The dawning of the nineteenth century brought with it the seminal novel Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, which straddled the boundary between fantasy and science fiction. Later, in the repressive Victorian age, was Charles Dickens, whose novel A Christmas Carol is perhaps one of the best known fantasy novels the world over. The first half of the 1800s also witnessed the development of America's great fantasist, Edgar Allan Poe, whose melancholy, macabre works weren't fully appreciated until decades after his death in 1849. During the last years of the nineteenth century, two wrote novels that prophesied the shape of things to come: Jules Verne, with his fantastic sea adventure story 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and H. G. Wells, whose novels The Time Machine and War of the Worlds, while cloaked in the trappings of early science fiction, opened the door for dozens of future fantasy authors to step through.
Which brings us to the twentieth century, a time in which a book that came out of nowhere defined fantasy for several generations of readers. That book, of course, is The Hobbit. John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's charming fable, originally conceived as a serial bedtime story for his son, made fantasy accessible to every reader, and continued the cycle of warrior protector (however unlikely a hero Bilbo Baggins is, he is still a hero) versus warrior destroyer, in the guise of the ancient dragon Smaug.
With Tolkien's work sweeping America, and coupled with the rise of the pulp magazine era, fantasy enjoyed a renaissance in America. Authors such as Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, Jorge Luis Borges, Lewis Carroll, and Ray Bradbury rose to prominence during this era. Dozens of fantasy worlds were created and explored during this ascendancy of the fantasy genre.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, the emphasis of the fantasy genre has shifted somewhat. Instead of the single novel, we now see trilogies, or perhaps multivolume works that span thousands of pages along with thousands of years of imagined history. Authors such as Tad Williams, Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, Melanie Rawn, Stephen R. Donaldson, Ursula K. Le Guin, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Jordan, Lloyd Alexander, George R.R. Martin, David Eddings, and Mercedes Lackey reinvented the fantasy novel as the epic series, covering their created worlds and characters in exhaustive detail, yet still leaving enough surprises to keep their readers coming back from more, volume after volume. Of course, the legions of writers who are still tackling fantasy in all its myriad forms are too many to count. Authors such as Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison, Charles de Lint, Jonathan Lethem, Orson Scott Card, Joan D. Vinge, and Lucius Shepard are taking the fantasy story to bold new plateaus.
With such a rich and varied history to draw upon, choosing one story would seem to be an impossible task. Yet that is what we asked several of today's preeminent fantasy writers to do, pick the one fantasy story that spoke to them, touched them, made them reexamine the genre in a new light. And they answered, with the results in this book you're holding right now. From the ornate passages of Charles Dickens to the lean, understated, yet richly evocative prose of Roger Zelazny, some of the best fantasy of two centuries is represented here, chosen by the very people who know it best those who write it. Each story is preceded by a brief (or not so brief, in some cases) introduction by the author who selected it, telling why they still remember that particular story. So prepare yourself for a journey of imagination unlike any you've ever experienced, as you read these stories chosen by today's top fantasy authors as their favorites.
GHOSTS OF WIND AND SHADOW
by Charles de Lint
Chosen by Tanya Huff
From the first piece by Charles de Lint I read, I felt he knew something the rest of us didn't. I can't actually define what that is, but it keeps me eagerly reaching for every new story. "Ghosts of Wind and Shadows" is a favorite for two reasons. First, for the seamless way he weaves his world into ours, making room for a traditional Faerie, the Oak King's Daughter, and her small cousins beside traffic and raincoats and MTV. Second, for the music. I have no musical ability at all, so I've always considered music to be magical. In this story, it is. It's nice to be right .
- Tanya Huff
There may be great and undreamed of possibilities awaiting mankind; but because of our line of descent there are also queer limitations.
- Clarence Day,
from This Simian World
Tuesday and Thursday afternoons, from two to four, Meran Kelledy gave flute lessons at the Old Firehall on Lee Street which served as Lower Crowsea's community center. A small room in the basement was set aside for her at those times. The rest of the week it served as an office for the editor of The Crowsea Times, the monthly community newspaper.
The room always had a bit of a damp smell about it. The walls were bare except for two old posters: one sponsored a community rummage sale, now long past; the other was an advertisement for a Jilly Coppercorn one-woman show at The Green Man Gallery featuring a reproduction of the firehall that had been taken from the artist's In Lower Crowsea series of street scenes. It, too, was long out of date.
Much of the room was taken up by a sturdy oak desk. A computer sat on its broad surface, always surrounded by a clutter of manuscripts waiting to be put on diskette, spot art, advertisements, sheets of Lettraset, glue sticks, pens, pencils, scratch pads and the like. Its printer was relegated to an apple crate on the floor. A large cork board in easy reach of the desk held a bewildering array of pinned-up slips of paper with almost indecipherable notes and appointments jotted on them. Post-its laureled the frame of the cork board and the sides of the computer like festive yellow decorations. A battered metal filing cabinet held back issues of the newspaper. On top of it was a vase with dried flowers not so much an arrangement, as a forgotten bouquet. One week of the month, the entire desk was covered with the current issue in progress in its various stages of layout.
It was not a room that appeared conducive to music, despite the presence of two small music stands taken from their storage spot behind the filing cabinet and set out in the open space between the desk and door along with a pair of straight-backed wooden chairs, salvaged twice a week from a closet down the hall. But music has its own enchantment and the first few notes of an old tune are all that it requires to transform any site into a place of magic, even if that location is no more than a windowless office cubicle in the Old Firehall's basement.
Meran taught an old style of flute-playing. Her instrument of choice was that enduring cousin of the silver transverse orchestral flute: a simpler wooden instrument, side-blown as well, though it lacked a lip plate to help direct the air-stream; keyless with only six holes. It was popularly referred to as an Irish flute since it was used for the playing of traditional Irish and Scottish dance music and the plaintive slow airs native to those same countries, but it had relatives in most countries of the world as well as in baroque orchestras.
In one form or another, it was one of the first implements created by ancient people to give voice to the mysteries that words cannot encompass, but that they had a need to express; only the drum was older.