The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror : Thirteenth Annual Collection [Paperback]

Terri Windling (Author), Ellen Datlow (Author)

Book Description

Series: Year's Best Fantasy & Horror | Publication Date: August 19, 2000

For more than a decade, readers have turned to The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror to find the most rewarding fantastic short stories. 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 fantasy and horror, and a long list of Honorable Mentions, making this an indispensable reference as well as the best reading available in fantasy and horror.


Contents

Summation 1999: FantasyTerri Windling
Summation 1999: HorrorEllen Datlow
Horror and Fantasy in the Media: 1999Edward Bryant
Comics: 1999, Seth Johnson
Obituaries: 1999, James Frenkel

Darkrose and Diamond, Ursula K. Le Guin
The Chop Girl, Ian R. MacLeod
The Girl Detective, Kelly Link
The Transformation, N. Scott Momaday
Carabosse, Delia Sherman
Harlequin Valentine, Neil Gaiman
Toad, Patricia A. McKillip
The Dinner Party, Robert Girardi
Heat, Steve Rasnic Tem
The Wedding at EsperanzaLinnet Taylor
Redescending, Ursula K. Le Guin
You Don't Have to be Mad . . .Kim Newman
The Paper-Thin Garden, Thomas Wharton
The Anatomy of a MermaidMary Sharratt
The Grammarian's Five DaughtersEleanor Arnason
The Tree Is My Hat, Gene Wolfe
Welcome, Michael Marshall Smith
The Pathos of Genre, Douglas E. Winter
Shatsi , Peter Crowther
Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love StoryNeil Gaiman
What You Make It, Michael Marshall Smith
The Parwat Ruby, Delia Sherman
Odysseus Old, Geoffrey Brock
The Smell of the Deer, Kent Meyers
Chorion and the PleiadesSarah Van Arsdale
Crosley, Elizabeth Engstrom
n0 Naming the Dead, Paul J. McAuley
The Stork-Men, Juan Goytisolo
The Disappearance of Elaine ColemanSteven Millhauser
White, Tim Lebbon
Dear Floods of Her Hair, James Sallis
Mrs. Santa Decides to Move to FloridaApril Selley
Tanuki, Jan Hodgman
At Reparata, Jeffrey Ford
Skin So Green and Fine, Wendy Wheeler
Old Merlin Dancing on the Sands of TimeJane Yolen
Sailing the Painted OceanDenise Lee
Grandmother, Laurence Snydal
Small Song, Gary A. Braunbeck
The Emperor's Old BonesGemma Files
The Duke of Wellington Misplaces His HorseSusanna Clarke
Halloween Street, Steve Rasnic Tem
The Kiss, Tia V. Travis
The Beast/The Hedge, Bill Lewis
Pixel Pixies, Charles de Lint
Falling Away, Elizabeth Birmingham

Honorable Mentions: 1999

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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. For the first time ever, they have selected an essay, Douglas Winter's "The Pathos of Genre," and this incisive critique of the limits of genre branding subtly calls attention to how Datlow and Windling's fiction and poetry selections usually resist simple categorizing. Many of their best picks from 1999 willfully bend, blend and move beyond expected genre materials: Tim Lebbon's "White," a horror and SF cross-stitch, uses B-movie imagery to explore the behavior of people confronted with ecological apocalypse. Kim Newman, in "You Don't Have to Be Mad," grounds a caustic horror satire of modern business mores in set pieces appropriated from television espionage programs of the 1960s. Michael Marshall Smith, in "Welcome," and Charles de Lint, in "Pixel Pixies," conjure alternate fantasy worlds with the most unlikely of talismansDa computer. Neil Gaiman, one of six authors represented by more than one contribution, places both a horror and a fantasy tale: "Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story," a nasty bit on the death of romance, and "Harlequin Valentine," a darkly funny fantasy. There are more than a few modern fairy tale variants, but even these show a refreshing range of styles and approaches, notably Patricia McKillip's "Toad," a delightful deflation of the frog prince's tale. The usual generous survey essays by Datlow, Windling, Ed Bryant and Seth Johnson only enhance the volume's reputation as indispensable reading for the year. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Myths and legends, fairytales and folklore, nightmares and dreams imbue the mundane with touches of magic while illustrating essential aspects of human nature. This annual anthology, the 13th in the series, explores those enchanting influences and gracefully demonstrates how the terms fantasy and horror encompass a range of creative writing from the "high" literary to the underrated comic. (Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics are more thought-provoking than most best sellers.) As usual, the editors begin with summaries of the past year in fantasy and horror in publishing, movies, and other media. Stressing the understanding of "interstitial" literatureDworks that cannot be pigeonholed to a single genre and that consists of much of imaginative writingDthe editors then present a variety of short stories and poems portraying wonders that are funny, subtle, lyric, and dreadful. Many are written by such accomplished and well-known authors as Ursula K. Le Guin, Gaiman, Charles de Lint, and Steve Resnic Tem. This volume of all-around high-quality storytelling is highly recommended to imaginations of all shapes and sizes.DAnn Kim, "Library Journal"
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin; 1st edition (August 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031226416X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312264161
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,717,772 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I've been an editor for over thirty years, first in book publishing, but mostly editing short stories for OMNI Magazine and webzine, EVENT HORIZON, a webzine, and SCIFICTION, the fiction area of SCIFI.COM. I now edit original and reprint anthologies. Born and bred New Yorker, although I travel a lot.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars pure magic, September 13, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror : Thirteenth Annual Collection (Paperback)

If you`ve read too much minimalist academic fiction, you`re in for a treat. These stories, both dark and light, and infused with magic and poetry, have been culled from sources as diverse as the New Yorker, the Iowa Review, and some very obscure zines. Established masters of their craft such as Ursula Leguin and N. Scott Momaday rub shoulders with intruiguing newcomers such as Linnet Taylor and Mary Sharratt. Kelly Link`s fabulous story "The Girl Detective" is not to be missed.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Delightfully Wonderful, August 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror : Thirteenth Annual Collection (Paperback)

Every year the annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror Collection keeps my eyes glued to a book. The Stories and magical and entertaining, written by some of today's best fantasy and horror writers. The stories range from Tolkienesque tales with magical creatures to more serious fiction stories. Many sparked my imagination And of course, quite a few frightened me to a point where I left nail prints in the binding. I recommend this book to fans of fantasy and/or horror or simply anybody looking for a good read.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulous Anthology, October 20, 2000

By 

Fosky Bob "human" (Vacaville, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror : Thirteenth Annual Collection (Paperback)

What a beautiful, fabulous anthology. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have turned out another of their elegant and amazing collections.

This anthology starts off fast with another of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea stories, but it's the second one, Ian MacLeod's 'The Chop Girl' that starts the anthology off with a bang. MacLeod's story is creepy, eerie, spooky, and thoroughly delightful. The anthology never loses steam. Nearly every story is wonderful.

Excellent stories by Charles de Lint, Gemma Files, Jeffrey Ford (be sure to check out his books here on Amazon. They're fabulous!), Tim Lebbon, Steven Millhauser, Paul McAuley, Michael Marshall Smith, Kim Newman, and on and on.

What makes this anthology so special is the breadth of sources that Datlow and Windling draw from. They have a few stories from the usual suspects, F&SF, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov's and so on, but the amount of stories, really good stories, that they grab from tiny obscure publications that probably less than 3,000 people read is astounding. In my mind this makes this series of anthologies infinitely more valuable than their SF counterparts.

I highly recommend this volume.