New short fiction: "The Vicar of Mars" by Gwyneth Jones

Eclipse 4: New Science Fiction and Fantasy (Night Shade Books, May 2011), a new international anthology edited by Australian Jonathan Strahan, has an intriguing new work of short fiction by award-winning British science fiction & fantasy author Gwyneth Jones titled “The Vicar of Mars.”

I haven’t read “The Vicar of Mars,” but critic Lois Tilton of Locus Online provides a summary of this “classic horror” story in her review of Strahan’s anthology:

The eponymous clergyman is an aging Shet, the Reverend Boaaz Hanaahaahn, High Priest of the Mighty Void. His real reason for coming to Mars is rock collecting, but he is a conscientious cleric, so he reluctantly undertakes a pastoral visit to the human Isabel Jewel, who has been suggested as perhaps being in need of his spiritual guidance. Afterwards, however, he suffers from nightmares and the inescapable sense that there is something evil lurking behind him. [...] The locals attempt to warn him away from the old woman, but Boaaz is firm in his faith and convinced he has a duty to guide Isabel Jewel into the Void.

It seems like “The Vicar of Mars” is worth reading, and I love the title!