Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears (Fairy Tale Anthologies)

Fairy tales reimagined—in stories by “a distinguished company of writers” including Neil Gaiman, Joyce Carol Oates, and Tanith Lee (Kirkus Reviews). For many of us, the fairy tale was our first exposure to the written word and the power of storytelling. These wondrous works of magic and morality enthralled us, enchanted us, sometimes terrified us, and remain in our hearts and memories still. Once again, World Fantasy Award–winning editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling have compiled an extraordinary collection of reimagined tales conceived by some of today’s most acclaimed contemporary purveyors of literary fantasy, science fiction, and horror, including Neil Gaiman, Gahan Wilson, Joyce Carol Oates, Tanith Lee, Nancy Kress, Gene Wolfe, and others. Remarkable things lurk in these dark and magical woods. Here Beauty confronts a serial-killer Beast, Hansel and Gretel’s witch resides not in a gingerbread house but in a luxurious resort, and Rumpelstiltskin is truly the devil demanding his due, rightfully or otherwise. The hilarious “Roach in Loafers” ingeniously combines the classic “Elves and the Shoemaker” tale with “Puss in Boots” and adds an insectile twist, while in a modern fable that blends The Wizard of Oz and Hans Christian Andersen, Dorothy is set adrift in Hollywoodland, ruby slippers and all. These are not the fairy stories you remember from childhood.

From Publishers Weekly

Datlow and Windling, winners of a World Fantasy Award for their annual Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, score again with this third entry in their provocative volumes of original, updated fairy tales for adults. The collection, which gathers many impressive names from the field of dark fantasy, also contains introductory essays and extensive suggested reading lists. Highlights include Tanith Lee's "The Beast," a disturbing but all too believable vision of psychopathy and art, and a rather different take on art's worth in an even more unsettling story by Garry Kilworth ("Masterpiece"). Joyce Carol Oates offers an exceptionally surrealistic version of the Sleeping Beauty myth, while Roberta Lannes contributes an exceedingly amusing variation on "The Shoemaker and the Elves." The late John Brunner is represented by a masterful fable that employs Chinese myth, an evil emperor and all-powerful dragons, and Nancy Collins creates a wonderfully folksy atmosphere with her Kentucky-set yarn about fear and common sense. Though the collection skews slightly toward tales of damsels in distress imperiled by evil males (it's notable that only six of the 22 stories are by men), it triumphantly concludes with Delia Sherman's uplifting fable about redemption, nobility and friendship. Like its predecessors, Snow White, Blood Red and Black Thorn, White Rose, this anthology is a must for those who believe that "once upon a time" means now. Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

From Roberta Lanne's upscale retelling of "The Shoemaker and the Elves," in which an ambitious cockroach lends his entrepreneurial talents to a Manhattan tailor ("Roach in Loafers"), to Ellen Steiber's moody tribute to Japanese folklore ("The Fox Wife"), the 22 original stories and poems in this collection bring a modern twist to classic and sometimes obscure fairy tales. Like its predecessors Black Thorn, White Rose (AvoNova: Morrow, 1994) and Snow White, Blood Red (Morrow, 1992), this volume explores new interpretations of old themes. It offers a fresh look at tales no longer for children only. Suitable for most libraries' fantasy or short story collections.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

In this editorial team's third anthology of original short fantasies based on traditional fairy tales, the writing is consistently of very high quality. Indeed, so high that it constitutes justification for the book all by itself. Readers should skip the introduction, though, in which Datlow and Windling grind their pet axes, and be aware that the stories are best read in small doses, for literate though they are, far too many of them struggle to make old tales fit the procrustean beds of modern psychology. The stories that avoid this, most notably Nancy Collins' "Billy Fearless," are substantially more readable. But the whole volume still will reward connoisseurs of superior literary fantasy prepared to slog through psychobabble and political agendas. Roland Green

Booklist

“Very high quality . . . The whole volume will reward connoisseurs of superior literary fantasy.”

Kirkus Reviews

“A distinguished company of writers . . . The fairy-tale tradition clearly retains its imaginative fertility, and the authors have almost without exception risen to the occasion.”

Publishers Weekly

“Datlow and Windling . . . score again. . . . This anthology is a must for those who believe that ‘once upon a time’ means now.”

About the Author

Ellen Datlow, an acclaimed science fiction and fantasy editor, was born and raised in New York City. She has been a short story and book editor for more than thirty years and has edited or coedited several critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series and Black Thorn, White Rose (1994) with Terri Windling. Datlow has received numerous honors, including multiple Shirley Jackson, Bram Stoker, Hugo, Locus, and World Fantasy Awards, and Life Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Association, to name just a few. She resides in New York.   Terri Windling is a writer, editor, and artist specializing in fantasy literature, folklore, and mythic arts. She has published over forty books, receiving nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Award (for her novel The Wood Wife), the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFWA’s Solstice Award for “outstanding contributions to the speculative fiction field as a writer, editor, artist, educator, and mentor.” She writes essays on folklore and fantasy; maintains a popular blog on these subjects (Myth & Moor); and is on the board of the Chichester Centre for Fairy Tales, Folklore, and Speculative Fiction (Chichester University). She also creates myth-inspired visual art for exhibition in the US and Europe; and she’s a member of the Modern Fairies music-and-folklore project (Oxford & Sheffield Universities). A former New Yorker, she now lives with her British husband and family in Devon, England.

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