“On Death and the Deuce" by Rick Bowes. Copyright © 1992 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1992 issue. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” by Harlan Ellison. Copyright © 1991 by The Kilimanjaro Corporation. Reprinted by arrangement with, and permission of, the author and the author’s agent, Richard Curtis Associates, Inc., New York. All rights reserved.
“Graves” by Joe W. Haldeman. Copyright © 1992 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, October/November 1992 issue. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Ugly File” by Ed Gorman. Copyright © 1992 by Ed Gorman. First published in Prisoners; CD Publications. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Elfhouses” by Midori Snyder. Copyright © 1992 by Peggy Omara. First published in Mothering Magazine # 64, Summer 1992 issue. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Candles on the Pond” by Sue Ellen Sloca. Copyright © 1992 by Sue Ellen Sloca. First published as Short Story Paperback # 59, Pulphouse Publishing. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Tree of Life, Book of Death” by Crania Davis. Copyright © 1992 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 1992 issue. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Puja” by D. R. McBride. Copyright © 1992 by D. R. McBride. First published in Grue Magazine #14. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Hermione and the Moon” by Clive Barker. Copyright © 1992 by Clive Barker. First published in The New York Times, October 30, 1992. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Absence of Beast by Graham Masterton. Copyright © 1992 by Graham Masterton. First published in Dark Voices 4 edited by David Sutton and Stephen Jones; Pan Books Ltd. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Rat Catcher” by Steve Rasnic Tem. Copyright © 1992 by Steve Rasnic Tem. First published in Dark at Heart edited by Karen and Joe R. Lansdale; Dark Harvest Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“Will" by Jane Yolen. Copyright © 1992 by Jane Yolen. First published in The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Spring 1992 Volume 3, Number 3. Reprinted by permission of the author and her agent, Curtis Brown, Ltd.
“The Question of the Grail” by Jane Yolen. Copyright © 1992 by Jane Yolen. First published in Grails, Quests, Visitations and Other Occurences edited by Richard Gilliam, Martin H. Greenberg and Edward D. Kramer; Unnameable Press. Reprinted by permission of the author and her agent, Curtis Brown, Ltd.
“In the Season of the Dressing of the Wells” by John Brunner. Copyright © 1992 by Brunner Fact & Fiction Ltd. First published in After the King edited by Martin H. Greenberg; Tor Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Blue Stone Emperor’s Thirty-three Wives” by Sara Gallardo. Copyright © 1992 by White Pine Press. First published in Secret Weavers: Stories of the Fantastic by Women Writers of Argentina and Chile edited by Marjorie Agosin. Reprinted by permission of White Pine Press.
“Alice in Prague, or The Curious Room” by Angela Carter. First published in The Village Voice Literary Supplement, March 1992. Reprinted by permission of the author’s agent, Rogers, Coleridge & White Ltd.
“Replacements” by Lisa Tuttle. Copyright © 1992 by Lisa Tuttle. First published in MetaHorror edited by Dennis Etchison; Dell Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.
“The Ghost Village” by Peter Straub. Copyright © 1992 by Peter Straub. First published in MetaHorror edited by Dennis Etchison; Dell Books. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the publishers, editors, writers, artists, booksellers, librarians, and readers who sent material and recommended favorite titles for this volume; and to Locus, SF Chronicle, Library Journal, PW, and Folk Roots magazines, which are invaluable reference sources.
Special thanks to the Tucson and Chagford public library staffs; Tucson’s Book Arts Gallery; to Lawrence Schimel, Jane Yolen, and Wendy Froud for story recommendations; to Robert Gould, Charles de Lint, and Ellen Kushner for music recommendations; to Beth Meacham, Tappan King, Ellen Steiber, Robin Hardy, and Munro Sickafoose in Tucson; to Rob Killheffer in New York; and, in particular, to our packager Jim Frenkel and his assistant Nevenah Smith; our St. Martin’s editor Gordon Van Gelder; our cover artist Tom Canty; U. of A. intern and editorial assistant Brian McDonald; and my hard-working co-editor and friend Ellen Datlow.
I would like to thank Robert Killheffer, Gordon Van Gelder, Lisa Kahlden, Merrilee Heifetz, Keith Ferrell, Linda Marotta, Mike Baker, Matthew Rettenmund, Matthew Bialer, and Jim Frenkel for all their help and encouragement. Also, a special thank-you to Tom Canty and Terri Windling. Finally, I appreciate all the book publishers and magazine editors who sent material for 1992.
(Please note: It’s difficult to cover all nongenre sources of short horror, so should readers see a story or poem from such a source, I’d appreciate their bringing it to my attention. Drop me a line c/o Omni Magazine, 1965 Broadway, New York, NY 10023.)
I’d like to acknowledge Charles N. Brown’s Locus magazine (Locus Publications, P.O. Box 13305, Oakland, CA 94661; $50.00 for a one-year, first-class subscription 112 issues], $38.00 second class) as an invaluable reference source throughout the Summation; and Andrew I. Porter’s Science Fiction Chronicle (S.F.C., P.O. Box 2730, Brooklyn, NY 112020056; $36.00 for a one-year, first-class subscription [12 issues], $30.00 second class), also an invaluable reference source throughout.
The packager would like to thank Nevenah Smith for her help in making this book possible.
Summation 1992: Fantasy
Fantasy, for those new to the field of fantastic literature, is a trickster of a term. To publishers, bookstore managers, and all the salespeople in between whose job it is to get books from an author’s imagination into a reader’s hands, the term fantasy means one thing: a convenient label with which to classify and market a narrow group of “genre” books. To the reader, however, it means another: fantasy fiction permeates the whole field of literature, for works of fantasy can be found in every genre—including the category labeled “mainstream fiction”—and in every area of the arts.
The Years Best Fantasy and Horror annual anthology is intended for the readers, not the marketers, except wherein they be readers too. Thus, in these pages, our definition of fantasy is a reader’s definition. For our purposes, fantasy is a broad and inclusive range of classic and contemporary fictions with magical, fabulous, or surrealistic elements, from novels set in imaginary worlds with their roots in the oral traditions of folktale and mythology, to contemporary stories of Magic Realism in which fantasy elements are used as metaphoric devices to illuminate the world we know. You need never have read the works of J. R. R. Tolkien or his imitators to have read fantasy fiction, for the field also includes magical works as diverse as Shakespeare’s The Tempest, poetry by W. B. Yeats, tales by Oscar Wilde and James Thurber, modern novels by Joyce Carol Oates and Gabriel Garcia Marquez.