The collaborative efforts of Ellen Datlow (horror) and Terri Windling (fantasy) are becoming something of a legend, as year after year they deliver the best horror and fantasy short fiction in a fat (500 double-length pages) anthology that avoids pigeonholes with its mingled, unlabeled sample of the two genres. As in previous years, this volume includes more than 100 pages of summaries about the year 1997 in horror and fantasy publishing, horror and fantasy in the media, and comics. The fiction includes 18 stories and 8 poems with just Terri Windling's initials, and 18 stories and 1 poem with Ellen Datlow's initials, with some (presumably dark fantasy) that are tagged by both.

Even more than usual, Ellen Datlow's horror selections introduce a remarkable variety of types of stories. One of the best tales is Molly Brown's "The Psychomantium," about a mirror that allows alternative time lines to intersect, creating double fates for the characters. "The Skull of Charlotte Corday" (photos included) by Leslie Dick takes an essayistic approach to a famous female assassin and some creepy details in the history of sexual surgery. Douglas Clegg's "I Am Infinite, I Contain Multitudes" is a striking body-horror tale that was nominated for a Bram Stoker Award. Christopher Harman, P.D. Cacek, Joyce Carol Oates, and Vikram Chandra contribute old-fashioned ghost stories. Gary Braunbeck's "Safe" is reminiscent of the best of Stephen King in its portrayal of realistic horror in a small town. Michael Chabon's "In the Black Mill" more than proves that Lovecraftian horror can transcend shallow pastiche. And other horror notables--such as Michael Cadnum, Christopher Fowler, Caitlín Kiernan, Stephen Laws, Kim Newman, Norman Partridge, and Nicholas Royle--make appearances.

Terri Windling's selections include familiar fantasy names such as Peter Beagle, Charles de Lint, Karen Joy Fowler, and Jane Yolen, and famous genre-crossers such as Ray Bradbury, Howard Waldrop, and Jack Womack. She also provides welcome space for fantasy poetry--charming pieces with images of the Trickster Coyote, Sheela Na Gig, and a mermaid, and titles like "Coffee Jerk at the Gates of Hell." The Pulitzer Prize-winning Steven Millhauser contributes an enchanting tale that originally appeared in the New Yorker. Other tales are inspired by an intriguing range of sources: Gulliver's Travels, Marilyn Monroe, the Scottish legend of the Sineater, the art of glass blowing, Aztec myth, and ancient Jewish lore.

There's no better way to take in the best of these two genres, both for the great selections and the ample pointers to 1997's novels, magazines, art, movies, and comics that you may not have heard about.

From Publishers Weekly
"Best" is a subjective judgment, but there's no question that for each of the past 15 years Datlow and Windling have assembled an excellent anthology of richly rewarding imaginative literature. Their harvest of horror and fantasy for 2001 is a bumper crop of 49 stories and poems, many from sources that won't be familiar to the average reader and some from newcomers whose promise bodes well for the future of both genres. As in years past, certain themes cut across genre boundaries and explode notions of horror and fantasy as separate literary forms. Shapeshifters are present in Charles de Lint's upbeat "Trading Hearts at the Half Kaffe Cafe," where they teach a lesson about trust in a romantic relationship, and in Susan Palwick's haunting "Gestella," where they crystallize the sense of estrangement in a deteriorating marriage. Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Bones of the Earth," written in the classic high-fantasy style, and S.P. Somtow's "The Bird Catcher," which features a legendary serial killer, are both moving coming-of-age parables. Intimations of realities beyond comprehension dominate Anthony Doerr's "The Hunter's Wife," a transcendent meditation on the consolations of mortality, and Caitlin Kiernan's "Onion," which brilliantly suggests a universe of chaotic cosmic horrors through the dysfunctional lives of people who have seen but not understood them. Enhancing the mix are top-flight tales by Steve Rasnic Tem, Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand and Gregory Maguire, and Michael Chabon's "The Dark God of Laughter," a metaphysical mystery that ranks as one of the year's most refreshingly uncategorizable stories. Without question, this book is mandatory reading for lovers of weird and fanciful fiction.Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Myths and legends, fairytales and folklore, nightmares and dreams imbue the mundane with touches of magic while illustrating essential aspects of human nature. This annual anthology, the 13th in the series, explores those enchanting influences and gracefully demonstrates how the terms fantasy and horror encompass a range of creative writing from the "high" literary to the underrated comic. (Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics are more thought-provoking than most best sellers.) As usual, the editors begin with summaries of the past year in fantasy and horror in publishing, movies, and other media. Stressing the understanding of "interstitial" literatureDworks that cannot be pigeonholed to a single genre and that consists of much of imaginative writingDthe editors then present a variety of short stories and poems portraying wonders that are funny, subtle, lyric, and dreadful. Many are written by such accomplished and well-known authors as Ursula K. Le Guin, Gaiman, Charles de Lint, and Steve Resnic Tem. This volume of all-around high-quality storytelling is highly recommended to imaginations of all shapes and sizes.DAnn Kim, "Library Journal" Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The fourteenth in this annual series is, compared with some of its predecessors and its editors' other collaborations, uninspired. Among its 150,000 words of fiction are good Harlan Ellison, Ramsey Campbell, Charles de Lint, and Esther Friesner stories and some respectable efforts by lesser-known writers, but the rest is notably less good. This last may be the result of too many stories focused on a particular situation: the odd person or place amid the mundane urban environment, whose oddness and identity normal folk come to realize too late. De Lint is, if not the inventor, a master of that setup in psychological fantasy, as his story demonstrates. But there aren't enough of his peers to fill a volume this big without turning it into more of a theme anthology than it already is or, given that it is ostensibly an annual overview of fantasy and horror, should be. It is still recommendable, but look out for other anthologies covering other corners of its field. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"There are other annual 'best' collections of fantasy and horror combined, but this long-running series . . . tops them all . . . All essential volume for anyone who values quality in fantasy and horror today."—Publishers Weekly (starred)

