2013 read #143: The Year's Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

The Year's Best Fantasy: First Annual Collection, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
510 pages
Published 1988
Read from November 8 to November 18
Rating: ★★½ out of 5

My plan, such as it is, is to work my way through this and various other anthology series in as systematic a fashion as my library's ILL resources will permit. With this series, I'm beginning with the first, and reading as many as I can stand. I like what I've seen of '80s fantasy, but the prominence of horror in this anthology gives me misgivings. While I tend to adore the occasional horrific fantasy in these collections, I've never been a fan of outright horror. I made it through two pages of an edition of The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror before giving up; the mediocrity was astounding. Let's hope the horror stories here are more enjoyable, or at least more fantastic, and less reliant on boring crap like vampires and werewolves and serial killers and children of the various grain crops.

Expanding my historical foundations in my chosen genre is perhaps prudent. Why, however, should I read introductory material for a yearly anthology series, discussing industry happenings twenty-six years out of date? With future editions I might skip my usual diligence, because learning about how expansive and profitable dead tree publishing was in days of yore -- and reading complaints about how too many fantasy works were getting printed -- is only depressing, not informative. That said, Windling's "Summation" of fantasy in 1987 offered some primo book recommendations; I couldn't resist putting in an immediate ILL request for C. J. Koch's The Doubleman, described as "a Steeleye Span-type band battling magic and touring Australia." Um, hell yes, please. Though I maaaaay have just skimmed the other two introductions, summing up 1987's horror books and fantasy and horror cinema.

It bears emphasizing, just for archival purposes, that these stories were originally published in 1987.

"Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight" by Ursula K. Le Guin. Oh hey, I know this one. Already reviewed in quite positive terms in Modern Classics of Fantasy.

"A World Without Toys" by T. M. Wright. Ah, already we hit outright horror. It isn't promising. It's a one-note little story propped up by stick-figure characters (the hard-driven, kind of nasty professional woman, the genial man-child professional man with inexplicable feelings for her) and a rote scenario (creepy house is found, stirs some buried longing for childhood and freedom in the professional woman, he goes looking for her, they both get swallowed by the house, the end). I don't even read horror and this felt so damn familiar to me. Not a joy.

"DX" by Joe Halderman. Whoa, there are poems in this collection? I'm sure I've mentioned recently how, for me, the Vietnam well is pretty much bone dry. None of the stories or hard truths taken home from that war have much hold on my imagination or my emotions. Perhaps I was a bit premature making that statement. This poem offers nothing new or surprising to me in this year 2013, but it was damned moving, and therefore earns a pass.

"Friend's Best Man" by Jonathan Carroll. Magical Sick Kid and Magical Dog team up to help a newly handicapped man adjust to and improve his life. Kind of sweet, kind of cliched, entirely manipulative, very '80s... and then it takes a left turn at the very end. What I do like about this story is that the dog's communications through the dying girl aren't ever accurate. They're close enough to give the narrator pause, but there's plenty of room for doubt, so when the dying girl warns him that "The animals are rising," it hits a nicely ambivalent note. That said, this is an average-ish story at best.

"The Snow Apples" by Gwyneth Jones. Adequate "original fairy tale," inspires no strong feelings one way or the other. I do like how the kingdom is motorized and industrial, though Catherynne M. Valente brought the motorized fairy tale close to perfection with Deathless, and this tale is shabby and forgettable compared to that book.

"Ever After" by Susan Palwick. "Telling the other side of the story" has long been a quick and easy way to fashion post-modern retellings of fairy tales and the like. "Adding vampires" was, a few short years ago, another ubiquitous method, mostly utilized for camp effect. You would think a retelling of "Cinderella" from the godmother's point of view, which revealed that the godmothers were a race of vampires who spirit away young ladies for grooming, would be a ridiculous mess of cliches. Nevertheless, I really enjoyed this entry. There is a nice balance of dramatic tension from not knowing exactly what the Godmother is, from the girl being rebellious and headstrong and getting herself into unknown dangers, from the political plots weaving around them in the castle. And, dare I say it, I thought the way Palwick made the respective mythos of godmothers and vampires dovetail so perfectly was damn clever -- something I never expected to say about a vampire story. I'm impressed.

"My Name Is Dolly" by William F. Nolan. Brief (only three pages!) shock value story, in which an abused little girl (fashionable topic at the time, from what I can gather) kills her adoptive father, or maybe a witch uses a wind-up dolly to kill him for her... in other words, was it magic or was the girl craaaaaazy? Boring, obvious, manipulative stuff.

"The Moon's Revenge" by Joan Aiken. Charming fairy tale, pretty good as such things go, capturing that authentic Brothers Grimm obsession with shoes.

"Author's Notes" by Edward Bryant. Oh boy, the author-as-twisted-psycho-killer schtick. I rolled my eyes so hard I think I'll see double for a week. It's just as trite and dumb and full of precious "dark truths about life and society that, like, no one admits to themselves" as I feared.

