Legends [Paperback]

R (ed) Silverberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 1999

Rich new works by the very best known creators of fantasy fiction, each set in the special universe of the imagination that made that writer famous throughout the world. Terry Pratchett: Discworld: THE SEA AND LITTLE FISHES: Fruit, vegetables and deadly rivalry between witches. Anne McCaffrey: Pern: RUNNER OF PERN: A young Runner on her first journey, dreaming of dragons and glory. George R.R. Martin: A Song of Ice and Fire: THE HEDGE KNIGHT: A self-made knight, his honour, his horse, his squire, his luck. Tad Williams: Memory, Sorrow and Thorn: THE BURNING MAN: Dragon's blood and ancient hatreds on the Road of Dreams. Robert Jordan: Wheel of Time: NEW SPRING: Storm and battle in the shadow of the Blight! as the wheel turns.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Acclaimed writer and editor Robert Silverberg gathered 11 of the finest writers in fantasy to contribute to this collection of short novels. Each of the writers was asked to write a new story based on one of his or her most famous series, and the results are wonderful. From Stephen King's opening piece set in his popular Gunslinger universe to Robert Jordan's early look at his famed Wheel of Time saga, each of these stories is exceptionally well written and universally well told. The authors here include King, Jordan, and Silverberg himself, as well as Terry and Lyn Pratchett, Terry Goodkind, Orson Scott Card, Ursula K. Le Guin, Tad Williams, George R.R. Martin, Anne McCaffrey, and Raymond E. Feist. This is not only a great book in and of itself, but it's also a perfect way for fantasy fans to find new novels and authors to add to their "to read" lists. --Craig E. Engler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

Microcosmic glimpses of broadly imagined worlds and their larger-than-life characters distinguish this hefty volume of heavyweight fantasy. Silverberg collects 11 previously unpublished short "novels" by genre celebrities, each a window on a sprawling saga that has shaped the way modern fantasy fiction is written and read. Stephen King weighs in with "The Little Sisters of Eluria," set early in the Dark Tower saga and deftly weaving threads of horror, quest fantasy and the western into a dangerous snare for his indefatigable gunslinger, Roland of Gilead. Ursula K. Le Guin contributes "Dragonfly," a tale about a young woman who would be a wizard that offers a savvy dissection of the sexual politics that govern Le Guin's Earthsea empire. Neo-Arthurian fantasy gets its due in George R.R. Martin's "The Hedge Knight," a prequel to the Song of Ice and Fire series. Only a sliver of fantasy insinuates Silverberg's own "The Seventh Shrine," a Majipoor murder mystery that becomes a fascinating exploration of clashing cultures. Although most of the selections are sober sidebars to serious literary fantasy cycles, Terry Pratchett's "The Sea and Little Fishes" is a giddy Discworld romp that pits cantankerous witch Granny Weatherwax against her crone cronies, and Orson Scott Card's "Grinning Man" is corn-fed tall talk in which Alvin Maker outwits a crooked miller in the alternate America of Hatrick River. Some entries, among them Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar tale "The Wood Boy" and Anne McCaffrey's "Runner of Pern," shine only as light glosses on their authors' earlier achievements. Still, there's enough color, vitality and bravura displays of mythmaking in this rich sampler, which also includes tales by Terry Goodkind, Tad Williams and Robert Jordan, to sate faithful fans and nurture new readers on the stuff of legends still being created.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Voyager (November 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0006483941
• ISBN-13: 978-0006483946
• Product Dimensions: 6.9 x 4.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,171,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

72 of 80 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This is just part of the original book, March 23, 2007

By 

Khyraen "Superintendent, Barlow Christian Aca... (CA, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, Vol. 1 (Mass Market Paperback)

This book may well be worth more than one star, but I wanted your attention because...

I wanted to help redirect potential Amazon buyers to the book they are looking for. The book that I read had 11 short stories by 11 different authors. It seems that several people were looking for that book when they bought this one.

This edition of the book seems to contain only 4 short stories. There are other editions that contain the missing stories and complete the collection (Legends 2 : Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy and Legends-Vol. 3 Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy (Legends (Tor))), but if you want the original, here is how you find that book on Amazon.

First, it must have this information:

Hardcover: 708 pages
Publisher: Tor Books; 1st ed edition (August 25, 1998)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0312867875
ISBN-13: 978-0312867874

You can look it up under the ISBN or click on the following link (Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy). Note how many pages it has and, also, that Amazon lists the author of this book as the author of the first story in the book, Stephen King.

Hope that helps you find what you are looking for.

(If you search inside the book featured here, and you look at the back cover, you will see that you only get four stories. The book I directed you to has more authors and stories listed on the back cover--but no option to view it. However, I know it is the right ISBN because I got it directly from the copy I read.)

