The big book of modern fantasy The ultimate collection

Book - 2020

"Return to the sumptuous, global feast of fantasy fiction with Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's selection of modern masterpieces. From the swinging sixties to the strange, strange seventies, the over-the-top eighties to the gnarly nineties--and beyond, into the twenty-first century--the VanderMeers have found the stories and the writers from around the world that reinvented and revitalized the fantasy genre after World War II. From Jorge Luis Borges to Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock to Angela Carter, Terry Pratchett to Stephen King, the full range and glory of the fantastic are on display in these ninety-one stories in which dragons soar, giants stomp, and human children should still think twice about venturing alone into the dark f...orest."--

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Subjects
Genres
Short stories
Fantasy fiction
Published
New York : Vintage Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC 2020.
Language
English
Other Authors
Ann VanderMeer (editor), Jeff VanderMeer
Item Description
"A Vintage Books original." -- title page verso.
Physical Description
xviii, 876 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
ISBN
9780525563860
  • Introduction / by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
  • Ten rounds with grandfather clock / Maurice Richardson
  • The circular valley / Paul Bowlew
  • Signs and symbols / Vladimir Nabokov
  • The Zahir / Jorge Luis Borges
  • Liane the wayfarer/ Jack Vance
  • Poolwana's orchid / Edgar Mittelholzer
  • The man who sold rope to gnoles / Margaret St. Clair
  • O ugly bird! / Manly Wade Wellman
  • The gopherwood box / Abraham Sutzkever
  • My life in the bush of ghosts (excerpt) / Amos Tutuola
  • A very old man with enormous wings / Gabriel García Márquez
  • The anything box / Zenna Henderson
  • Lean times in Lankhmar / Fritz Leiber
  • The dreaming city / Michael Moorcock
  • Cronopios and Famas / Julio Cortázar
  • Kaya-Kalp (metamorphosis) / Intizar Husain
  • The last dragon in the world / Tove Janson
  • The drowned giant / J. G. Ballard
  • The monster / Satu Waltari
  • Narrow valley / R. A. Lafferty
  • The sinister apartment / Mikhail Bulgakov
  • The origin of the birds / Italo Calvino
  • The prey / Bilge Karasu
  • The topless tower / Silvina Ocampo
  • The barbarian / Joanna Russ
  • the youngest doll / Rosario Ferre
  • The ones who walk away from Omelas / Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Ark of bones / Henry Dumas
  • Winged creatures / Sylvia Townsend Warner
  • Linnaeus forgets / Fred Chappell
  • The erl-king / Angela Carter
  • The great night of the trains / Sara Gallardo
  • The tale of dragons and dreamers / Samuel R. Delany
  • The white horse child / Greg Bear
  • The dreamstone / C. J. Cherryh
  • Five letters from an Eastern empire / Alasdair Gray
  • The ice dragon / George. R. R. Martin
  • One time / Leslie Marmon Silko
  • Sister light, sister dark / Jane Yolen
  • The luck in the head / M. John Harrison
  • Warlock at the wheel / Diana Wynne Jones
  • Mrs. Todd's shortcut / Stephen King
  • On the dark side of the station where the train never stops / Pat Murphy
  • After the hurricane / Edgardo Sanabria Santaliz
  • The girl who went to the rich neighborhood / Rachel Pollack
  • The bystander / Leena Krohn
  • Wild boys: variations on a theme / Karen Joy Fowler
  • The mole king / Marie Hermanson
  • What the tapster saw / Ben Okri
  • The fool / David Drake
  • The flying creatures of Fra Angelico / Antonio Tabucchi
  • A Mexican fairy tale / Leonora Carrington
  • The boy in the tree / Elizabeth Hand
  • TV people / Haruki Murakami
  • Alice in Prague or the curious room / Angela Carter
  • Moon songs / Carol Emshwiller
  • The life and adventures of shed number XII / Victor Pelevin
  • The fellowship of the dragon / Patricia McKillip
  • Troll bridge / Terry Pratchett
  • Longing for blood / Vilma Kadleckova
  • A brief visit to Bonnyville / D. F. Lewis
  • Travels with the Snow Queen / Kelly Link
  • The neurosis of containment / Rikki Ducornet
  • The darktree wheel / Rhys Hughes
  • Foetus / Shelley Jackson
  • Tan-Tan and dry bone / Nalo Hopkinson
  • Where does the town go at night? / Tanith Lee
  • Pop art / Joe Hill
  • State secrets of Aphasia / Stepan Chapman
  • The window / Tatyana Tolstaya
  • The wight of words / Jeffery Ford
  • All the water in the world / Han Song
  • The kite of stars / Dean Francis Alfar
  • Mogo / Alberto Chimal
  • The malady of ghostly cities / Nathan Ballingrud
  • End of the line / Aimee Bender
  • I left my heart in Skaftafell / Victor LaValle
  • The grassdreaming tree / Sheree Reneé Thomas
  • La peau verte / Caitlín R. Kiernana
  • A hard truth about waste management / Sumanth Prabhaker
  • Bufo Rex / Erik Amundsen
  • The arrest of the Great Mimille / Manuela Draeger
  • Aunts / Karin Tidbeck
  • For life / Marta Kisiel
  • The spring of Dongke Temple / Qitongren
  • The wordeaters / Rochita Loenen-Ruiz
  • Creature / Ramsey Shehadeh
  • Beyond the sea gate of the scholar-pirates of Sarsköe / Garth Nix
  • The bear dresser's secret / Richard Bowes
  • Table with ocean / Alberto Chimal
  • The jinn / Musharraf Ali Farooqi.
Review by Booklist Review

