Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

James P. Blaylock has been publishing singular, literate, evocative stories since 1977, but Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories appears to be his first (and a complete) collection. Its 16 stories have little concern for genre; Blaylock slides from the fantastic to subtle horror to slipstream, sometimes in the same story. His introduction, with its mentions of an antique shop of mysterious orientalia and of aquaria stocked with obscure oddities, perfectly prefigures the concerns of his stories. The past is sometimes the setting, and it often haunts or drives the characters. But this is no simple nostalgia; Blaylock knows the past, irrecoverable yet inescapable, can be a burden and a trap. Mysteries, too, compel or lure many characters, with their strangeness and shadows and dangers. And some characters pursue--or are controlled by--peculiar obsessions.

Thirteen Phantasms does not present the stories in chronological order, but reading them chronologically reveals Blaylock's evolution into a great writer. His first sale, 1977's atmospheric ship-of-fools/bus-of-bozos fantasy "The Red Planet," is creepy, but too mysterious and underdeveloped to please many readers. A decade later, Blaylock would win the World Fantasy Award with the deserving and powerful "Paper Dragons"; set in a world in which matter has become mutable, it is one of the most unusual dragon stories ever written. The most recent story, 1998's "The Old Curiosity Shop," is a tremendous work in which a man who abandoned his wife discovers she has literally dwindled away from grief, and the objects she left behind, curios sold to a strange shop, are so invested with the weight of memories that a man might be crushed beneath a single item.

Most of the stories take place in contemporary California, but three of the exceptions ("The Ape-Box Affair," "Two Views of a Cave Painting," and "The Idol's Eye") are set in an alternate-history England in which H.G. Wells's science fiction must be fact; and they belong to that rarest of subgenres, comic steampunk. These entertaining adventures feature Langdon St. Ives, a Victorian scientist-adventurer after the manner of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger, and the hero of Blaylock's novels Homunculus (winner of the Philip K. Dick Award) and Lord Kelvin's Machine. --Cynthia Ward

Review

Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories serves up sixteen examples of why he [is] a respected writer in the field. -- St. Louis Post-Dispatch

A short story collection from [Blaylock] is cause for celebration and rejoicing. -- Neil Gaiman --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Edgewood Pr; 1st edition (October 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0970130600
• ISBN-13: 978-0970130600
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 0.9 inches
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #967,618 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Important Collection From a Master of Fantasy Fiction, January 9, 2001

By	Mark Wingenfeld "kathmandubooks" (Winter Park, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This book collects almost all of Blaylock's short fiction and includes an introduction by the author which is just as entertaining as any of his stories. The pieces included here were originally published in various magazines and anthologies and most of them have never been reprinted. Blaylock is one of the quirkiest and most original writers around and if you've never read anything by him this book is a good introduction. The stories in this collection were published over a period of 25 years, and you can see the progression of Blaylock's talent. The earlier pieces pale in comparison to the later ones, but they all bear the unmistakeable mark of Blaylock's genius for fantasy, and his belief that all the little details in our everyday lives can sometimes add up to more than the sum of their parts. Highlights include the World Fantasy Award winning stories "Paper Dragons" and "Thirteen Phantasms".

4.0 out of 5 stars Fine overview of style, August 24, 2009

By	M. Bunn (Little Rock, AR US) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Thirteen Phantasms and Other Stories (Paperback)

Blaylock is a genius. I prefer his novels (The Last Coin, Lord Kelvin's Machine, and (of course!) The Digging Leviathon) to his short fiction, but that's just me. I'm sure convincing arguments could be made the other way because his short fiction is brilliant. The Curiosity Shop is strange and wonderful, and the same can be said for most of the stories in this collection. My favorite authors are Philip K. Dick and James P. Blaylock. They spend about equal time at the top of the list.

4.0 out of 5 stars The Short Review's review of 13 Phantasms, December 25, 2008

By	Tania Hershman "www.taniahershman.com" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thirteen Phantasms and other Stories (Paperback)

Reviewed by M. Bobowski

13 Phantasms and Other Stories is rich in quiet humor and it invites us in, makes us comfortable. The edges are soft, like the lines between fantasy and reality, and each story is a world unto itself.

In Paper Dragons a Chinese restaurant becomes the communications center for a traveling crypto-zoologist, getting on the wrong bus in Red Planet turns into the journey of a lifetime for Monty, and the sea seen through John Kendal's keyhole in Nets of Silver and Gold is not necessarily the same sea seen through his window. The real magic here lies not in fantastic events or unreal places, but in the ability to create people from only ink and paper. It is a feat on par with creating a dragon from copper wire and cotton stuffing, and Blaylock's characters in these stories, at least the men, are very human. ...........

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