Customer Reviews

Smart Dragons, Foolish Elves

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This collection of short stories is absolutely wonderful. It includes Sci/Fi stories about Hell, Trolls, and the absolute worst wish ever imagined. I've read this book a number of times and it never fails to make me burst into laughter.

The book contains 18 stories and an introduction/afterword. The theme is supposedly humor, but Foster picked out personal favorites, not always politically or scientifically correct. For example, "Thimgs" by Theodore Cogswell was published in 1958 and uses adjectives like 'crippled' and 'gimpy' for a disabled girl, and the supra-advanced technology consists of computer tape spools.

Nina Kiriki Hoffman has a story in here, "Savage Breasts", which is vaguely horrifying. Think possessed sentient breasts. Zelanzy's "Unicorn Variations" shows up, as it does in like a dozen other anthologies. Great story if you haven't read it. I enjoyed the majority of the stories to be honest, but I found a recurring theme is 'be careful what you wish for' often featuring djinn, and forgotten shops that disappear when you leave.

Overall, despite one or two duds, a collection of memorable short stories.

I want to endorse what Steven Saus said, and wish I'd paid more attention to his review before I bought the book. The cleverness of the title and the reputations of some of the contributors just sucked me in. But just about all of these stories are sadly dated, and many of them are now painfully unfunny. I don't think we've come this far since 1991 -- I think this book was reactionary when it was published! The stories were clearly chosen from this particular subgenre. I barely made it through and hardly cracked a smile. Mostly they're dark and depressing, if well-written and creative.

Sometimes it's hard to believe how much our society has changed in just a two decades. I mean, the Honeymooners had a threat of domestic violence as its catchphrase. This collection of humorous fantasy stories, originally published in 1991, isn't quite as bad as all that, but many of the stories assume gender and even racial stereotypes that no longer pass muster.

Some of the tales - such as the contributions from Roger Zelazny and Robert Silverberg - hold up extremely well. Their humor is character based, rather than situational.

Too many of the others, though, rely on stereotypical roles for women (secretaries, "needing a man", shrewish wife) or racist stereotypes about Jewish business owners for their humor. (I really don't know if the authors were/are Jewish themselves, but honestly, that's kind of beside the point.) Alan Dean Foster's introductions are, by today's standards, quite chauvinistic indeed.

As a result, many (over half) of the stories fall flat. Or you might find them funny - but unintentionally so. It's a shame, because the good stories herein *are* worth reading. Pick this book up at a library, or on the cheap at a used bookstore, if for no other reason than to realize how far we've come towards gender equity and race relationship since 1991.