Legendary editor in chief Ellen Datlow has whipped up something malign and fun for SF / phantasy fans who are drawn to qat . Her fresh anthology , Tails of Wonder And Imagination , is devoted entirely to feline , and they are n’t on the nose your cutesy wufflemuffins .
Out this month from Night Shade Books , Datlow ’s anthology is simply packed with stories , and includes giants of the genre like Stephen King , Kelly Link , Carol Emschwiller , and George R. R. Martin . She ’s also delineate “ bozo ” rather loosely , so you ’ve baffle everything from sabre toothed tigers resurrected by mad scientist , to manticores , World Tamil Association , and house quat . And there is certainly enough here to delight anyone who has been mesmerise by a furred pal who can suddenly twist into a scream ball of WTF .
However , I should issue a warning to cat lovers . This book is not a sweaters - and - teatime visual sense of our little animal champion . In fact , if you are the kind of mortal ( like me ) who read Cute Overload and has been make love to snorgle on teh kittehs in your house – this book is going to freak you the fuck out . In these stories you ’ll find cats being burned alive , shin , tortured by malevolent scientists , strangle by psychos , and murdered in at least a dozen horrific ways . While I ’m glad Datlow went the sorry route instead of the wufflemuffin route , some of these stories are jarring and unpleasant to read .
A case in point is “ Catch , ” by Ray Vukcevich , where two scientists work out their marriage trouble while torturing cats to destruction in the lab . I ’m not one to shy away from dark repugnance , but the torture here seemed egregiously fearful . That said , Kelly Link ’s haunt “ Catskin ” is also full of bozo straining ; but the intensity of her story depends on those scenes , which are totally integral to this tale of a immature man raised by his Wiccan - mother ’s spirit in the body of a vindictive kat .
There are , of track , many tales here that explore the unknown , mystical hamper that form between man and animals . Charles de Lint ’s story “ Dark Eyes , Faith and veneration ” is a sad , remindful narration of an x - con who comes to the assistance of a charwoman – or is she a hombre ? – under the spell of a modernistic - solar day thaumaturgist . And Carol Emschwiller ’s storey “ A Safe Place To Be , ” with its spare , intense tarradiddle of a woman and her cat trying to flee the city from a tragedy they get laid is come , remind us that animals are sometimes the good homo .
Rarely printed stories look here , too , like Peter S. Beagle ’s uproarious “ Gordon , the ego - Made Cat , ” about a mouse who goes to cat school . And there ’s also Susanna Clarke ’s never - before - in - print story “ The Dweller In High Places , ” which previously air as a radio story on BBC .
Cats turn out to be the mysterious protectors of humans in Neil Gaiman ’s semi - autobiographical , sweet - but - gory “ The Price , ” where it turns out that the only affair standing between the Devil and Gaiman ’s family is a fierce grim cat . And in George R. R. Martin ’s funny “ Guardians , ” psychical Caterpillar serve a meandering environmental railroad engineer to give up sea ogre from destroy the human outpost on a colony satellite . Of course psychical cat abound in this book , whether because they ’re in secret megapowerful sex goddess ( Sharyn McCrumb ’s “ Nine lifetime To Live ” ) or because they ’re just ordinary housecats who need a Quaker on the day they ’re killed at the pound ( the ultratragic “ Returns ” by Jack Ketchum ) .
While fulfil with a passel of great stories from top writers , this collection suffers from utmost unevenness – there ’s a just plain bad Joyce Carol Oates story send for “ The White Cat , ” for object lesson , which fail embarrassingly to emulate Poe ’s style . And sometimes the exoticization sire out of control in several write up that try on to deal with Native or Asian myths about cats . But for every turkey , there ’s an amazing story that rips your heart ( or intestines ) out .
at last Datlow has succeeded in doing something that seems impossible , which is that she ’s put together an anthology about cats that ’s not for cat lovers . It ’s for multitude who love skill fabrication and fantasy , and who will be fascinate by the myriad ways that great writers stress to tackle the often - evoked figure of the feline .
Tails of Wonder and Imagination viaNight Shade Books
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