37 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great collection, with stories by many favourite authors., October 4, 1998

By 

[e-mail] (California, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy (Hardcover)

LEGENDS: SHORT NOVELS BY THE MASTERS OF MODERN FANTASY, edited and introduced by Robert Silverberg, presents "eleven rich, robust new stories by the best-known and most accomplished modern creators of fantasy fiction, each one set in the special universe of the imagination that made that writer famous throughout the word." Thus we have, for instance, a Wheel of Time story by Robert Jordan, an Earthsea story by Ursula K. Le Guin and, of course, a Discworld story by Terry Pratchett.

THE LITTLE SISTERS OF ELURIA is Stephen King's contribution, set in the world(s) of The Dark Tower. It describes how the last gunslinger, Roland of Gilead, encounters first a band of mutant humans and then the not-so-benevolent sisterhood of the title.

THE SEA AND LITTLE FISHES features Pratchett's Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, set at the time of an annual competition to see who's the best at witching. Granny's inevitable victory shakes up the whole kingdom as she shows how she's bad at being nice but good at being right.

DEBT OF BONES is a story by Terry Goodkind, set prior to the events of his Sword of Truth books. Abigail come to plead with the First Wizard to save her family from an early invasion of the D'Harans, but her mission does not go quite as she intends...

GRINNING MAN presents Davy Crockett as he never was, in Orson Scott Card's alternate America of the Tales of Alvin Maker. Crockett causes trouble for Alvin who, thanks to the young Arthur Stuart, learns an important lesson in distinguishing truly good acts from the disguises taken by evil acts like revenge.

THE SEVENTH SHRINE describes an event on Silverberg's own Majipoor, late in the reign of Valentine as Pontifex, the senior ruler of the giant planet. A strangely ritualistic murder during an archeological dig of an ancient alien city prompts Valentine to investigate.

DRAGONFLY revisits the wizards (and witches) of Earthsea in Le Guin's contribution. A local witch has detected some unidentified power in the girl Dragonfly but refuses to teach her any magic. Years later, the grown woman concocts a scheme with a visiting wizard to pass herself off as a man and study on Roke.

THE BURNING MAN is a story from Tad Williams' lands of Osten Ard, the setting of his Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books. It is told by Breda, orphaned by one king and then adopted by another, and concerns first love, an occult rite and a difficult choice, all of which will burn in her mind forever.

THE HEDGE KNIGHT is an entertaining tale from the Seven Kingdoms of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Squire Dunk finds himself with a knighthood when his master dies, and decides to enter a local tourney to prove himself a champion.

THE RUNNER OF PERN is set, of course, on Anne McCaffrey's world. Tenna is the daughter of a long line of runners, message carriers for those who cannot use dragons to send their letters, and her story provides insights into yet another way of life on Pern.

THE WOOD BOY is a short tale from Raymond E. Feist's Riftwar Saga and concerns Dirk, two dead bodies and a Lord's gold. Dirk's life is changed forever when his Lord's estate is occupied by the invading Tsurani, and changed again by treason, murder and revenge.

NEW SPRING describes how Lan met Moiraine as a prelude to Jordan's books of The Wheel of Time, answering the question of how he came to throw her into the freezing waters of a lake, and then become her Warder and join her twenty year quest to find the Dragon Reborn.

Before reading the collection, I had read books set in five of the eleven worlds presented, and I'm looking forward to further exploration of the other six. While writing good short fiction is difficult, writing good short fiction in a setting that's previously been described in the course of a number of novels must be even more difficult. Such a short story can't be treated merely as a chapter extracted from a novel, where storylines can be set up in earlier chapters and then concluded in later chapters, but I think that all of the authors met the challenge very well. Of course, many of them make their task a little easier by moving to a time before the events of any of their books, or to a setting that has not already been used, but the stories are still entertaining nonetheless. Possibly the only author to fall into the trap of providing too much background was Silverberg himself, though I'm still looking forward to reading the Majipoor books. Even those authors noted for writing huge individual works --- such as Robert Jordan, whose seven Wheel of Time books total over 4500 pages, constituting a single, continuous story --- managed complete pieces in eighty pages or less.

Coming at this from the point of view of a Pratchett fan, I can also recommend AFTER THE KING: STORIES IN HONOR OF J. R. R. TOLKIEN (Tor) and THE WIZARDS OF ODD (Ace).

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Amazon misled me, February 12, 2004

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Legends: Short Novels by the Masters of Modern Fantasy, Vol. 1 (Mass Market Paperback)

I, like another, thought I was purchasing a book with 11 short stories with some of my favorite authors. I was disappointed to find ONLY 4 of the stories in this version. I went awry with the description in the Editorial Review, Amazon.com by Craig Engler, printed in conjunction with this text. Please include more accurate information!