the Fairy Ring
• E.F. Benson - How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery
• Clark Ashton Smith - The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis
• H.F. Heard - The Great Fog
• Robert Aickman - The Stains
• Mark Samuels - Cesare Thodol: Some Lines Written on a Wall
• Aaron Worth - The Mykophagoi

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Anthologies, Gothic, Classics, Fiction, Halloween

317 pages, Paperback

First published March 27, 2025

Reviews

[KDS · Rating 4 out of 5]

This might well be one of the strongest collections of weird horror in the Tales of the Weird series. It's let down slightly by a truly awful introduction which is not only pretentious, but unfocused, wordy and riddled with as many parantheses as the editor could cram in. Luckily the intros at the start of each tale are much more succint and informative.

The stories themslves range from very good to the most iconic of the "weird" genre. Amongst them we have; Poe's oppressive 'The Fall of the House of Usher', Charlotte Perkins' brilliant feminist horror 'The Yellow Wallpaper', Ashton Smith's terrifying 'Vaults of Yoh Vombis', Lovecraft's creeping dread 'The Shunned House' and a thought provoking (if plot hole ridden) ecological piece of social change in 'The Great Fog'. There is even a great little William Hope Hodgson story, along with a longer form Robert Aickman. Unlike other books in the series, these aren't in date order, but it doesn't really matter at all.

I'm unconvinced some of these are truly fungal focused. 'The Yellow Wallpaper' is tenuous at best and 'The Fall of House of Usher' specifically mentions fungus on the outer walls once. Thematically these few are hardly on par with a story about a crew assimilated by lichen or a world that becomes so overun by a new mould, it changes civilisation forever.

But, they are excellent stories. And if you want an entry point anthology into the genre of the weird, this (mostly) mycological themed collection is as good as any out there.

[p. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a mix of popular and lesser know authors. It is nice that this is a chance for some readers to discover some of the most notable works of weird fiction but I personally enjoy the series more so for the chance to read lesser known stories and authors. But this is a nicely creepy topic so it was still a pretty successful anthology.

Favourite entries (not mentioning any of the staple works included within the book, such as "The House of Usher", "The Yellow Wall-Paper" and "The Voice in the Night"): "The Purple Pilaeus" by H.G. Wells, "How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery" by E.F. Benson, and "The Stains" by Robert Aickman

[Sam Hirst · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was really looking forward to this one and found it quite disappointing. The introduction was amusing and the first poem delightful. The first story was the first that comes to mind when thinking of the fungal weird - 'A Voice in the Night'. The rest of the collection struggled. There were some good stories (I enjoyed the Benson and the final story by Worth particularly) but this quality was not consistent. There were some big names and some oft-anthologised stories, which at times felt a bit pointless especially with the very tenuous and weak connections to the fungal that kept appearing. As other reviews have mentioned, I'd have love to see some less well-known stories but mostly I'd just have liked more stories that actually were the fungal weird. A mention of something having a vague resemblance to fungus or the mere mention of the word 'mushroom' doth not a fungal horror make. The ordering wasn't particularly clear to me and I don't feel like this collection gave an overview of the fungal weird or its development. It's a pity because it's something I've particularly enjoyed about the British library 'Tales of the Weird' series - the ability to get a good look at a micro-genre or sub-genre of the Gothic/horror. This collection let me down. It mostly felt like a chance for the editor to add in some of their favourite stories, many of which would have been better served by inclusion in a different thematic collection. There was also a VERY long story that I could have done without (the Aickman), but then I have honestly had my fill of 'much older man sleeps with eldritch child-woman' stories for a lifetime.

There are some good stories in here so don't be necessarily put off, but if you're looking for a good overview, a selection of lesser known stories, or a coherently edited collection within a specific subgenre, lower your expectations.

[Chris Greensmith · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit."

[Patch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lovely collection of works, I only wish there was a closing essay to go with

[LayDownYourSoul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Houses exploding, brains turning to fungus, buried jelly monsters, and ancient Martian evil: what more could you want?

Great collection, a lot of absolute classics combined with more niche picks. I've read a few of these Tales of the Weird books and this was definitely the collection with the most stories I had already read, but that wasn't a bad thing.

