Product Details
The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: 20th Annual Collection

The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2007: 20th Annual Collection
From St. Martin's Press

Price:

This item is not available for purchase from this store.
Click here to go to Amazon to see other purchasing options.


18 new or used available from $3.27

Average customer review:

Product Description

For twenty years this award-winning compilation has been the nonpareil benchmark against which all other annual fantasy and horror collections are judged. Directed first by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling and for the past four years by Datlow and Kelly Link & Gavin J. Grant, it consistently presents the strangest, the funniest, the darkest, the sharpest, the most original—in short, the best fantasy and horror.  The current collection, marking a score of years, offers more than forty stories and poems from almost as many sources. Summations of the field by the editors are complemented by articles by Edward Bryant, Charles de Lint and Jeff VanderMeer highlighting the best of the fantastic in, respectively, media, music and comics as well as honorable mentions—notable works that didn’t quite make the cut but are nonetheless worthy of attention. The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: 20th Annual Collection is a cornucopia of fantastic delights, an unparalleled resource and indispensable reference that captures the unique excitement and beauty of the fantastic in all its gloriously diverse forms, from the lightest fantasy to the darkest horror.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #401533 in Books
  • Published on: 2007-10-02
  • Released on: 2007-10-02
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Hardcover
  • 608 pages

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. In the two decades since this venerable series was inaugurated, so many venues have begun to welcome horror and fantasy stories that these dedicated editors play a crucial role in bringing the best new works to fans who don't always read far afield. Trend spotters will note numerous ghost stories in Datlow's horror picks, including Christopher Harman's The Last to Be Found and Stephen Volk's 31/10, supremely eerie exercises in the ghost-hunt-gone-bad vein, and Stephen Gallagher's The Box and Glen Hirshberg's The Muldoon, whose spooks are equal parts psychological and supernatural. Link and Grant's eclectic fantasy picks range from the haunting magical realism of Geoff Ryman's Hugo- and WFA-nominated Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter to the light urban fantasy of Ellen Klages's In the House of Seven Librarians and Jeffrey Ford's blend of whimsy and the macabre in The Night Whiskey. As the line between fantasy and horror blurs, this combined presentation of their exemplars will give readers of both genres much to enjoy, and may even broaden a few horizons. (Oct.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

“The best anthology I have read in a while, this is great for keeping up with what is going on in the worlds of fantasy and horror, or simply as a collection of fine stories.”
--The Zone
 
“This is the anthology to pick up every year if you want to read the best short fiction from the previous year and get overviews of the best fiction, non-fiction, films and video, anime, and music that was released in that year.”--Green Man Review
 
“Long lived and always outstanding.” --Science Fiction Chronicle
 
“A standard that... will be the one to beat in the future." --Locus
 
Treasures abound here."  --Minneapolis Star Tribune
 
"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.. . . The usual generous survey essays only enhance the volume's reputation as indispensable for the year."--Publishers Weekly

About the Author

Ellen Datlow was editor of SCI FICTION, the multi award-winning fiction venue of SCIFI.COM for six years, and before that fiction editor of OMNI and OMNI.com for many years.  She continues to edit anthologies for adults, young adults, and children. Her horror anthology Inferno will be out in December.
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 ten years. An anthology, The Best of Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, will be published this autumn.
Kelly Link is the author of two collections, Stranger Things Happen, and Magic For Beginners (one of Time Magazine's Best Books of the Year). Stories from her collections have won the Nebula, Hugo, World Fantasy, Tiptree, and Locus awards, and her work has recently appeared in A Public Space, Firebirds Rising, and Best American Short Stories 2005.
Originally from Scotland, Gavin J. Grant regularly reviews fantasy and science fiction. Publications where his work has appeared include Los Angeles Times, BookPage, SCI FICTION, Strange Horizons, and Salon Fantastique.

Customer Reviews

The Twentieth Annual Collection is a terrific compilation.5

As has been the case (at least since this reviewer began reading this annual collection several years ago), this anthology provides some of the best horror and fantasy short stories, poems and other media from 2006. The forty entries are always fun even for those who may have read most of them in other collections. The tales range the gamut from wishfully whimsical to fundamentally frightening to awesomely amusing. However, once again it is the deep articles that provide "Summation 2006: Fantasy", "Summation 2006: Horror", "The Year in Media of the Fantastic: 2006", "Fantasy in Comics and Graphic Novels 2006", "Music of the Fantastic: 2006", and "Obituaries: 2006" that bring an extra edge to this always strong collection; even the obits enhance the book with its short homage to the famous like the Jims Baen and Williamson and the not so famous (to me) such as "Retro Hugo" winner Wilson Tucker. This reviewer especially enjoys comparing this year's trends as described in the Summations to the last few years. Readers will enjoy meeting new authors (at least to me) like Ira Sher and Margo Lanagan and long time favorites like Gene Wolfe and Terry Dowling. Besides the articles, perhaps the best entry is the realistic futuristic "Another Word for Map Is Faith" by Christopher Rowe (right surname for the author of this tale), who extrapolates the religious right teaming with the Neocons into a scary vision of a Taliban-like control of America. The Twentieth Annual Collection is a terrific compilation.

Harriet Klausner

Consistently Entertaining Fiction5
The short stories compiled here range from the hilarious "Fourteen Experiments in Postal Delivery" to the melancholy "Dog Person." While I picked up the "Year's Best" for the horror, I found the fantasy stories to be among the most interesting. The "fantasy" stories included are of the speculative variety and not the sword-and-sorcery variety--that's a plus for me, but it won't be everyone's cup of tea. One of my personal favorites here is Geoff Ryman's magical "Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter," a story that reads like a Garcia Marquez/J-horror mash-up. And the supremely bizarro "Night Whiskey" by Jeffrey Ford is just too good to define.

Is every story going to please every reader? With such varied tastes, that's not a realistic assumption. There were a couple of stories I skimmed, but overall I found a lot of sparkling gems here. And even if there were no stories included, I would recommend this annual based on the year-in-fantasy and year-in-horror reviews that begin every volume.

Always excellent4
The Year's Best series is always a good purchase for the lover of fantasy and horror. Here you get to meet the freshest talent and to sample their wares. My only critique is the "Best Of" sections at the front of the book, which seem to get longer and longer each year. Not that this section isn't worth reading to get ideas, but it's taking up valuable short story space. However, if you are ever in a bookstore and needing a new flavor, I suggest picking up a copy of this book and looking around the store to see if any of their suggestions are in stock. It's my own version of a fiction treasure hunt.