The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) (No. 12) [Paperback]

Ellen Datlow (Editor), Terri Windling (Editor)

Book Description

Series: Year's Best Fantasy & Horror | Publication Date: July 30, 1999

Over 250,000 words of the finest fantasy and horror

A. S. Byatt
Charles de Lint
Karen Joy Fowler
Neil Gaiman
Lisa Goldstein
Stephen King
Ellen Kushner
Patricia A. McKillip
Steven Millhauser
Michael Marshall Smith
Peter Straub
Jane Yolen

For more than a decade, readers have looked to The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror to showcase the highest achievements of fantastic fiction. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling continue their critically acclaimed and award-winning tradition with another stunning collection of stories. The fiction and poetry here is culled from an exhaustive survey of the field, nearly four dozen stories ranging from fairy tales to gothic horror, from magical realism to dark tales in the Grand Guignol style. Rounding out the volume are the editors' invaluable overviews of the year in fantastic fiction, and a long list of Honorable Mentions, making this volume a valubale reference source as well as the best reading available in fantasy and horror

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror annuals are always a treat; read this one and The Year's Best Science Fiction Sixteenth Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois and you'll have a fairly complete overview of speculative fiction from 1998 as well as hours of great reading.

Datlow and Windling, renowned for crossing genre boundaries, gather stories and poems from mainstream magazines, literary journals, and Internet zines. There are vampires, a Lovecraft homage, enchanted birds and animals, shapeshifters, adult fairy tales, ghosts, and even a hunted muse. The best are Byatt's sensuous, enchanting "Cold"--about an ice princess who marries a glass-blowing desert prince--and Straub's novella, "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff" (which won the Stoker award for Best Long Fiction in 1999), a black comedy of revenge gone awry. The reference material includes each editor's review of the year's best novels, collections and anthologies, magazines, related nonfiction, children's books, and art. There's also a roundup of 1998's film, television, and dramatic offerings by Ed Bryant, a brief essay on comics by Seth Johnson, and obituaries by James Frenkel.

It's an invaluable source of introductions to authors you might not otherwise try, plus thought-provoking observations on fantasy in all its guises. You may not get to a convention this year, but if you've read Datlow and Windling, you'll know what a good one is like. --Nona Vero

From Publishers Weekly

Twelve years of taking the pulse of literary horror and fantasy fiction haven't dulled Datlow and Windling's discrimination. The latest volume in their acclaimed series is a cornucopia of treats harvested from a wide assortment of trade and specialty press publications (including e-zines) issued in the U.S. and abroad. Though the editors split space evenly, Datlow's 11 solo horror picks run long, the better to accommodate their atmospherics and meticulously orchestrated chills. Peter Straub's "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff," an arch revenge thriller of Dickensian style and scope, is one of several stories that give old-fashioned horrors a contemporary twist. Modern terrors get their due in Dennis Etchison's "Inside the Cackle Factory," a flicker of Hollywood noir, and John Kessel's brilliant "Every Angel Is Terrifying," a sequel to Flannery O'Connor's "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" that stands on its own as a haunting meditation on failed redemption. Windling's 32 fantasy selections include eight poems and 24 stories that span a variety of story types: dark fantasy in Stephen King's unsettling dream tale "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French"; magic realism in Kurahashi Yumiko's man-to-animal fable "The House of the Black Cat"; parable in Jorge Luis Borges's brief "The Rose of Paracelsus." Kelly Link, in her wry metafiction "Travels with the Snow Queen," and A.S. Byatt, in her exquisite romance "Cold," show the traditional fairy tale to be alive and well. In addition, three stories were chosen by both editors. Notwithstanding the very different paths horror and fantasy fiction have taken in recent years, this indispensable anthology proves that a well-told tale can enthrall readers regardless of genre preference.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 624 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (July 30, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312206860
• ISBN-13: 978-0312206864
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,617,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars more horror this year?, April 16, 2000

By 

"silo1013" - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) (No. 12) (Paperback)

Good collection of stories, though there seems to be a bit more horror than usual, and the inclusion of a couple of stories in which I was hard-pressed to find any fantastic or horrific elements at all. As usual, the poetry selections are the weakest in the bunch, with the delightful exception of Marisa de los Santos' "Wiglaf". My favorites from this collection: "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French" by Stephen King [I'm not a big King fan, but i was pleasantly surprised by this excellent little tale]; "The Faerie Cony-catcher" by Delia Sherman [its ending was not unexpected, but delightful all the same]; and "Cold" by A.S. Byatt [typical Byatt. for those unaquainted with A.S. Byatt, I can only say.. beautiful]. Terri Windling's Fantasy Summation for 1998 is useful as always.

The following is a complete listing of authors and their included works: Kelly Link, "Travels with the Snow Queen; Steve Duffy, "Running Dogs"; Marisa de los Santos, "Wiglaf"; Susanna Clarke, "Mrs Mabb"; Rick Kennett, "Due West"; Catharine Savage Brosman, "Kokopelli"; Bruce Glassco, "Taking Loup"; Sara Douglass, "The Evil Within"; Larry Fontenot, "Wile E. Coyote's Lament"; Mary Rosenblum, "The Rainmaker"; Michael Marshall Smith, "A Place to Stay"; Lisa Goldstein, "The Fantasma of Q___"; Ralph Salisbury, "Hoopa, the White Deer Dance"; Stephen King, "That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French; Karen Joy Fowler, "The Travails"; Terry Lamsley, "Suburban Blight"; Dennis Etchison, "Inside the Cackle Factory"; Kurahashi Yumiko, "The House of the Black Cat"; John Kessel, "Every Angel is Terrifying"; Neil Gaiman, "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar"; Lawrence Osgood, "Great Sedna"; Sylvia Brownrigg, "The Bird Chick"; Mark W. Tiedmann, "Psyche"; Carol Ann Duffy, "Mrs. Beast"; Jane Yolen, "Become A Warrior"; Norman Partridge, "Blackbirds"; Nick DiChario, "Carp Man"; Delia Sherman, "The Faerie Cony-catcher"; Zan Ross, "At the River of Crocodiles"; Steven Millhauser, "Clair de Lune"; Jorge Luis Borges, "The Rose of Paracelsus"; Peter Straub, "Mr. Clubb and Mr. Cuff"; Michael Blumlein, "Revenge"; Holly Prado, "The Tall, Upheaving One"; Patricia A. McKillip, "Oak Hill"; Christopher Harman, "Jackdaw Jack"; Sarah Corbett, "Dark Moon"; Ellen Kushner, "The Death of the Duke"; Judy Budnitz, "Hershel"; Ray Vukcevich, "By the Time We Get to Uranus"; Kelly Link, "The Specialist's Hat"; Charles de Lint, "Twa Corbies"; Terry Dowling, "Jenny Come to Play"; Ilan Stavans, "Blimunda"; Chana Bloch, "Mrs. Dumpty"; A. S. Byatt, "Cold".

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good fiction, poor overview, August 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) (No. 12) (Paperback)

There are some fine stories in here, but as usual Ellen Datlow lets intra-genre politics inform her summary of the horror field. Once again, she refuses to acknowledge that authors like Bentley Little even released a book this past year (which he did--the brilliant social commentary THE STORE), and goes on and on praising lesser lights who have not offended her. The stories are worth reading, though.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best yet, August 3, 1999

By 

Jack Fisher - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Twelfth Annual Collection (Year's Best Fantasy & Horror) (No. 12) (Paperback)

This edition is the best I've read yet! All the stories had some sort of magic element. They were all smart and well written.