Sparky and Rhonda Rucker’s Treasures and Tears uses music as a teaching tool to preserve Black American folklore; their traditional music is country-folk in flavor, with a touch of soul. The Gypsies are a large ensemble given to mixing Balkan instrumental music with jazz influences and a bit of Klezmer: clarinets, accordions, and gypsy violin. Great fun. Their latest release is Gypsy Swing. For lovers of medieval music, imagine medieval music with a punk edge and you’ll have Dead Can Dance, whose latest, Aion, is their best so far (featuring, as it does, less of the Jim Morrison—like vocals of Brendan Perry and more of the exquisite, eerie, soaring vocals of Lisa Gerrard against a background of tenor and bass viol). Other beautiful women’s vocal music, passed on to me courtesy of Charles de Lint, is performed by American singer Connie Dover, and by harpist Loreena McKennit (including lovely versions of Tennyson’s The Lady ofShalott and Yeats’s Stolen Child). Track down anything by either of these ladies. Another tip from de Lint is Ireland’s Luka Bloom (a.k.a. Barry Moore, brother of Irish folk musician Christy Moore), whose new release, The Accoustic Bicycle, is a real treat and contains, God help us, Irish rap.
Music is evident in several works of fantasy fiction this year: Charles de Lint, himself a musician with the Ottawa Celtic band Jump at the Sun, weaves Celtic music into his novel The Little Country (Morrow) and his novella Our Lady of the Harbour (Axolotl). Elizabeth Ann Scarborough’s novels Phantom Banjo and Picking the Ballads Bones (Bantam) deal with folk music and the devil, set in modern folk music clubs. Worldbeat music inspired—and is laced throughout_ the continuing books of the “punk fantasy” Borderlands series: Life on the Border, with stories by musicians de Lint, Ellen Kushner, Midori Snyder and others (Tor)' and Elsewhere, a Borderlands novel by Will Shetterly—a very moving coming-of-age tale (Jane Yolen Books/HBJ). Writers Emma Bull and Steven Brust are members of the Minneapolis band Cats Laughing, which issued a new version of their first release, Cats Laughing; their second release, Another Way to Travel, contains a song by Bull featured in Life on the Border. Ellen Kushner’s novel Thomas the Rhymer, based on the English/Scots folk ballad of that name, was released in paperback (Tor); Kushner, a radio d.j. and former folksinger, has put together a performance piece of traditional ballads and text from her novel, which debuted in Boston in 1991. She will be performing the piece in England with folksinger June Tabor this year.
The 1991 World Fantasy Convention was held in Tucson, Arizona, over the weekend of November 1-3. The Guests of Honor were Harlan and Susan Ellison, Stephen R. Donaldson and Arlin Robins. Winners of the World Fantasy Award were as follows: Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner and Only Begotten Daughter by James Morrow (tie) for Best Novel; Bones by Pat Murphy for Best Novella; “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess for Best Short Fiction; The Start of the End of It All and Other Stories by Carol Emshwiller for Best Collection; Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell for Best Anthology. Special Award/Professional went to Arnie Fenner, designer for Mark V. Ziesing Books; Special Award/Nonprofessional went to Cemetery Dance edited by Richard Chizmar. The Life Achievement Award was given to Ray Russell. The judges of the 1991 awards were: Emma Bull, Orson Scott Card, Richard Laymon, Faren Miller and Darrell Schweitzer. The 1992 World Fantasy Convention will be held in October in Pine Mountain, Georgia. (For membership information, write: WFC’92, Box 148, Clarkston, GA 30021.)
The 1991 British Fantasy Awards were presented at the British Fantasy Convention in London in November. The winners were as follows: Best Novel. Midnight Sun by Ramsey Campbell; Best Anthology/Collection: Best New Horror edited by Stephen Jones and Ramsey Campbell; Best Short Fiction: “The Man Who Drew Cats” by Michael Marshall Smith; Best Artist: Les Edwards; Small Press: Dark Dreams edited by David Cowper Thwaite and Jeff Dempsey; Icarus Award for Best Newcomer: Michael Marshall Smith; Special Award: Dot Lumley, for services to the genre. (For membership information on the 1992 convention, write: UK Fantasy Con, 15 Stanley Road, Morden, Surry, SM4 5DE, UK.)
The 1991 Mythopoeic Awards were presented during the Mythopoeic Society’s Annual Conference in San Diego in July. The award for a book-length fantasy “in the spirit of the Inklings” went to Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner; the Mythopoeic Scholarship Award went to ]ack: C. S. Lewis and His Times by George Sayer. (For information on next year’s convention, write: Mythcon XXIII, Box 17440, San Diego, CA 92117.)
The International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts was held, as always, in Ft. Lauderdale, in March. The Guests of Honor were writer Gene Wolfe, artist Peter Maqua and scholar Brian Attebery. The Crawford Award for Best First Fantasy Novel was awarded at the conference to Michael Scott Rohan for The Winter of the World trilogy. (For information on next year’s conference, write: ICFA 92, College of Humanities, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, FL 33431.)
The Fourth Street Fantasy Convention was held, as always, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Guests of Honor were writer Diana Wynne Jones and publisher Tom Doherty. (For information on next year’s convention, write: c/o David Dyer-Bennett, 4242 Minnehaha Ave. S., Minneapolis, MN 55406.)
That’s a brief roundup of the year in fantasy; now to the stories themselves.
As always, the list of the very best stories of the year ran longer than we have room to print, even in a fat anthology such as this one. I’d particularly like to recommend you also seek out the following tales: “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep by Suzy McKee Charnas (in A Whisper of Blood); “Snow on Sugar Mountain” by Elizabeth Hand (in Full Spectrum 3); “Venus Rising on Water” by Tanith Lee (in Isaac Asimov’s, Oct. 1991); “Lighthouse Summer” by Paul Witcover (in Isaac Asimov’s, April 1991); “Little Miracles, Kept Promises” by Sandra Cisneros {Woman Hollering Creek and Other Stories); “The Better Boy” by James P. Blaylock and Tim Powers (in Isaac Asimovs, Feb. 1991) and “Fin de Cycle” by Howard Waldrop (in his story collection Night of the Cooters.
I hope you will enjoy the tales that follow as much as I did. Many thanks to all of the authors who allowed us to collect them here.