Tuesday, January 13, 2009

Passing of an Age, Part 2

Talk about a double-whammy. I just heard from dean that the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror yearly anthologies, that international bible for genre readers (published by St. Martin's Press) has put its last anthology out last year after 21 years in existence.

Unfortunately, their editors Ellen Datlow, Kelly Link and Gavin Grant didn't give the reason for the stoppage (though weird writer/editor Jeff VanderMeer talks about the possible reasons here). Whatever the reason, it's still a sad day for genre readers in that they won't be able to get their yearly fix of the definitive best short fiction of the year as well as the yearly round-up of everything published that is fantasy and horror.

As a reader, I loved this series and this almost-complete collection remains one of my prized books on my bookshelves. After all, one thing great about Datlow, Terri Windling and then later Link and Grant was that they didn't limit their reading to just the US genre market but rather went as far a-field (even non-genre) as they could to look for great fantasy and horror.

As a writer, I would have loved to be even just mentioned in the honorable mention section at the back of the book. Now I guess I won't be able to. *sigh*

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