The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: 18th Annual Collection

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, Kelly Link, and Gavin Grant continue this 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 magic 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 sections on comics, by Charles Vess; on anime and manga, by Joan D. Vinge; on media, by Ed Bryant; and on music, by Charles de Lint. With a long list of Honorable Mentions, this is an indispensable reference as well as the best reading available in fantasy and horror.

From Publishers Weekly

The 18th volume in Datlow's well-regarded series continues to take the pulse of contemporary fantastic literature with intriguing results, but without Terri Windling, Datlow's co-editor through volume 16, some of the fantasy selections, chosen by Small Beer publishers Link and Grant, fail to conjure the elusive magic all great fantasy needs. Luckily, Datlow's more seasoned eye has discovered enough chilling horror to make the anthology a must-buy. Culled from author collections, literary and trade magazines, anthologies and online sources, the 44 stories and poems reflect a distinctly global flavor and avoid traditional tropes and topics. The standouts include haunting selections from such well-known authors as Peter Straub (two prose selections), Alice Hoffman, Christopher Fowler, Chuck Palahniuk, China Miéville, John Farris, Douglas Clegg, Joyce Carol Oates, John Kessel and Gregory Maguire. Exceptional contributions from lesser-known talents include Mélanie Fazi's "The Cajun Knot," Shelley Jackson's "Here Is the Church," M. Rickert's "Cold Fires" and Terry Dowling's "Clownette." (Aug.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Anyone worried about original coeditor Terri Windling's replacement last year by Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant should chill now. Their second year aboard this annual excursion on the high-quality seas of fantasy, light and dark, shows no decline in quality or quirkiness from their maiden voyage, though with original coeditor Datlow still in service, fans needn't have worried. Here one still gratefully finds so extraordinarily well wrought an exercise in fantastic literary realism as Peter Straub's "Mr. Aickman's Air Rifle" (how well wrought? John O'Hara might envy the dialogue). Here is one of the most grotesque stories imaginable, Chuck Palahniuk's "Guts," which, Datlow remarks, "contains some rather graphic elements" (it's about a very private pastime of 13-year-old boys). John Kessel's weirdly jolly rural grunge fantasy, "The Baum Plan for Financial Independence," may be less surprising, but the book wouldn't be as good without it, or without Andy Duncan's exquisite essay in biographical fiction, "Zora and the Zombie," about Zora Neale Hurston's anthropological researches in Haiti. As usual, lots of excellent genre reading. Ray OlsonCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

From the Back Cover

Featuring:M. T. Anderson, Laird Barron, Simon Bestwick, Simon Brown, Stepan Chapman, Douglas Clegg, D. Ellis Dickerson, Terry Dowling, Andy Duncan, Jean Esteve, John Farris, Mélanie Fazi, Jeffrey Ford, Christopher Fowler, Stephen, Gallagher, Theodora Goss, Elizabeth Hand, Alice Hoffman, Shelley Jackson, John Kessel, Margo Lanagan, Tanith Lee, Bentley Little, Elizabeth A. Lynn, Gregory Maguire, China Miéville, Richard Mueller, Joyce Carol Oates, Frances Oliver, Chuck Palahniuk, Tina Rath, Philip Raines and Harvey Welles, M. Rickert, Anna Ross, Alison Smith, R.T. Smith, Peter Straub, Lucy Sussex, Catherynne M., Valente, Greg Van Eekhout, Conrad Williams

About the Author

Ellen Datlow is the acclaimed editor of such anthologies as Blood Is Not Enough, Little Deaths, Alien Sex, Vanishing Acts, and The Dark. She has won the Hugo Award for Best Editor once, the World Fantasy Award seven times and the International Horror Guild award for The Dark. She and Terri Windling also won the Bram Stoker Award for The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Thirteenth Annual Collection. She currently edits fiction for SCIFI.COM. Kelly Link and Gavin Grant started Small Beer Press in 2000. They have published the zine Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet (“tiny but celebrated”---The Washington Post) for seven years. Kelly Link's first collection of short stories, Stranger Things Happen, was selected as a Best Book of the Year by Salon, Locus, and The Village Voice. Stories from the collection have won the Nebula, Tiptree, and World Fantasy Awards. Her most recent short stories have appeared in The Dark and The Faery Reel. She recently published Magic for Beginners, and when she isn’t writing, she edits the anthology Trampoline. Originally from Scotland, Gavin Grant regularly reviews fantasy and science fiction. Publications where his work has appeared include Scifiction, Strange Horizons, The Third Alternative, and Singularity.

Reviews

News