"A rich, inventively written collection . . . not to be missed."—Kirkus Reviews

"As always, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror is the most broadly literate . . . and the most varied of all the genre annuals."—Locus

"The most extensive and reliable guide to the field available."—Realms of Fantasy


Review
"There are other annual 'best' collections of fantasy and horror combined, but this long-running series . . . tops them all . . . All essential volume for anyone who values quality in fantasy and horror today."—Publishers Weekly (starred)

"A rich, inventively written collection . . . not to be missed."—Kirkus Reviews

"As always, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror is the most broadly literate . . . and the most varied of all the genre annuals."—Locus

"The most extensive and reliable guide to the field available."—Realms of Fantasy


Review
"There are other annual 'best' collections of fantasy and horror combined, but this long-running series . . . tops them all . . . All essential volume for anyone who values quality in fantasy and horror today."—Publishers Weekly (starred)

"A rich, inventively written collection . . . not to be missed."—Kirkus Reviews

"As always, The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror is the most broadly literate . . . and the most varied of all the genre annuals."—Locus

"The most extensive and reliable guide to the field available."—Realms of Fantasy


Book Description
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 and Terri Windling 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, a new Year's Best section, on comics, by Charles Vess, and on anime and manga, by Joan D. Vinge, and a long list of Honorable Mentions, making this an indispensable reference as well as the best reading available in fantasy and horror.


About the Author
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 lives in New York City.

Terri Windling won the Mythopoeic Award for her first adult novel, The Wood Wife. She had edited numerous books and anthologies, including The Essential Bordertown and Silver Birch, Blood Moon, the most recent in a series of contemporary fairy-tale anthologies, edited with Ellen Datlow. She divides her time between Devon, England and Tucson, Arizona.

FROM OUR EDITORS

If you read one anthology of fantastic fiction this year, it has to be this one. Datlow and Windling have shown, over this past decade, that they have an unerring eye for the fantastic that is at once literate and accessible, which is no mean feat. I particularly liked the Wrede and the McKillip, but almost all of the stories are worthy of note. Highly recommended.
—Michelle West

ANNOTATION

The annual excellence that has garnered this series two consecutive World Fantasy Awards and a windfall of critical acclaim continues in an impressive new anthology. Comprehensive in its coverage of the year in horror and fantasy, this collection features works by Ellen Kushner, Pat Cadigan, Jane Yolen, and dozens of others.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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 and Terri Windling 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, two new Year's Best sections -- on comics, by Charles Vess, and on anime and managa, by Joan D. Vinge -- and a long list of Honorable Mentions, making this an indispensable reference as well as the best reading available in fantasy and horror.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