"Lake George in High August" by John Robert Bensink. Another brief one, pretty much a literary short-short story if you ask me, dredging up some old heart-punching standbys like the death of a child and survivor's guilt. Competent storytelling, not sure what it has to do with fantasy.

"Csucskári" by Steven Brust. Straightforward (as far as I can tell) retelling of a Hungarian folktale in the wily trickster hero mold. Why it's here and not in a book of folklore is anyone's guess. It would seem fairy tales and folktales were all the rage in 1987, or at least that's what most impressed Datlow and Windling at the time.

"The Other Side" by Ramsey Campbell. Ohhhhh boy. Preternatural clown inflicts torments on a bunch of after school special thugs and kids-these-days, while an angry cliche of an '80s conservative watches from his window, feeling a mixture of horror and approval. And naturally the clown turns out to have the man's face under its makeup. Horror, ladies and gentlemen: it just doesn't do anything for me, man. I know it's supposed to be chilling, but this is just stupid.

"Pamela's Get" by David J. Schow. The basic gist here -- Pamela dies, and Jaime discovers (or thinks she discovers) that she was only Pamela's imaginary friend, and must race to preserve her existence by whatever means necessary before it's too late -- has potential. The execution, though, is awful. Witty-tongued yuppies on the make are not appealing protagonists, and the oh so hip and urban and cynical narration is crap. Kind of a yawn.

"Voices in the Wind" by Elizabeth S. Helfman. Another "folktale," as Windling puts it. Unremarkable stuff. I don't care enough to even find out if it's an original "folktale" or a retelling.

"Once Upon a Time, She Said" by Jane Yolen. "Storytelling is magic" is a tired old genre truism. I for one would be pleased to never see it again. This is a brief poem on the theme, nothing special, kinda pointless.

"The Circular Library of Stones" by Carol Emshwiller. Gently melancholy, a lovely voice, affecting enough that I'm willing to overlook my usual embargo against "The fantasy is all in her mind" stories.

"Soft Monkey" by Harlan Ellison. My first exposure to Ellison's writing, I think. I'd seen some kind of interview or video essay he did, railing about how much money he as a writer deserved, which helped solidify my impression of him as a self-important and self-loving asshat who can't be ignored because he's so goddamn talented. This story prefigures the obsession with the homeless that I, at least, associate with the early '90s -- what I tend to think of as the "Even Flow" years. The sensory imagery is as vivid as a snapping bone, but the whole plot -- "mob enforcers chase crazy bag lady who witnessed a murder" -- feels silly and borderline exploitative. Tell a story about a woman who clings to a "soft monkey" proxy of her dead baby, if you like, but don't turn her into John McClane drowning mobsters in dumpsters. Also, this has fuck-all to do with fantasy, unless all stories about delusional ideation must get shoehorned into fantasy.

"Fat Face" by Michael Shea. Is this my first "official" Cthulhu Mythos story? There was that goofy little Old God meets steampunk thing in Subterranean 2, but "Fat Face" is the first story I've read using specifically Lovecraftian creatures. And naturally, as this is the '80s, the main character/victim is a naive prostitute with a heart of gold. I didn't like it or dislike it. While I think the Mythos is an interesting collection of ideas, there's also a certain amount of inevitability to everything that robs it of any suspense or horror.

"Uncle Dobbin's Parrot Fair" by Charles de Lint. My second de Lint story, and I like it, for the most part. His brand of magical realism feels as comfortable and familiar as an old sweater in November. I'm a little bit bored of the "magic comes to those who believe" motif, but not as bored of it as I am of some other themes (like, I dunno, "storytelling is magic" or "was it real or was she CRAZY?"). A bit predictable but sweet.

"The Pear-shaped Man" by George R. R. Martin. There is a small subculture or clique on the internet, made up of disaffected former Song of Ice and Fire fans, that gets its jollies by insisting Martin is a gross lip-smacking creep one bust away from the sex offender registry. (Maybe this subculture is limited to the book and television forums of SomethingAwful, but it was certainly loud and proud in those places last time I looked.) This story gets cited in that community by people unable to separate works of fiction from the character of the author. They even call Martin, derisively, "the Pear-shaped Man." Finally reading this story, I'm struck by how... it's actually kinda funny. And creepy. I mean, it's creepy-guy body-horror making extensive use of the creepiest food imaginable, Cheez Doodles. I almost kind of... like this? A horror story I almost kind of like? What's going on here?

"Delta Sly Honey" by Lucius Shepard. A Vietnam War ghost story. I figure, if anyone could make Vietnam interesting to me, it'd be Shepard. Still nowhere near the standard I expect from the guy who wrote "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule," but after all the duds in this book, this is good enough.

