The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Seventeenth Annual Collection (Paperback)

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

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The proliferation of specialty fantasy publications with short runs and low profiles, combined with the growing pervasiveness of fantasy and horror in mainstream markets that elude genre enthusiasts, has made this annual culling increasingly vital for readers who seek the best in fantastic fiction. Datlow (the horror half) teams with new co-editors (who assume fantasy detail once handled by Terri Windling) and the series doesn't skip a beat in quality, delivering 43 stories and poems published in 2003 that illustrate modern fantasy's breadth and variety. Stephen King is represented by "Harvey's Dream," an eerie tale of a precognitive dream's disruption of an ordinary suburban household. Karen Joy Fowler, in "King Rat," and Ursula K. Le Guin, in "Woeful Tales from the Mahigul," make suffering the grist of powerful folk tales. Stories by Michael Swanwick, Neil Gaiman and Dan Chaon stretch traditional genre themes in intriguing new directions. Likewise, the one dominant theme that shapes the contents of this year's volume—the zeitgeist of a post-9/11 world—gets memorably varied treatments from several contributors. Lucius Shepard conjures ghosts from the ruins of the World Trade Center for a consoling tale of redemption in "Only Partly Here," while Brian Hodge evokes an all-consuming evil in the battlefields of Afghanistan in "With Acknowledgments to Sun Tzu." Wartime paranoia is implicit in two subtly crafted fables, M. Rickert's "Bread and Bombs" and George Saunders's "The Red Bow." Like the other selections, these stories are proof that the best fantastic fiction is modern mythmaking at its finest.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
The big news about the seventeenth entry in this long-running series is that Small Beer Press proprietors Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant here assume outgoing original coeditor Terri Windling's duties. (Less momentous is the inclusion of an anime and manga survey among the customary yearly roundup articles.) Link and Grant's good taste in outre setups, stylistic and formal adventurousness, and ambiguity shows in such challenging selections as Adam Corbin Fusco's "N0072-JK1," Philip Raines and Harvey Welles' "The Fishie," and John Woodward's poem "At the Mythical Beast." For her part, Datlow chooses such chilling head-scratchers as Dale Bailey's "Hunger: A Confession" and Brian Hodges' "With Acknowledgments to Sun Tzu." All three editors raid such acclaimed anthologies as The Dark [BKL N 1 03], Gathering the Bones [Ag 03], and Firebirds [O 15 03] and journals including the New Yorker and the Paris Review as well as that genre mainstay, the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Pick of the pack? Try Lucius Shepard's characteristically delicious "Only Partly Here." Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin (August 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312329288
• ISBN-13: 978-0312329280
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,021,248 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

  #24 in	Books > Literature & Fiction > Authors, A-Z > ( D ) > Datlow, Ellen
  #40 in	Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > ( D ) > Datlow, Ellen

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Winner of the 2003 Bram Stoker Award for Best Anthology, July 17, 2005

By	Ellen Datlow (NYC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I am delighted to announce that YBFH #17 just won the Stoker Award for Best Anthology of 2003.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Still the place to discover the best writers and stories, May 17, 2005

By	David J. Schwartz (St. Paul, MN USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The strength of the Datlow/Windling collections was always--aside from the editors' shrewd instincts--the wide net they cast over the field. Grant and Link help continue that tradition, and this edition includes stories from Esquire, The New Yorker, and the Paris Review as well as the breadth of genre magazines and anthologies. The big names are here (King, LeGuin, Gaiman) as well as folks you may not have heard of. There are too many standout stories to mention, but the most exciting thing about the Year's Best for me has always been the discoveries, so I'll list a few people I hadn't read before who blew me away with their stories: Laird Barron, Dean Francis Alfar, Philip Raines and Harvey Welles, Megan Whalen Turner, and Paolo Bacigalupi. This is still the one annual collection you must read if you are a fantasy and horror afficionado.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As compelling as ever, July 22, 2005

By	Ribreader - See all my reviews

I am a long-time reader of this anthology, and #17 marks a fascinating shift in the fantasy selections. Link & Grant have tastes quite distinct from Windling's, though I can also see some overlap. But the works they've chosen are no less well-written and wonderful. Datlow's horror selections are as strong as always, so there's an interesting new balance in the two genres here. It's a smart and interesting new spin on this always notable series.