In fact, probably one of my favourites in this book was The Yellow Wallpaper, which I appreciated a lot more on reading it again than I did the first time. Truly a masterpiece of psychological horror, reminded me of the perfectly captured paranoia of The King in Yellow, or the horrifying looping of The Haunting of Hill House. (This story came before both of them). And I enjoyed the feminist themes; plus the view it gave into perceptions at the time of women, mental illness, and women's mental health.

Also really appreciated the short and sweet introductions to all the stories but particularly the above mentioned one. Was quite powerful knowing the context of this being inspired by a real mental breakdown, and the fact that a copy was sent (out of spite) to the doctor that had prescribed such harmful treatment.

The other re-reads for me were The Voice in the Night and The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis. Both incredible feats of creativity, with great storytelling, and very enjoyable to read. Extremely atmospheric, well framed stories.

I did enjoy the unusual opening with a Sylvia Plath poem about fungi, which kind of teetered on the edge of relevant in a fun way.

The Shunned House might have been my favourite of the collection, and probably one of my favourite Lovecraft stories. I loved the Carnacki-style, vintage monster hunting devices (Crookes tubes and carboys of acid) and the eventful climax. Really enjoyed the imagery of the doubled-over, barely visible figure, and the aftermath of the final battle... Also a very cool, unique take on vampires. I'm always a fan of some attempt to explain the unexplainable with pseudoscience, and this story provided a good example of that in the way it tried to describe the reality of these creatures.

Loved the touch of comedy with the H.G. Wells story, and the nightmare scene and ending of How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery. The Fall of the House of Usher was also a highlight, perfectly told story with a nice layered plot, fantastic writing and atmosphere. The Great Fog was also very interesting, preferred the mysterious start to where it eventually went, but a very cool ecological story with a lot of ambition. The rest of the short stories I pretty much all enjoyed. Lots of cool, spooky or striking moments, as well as great imagery.

My enjoyment was a little hindered by the fact the longest story was my least favourite - The Stains was a very slow build, and by the end I felt it was trying to say something but I didn't really understand what.

Some quotes I liked:
- "Etienne Roulet, less apt at agriculture than at reading queer books and drawing queer diagrams, was given a clerical post"
- "The same person, alone and guarded, complained wildly of a staring thing which bit and chewed at her"
- "His prayers were neither uttered at the proper time nor directed at the proper object"
- "To say that we actually believed in vampires or werewolves would be a carelessly inclusive statement. Rather... we were not prepared to deny the possibility of certain unfamiliar and unclassified modifications of vital force and attenuated matter; existing very infrequently in three-dimensional space... yet close enough to the boundary of our own to furnish us occasional manifestations which we, for lack of a proper vantage-point, may never hope to understand."
- "Some secrets of inner earth are not good for mankind, and this seemed to me one of them."
- "Playing with death it was"
- "I feel that the period will sooner or later arrive when I must abandon life and reason together, in some struggle with the grim phantasm, FEAR"
- "[I] came so near the border line of utter mental ruin that I could see over"
- "I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper... and sent it to the physician who so nearly drove me mad. He never acknowledged it"
- "I am glad my case is not serious! But these nervous troubles are dreadfully depressing. John does not know how much I really suffer. He knows there is no REASON to suffer, and that satisfies him"
- "I cry at nothing, and cry most of the time"
- "I don't like to LOOK out of the windows even - there are so many of those creeping women, and they creep so fast"
- "It is getting to be a great effort for me to think straight. Just this nervous weakness I suppose"

[Leila Anani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Initially I was a bit disappointed with the story list here - There are a lot of big names of very familiar stories that in in print in other easily accessible anthologies: We've got Hodgson's A Voice in the Night, Poe's House of Usher, Lovecraft's The Shunned House, Ashton-Smith's The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis, Plath's Mushrooms and Gilman's The Yellow Wallpaper (this I've never really considered as fungus related) - I think I was hoping to unearth some gems by authors I was unfamiliar with.

However, after reading this I was pleasantly surprised - I found myself looking at very familiar material with a new lens - particularly Yellow Wallpaper and The Shunned House. Ashton-Smith's Alien pre-cursor, Vaults of Yoh-Vombis really stood out - I think isolating it from the rest of his stories (where you get a bit Ashton-Smithed out if that makes sense) really made me focus on this one story which is excellent. I also thought that A Voice in the Night (one of my favourite short stories anyway) was a wonderful companion to the final tale here, Aaron Worth's The Mykophagoi - Which almost feels like an extension of Hodgson and the pair make excellent bookends so to speak to sandwich the other stories together.

