Best fantasy, sci-fi, and horror anthologies?

[Zsinj]

I was wondering, what are the best fantasy, sci-fi, and horror anthologies out there to buy? What would you guys recommend?

[AuntiePam]

I really like the Datlow-Windling Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies, and Stephen Jones' Mammoth Book of Best New Horror.

After that, I think these three should be in everyone's library:

Dark Forces, edited by Kirby McCauley -- the stories were all new, none had been published before. It includes The Mist by Stephen King, and good stuff by Ray Bradbury, Joyce Carol Oates, Gene Wolfe, Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Bloch, and others. 23 stories, almost 500 pages.

The Arbor House Treasury of Horror and the Supernatural compiled by Bill Pronzini, Barry Malzberg and Martin Greenburg -- 41 stories, 600 pages -- divided into two categories -- Grandmasters and Modern Masters.

The Arbor House includes old and new classics -- Hop Frog, Pickman's Model, A Rose for Emily, The Girl With the Hungry Eyes, Come and Go Mad, Sticks, If Damon Comes, the Crate. Great stuff.

The Dark Descent edited by David Hartwell -- 56 stories, over 1000 pages. There's some duplication of stories from the Arbor House book, but not enough to matter.

Dark Descent includes three Stephen King stories, including The Reach (my favorite King short story), The Call of Cthulhu, Yours Truly Jack the Ripper, Born of Man and Woman, The Beckoning Fair One, The Damned Thing, The Rats in the Walls, all kinds of good stuff.

These three are from the 80's -- is there anything newer that people like? I'm looking forward to hearing if there are some newer ones. I haven't bought any anthologies for awhile, except for the Datlow/Windlings and Jones books.

[Mithfânion]

Well, I haven't read much of them, but ones that I have bought recently, or are still on my wishlist, would be:

*Legends II, pb edition, R. Silverberg
*Stories of your life and others-T. Chiang (much awarded SF collection)
*A Song for Lya and others-GRR Martin
*A Second chance at Eden -P. Hamilton ( to get a good look at whether I might enjoy his 1,000 page space operas).
*The Complete Robot-I. Asimov

There's also The Collected works of Greg Bear, Otherness, by David Brin, and various Stephen King collections (Everything's eventual, Skeleton crew, Night shift, Different seasons).

[DarthV]

I'm about halfway through The Sandman: Book of Dreams which is a collection of short stories based on Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics. Pretty interesting reading.

[Julian]

Originally posted by Zsinj
I was wondering, what are the best fantasy, sci-fi, and horror anthologies out there to buy? What would you guys recommend?

Well it depends. Are you looking for anthologies that will keep you abreast of current developments in these fields? Or are you just looking for collections of good tales, regardless of when they were written?

For example: if the answer is the former and you like fantasy, Auntie's right: you should get The Year's Best Fantasy And Horror series, which is edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling, and published by St. Martin's Griffin (and available via Amazon or Barnes & Noble). It's currently in its 16th installment (published in August 2003 and dealing with 2002). This is more or less essential - even though I often find myself in total disagreement with regard to their summation of what is, indeed, the year's best fantasy!

If, on the other hand, you like (for example) science fiction and are just interested in great stories - well, a seminal volume is Dangerous Visions, which was first published somewhen in the early 70's and edited by Harlan Edison.

[Blackwing]

Depends on what you like.

For Arthurian fantasy: The Mammoth Book of Arthurian Legends, The Chronicles of the Holy Grail and The Chronicles of the Round Table (all edited by Mike Ashley).

Other books that Ashley has edited (for some reason they seem to come to Finland more often than any other kind of athologies):

For comic fantasy: The Mammoth Book of Comic Fantasy and Mammoth Book of Seriously Comic Fantasy.

Other: The Mammoth Book of Fantasy, The Mammoth Book of Fairy Tales

Marion Zimmer Bradley: Sword and Sorceress series is pretty good.

Mercedes Lackey: Oathbound, Oathbrakers abd Oathblood. They are a collection of Lackey's short stories from the S&S series (above). They have the same character.

[ChrisW]

Legends - Buy the hardcover as it's split into a few books in pb. It features the big names in fantasy.

Legends II from what i've heard pales in comparison.

[Mithfânion]

Couple of recent ones I found of interest:

Best Horror of the Year vol. 1
Lovecraft Unbound
Inferno

All 3 of those were published recently and were edited by Ellen Datlow.

There's also Eclipse 3, which I picked up after enjoying last year's Eclipse 2. This is from Jonathan Strahan, who also has the Best Fantasy & Science Fiction vol. 3 anthology out now, covering what he feels is the best short work of 2008.

I'm also looking into the Dark Delicacies series of horror anthologies, as well as The Dark Descent mentioned upthread, or Sarrantonio's "999".

Next year we've got "Warriors" by Martin & Dozois, "Stories" edited by Gaiman & Sarrantonio, and Swords & Dark Magic, edited by Strahan & Anders.

[symbolhunter]

Lovecraft is most famous for the remarkable Cthulhu stories. So powerful was the mythos he created, that there have been several excellent anthologies of stories by other authors using it as a basis for their own works.

Here is oneI found particularly interesting: It is available in two different editions. The later book contains some additional stories and deletes others.

