The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

by The Big Book of Modern Fantasy (retail) (epub)

  Shehadeh, Ramsey: “Creature” by Ramsey Shehadeh. Copyright © 2008 by Ramsey Shehadeh. Originally published in Weird Tales #350. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Silko, Leslie Marmon: “One Time” by Leslie Marmon Silko. Copyright © 1981, 2012 by Leslie Marmon Silko. First published in Storyteller. Used by permission of Penguin Books, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

  Song, Han: “All the Water in the World” by Han Song. Copyright © 2002 by Han Song. Originally published in Science Fiction World. Translation by Anna Holmwood. Reprinted by permission of the author and translator.

  St. Clair, Margaret: “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles” by Margaret St. Clair. Copyright © 1951, 1979 by Margaret St. Clair. Reprinted by permission of MacIntosh and Otis, Inc.

  Sutzkever, Abraham: “The Gopherwood Box” by Abraham Sutzkever. Copyright © 1953 by Abraham Sutzkever. First published in Di Goldene Keyt (Golden Chain), issue 17. Translation copyright © 2019 by Zackary Sholem Berger. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and the translator.

  Tabucchi, Antonio: “The Flying Creatures of Fra Angelico” by Antonio Tabucchi. Copyright © 2013 by Antonbio Tabucchi. Translation copyright © 1991 by Tim Parks. First published as I volatili del Beato Angelico, 1987. Reprinted by permission of the estate and Archipelago Books.

  Thomas, Sheree Renée: “The Grassdreaming Tree” by Sheree Renée Thomas. Originally published in So Long Been Dreaming, 2004. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Tidbeck, Karin: “Aunts” by Karin Tidbeck. Copyright © 2012 by Karin Tidbeck. Originally published in English in Jagannath: Stories by Karin Tidbeck (Vintage Books). First published in Swedish in 2007 as Skurups folkhögskola. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  Tolstaya, Tatyana: “The Window” from Aetherial Worlds: Stories by Tatyana Tolstaya, translated by Anya Migdal, compilation copyright © 2018 by Tatyana Tolstaya. English translation copyright © 2018 by Anya Migdal. Used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

  Tutuola, Amos: Excerpt from “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts” by Amos Tutuola. Copyright © 1954 by Grove Press. Reprinted by permission of Grove Press and the author’s estate.

  Vance, Jack: “Liane the Wanderer” by Jack Vance. Copyright © 1950 by Jack Vance. First published in The Dying Earth. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

  Waltari, Satu: Excerpt from “Twilight Traveller’s” (“Hämärä matkamiehet”) reprinted as “The Monster” by Satu Waltari. Copyright © 1964. Translation copyright © 2005 by David Hackston. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate and translator.

  Warner, Sylvia Townsend: “Winged Creatures” by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Copyright © 1974 by Sylvia Townsend Warner. First published in The New Yorker. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

  Wellman, Manly Wade: “O Ugly Bird” by Manly Wade Wellman. Copyright © 1951 by Manly Wade Wellman. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.

  Yolen, Jane: “Sister Light, Sister Dark” by Jane Yolen. Copyright © 1983 by Jane Yolen. First published in Heroic Visions. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  ABOUT THE TRANSLATORS

  Zackary Sholem Berger lives multiple literary lives. He is a poet and translator working in (as well as between) Yiddish, Hebrew, and English. His work has appeared in multiple venues, including Poetry magazine, the Yiddish Forward, and Asymptote; themes of his verse range from the philosophical and medical to the immediate problems of his adopted city Baltimore. In the Yiddish world he might be best known as a regular contributor to the Forverts and the translator of Dr. Seuss’s Cat in the Hat (as well as other Seuss creations) into Yiddish. His translations of prose poetry by Abraham Sutzkever are due to appear in book form in 2020.

  Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, including, most recently, Song for the Unraveling of the World. He has translated work by David B. Claro, Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, Manuela Draeger, Jules Romains, and a number of other writers. Three of his book-length translations have been finalists for the French-American Foundation’s Translation Prize, and his co-translation (with Sarah Evenson) of David B.’s Incidents in the Night was one of Time magazine’s top ten graphic novels of 2013 as well as a finalist for the Eisner Award and for the Los Angeles Times Book Award. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at CalArts.

  Charlie Haldén lives in Stockholm, Sweden, and spends their time happily surrounded by words. They divide their working time between translating and narrating audio books, as well as some proofreading and editing. Charlie completed a BA in Translation Studies at Stockholm University in 2011, writing their thesis on the translation of fantasy literature and presenting a model for how to treat it with the seriousness it deserves. They have since been back to teach at the Translation Studies department. Apart from translation, Charlie has also studied journalism, theater, and literature, along with several languages. Their translation work includes museum audio guides, marketing, LGBTQ outreach, and song lyrics, but literary translation is where their heart is. When not working, Charlie can often be found playing or preparing for a LARP, of the variety that explores human psychology, political issues, or dystopian futures. They also write poetry and play the piano.

  Valerie Mariana lives in West Sacramento, California, with her husband and two dogs. She has degrees in French and environmental science. By day she works on environmental remediation projects, and by night she works on the occasional translation.