This mammoth anthology from two of speculative fiction's most talented editors collects stories published after 1945, where The Big Book of Classical Fantasy (2019) left off. Ann and Jeff Vandermeer again demonstrate their commitment to presenting not only treasured stories by big names in the field (Moorcock, Leiber, Le Guin) but also a well-rounded range of lesser-known literary or paraliterary fantasists' work and previously under- or untranslated writers. An anthology of this breadth and depth will have stories that will please almost any kind of fantasy reader, but there are standouts: Rhys Hughes' "The Darktree Wheel" follows a skilled thief and footpad as he explores the ice-encased city of Chaud-Melle while attempting to survive a cooking festival and a postal revolution; Stepan Chapman's "State Secrets of Aphasia," set in an Oz-like wonderland threatened by a mysterious black glacier; and the newly translated "The Arrest of the Great Mimille" by Manuela Draeger, in which a horde of wall-fish menace a surreal city by attempting to create a sheriff out of cubic bubbles. The stories range from fantasy adventure to surrealist fable, making this collection an essential read for any passionate reader, period.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

This encyclopedic anthology picks up where the VanderMeers' The Big Book of Classic Fantasy left off, offering a staggering 91 fantasy shorts published between 1946 and 2010. In the introduction, the VanderMeers define fantasy as "any story in which an element of the unreal permeates the real world or any story that takes place in a secondary world that is identifiably not a version of ours." This encompasses undeniable masterworks, including Vladimir Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols" and Gabriel García Marquez's "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings," but is too broad a theme to unify the anthology as a whole. Instead, the VanderMeers offer a sweeping survey, highlighting stories by genre greats (Ursula K. Le Guin, Terry Pratchet), modern titans (Stephen King, Victor Lavalle, George R.R. Martin, Haruki Murakami) and beloved cult figures (Leonora Carrington, Angela Carter) and celebrating lesser-known works in translation, including Pakistani legend Intizar Hussain's "Kaya-Kalp (Metamorphosis)," Guyanese novelist Edgar Mittelholzer's "Poolwana's Orchid," and the first English translations of stories by Mexican author Alberto Chimal, Swedish author Marie Hermanson, and Polish author Marta Kisiel. Though the anthology's size and scope will intimidate casual readers, anyone with a scholarly interest in the evolution of the genre will find this a treasure trove. Agent: Sally Harding, Cooke McDermid Literary. (July)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Kirkus Book Review

A companion volume to The Big Book of Classic Fantasy (2019), Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's latest anthology--and last together, according to the introduction--explores modern fantasy and its evolution from the end of WWII to 2010 with a shelf-bending collection featuring 91 stories from some of the genre's biggest luminaries, including Ursula K. Le Guin, George R.R. Martin, Terry Pratchett, Stephen King, and J.G. Ballard. The VanderMeers do an adept job of giving readers a comprehensive view of the narrative scope of fantasy--which they describe as "one of the broadest genres imaginable"--over the last six-plus decades with an impressively wide variety of stories. In addition to featuring iconic adventure fantasy works (Fritz Leiber's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story "Lean Times in Lankhmar"; "The Tales of Dragons and Dreamers," a Tales of Nevèrÿon story by Samuel R. Delany; and Michael Moorcock's introduction to Elric of Melniboné in "The Dreaming City") and classic "literary" short stories like Vladimir Nabokov's "Signs and Symbols" and "A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings" by Gabriel García Márquez, the anthology also contains a conspicuous number of dragon-powered stories. Finnish author Tove Jansson's illustrated all-ages story "The Last Dragon in the World" includes her signature Moomins characters in a delightful tale about a tiny dragon, and Patricia McKillip's "The Fellowship of the Dragon" follows five armed women as they embark on a perilous quest to find a missing harpist who has been allegedly imprisoned by a dragon. Many of the book's strongest selections come from international fantasy, with translated stories from Mexican writer Alberto Chimal ("Mogo"), French author Manuela Draeger ("The Arrest of the Great Mimille"), and Belarusian writer Abraham Sutzkever ("The Gopherwood Box"). This doorstopper of an anthology will surely entertain fantasy fans. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.