The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: 20th Annual Collection (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) [Hardcover]

Kelly Link (Editor), Gavin Grant (Editor), Ellen Datlow (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Year's Best Fantasy & Horror | Publication Date: October 2, 2007

For twenty years this award-winning compilation has been the nonpareil benchmark against which all other annual fantasy and horror collections are judged. Directed first by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling and for the past four years by Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant, it consistently presents the strangest, the funniest, the darkest, the sharpest, the most original--in short, the best fantasy and horror.  The current collection, marking a score of years, offers more than forty stories and poems from almost as many sources. Summations of the field by the editors are complemented by articles by Edward Bryant, Charles de Lint and Jeff VanderMeer highlighting the best of the fantastic in, respectively, media, music and comics as well as honorable mentions--notable works that didn't quite make the cut but are nonetheless worthy of attention. The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 20th Annual Collection is a cornucopia of fantastic delights, an unparalleled resource and indispensable reference that captures the unique excitement and beauty of the fantastic in all its gloriously diverse forms, from the lightest fantasy to the darkest horror.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. In the two decades since this venerable series was inaugurated, so many venues have begun to welcome horror and fantasy stories that these dedicated editors play a crucial role in bringing the best new works to fans who don't always read far afield. Trend spotters will note numerous ghost stories in Datlow's horror picks, including Christopher Harman's The Last to Be Found and Stephen Volk's 31/10, supremely eerie exercises in the ghost-hunt-gone-bad vein, and Stephen Gallagher's The Box and Glen Hirshberg's The Muldoon, whose spooks are equal parts psychological and supernatural. Link and Grant's eclectic fantasy picks range from the haunting magical realism of Geoff Ryman's Hugo- and WFA-nominated Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter to the light urban fantasy of Ellen Klages's In the House of Seven Librarians and Jeffrey Ford's blend of whimsy and the macabre in The Night Whiskey. As the line between fantasy and horror blurs, this combined presentation of their exemplars will give readers of both genres much to enjoy, and may even broaden a few horizons. (Oct.)
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Review

"The best anthology I have read in a while, this is great for keeping up with what is going on in the worlds of fantasy and horror, or simply as a collection of fine stories."
--The Zone
 
"This is the anthology to pick up every year if you want to read the best short fiction from the previous year and get overviews of the best fiction, non-fiction, films and video, anime, and music that was released in that year."--Green Man Review
 
"Long lived and always outstanding." --Science Fiction Chronicle
 
"A standard that... will be the one to beat in the future." --Locus
 
Treasures abound here."  --Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
"You can't improve on the "best," but as the editors of this landmark anthology series show in its most recent volume, you can find fresh new angles from which to present it.. . . The usual generous survey essays only enhance the volume's reputation as indispensable for the year."--Publishers Weekly

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press; First Edition edition (October 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312369433
• ISBN-13: 978-0312369439
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,130,381 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Twentieth Annual Collection is a terrific compilation., October 22, 2007

By 

Harriet Klausner - See all my reviews
(#1 Hall OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: 20th Annual Collection (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) (Paperback)

As has been the case (at least since this reviewer began reading this annual collection several years ago), this anthology provides some of the best horror and fantasy short stories, poems and other media from 2006. The forty entries are always fun even for those who may have read most of them in other collections. The tales range the gamut from wishfully whimsical to fundamentally frightening to awesomely amusing. However, once again it is the deep articles that provide "Summation 2006: Fantasy", "Summation 2006: Horror", "The Year in Media of the Fantastic: 2006", "Fantasy in Comics and Graphic Novels 2006", "Music of the Fantastic: 2006", and "Obituaries: 2006" that bring an extra edge to this always strong collection; even the obits enhance the book with its short homage to the famous like the Jims Baen and Williamson and the not so famous (to me) such as "Retro Hugo" winner Wilson Tucker. This reviewer especially enjoys comparing this year's trends as described in the Summations to the last few years. Readers will enjoy meeting new authors (at least to me) like Ira Sher and Margo Lanagan and long time favorites like Gene Wolfe and Terry Dowling. Besides the articles, perhaps the best entry is the realistic futuristic "Another Word for Map Is Faith" by Christopher Rowe (right surname for the author of this tale), who extrapolates the religious right teaming with the Neocons into a scary vision of a Taliban-like control of America. The Twentieth Annual Collection is a terrific compilation.

Harriet Klausner

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 20 Years and Still Great, November 23, 2007

By 

Sigrid Freyasdottir (New Jersey) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: 20th Annual Collection (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) (Paperback)

This is the 20th edition of the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and I can recommend this one along with the other nineteen. Most anthologies feature a couple great stories, a few good stories, and several mediocre tales. This anthology consistently provides high quality stories chosen from a wide variety of publications. Most of the stories and poems are designated horror or fantasy, but the distinction can be a very thin line and that's a good thing. If you love horror, but don't think you like fantasy (or vice versa), this anthology may change (and broaden) your mind. I'd be hard pressed to pick an absolute favorite story, but "La Profonde", "The Night Whiskey" and "Father Muerte & the Flesh" were standouts for me.

Aside from the stories and poems, each edition includes articles on horror, fantasy, media, comics, music, and obituaries for each year that are themselves worth the price of the book. This edition is no exception. The authors cover nearly everything published or released in horror and fantasy in 2006, leaving you with a long reading, listening, and watching list. Hopefully, twenty years is just a start for the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror series.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Consistently Entertaining Fiction, January 15, 2008

By 

Andrew Shaffer "Author, Blogger" (Iowa) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: 20th Annual Collection (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) (Paperback)

The short stories compiled here range from the hilarious "Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery" to the melancholy "Dog Person." While I picked up the "Year's Best" for the horror, I found the fantasy stories to be among the most interesting. The "fantasy" stories included are of the speculative variety and not the sword-and-sorcery variety--that's a plus for me, but it won't be everyone's cup of tea. One of my personal favorites here is Geoff Ryman's magical "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter," a story that reads like a Garcia Marquez/J-horror mash-up. And the supremely bizarro "Night Whiskey" by Jeffrey Ford is just too good to define.

Is every story going to please every reader? With such varied tastes, that's not a realistic assumption. There were a couple of stories I skimmed, but overall I found a lot of sparkling gems here. And even if there were no stories included, I would recommend this annual based on the year-in-fantasy and year-in-horror reviews that begin every volume.