Each year editors Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling compile a collection of what they regard to be the best fantasy and horror short stories published during that year. This volume covers the stories of 1994, and as always includes a discussion of the state of the publishing industry and a list of stories that couldn't be included in the volume but were worthy of note.
Fantasy and horror cover a broad spectrum, from retellings of fairy tales and mythology to magic realism, from subtle psychological horror to grim stories of gore and extreme suffering. There is Pagan Kennedy's ironic contemporary story of "Elvis's Bathroom," which explores the popular cult of Elvis is explored in terms of the search for wonder in a world where increasingly the strange is explained away by science. "De Natura Unicorni" by Jane Yolen is the story of a legendary beast, done in her usual witty, elliptical style.
In all, this is an excellent compendium, a particularly good resource for the writer who wants to see what a top editor in the field considers to be the best of the best.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Summation 1994: Fantasy by Terri Windling
Summation 1994: Horror by Ellen Datlow
Horror and Fantasy in the Media: 1994 by Edward Bryant
Comics 1994 by Will Shetterly and Emma Bull
Obituaries
"Transmutations" by Patricia A. McKillip
"Bottom's Dream" (poem) by Rachel Welzsteon
"La Promesa" by Leroy Quintana
"Aweary of the Sun" by Gregory Feely
"A Wheel in the Desert, the Moon on Some Swings" by Jonathan Carroll
"Who will Love the River God?" by Emily Newland
"Brothers" by Joyce Carol Oates
"Subsoil" by Nicholson Baker
"Elvis's Bathroom" by Pagan Kennedy
"Yet Another Poisoned Apple for the Fairy Princess" by A. R. Morlan
"The Big Game" by Nicholas Royle
"Buenavantura and the Fifteen Sisters" by Margarita Engle
"De Natura Unicorni" by Jane Yolen
"Blue Motel" by Ian McDonald
"A Friend Indeed" by David Garneet
"Something in the Rain" by Charles Grant
"Rain Falls" by Michael Marshall Smith
"That Old School Tie" by Jack Womack
"Animals Behind Bars!" by Scott Bradfield
"Monuments to the Dead" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
"Unterseeboot Doktor" by Ray Bradbury
"Young Woman in a Garden" by Delia Sherman
"The Man in the Black Suit" by Stephen King
"In the Tradition..." (essay) by Michael Swanwick
"Words Like Pale Stones" by Nancy kress
"Marchen" (poem) by Jane Yolen
"Giants in the Earth" by Dale Bailey
"A Conflagration Artist" by Bradley Denton
"Report" by Carme Riera
"The Village of the Mermaids" (poem) by John Bradley
"--And the Horses Hiss at Midnight" by A. R. Morlan
"The Entreaty of the Wiideema" by Barry Lopez
"White Chapel" by Douglas Clegg
"The Stone Woman" (poem) by Linda Weasel Head
"Coyote Stories" by Charles de Lint
"The Box" by Jack Ketchum
"A Fear of Dead Things" by Andrew Klavan
"He Unwraps Himself" (poem) by Darrell Schweitzer
"Chandira" by Brian Mooney
"Fever" by Harlan Ellison
"The Best Things in Life" by Lenora Champagne
"Mending Souls" by Judith terr
The Ocean and All Its Devices" by William Browning Spencer
"Strings" by Kelley Eskridge
"Superman's Diary" by B. Brandon Barker
Isobel Avens Returns to Stepney in the Spring" by M. John Harrison
"The Sisterhood of Night" by Steven Millhauser
"Winter Bodies" by Noy Holland
"The Sloan Men" by David Nickle
"Is That Them" by Kevin Roice
"The Kingdom of Cats and Birds" by Geoffrey A. Landis
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