First there is the two volume set edited by Derleth:

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos by H.P.Lovecraft and others: Collected by August Derleth.
Volume 1 contains an introduction to the Mythos by Derleth. this is followed by "The Call of Cthulhu" by Lovecraft and eight stories by other authors using the Lovecraftian universe. Writers include Clark Ashton Smith {2 storeis}, Robert E. Howard, Frank Belknap Long {2 stories}, August Derleth {2 stories}, Henry Kuttner, and J.Vernon Shea.
Volume II has "The Haunter of the Dark" by Lovecraft and three stories by Robert Bloch, two by Brian Lumley, and one each by J. Ramsey Campbell, James Wade, and Colin Wilson.
Finally there are biographical material of the various contributors.

I got my volumes at different times. Vm 1 was published by Panther and Vm 2 by Beagle. The copyright of both books is 1969 and they were both published by arrangement with Arkham House. Both were published in paperback.

The second version of this anthology was published in 1990 in a single hardback volume by Arkham House and contains illustrations. There is a different introduction. The title is slightly different:

Golden Anniversary Anthology

Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
H.P.Lovecraft & Divers Hands
With Illustrations by
Jeffrey K. Potter

Four stories {2 by Lumley, one each by Wade and Vernon Shea are gone. Additions are by Fritz Leiber, a different story by Lulmey, and one each by Joanna Russ, Karl Edward Wagner, Philip Jose Farmer, Stephen King, and Richard A. Lupoff.

If you can only get one version the 1990 edition is probably to be preferred. However, some of the deletions were actually quite good stories and I think it would be better to have both. ABE is probably the best source for these books. I got my copies for a quite reasonable price.

[Jussi]

Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance is one of the strongest anthologies I have read. It is edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. If you enjoy Vance's "Dying Earth" sequence, this is a must read.

[symbolhunter]

Songs of the Dying Earth: Stories in Honor of Jack Vance is one of the strongest anthologies I have read. It is edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois. If you enjoy Vance's "Dying Earth" sequence, this is a must read.

I LOVE The "Dying Earth" series! I'm going to look that one up. Thanks for posting about it!

[Severn]

I'm just reading Songs of Love and Death, which is an anthology that features stories from all three genres.

There's a great story from Gaiman, and a story that ties into a key plot element in Carey's Kushiel series. There's a moving, poignant story from Hobb and several other good ones. There's only one I didn't like so far (about half way through now) but it's a horror one, which I don't enjoy anyway. I have to say the author's writing is beautiful though. Can't remember her name.

Another collection I really love is The Faery Reel, which also features Gaiman. It has McKillip and de Lint stories as well. Definitely worth reading. And it's another one edited by Terri Windling.

Legends 2 was very meh. Very. They somehow managed to collect the most boring stories, from some of the best writers. Unfortunate.

There's Dark Alchemy and Daw 30th Anniversary Fantasy Anthology and The Locus Awards the latter of which includes both sci fi and fantasy.

[Hobbit]

Most of the David Hartwell/Kathryn Cramer anthologies I'd recommend.

So, for Horror: The Dark Descent

For SF: The Hard Sf Renaissance, The Space Opera Renaissance, The Ascent of Wonder and The Science Fiction Century.

Mark

[symbolhunter]

A Quest-Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic {2002} edited and with an introducton by Margaret Weis might be of some interest. It is nicely produced by Warner Books and contains stories by C.J. Cherryh, KarlEdward Wagner, Poul Anderson. Charles L .Fontenay, Tanya Huff, Neil Gaiman, Lois Tilton, Orson Scott Card, Richard Parks, Mercedes Lackey, and Michael Moorcock.

The stories are excellent. I would particularly recommend Fontenay's wonderful "The Silk and the Song". Published originally in Fantasy and Science Fiction in 1956 and included in their volume for the best of that year, it is surprisingly difficult to get.

[Randy M.]

For horror:
Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural ed by Herbert Wise & Phyllis Cerf
The Dark Descent ed by David Hartwell

Those two are core collections. The former has been in print around 70 years by Modern Library -- at least, it was still in print last I knew.

More recently, Ellen Datlow's Darkness and Stephen Jones' The Mammoth Book of the Best of the Best New Horror (talk about unwieldy titles) offer 20 (25? 30?) year retrospectives of the stories they felt most strongly about.


Zombies ed by John Skipp
Werewolves & Shapeshifters ed by John Skipp
The Living Dead ed by John Joseph Adams
By Blood We Live ed by John Joseph Adams

Haven't read any of these cover to cover, but the selection of stories I've read were good.

Look also for best of the year anthologies from Ellen Datlow, Stephen Jones and Paula Guran -- I'm surprised by how little their contents overlap most years. Guran includes "dark fantasy" in her title, which may partly explain why, freeing her (if only in her own mind) to offer a somewhat broader range of stories. I've been enjoying cherry-picking from her 2010 volume the last week; the 2011 volume is just out.

For rather older works, you can't beat the anthologies created by Richard Dalby, Mike Ashley and the late Michael Cox. The late Peter Haining was hit and miss as I grew older, but his anthologies were formative reading for me.

Arguably the most important recent anthology for fantasy in the U.S. is the 2-volume Peter Straub edited American Fantasy Tales.

Also, in the next month or so, Jeff and Ann Vandeermeer will publish in the U.K. a massive collection titled, The Weird. The contents for the latter are listed here,
http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2011/0...ff-vandermeer/


Randy M.