It's a very strong collection in general, probably the weakest for me was The Fiddler in the Fairy Ring - but at only 7 pages this is one of the shortest tales in here and doesn't outstay its welcome. H.G Wells' The Purple Pilaeus ought to get a mention - its Wells at his most whimsical - It feels a bit out of place tonally (its not really horror as the bulk of the stories here are) however I'm a massive Wells fan and its just such a fun, quirky tale, definitely featuring fungus, that I can't really begrudge its inclusion here.

There are however, some startling omissions - There's no Bradbury here (come into my cellar would have made my cut), Wyndham's Puffball menace or Heron's Flaxman Low tale 'The story of old Konnor House' - The latter is however, referenced in the excellent introduction. That's another point I should make about this anthology - In terms of further reading, this has one of the best introductions so far in the BL Tales of the Weird anthologies - I've ended up with a massive reading list from it and gone down some very interesting rabbit holes - I've discovered multiple films and books from the introduction to this - and it introduced me to Flaxman Low for which I'm really grateful - I love early occult detectives. So while this volume is a far from comprehensive collection on the fungal weird, it does boast some of the finest stories in the genre and gives you excellent advice on where to go from here....

I think this might just be my favourite of the BL anthologies to date, although the Uncanny Gastronomic was excellent and Eerie East Anglia boasted some really freaky stuff - still this one's up there with the best of them.

[Ash D · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun fungal collection!
These seem to be drawn from a specific period so 'newer' stories don't feature as much but Worth mentions plenty of names worth chasing up. As someone who is trying to read a lot in this space (mushroom fiction), I appreciated this short book which expanded my list.

And now a rapid fire review/summary of the short stories.

Mushrooms - Sylvia Path
I'm not a big fan of poetry so this one wasn't quite for me.

The Voice in the Night - William Hope Hodgson
Not particularly memorable, but perhaps this was also because it was early on.

The Fall of the House of Usher - Edgar Allan Poe
I was very much looking forward to this but I may have set my expectations too high. I recommend first reading What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher. While it is a retelling, I think extending from a short story to a novella and the modern language make it an easier read and the mushrooms get a bigger limelight.

The Yellow Wall-Paper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Poor Narrator (and poor Gilman). You do feel very sorry for them, I hope the mould provided the desired release.

The Shunned House - H. P. Lovecraft
Not a fan. I have enjoyed many of Lovecraft's works but there was a little too much scene setting in and not enough 'happening'.

The Purple Pilaeus - H. G. Wells
This was a fun little reprieve amidst all the doom and gloom!

The Fiddler in the Fairy Ring - Julia Horatia Ewing
While fungi are often subtly worked into stories as metaphors, I do appreciate a straightforward old-school folktale. Fairy-rings will steal you away, don't wander off the beaten path and be careful who you pick for company.

How Fear departed from the Long Gallery - E. F. Benson
While this was a interesting story, taking a very different approach to ghosts than most (they're just chilling around the house, don't mind them), I would consider this more a ghost-story than a fungi-story.

The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis - Clark Ashton Smith
If you want a more classic science-fiction story of visiting a sealed tomb (despite warnings from the locals) and watching your whole party die as you unleash an ancient horror, this is the one for you.

The Great Fog - H. F Heard
This was such a delightful find! I'm not sure what it was classified as at the time of publishing but this comes across like a very early work of cli-fi. I really enjoyed this!

The Stains
Stephen is a creep. We should not have had to wait that long for his end.

Cesare Thodol: Some Lines Written on a Wall - Mark Samuels
Similar to The Shunned House , there was a little too much world-building for a short story here. The payoff is better though.

The Mykophagoi - Aaron Worth
If you're not sure it's edible, don't eat it.

[Kat · Rating 4 out of 5]

There are some stories with very questionable fungal links, that seems to be there to either pad out the length, or so a famous story/author can be shoe-horned in to get more people to buy it. However in general I enjoyed this collection immensely.

I particularly enjoyed the stories from the lesser known authors, particularly "How Fear Departed the Long Gallery" by E F Benson, "The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis" by Clark Ashton Smith and "Cesare Thodol: Some Lines Witten On a Wall" by Mark Samuels. They gave me a new appreciation of the genre, what it could do and what it could be, as before these short story collections my exposure to classic weird horror had been Poe, Lovecraft and a little bit of Aickman, who all have a rather...dense style, which had rather coloured what I expected from the genre and time period. Clark Ashton Smith in particular was so outside of what I was expecting particularly in the amount of gore that was included.

