From richard.horton@sff.net Mon Mar 15 23:44:56 2004 Date: Thu, 08 Jan 2004 21:57:13 -0600 From: Rich Horton Newsgroups: sff.people.richard-horton, sff.discuss.short-fiction Subject: Re: Summary: Anthologies, 2003 On Mon, 05 Jan 2004 21:07:37 -0600, Rich Horton wrote: >6. Hardcover Fantasy/Horror > >Three nice hardcover anthologies consisted entirely (by design or >accident) of fantasy or horror stories. > >The books: Firebirds, Shadows Over Baker Street, The Dark > >Subtotals: 3 books, 50 stories (1 novella, 26 novelettes, 23 short >stories), about 416,000 words OK, I was supposed to do "Outside the US" next, but I decided to read COSMOS LATINOS, which pretty obviously fits in that category, so that'll have to wait until I finish it. So, to this rather ad hoc category. Still, it does fit together. They are all hardcover anthologies. The Dark is ghost stories -- that's fantasy. Shadows Over Baker Street is Lovecraft meets Sherlock Holmes. There's a colorable argument that that could be Science Fiction -- but to me the stories read as fantasy. As for Firebirds, the book is labelled "Science Fiction and Fantasy" (and Young Adult, which is accurate) -- probably a fair description of the Firebird label, but not of the book -- all the stories are clearly fantasy except for one mainstream story. So -- one way or another, I found each of these anthologies decent reading. The least of them is Shadows Over Baker Street, though oddly it may have the best story: Neil Gaiman's "A Study in Emerald", a short novelette (7800 words, so my length categorization may be wrong) set in an alternate history where the "Old Ones" rule England -- arguably mostly fairly but with some negative aspects. Our heroes investigate a murder traceable to some foolish revolutionaries who want to restore human ascendancy. The rest of the book has some OK reading but too many of the stories, to my taste, relied mainly on introducing Holmes then presenting him with an irrational puzzle dealing with Chthulhu or some such messing with our world. I don't think the strengths of either sort of story (Lovecraft's or Doyle's) were well represented. The Dark is a strong collection of ghost stories. I found stories by Terry Dowling and Daniel Abraham the best. Dowling's "One Thing About the Night" tells of an enthusiast of "psychomantiums" -- unusual rooms employing mirrors and darkness to create strange psychological effects -- or are they purely psychological. Abraham's "An Amicable Divorce" tells of a divorced man with a dead son with a chance at reconciliation when his haunted wife calls for help. Another fine story is Kelly Link's "The Hortlak", the strangest story in the book, about a young man working in a convenience store near a zombie colony. There is also a good Tanith Lee story, "The Ghost of the Clock", about a young woman coming to stay with her evil aunt, and her aunt's haunted clock. Notable weak stories by prominent writers were Sharyn McCrumb's "The Gallows Necklace" -- any likelihood of me reading her controversial fandom mysteries was certainly reduced -- and Lucius Shepard's "Limbo", which actually starts pretty strong and wholly falls to pieces at the climax. But that's nitpicking -- the anthology is certainly worth reading as a whole. Firebirds is a YA anthology evidently aimed at promoting the newish Firebird YA line of SF and Fantasy books. The anthology itself is pretty fun reading. Highlights include Delia Sherman's "Tam Lin in the 60s NY folk scene" story, "Cotillion"; Sherwood Smith's "Beauty", a next generation sequel to her wonderful diptych Crown Duel/Court Duel (recently reissued in one volume as Crown Duel); Diana Wynne Jones's nice cat fantasy "Little Dot"; and "Max Mondrosch", a rather morose story of a man looking unsuccessfully for a job, by Lloyd Alexander. (All but the last are novelettes.) Many other stories were fun reading -- few stand out as outstanding. I don't know if that's a result of the YA nature of the book or something else.