"Small Heirlooms" by M. John Harrison. Datlow notes this is "ostensibly" a mainstream literary story. I'll go ahead and say this is a mainstream literary story, all existential and post-war world-weary, very chilly and literate and European. I can recognize the value of this sort of thing, but still find it dull.

"The Improper Princess" by Patricia C. Wrede. Yet another one in the original fairy tale vein, nothing especially new or noteworthy to my tastes. As I've said somewhere before, this sort of story -- its sole purpose to take the air out of old fantasy cliches and make the bold statement that women are people too -- might have been cutting edge back when this was published, but nowadays leaves me wondering "Was that seriously it?"

"The Fable of the Farmer and Fox" by John Brunner. Another original fable. Nothing much to say about it.

"Haunted" by Joyce Carol Oates. Is this my first exposure to Oates? I think so. Kids growing up poor in a generalized Midwest setting, where half-understood fears of the world around you blend imperceptibly into the horrors of the supernatural, vividly depicted, cutting right into the summer haze of memory. Reminds me of Bradbury. Quite good.

"Dead Possums" by Kathryn Ptacek. Okay, all these not-really-fantasy stories are getting to be too much. I guess it was fashionable at the time to keep the fantastic element so subtle that you wouldn't be able to find it inside a phone booth, but if this has any fantastic element at all, it falls under the category of poetic justice or Alanis Morissette-style irony, hardly enough to distinguish it as a genre piece. This one has a bit of emotional punch to it, but the titular possums angle doesn't contribute much at all aside from a kind of pointless shock-value ending. (The guy runs over one possum in the beginning, and feels bad about it; leaving him to be ignored and run over by multiple oblivious drivers all night long seems more "edgy" than meaningful to me.)

"Pictures Made of Stones" by Lucius Shepard. A narrative poem once again demonstrating Shepard's fixation on drug-altered consciousness during economic wars in jungle countries. Pretty good story; though I'm no judge of poetry, I found no especial reason why the form suited the narrative better than, say, stream of consciousness prose might have done.

"Splatter: A Cautionary Tale" by Douglas E. Winter. This one would only be interesting if I cared about horror films and the perennial save-our-children censorship campaigns. I don't care about the former, and I only care about the latter when it's especially hilarious, as with Dungeons & Dragons. So I don't really care for this "condensed novel," nor do I get much pleasure from what amounts to a list of bullet points.

"Gentlemen" by John Skipp and Craig Spector. Competent storytelling, an interesting allegorical twist I didn't see coming, but this gritty urban drinks, drugs, and dissolution milieu will never interest me. I'd rate it middling or so.

"Demon Luck" by Craig Shaw Gardner. A cute, insubstantial, mildly satirical high fantasy piece of the sort I had expected to dominate this book. It brought a smile.

"Words of Power" by Jane Yolen. Unremarkable animal-magic/womb-magic stuff.

"Jamie's Grave" by Lisa Tuttle. The surest way to twist and dig into my emotions is to get a kid involved. That's just something that comes with parenthood, a surefire means of manipulation, though I feel used and toyed with afterwards. This had me queasy with that deep-rooted parental oh-shit-no feeling, then squirming with revulsion and, well, horror at the end, so I guess this one was pretty effective.

"The Maid on the Shore" by Delia Sherman. I really liked this one. Selkies are one of my favorite folkloric species, and this style of retelling -- actually adding to the tale and making it something new and unique -- is something I'm greatly fond of. Not an all-time classic, but excellent nonetheless.

"Halley's Passing" by Michael McDowell. The screenwriter of Beetlejuice offers one of those tales of affectless, methodical serial killers who happen to be vampiric immortals changin' with the times. Competently done, not my kind of thing.

"White Trains" by Lucius Shepard. Jeez, this dude gets three slots in one best-of anthology? At least I can tell why this is formatted as a poem; something of the inner rhythm of the language penetrated even my poetry-numb skull. This is an excellent and hilarious piece of what-the-fuck.

"Simple Sentences" by Natalie Babbit. Mildly amusing, vaguely Twainian tale of a street-slanging pickpocket and a sesquipedalian ponce winding up in Hell together. Ends with a groaner of a pun.

"A Hypothetical Lizard" by Alan Moore. Apparently Moore's first fantasy story, written on commission from admiring editors. Windling praises it as "the best story of the year." I wouldn't go that far -- "Buffalo Gals" earned that accolade, beyond question -- but it is a damn fine piece of fiction, bloated and decadent with enough imagery to supply a dozen Heavy Metal covers, swollen with unsettling sensuality, maggoty with spoiled love, resentment, and vengeance. Easily the second best story in this anthology.

Now that I've read this collection... I'm much less eager to read through this entire series. Either the fantasy of the late'80s was much less exquisite than the likes of "Buffalo Gals" had led me to believe, or Datlow and Windling's editorial sensibilities clash irreconcilably with my tastes. In a couple months, maybe, I'll give this series another shot. Right now I'm happy to be done with it.