From Weird and Distant Shores [Deluxe Edition] [Hardcover]

Caitlin R. Kiernan (Author), Poppy Z. Brite (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2002

From Weird and Distant Shores: This collection of thirteen short stories by the award-winning author of Silk and Tales of Pain and Wonder establishes Caitlin R. Kiernan as one of today's most versatile fantasists. Spanning and transcending the fields of fantasy, dark fantasy, and science fiction, these stories include some of Kiernan's early and hard-to-find work, and explore the limits of that ubiquitous bane of contemporary F&SF, the "theme" and "shared-world" anthology.

In the words of Douglas E. Winter: "Caitlin Kiernan's stories, even when appearing in theme anthologies, fill a space that is genuinely hers ó thematically and stylistically. Rarely do her texts offer the punch line ending of a campfire tale, or even a tidy denouement. Instead they present a fine mingling of attitude and atmosphere, expressed with delightful idiosyncrasy . . ." Including such critically-acclaimed stories as "Emptiness Spoke Eloquent" (selected for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror) and "Persephone," as well as Kiernan's first ever collaboration with Poppy Z. Brite, From Weird and Distant Shores is a nightmare tour de force you won't easily forget.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Drawn primarily from shared-world anthologies that dominated horror and fantasy markets in the '90s, the 13 stories that comprise Kiernan's latest collection raise intriguing questions about the nature of creative collaboration. Although she acknowledges as silent partners the graphic, gaming and classic horror media that shaped those compilations, the author has such an original and inimitable voice that she virtually steals these stories from their influences. "The Comedy of St. Jehanne d'Arc," one of two selections set in a role-playing game world secretly controlled by a vampire conspiracy, inventively parallels the plight of Joan of Arc to the vampire neophyte forced by her master to speak to the Maid of Orleans in voices. "Stoker's Mistress," set in the same world, shows the creator of Dracula enthralled by a vampire muse who inspires him to write a novel that will deflect mortals from learning the true nature of vampires. Like most of the other selections, these stories stand solidly on their own outside the books that spawned them, in part because Kiernan's focus is not on the minutiae of their prefab universes but on the attitudes and sensibilities of characters caught in their events. Her impressionistic style, built on poetic enjambments of sensory images and moods, proves perfect for rendering the postapocalyptic future of "By Turns" and the alien zombie consciousnesses of "Two Worlds, and in Between." Featuring collaborations with Christa Faust and Poppy Z. Brite, as well as a provocatively opinionated preface, this book should please Kiernan devotees and fans of the worlds she's cohabited. (Feb.)Wrong Things (Forecasts, Oct. 22).

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Subterranean Press; 1st edition (February 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931081271
• ISBN-13: 978-1931081276
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,105,403 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, but not her best work., December 22, 2003

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: From Weird and Distant Shores (Hardcover)

Caitlin R. Kiernan, From Weird and Distant Shores (Subterranean Press, 2002)

I can't really say anything about Cait Kiernan's delicious storytelling that I haven't already said before. If you haven't yet discovered the gothically beautiful, barren world that is the mind of Caitlin R. Kiernan, all I can do is wish that, soon, you will. Kiernan's short stories are the literary equivalent of Edward Gorey's drawings; witty, somewhat Victorian in their scope, but with an ineffable sadness behind them that changes from piece to piece, beckoning the reader ever farther down the road to perdition.

That said, I ended up not rating From Weird and Distant Shores as high as Candles for Elizabeth. This is (for the most part) a collection of "shared-world" stories Kiernan wrote during her fledgling years for various anthologies. And while everything she says in the introduction about the attraction of writing shared-world stories is true, all the pitfalls of doing so loom before even the finest writers. Investing your breath of life into someone else's creation doesn't always work; it ends up either being their creation looking right, but moving with an odd, amateur-puppeteer-style jerkiness, or looking like your creation and making the original author say "what the hell is THIS?" Which obviously happened to Kiernan more than once, judging by the acid words she has for certain copyeditors in the afterwords of some of these tales. (Needless to say, of the shared-world stories here, those, presented in their original drafts in this collection, are usually the best.)

There are exceptions, of course. There are three very early tales from an abandoned short-story cycle towards the end of the book, and while science fiction is not nearly as much my bag as is dark fantasy, what was in them begs for more fleshing out. Hopefully, more readers of the book than I will be thinking very hard at Kiernan "when do we get more of `Between the Flatirons and the Deep Green Sea'?" Also, some of the shared-world collections were far less restrictive than others, and the book's most haunting tale ("Two Worlds, and In Between"-a much better title than the original, because it gives nothing away) comes from one of them.

Highly recommended, especially if you can't find the now-out-of-print Candles for Elizabeth. ****