My Favorite Fantasy Story

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Charles de Lint is a full-time writer and musician who presently makes his home in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, with his wife Mary Ann Harris, an artist and musician. His most recent books are Somewhere to Be Flying and the single author collection entitled Moonlight and Vines. For more information on his work, visit his Web site at .

Jack Vance combines elements of the mystery, fantasy, and science fiction genres into a adventure-filled style that is all his own. His strengths lie in creating detailed, imaginative yet plausible societies, complete with a noticeable lack of altruism. Along the way to garnering awards such as the Edgar, Hugo, and Nebula Awards, he has examined such far-ranging topics as the power of language and the concept and price of freedom and independence. Notable novels include The Languages of Pao, The Dragon Masters, and Bildungsroman.

Terry Pratchett is best known for Discworld, his humorous fantasy series set on a world supported by four elephants on the back of a giant turtle swimming through space. Through more than twenty novels, he has lampooned just about every aspect of British society, as well as Hollywood, rock music, death, and just about everything else under the sun. A former journalist for various English cities and press officer for the Central Electricity Board Western Region, he was awarded the British Science Fiction award in 1990. He lives with his wife, Lyn Pratchett, in Wilts, England.

Mention the name Poul Anderson and instantly dozens of excellent science fiction novels and short stories spring to mind. However, like many authors, he has also tried his hand at fantasy fiction, with equally impressive results. Two of his novels that deserve mention are Three Hearts and Three Lions and The Broken Sword, the latter based on the Norse elven myths. He has also written in universes as diverse as Shakespeare's comedies and Robert E. Howard's Conan mythos. A seven-time winner of the Hugo Award, he has also been awarded three Nebulas and the Tolkien Memorial Award.

Humor and hope for the future are two hallmarks of the stories of R. A. Lafferty. Outrageous yet believable characters, transformation, and elements of the eternal war between Heaven and Hell also appear in his work. He has been writing fiction unlike anything else for more than twenty-five years, and has been rewarded with a Hugo Award and a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1990. He lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

L. Sprague de Camp has been writing since the 1930s, and has more than three dozen novels, dozens of short stories, and many nonfiction works to show for his efforts. Known early on for his space opera novels, he was first critically recognized for the novel Lest Darkness Fall, about one man's attempt to change history during the Roman Empire. In his wide-ranging career he has written everything from Conan pastiches to books on writing science fiction. He has also edited more that a dozen fantasy anthologies and manuscripts, working with authors such as Christopher Stasheff and the late Robert E. Howard.

M. R. James (1862-1936) was the most-lauded author of the nineteenth-century ghost story in the world. A scholar of classical languages and medieval and Biblical legend, he enjoyed a successful career as the director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and as Provost at King's College from 1905-1918 as well as Vice-Chancellor at Cambridge from 1913-1915. He was awarded various honorary degrees during his career and received the Order of Merit in 1930. It is his supernatural fiction, however, that he will be remembered for, stories that didn't rely on overt horror or description, but rather the gently lurking terror that crept up on the usually unsuspecting protagonist, until he came face-to-face with what he most feared.

Barbara Kingsolver has been writing evocative fiction about the plight of repressed indigenous cultures for more than a decade now. A former technical writer and freelance journalist, she turned to full-time writing with the publication of her first novel The Bean Trees, and has since published three more novels, Animal Dreams, Pigs in Heaven, and The Poisonwood Bible, as well as a nonfiction book about the role women played in the Arizona mining strike of 1983, a book of essays, and a book of poetry. She has been critically lauded for her emotionally stirring prose and poetry, and has won the PEN fiction prize and a citation of accomplishment from the United Nations National Council of Women. Along with her fiction, she has also reviewed fiction for both The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times.

Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald, a husband-and-wife writing team, have written a number of fantasy and science fiction novels for young readers, including the Circle of Magic books. They have four children, including a set of twins, and live in Colebrook, New Hampshire. Mr. Macdonald was a naval officer for many years, and is now a journalist. Dr. Doyle occasionally teaches English and composition at local colleges. Other stories by them appear in Witch Fantastic, Werewolves, Vampires, and A Wizard's Dozen.

Elisabeth Waters sold her first short story to Marion Zimmer Bradley for The Keeper's Price, the first of the Darkover anthologies. She has sold short stories to a variety of anthologies, including Chicks in Chainmail and Sword of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar. Her first novel, a fantasy called Changing Fate, was awarded the 1989 Gryphon Award, and was published by DAW in 1994. She is a member of the Science Fiction And Fantasy Writers of America and the Authors Guild. She has also worked as a supernumerary with the San Francisco Opera, where she has appeared in La Gioconda, Manon Lescaut, Madame Butterfly, Khovanschina, Das Rheingold, Werther, and Idomeneo.

Jean Ingelow (1820-1897) wrote fantasy that many critics of her time labeled feminist, but she was writing for children, not just girls, and a closer examination of her fiction reveals this. She created a haunting, evocative wonderland that was at once eerie yet captivating, quite unlike the worlds of L. Frank Baum or Lewis Carroll. In "Mopsa the Fairy" she examines one possible permutation of a very unstereotypical fairy princess.

Manly Wade Wellman (1903-1986) got his start in the pulps, contributing science fiction and horror tales to Weird Tales and Astounding Stories in 1927. He is best known for his fantasy stories involving paranormal investigators, the most famous of which are his stories set in the Apalachian mountains featuring John the Balladeer, a wandering minstrel who battles evil with the help of magic and his silver-stringed guitar. While he wrote more than twenty adult novels, his largest body of work was in children's novels, with dozens of books published. His work was honored by critics and audiences alike, and he won awards as diverse as the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, the American Association of Local Historians Award of Merit, and the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement.

Robert Bloch (1917-1994) is remembered as the writer of the book Psycho, the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's famous film of the same name. He got his start writing stories for pulp magazines such as Weird Tales, Fantastic Adventures, and Unknown. Later in his career he wrote the novels American Gothic, Firebug, and Fear and Trembling, among many others. He also edited several anthologies, including Psycho-paths and Monsters in Our Midst.

M. John Harrison began his writing career as a critic for the magazine New Worlds in the late 1960s. He has since published several novels of lyrical fantasy about the city of Virconium, including The Pastel City, and A Storm of Wings, as well as three collections of short stories and several other non-series novels, including Luck in the Head and Signs of Life. He was also a regular contributor to the New Manchester Review in the late 1970s. He lives in London, England.

Influenced by the novels of H. G. Wells, the theme of humans dealing with catastrophe is prominent in the work of John Wyndham (1903-1969). The novel Day of the Triffids is his best-known work dealing with this subject. Alien invasion, telepathy, mutation, and fantastic events occurring in everyday life are also explored in his work, usually as the catalyst for change in the Earth of his novels.

As one of the leading novelists of his age, Charles Dickens (1812-1870) helped legitimize the literary use of horror and the supernatural in such novels as The Pickwick Papers and Bleak House, and the unfinished Mystery of Edwin Drood. He also popularized the concept of the Christmas ghost story with his seminal work A Christmas Carol. He is also remembered for his mainstream novels, including Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, and Great Expectations.

Roger Zelazny (1937-1995) burst onto the science-fiction writing scene as part of the "New Wave" group of writers in the mid to late 1960s. His novels This Immortal and Lord of Light met universal praise, the latter winning a Hugo Award for best novel. His work is notable for its lyrical style and innovative use of language both in description and dialogue. His most recognized series is the Amber novels, about a parallel universe which is the one true world, with all others, Earth included, being mere reflections of his created universe. Besides the Hugo, he was also awarded three Nebulas, three more Hugos, and two Locus Awards.