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

by Datlow, Ellen; Link, Kelly; Grant, Gavin

• ISBN13: 9780312329273
• ISBN10: 031232927X
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-08-01
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press

Summary

For more than a decade, readers have turned toThe Year's Best Fantasy and Horrorto find the most rewarding fantastic short stories. Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant continue their 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 magical 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 Year's Best sections--on comics, by Charles Vess, and on anime and manga, by Joan D. Vinge and on film and television by Edward Bryant. This is an indispensable reference as well as the best reading available in fantasy and horror. *Terry Bisson *Kevin Brockmeier *Dan Chaon *Peter Crowther *Theodora Goss *Daphne Gottlieb *Glen Hirshberg *Brian Hodge *Nina Kiriki Hoffman *Kij Johnson *Paul LaFarge *Thomas Ligotti *Sara Maitland *Maureen F. McHugh *Steve Rasnic Tem *Benjamin Rosenbaum *Michael Marshall Smith *Michael Swanwick *Karen Traviss *Megan Whalen Turner

Author Biography

Ellen Datlow is the acclaimed editor of such anthologies as Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers (with Terri Windling), Lethal Kisses, Off Limits, and Endangered Species, and has won the World Fantasy Award six times. She has won and been nominated for the Stolker Award. She lives in New York City and currently edits fiction for SCIFI.COM

Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant started Small Beer Press in 2000. They have published the zine Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet ("tiny, but celebrated"-Washington Post) for seven years. They live in an old farmhouse in Northampton, Massachusetts.

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 Conjunctions and McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. She is the editor of the anthology Trampoline and is currently working on more short stories.

Originally from Scotland, Gavin J. Grant worked in bookshops in Los Angeles and Boston and BookSense.com a website for independent bookshops. He regularly reviews fantasy and science fiction. Publications where his work has appeared include Scifiction, Strange Horizons, The Third Alternative, Singularity, and The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xiii
Summation 2003: Fantasy
Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant	xv
Summation 2003: Horror
Ellen Datlow	xlix
Media of the Fantastic: 2003
Edward Bryant	xciii
Comics and Graphic Novels: 2003
Charles Vess	cvii
Anime and Manga: 2003
Joan D. Vinge	cxvii
Music of the Fantastic: 2003
Charles de Lint	cxlv
Obituaries: 2003
James Frenkel	cli
At the Mouth of the River of Bees
Kij Johnson	1	(15)
Why I Became a Plumber
Sara Maitland	16
Bread and Bombs
M. Rickert	24	(11)
The Red Bow
George Saunders	35	(9)
The Wife
Vandana Singh	44	(8)
Only Partly Here
Lucius Shepard	52	(21)
Bone (poem)
Steve Rasnic Tern	73	(2)
Old Virginia
Laird Barron	75	(17)
A Study in Emerald
Neil Gaiman	92	(16)
You Go Where It Takes You
Nathan Ballingrud	108	(11)
L'Aquilone du Estrellas (The Kite of Stars)
Dean Francis Alfar	119	(8)
Harvey's Dream
Stephen King	127	(8)
Woeful Tales from Mahigul
Ursula K. Le Guin	135	(15)
King Rat
Karen Joy Fowler	150	(5)
The Hortlak
Kelly Link	155	(21)
With Acknowledgements to Sun Tzu
Brian Hodge	176	(15)
Ash City Stomp
Richard Butner	191	(10)
King Dragon
Michael Swanwick	201	(30)
Invisible Geese: A Theory, The Perfect City (poems)
Patrick O'Leary	231	(4)
Bedfordshire
Peter Crowther	235	(20)
N0072-JK1
Adam Corbin Fusco	255	(5)
Cell Call
Marc Laidlaw	260	(8)
The Fishie
Philip Raines and Harvey Welles	268	(18)
Hunger: A Confession
Dale Bailey	286	(11)
Mr. Sly Stops for a Cup of Joe
Scott Emerson Bull	297	(7)
The Baby in the Night Deposit Box
Megan Whalen Turner	304	(14)
Lamentation over the Destruction of Ur
Paul LaFarge	318	(14)
The Silence of the Falling Stars
Mike O'Driscoll	332	(17)
At the Mythical Beast (poem)
Jon Woodward	349	(3)
The Fluted Girl
Paolo Bacigalupi	352	(20)
The Brief History of the Dead
Kevin Brockmeier	372	(11)
Flotsam
Nina Kiriki Hoffman	383	(24)
The Bees
Dan Chaon	407	(14)
Dancing Men
Glen Hirshberg	421	(26)
Lily, with Clouds
Theodora Goss	447	(6)
The Man Who Did Nothing
Karen Traviss	453	(15)
Husband
Shelley Jackson	468	(7)
Open Doors
Michael Marshall Smith	475	(7)
The Valley of Giants
Benjamin Rosenbaum	482	(4)
Purity
Thomas Ligotti	486	(13)
Ancestor Money
Maureen F. McHugh	499	(12)
Final Girl II: The Frame (poem)
Daphne Gottlieb	511	(3)
Almost Home
Terre Bisson	514	(31)
Honorable Mentions: 2003	545