This collection is short on fantasy and long on horror--with special emphasis on sadomasochism, which, in the hands of an author like Kathe Koja, can result in a darkly illuminating story about sexual fantasies sometimes better left unrealized. Not all writers are so gifted, however. Grant Morrison gives us an offensive story about a blind heroine who is urinated upon and slashed with a razor before being clamped to a ``Chair of Final Submission.'' But Datlow and Windling, who edited the earlier volumes in this series, offer entertaining fare as well, including several appearances by good old-fashioned vampires. K. W. Jeter's aged monster has needs that promise to make his daughter's life a horror for all eternity, while Jane Yolen pens a touching tale of a young girl whose love allows her undead mother to go to her eternal rest. Also included are some enjoyable new turns on famous characters, including Peter Pan, Robin Hood and Santa Claus. Deserving of special mention are Nancy Willard's magically real tale of a man who returns from the dead to retrieve his pets and Robert Holdstock and Garry Kilworth's suspenseful, literate tale of an archeologist on the trail of immortality. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Best" is a subjective judgment, but there's no question that for each of the past 15 years Datlow and Windling have assembled an excellent anthology of richly rewarding imaginative literature. Their harvest of horror and fantasy for 2001 is a bumper crop of 49 stories and poems, many from sources that won't be familiar to the average reader and some from newcomers whose promise bodes well for the future of both genres. As in years past, certain themes cut across genre boundaries and explode notions of horror and fantasy as separate literary forms. Shapeshifters are present in Charles de Lint's upbeat "Trading Hearts at the Half Kaffe Cafe," where they teach a lesson about trust in a romantic relationship, and in Susan Palwick's haunting "Gestella," where they crystallize the sense of estrangement in a deteriorating marriage. Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Bones of the Earth," written in the classic high-fantasy style, and S.P. Somtow's "The Bird Catcher," which features a legendary serial killer, are both moving coming-of-age parables. Intimations of realities beyond comprehension dominate Anthony Doerr's "The Hunter's Wife," a transcendent meditation on the consolations of mortality, and Caitl!n Kiernan's "Onion," which brilliantly suggests a universe of chaotic cosmic horrors through the dysfunctional lives of people who have seen but not understood them. Enhancing the mix are top-flight tales by Steve Rasnic Tem, Kelly Link, Elizabeth Hand and Gregory Maguire, and Michael Chabon's "The Dark God of Laughter," a metaphysical mystery that ranks as one of the year's most refreshingly uncategorizable stories. Without question, this book is mandatory reading for lovers of weird and fanciful fiction. (Aug. 21) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

You can't improve on the "best," but as the editors of this landmark anthology series show in its most recent volume, you can find fresh new angles from which to present it. For the first time ever, they have selected an essay, Douglas Winter's "The Pathos of Genre," and this incisive critique of the limits of genre branding subtly calls attention to how Datlow and Windling's fiction and poetry selections usually resist simple categorizing. Many of their best picks from 1999 willfully bend, blend and move beyond expected genre materials: Tim Lebbon's "White," a horror and SF cross-stitch, uses B-movie imagery to explore the behavior of people confronted with ecological apocalypse. Kim Newman, in "You Don't Have to Be Mad," grounds a caustic horror satire of modern business mores in set pieces appropriated from television espionage programs of the 1960s. Michael Marshall Smith, in "Welcome," and Charles de Lint, in "Pixel Pixies," conjure alternate fantasy worlds with the most unlikely of talismans--a computer. Neil Gaiman, one of six authors represented by more than one contribution, places both a horror and a fantasy tale: "Keepsakes and Treasures: A Love Story," a nasty bit on the death of romance, and "Harlequin Valentine," a darkly funny fantasy. There are more than a few modern fairy tale variants, but even these show a refreshing range of styles and approaches, notably Patricia McKillip's "Toad," a delightful deflation of the frog prince's tale. The usual generous survey essays by Datlow, Windling, Ed Bryant and Seth Johnson only enhance the volume's reputation as indispensable reading for the year. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

VOYA - Alison Kastner

The editors present a veritable feast of fantasy and horror, some of which readers will relish, and others of which, in the grand tradition of the genres, may turn stomachs. Gems such as Charles DeLint's Crow Girls, the story of a woman in crisis who is inexplicably moved by a chance encounter with two enigmatic girls, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's reminiscences of Surinam in Caribe Magico, make the collection one worth having. As in past years, the editors give a taste of a wide variety of styles, from the magic realism of Patricia Preciado Martin's Plumas to the B-movie horror style of Terry Lamsley's Walking the Dog. Those who have enjoyed rewritings of fairy tales will be drawn to Tanith Lee's The Reason for Not Going to the Ball, in which the "wicked stepmother" exonerates herself in a letter to the now-grown Cinderella. Jane Yolen's story The House of Seven Angels, about a rabbi who studies in the company of angels, begs to be read aloud. The summations of the year in fantasy and horror will make this a useful tool for those offering reader's advisory. Other chapters include "Horror and Fantasy in the Media" and "Obituaries." VOYA Codes: 3Q 3P M J S (Readable without serious defects, Will appeal with pushing, Middle School-defined as grades 6 to 8, Junior High-defined as grades 7 to 9 and Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12).

Library Journal