Chick Bassist is Ross Lockhart’s debut as a writer of fiction, after establishing himself as a fantasy and horror editor best known for two successful Lovecraftian “Book of Cthulhu” anthologies. Despite Lockhart’s genre editing background, the only fantasy in Chick Bassist is of the rock-and-roll variety.

This book is crazy fun, often funny, but it also has a serious feel, as troubling and difficult as real life. It tracks the passions and conflicts of an enjoyably grungy cast of dysfunctional characters, every one of them f**ked up in a charmingly rock-and-roll sort of way. Lockhart realistically captures the fun and filth of the garage music scene, the transitory existences of bands, the passionate creativity and train-wreck lifestyles. The characters and their scene are clearly personally known to the author, and will seem familiar to anyone who has played in bands or at least been part of that milieu.

Told from multiple viewpoints, the story not only switching character perspectives, but also juggling first, second and third person points of view. The title refers to Erin Locke, “the Queen of Rock,” who leads the band Heroes for Goats until things implode, and she takes off to play bass for a more successful band. Other points of view follow Robbie Snow, the bassist kicked out of Heroes for Goats for acting all mental after Erin had sex with him, and Christian, who ends up getting a severe beating by Robbie after Erin makes Christian kick him out of the band.

At its best, rock and roll is about ambition and failure, about lessons learned too late, about love, and also death. Chick Bassist is crammed full of these things. If you think you might enjoy a punk/grunge flavored book about underground bands and musicians, you’ll love this Chick Bassist. I browsed the first pages of this book when I was already in the middle of reading something else, and this one immediately sucked me in.

As for the “Would you read a sequel?” test, Chick Bassist easily passes. I’d gladly read the further adventures of Lockhart’s rock and roll characters. Bring it on!

Fungi, edited by Orrin Gray and Silvia Garcia-Moreno, collects about two dozen weird and fantastic stories focused on the theme of fungus, including mushrooms, molds and a whole related class of bizarre life forms.

I expected mostly dark tales of decay and derangement, but many of the tales here turn out to be lighthearted, whimsical, even silly. Whatever one’s preference in terms of tone, Fungi undeniably contains a healthy measure of strong genre fiction. Whether due to my own predisposition toward more serious horror and dark fantasy, or because the more playful efforts are not as strong, I consider the most successful stories here to be those darkest or most surreal in tone. The work of John Langan, Laird Barron, and E. Catherine Tobler stood apart in my estimation.

Langan’s lead-off “Hyphae” is a concentrated dose of nastiness. I dare anyone to read this without at least once letting out a disgusted, shuddering moan. I haven’t seen Langan write something so viscerally gruesome until this. So awful, yet wonderful. I loved it.

Laird Barron never disappoints, and his “Gamma,” a cynical yet emotionally powerful survey of childhood, adulthood, entropy and decay, balances a boy’s recollection of his father killing a lame horse named Gamma against a present-day, adult contemplation of his wife leaving him for another man. The story looks outward to embrace death and human existence more generally, and finally broadens to face horror on a truly cosmic scale.

It’s worth noting that E. Catherine Tobler’s “New Feet Within My Garden Go,” which may well be my favorite piece in the book, is a bonus story present in the hardcover but not the paperback version of Fungi. It’s a shame many readers will miss Tobler’s tale, which is complex, detail-rich, and overflowing with delicious, poetic weirdness. Beautifully and artfully told.

Another handful of stories deserve mention. Nick Mamatas describes in “The Shaft Through the Middle of It All” an apartment building where fungus growing in a ventilation shaft can bring harm to residents, though another use of fungus brings a kind of retributive power. J.T. Glover’s “The Flaming Exodus of the Greifswald Grimoire” tells of two brother sorcerers, adventuring grimoire hunters who find trouble when they try to snatch a tempting tome in a house they assume is empty. Paul Tremblay’s “Our Stories Will Live Forever” has the feel of straight realism, until a character dealing with terror of flying undergoes a transformation. Lastly, “The Pilgrims of Parthen,” by a writer new to me, Kristopher Reisz, suggests a society taken over by the visionary trips brought on by newly discovered mushrooms, which seem to transport the user into a distinct and transcendent separate reality.

Several more, despite falling short of total success in my judgement, possess strengths of expression or concept sufficient to at least partly recommend them. These include works by W.H. Pugmire, Ian Rogers, Daniel Mills, Jeff VanderMeer and A.C. Wise. Also, one humorous story in Fungi that I think works (by virtue of going way over the top) is Molly Tanzer and Jesse Bullington’s “Tubby McMungus, Fat From Fungus,” which describes a showdown between rival merkin-makers for fashion-conscious society felines.

Where other stories fell short, lapsing into slightness or forgettability, was often in making a story’s entire point nothing more than someone being consumed by mold, or surprised by the druggy effects of mushrooms. Of course, some that miss the mark for one reader may please others looking for different approaches to the subject. Whatever tone the reader prefers, Fungi contains a more than sufficient number of challenging and artful takes on the theme. Readers receptive to the fungal theme, and familiar with at least some of the authors contained here, should find in Fungi a successful weird fiction anthology and an overall satisfying read.

“The Day and the Hour & Drone” is a short book (roughly novella length) containing two stories by Ennis Drake, whose debut novel 28 Teeth of Rage I reviewed previously. As in his debut, Drake’s strength is his artful, powerful prose, as well as the confidence with which he evokes perceptual distortion, hallucination or possibly insanity on the narrator’s part.

The longer and more ambitious of the two, “The Day and the Hour,” features Jason Grae, a man tormented by his gift of sight and prophecy. Aware in advance of a series of seemingly connected catastrophies, yet unable to stop their cascade, Jason posesses the vision of a divine being along with the seemingly powerlessness of an ordinary man.

“Drone” tells of another tormented soul, in this case the “pilot” or remote operator of a drone aircraft, a fighter in the long-distance conflict modern warfare has become.

Both stories show Drake’s improvement as a writer, and demonstrate ample proof of the confident, poetic style with which he’s capable of drawing a narrative. This writing is full of unrestrained feeling, packed with visual detail and psychological resonance. Ennis Drake shows a dexterity of language and command of narrative that indicate he’s on the verge of even greater things. This is a name to watch.