  Lawrence Schimel writes in both Spanish and English and has published more than one hundred books as author or anthologist, in a wide range of genres, including fiction, poetry, graphic novels, and children’s literature. Some of his books include The Drag Queen of Elfland (Circlet), Fairy Tales for Writers (A Midsummer Night’s Press), Things Invisible to See: Lesbian and Gay Tales of Magic Realism (Circlet), The Future Is Queer (coedited with Richard Labonté; Arsenal Pulp), and Camelot Fantastic (with Martin H. Greenberg, DAW Books). He has won the Lambda Literary Award (twice), the Rhysling Award, the Spectrum Award, and other honors. He is also a prolific literary translator. Recent translations include the novels The Wild Book by Juan Villoro (Restless Books), Monteverde: Memoirs of an Interstellar Linguist (Aqueduct), and La Bastarda by Trifonia Melibea Obono (The Feminist Press in the United States/Modjaji Books in South Africa); the graphic novel of Jesús Carrasco’s Out in the Open (SelfMadeHero); and poetry collections Nothing Is Lost: Selected Poems by Jordi Doce (Shearsman), Destruction of the Lover by Luis Panini (Pleaides Press), and I Offer My Heart as a Target by Johanny Vazquez Paz (Akashic). He lives in Madrid, Spain.

  Ekaterina Sedia resides in the Pinelands of New Jersey. Her critically acclaimed and award-nominated novels The Secret History of Moscow, The Alchemy of Stone, The House of Discarded Dreams, and Heart of Iron were published by Prime Books. Her short stories have appeared in Analog, Baen’s Universe, Subterranean, and Clarkesworld, as well as numerous anthologies, including Haunted Legends and Magic in the Mirrorstone. She is also the editor of the anthologies Paper Cities (World Fantasy Award winner), Running with the Pack, Bewere the Night, and Bloody Fabulous as well as The Mammoth Book of Gaslit Romance and Wilful Impropriety. Her short story collection, Moscow But Dreaming, was released by Prime Books in December 2012. She also cowrote a script for Yamasong: March of the Hollows, a fantasy feature-length puppet film voiced by Nathan Fillion, George Takei, Abigail Breslin, and Whoopi Goldberg that was released by Dark Dunes Productions.

  Kate Webster is a translator of Polish into English based in London. She grew up in Wales and graduated with a BA in linguistics from the University of Manchester, where she then worked in academic research in the fields of psychology and human communication. After teaching Eng
lish for three years in Poland, she completed an MA at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, UCL. She has been working as a translator since 2012, and in September 2018, she was awarded a six-month mentoring placement with renowned literary translator Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Kate is currently working on a number of interesting projects, including the translation of an award-winning children’s book, a graphic novel for adults, and contemporary Polish poetry. Another graphic novel, I Nina (by Daniel Chmielewski), co-translated by Kate and Antonia, will be published in 2020 by Uncivilized Books. Other examples of Kate’s work, including translations of short stories and essays, are available on the websites of Przekrój and Eurozine. When not translating, she can inevitably be found in a café with her nose in a book or enjoying an evening of live music somewhere in London.

  ABOUT THE EDITORS

  Ann VanderMeer currently serves as an acquiring editor for Tor.com and Weird Fiction Review and is the editor-in-residence for Shared Worlds. She was the editor-in-chief for Weird Tales for five years, during which time she was nominated three times for the Hugo Award, winning one. Along with multiple nominations for the Shirley Jackson Award, she also has won a World Fantasy Award and a British Fantasy Award for coediting The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories. Other projects have included Best American Fantasy, three Steampunk anthologies, and a humor book, The Kosher Guide to Imaginary Animals. Her latest anthologies include Sisters of the Revolution, an anthology of feminist speculative fiction; The Bestiary, an anthology of original fiction and art; Current Futures and Avatars Inc (as editor in partnership with XPRIZE); The Big Book of Science Fiction; and The Big Book of Classic Fantasy.

  New York Times bestselling writer Jeff VanderMeer has been called “the weird Thoreau” by The New Yorker for his engagement with ecological issues. His most recent books, Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts, received widespread critical acclaim for their exploration of animal and human life in a post-scarcity landscape. VanderMeer’s prior work includes the Southern Reach trilogy (Annihilation, Authority, and Acceptance), which has been translated into forty languages. Annihilation was made into a film by Paramount Pictures and won the Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award. VanderMeer’s nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The Atlantic, Slate, Salon, and The Washington Post, among others. A three-time winner of the World Fantasy Award, he has also edited or coedited many iconic fiction anthologies, taught at the Yale Writers’ Conference, lectured at MIT, Brown, and the Library of Congress, been the writer-in-residence for Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and serves as the codirector of Shared Worlds, a unique teen writing camp located at Wofford College. His forthcoming novels include Hummingbird Salamander (MCD/FSG) and A Peculiar Peril, the first in the Misadventures of Jonathan Lambshead series (FSG Kids). With his wife, Ann VanderMeer, he has edited more than a dozen anthologies.

  Editorial consultant Matthew Cheney is the author of Blood: Stories (Black Lawrence Press, 2016) and Modernist Crisis and the Pedagogy of Form (Bloomsbury, 2020). He has published essays and fiction with Conjunctions, Weird Tales, Electric Literature, Los Angeles Review of Books, Weird Fiction Review, and elsewhere. He lives in New Hampshire and teaches interdisciplinary studies at Plymouth State University.

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