[tdeanatoz@yahoo]

And now here's FANTASY: THE BEST OF 2004, edited by Karen Haber & Jonathan Strahan, ibooks 2005 (pb). Early February, and they've already got both of their "Year's Best" anthologies out! Here's the Table of Contents:

"Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Nameless House of the Night of Dread Desire," Neil Gaiman
"The Word That Sings the Scythe," Michael Swanwick [*King Dragon]
"The Little Stranger," Gene Wolfe
"The Faery Handbag," Kelly Link
"Quarry," Peter S. Beagle
"The Enchanted Trousseau," Deborah Roggie
"The Sorcerer's Apprentice," Robert Silverberg [*Majipoor]
"The Annals of Eelin-Ok," Jeffrey Ford
"Pat Moore," Tim Powers
"The Angel's Daughter," Jay Lake
"The Silver Dragon," Elizabeth A. Lynn

The Swanwick was certainly expected, but I must confess that Silverberg's appearance here surprised me; "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is a very pedestrian story.

[Lowlander]

Well, we shouldn't forget Karen Haber is the wife
of Mr. Silverberg. That probably helped.

The rest of the stories seem to be fine. Swanwick is always
reliable, Kelly Link is an interesting new writer and it's
good to see Peter Beagle back writing fantasy.

Curious to see how many of these stories will be included
in Hartwell's Year's Best Fantasy 5 which will be published
later this year.

[tdeanatoz@yahoo]

I knew that, but the tagline "Who did Silverberg have to sleep with to get this story reprinted" seemed a bit obvious...

[Lowlander]

I'am feeling a bit sorry for Silverberg. He used to be a very good writer. I have read some of his novels and stories from the 50's to the beginning of the 80's and they're quite good. Especially because he wrote both adventure stories and more serious stuff.

But to come back to these Year's Best Fantasy anthologies.
It's good to see that both Hartwell and now Haber/Strahan
are giving some competition to the Datlow/Windling series.
Although I respect Datlow/Windling I must admit I prefer
the Hartwell series. Probably because Hartwell and now Haber get their stories from "mainstream" fantasy sources
like F&SF, Asimov's, and different SF/Fantasy anthologies.

Datlow/Windling's efforts to blend fantasy with mainstream
literature sometimes work, but as a result the stories they
present are not very exciting.