I highly recommend this collection to anyone wanting to expand their weird horror horizons.

[Charlie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Page 303, first sentence of 'The Mykophagoi, Aaron Worth -
"Oh, Yorkshire pudding's quite well enough," agreed the man in the stern of the whaleboat.

Content Warnings: referenced incest, relationship between an older man and an younger 'woman' who is never given an age but is often referred to as a young person.

I've been enjoying the British Libraries: Tales of the Weird series and have many more to read but this one is definitely a let down, especially when compared to the other two I have already read. Coincidentally, this book contains one of the stories included in another of the volumes, specifically 'The Voice in the Night' - William Hope Hodgson, which appears in 'Evil Roots: Killer Tales of the Botanical Gothic.' The tale does fit better in the Spores of Doom, as a specifically fungal themed anthology but it is worth noting if anyone is looking to read both.

I have two main gripes with this anthology, one more damning than the other. The lesser gripe is the present of very well-known stories, specifically 'The Fall of the House of Usher' - Edgar Allen Poe, 'The Yellow Wall-Paper' - Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and 'The Shunned House' - H.P. Lovecraft. All excellent short stories, but one of the joys of these anthologies is discovering lesser known short stories and authors in certain niche sub-genres, including these three, alongside a Sylvia Plath poem, and to a lesser extent, one of the lesser-known works of H.G Wells, makes the collection feel a bit sparse of new discovery especially for those with an interest in ''horror'', the genre used broadly here, who have read even superficially.

The larger gripe, which does cover some of the stories noted in the prior gripe, is that a significant number of these stories have little to do with the 'fungal weird' outside of it's presence as a point of comparison, being literally part of the described environment or mere speculation of it's involvement from readers without any substantial implication from the reader or the text. This is made more aggravatingly obvious when compared to the stories in the book that centre fungus, the supposed focus of the anthologies, or include it in an active capacity.

I enjoyed my time reading it, despite some of the uncomfortable subject matter, which I think is still important to include regardless of personal discomfort, but I still feel it could have been a lot better. In an admittedly petty note, I didn't care of the editor, Aaron Worth's, introduction or his preambles to the stories. The lacked a lot of information I would consider pertinent, in favour of appeals to modern happenings that fall flat and a severe amount of over-intellectualising. I would personally like to more about the story and it's author than all their other famous peers and every other obscure reference they make. This isn't a proper criticism however, just a personal gripe. He is the editor of another 'Tales of the Weird' book I have to read, hopefully his comments hit better in that one.

[Michael John Paul McManus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent volume of weird short stories from British Library of the Weird. Spores of Doom is a great read. I have never come across any of the stories before, and enjoyed every one of them. The Stains by Robert Aickman is a standout story as is The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. All in all very very good. 10/10

[Oli · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mushrooms 5*
The Voice in the Night 4.5*
The Fall of the House of Usher 4*
The Yellow Wall-Paper 5*
The Shunned House 5*
The Purple Pilaeus 4*
The Fiddler in the Fairy Ring 4*
How Fear Departed from the Long Gallery 4*
The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis 4*
The Great Fog 4.5*
The Stains 4.5*
Cesare Thodol: Some Lines Written on a Wall 4*
The Mykophagoi 5*

[Benjamin Cooper · Rating 4 out of 5]

so much as a sniff of a mushroom and Aaron Worth forces your story kicking and screaming into the most tenuously-linked collection of stories I've ever read. A few stand outs (favourite was The Voice in the Night), most of them decent, one masterbatory inclusion by the editor himself.

[Meryl Parker · Rating 3 out of 5]

the audacity of this editor to end the collection with a story they wrote (that wasn't particularly good)

[Stephanelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wanted more fungi from most of the stories...some were more fungi adjacent.
Was an interesting and spooky read, although not something I will be reading a lot of.

[Eddie Johnston · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some excellent stories but no one of sound mind would accept that alien leeches fall under the bracket of “fungal horror”.

[Samuel (Still Reading Sam) M. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Again a mixed bag, with the odd stand out but yeah. 3 is fair