An Interview with Ellen Klages – Metaphors for Short Stories: Petits Fours, Scrimshaw, and Training Bikes
So what exactly is a short story? Ask Ellen Klages, author of novel The Green Glass Sea and numerous pieces of short fiction (collected in Portable Childhoods), and she’ll give you five or six vibrant images to think about.
You are adept at writing from a child’s point of view with a combination of sympathy and […]
Lace and Blade, edited by Deborah J. Ross
Lace and Blade, edited by Deborah J. Ross, kicks off the introduction with a quote from Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman.” Full of sensuous descriptions and melodramatic incident, this Victorian ballad poem also characterizes the themes of Norilana Books‘ anthology. Rogues, romance, and magic mix in these tales of an idealized period with lavish costumes and […]
Continue ReadingThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 2008
In the March, 2008, issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction Alexander Jablokov sees the Cold War technology race through the eyes of “The Boarder,” Vassily, a Soviet ex-pat living in Andrew’s U.S. basement. As a metallurgist who helped to develop Sputnik, he follows the U.S. space program with avidity, influencing young Andrew with his criticisms. […]
Continue ReadingThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2008
In the first short story, “Balancing Accounts” by James L. Cambias, of the February 2008 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Annie is a sentient spaceship (I think) whose owners allow her the independence to seek out and trade for metal, electronics, and other supplies needed for interstellar travel. Mostly, Annie thinks in a […]
Continue ReadingInferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Ellen Datlow
All stories in Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural had to conform to one requirement, editor Ellen Datlow (who says she’s not prolific, but she’s just being modest) says in the preface: They had to cause the reader “a sensation of fear so palpable that [he or she] feels impelled to turn up […]
Continue ReadingAn Interview with Ellen Datlow
On the eve of the debut of her latest horror anthology, Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, editor Ellen Datlow shares her perspective on genre trends, the quintessence of the short story, and the stupidity of carnivorous zombies.
When you choose subjects for anthologies, do you choose subjects that you are already interested […]
Heroes in Training, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Jim C. Hines
I approached Heroes in Training expecting stories starring child and teen heroes undergoing rites de passage in order to prove their maturity. The term “hero” is much more loosely defined in this book, however. Within its pages, we meet a variety of species, ages, and moral orientations, whose common challenge is a […]
Continue ReadingMarion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress XXII, edited by Elisabeth Waters
For 22 volumes, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword & Sorceress anthologies have been collecting stories of women who use magic and/or might to overcome challenges. How’s the antho holding up after over two decades? Is it still fresh? Well, I’m happy to report that it is. Featuring a preponderance of first-time or fledgling authors, S&S XXII […]
Continue ReadingSo Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction, edited by Steve Berman
Welcome to the latest pun on fairies and faeries. So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction ties together the gay, lesbian, and otherwise queer with the magical, unearthly and otherwise fey creatures known as faeries. As queer people have historically existed along the margins of culture, so faeries, I suppose, have supposedly hovered in our peripheral […]
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