The Big Book of Modern Fantasy

WORLD FANTASY AWARD WINNER • A true horde of fantasy tales sure to delight fans, scholars, and even the greediest of dragons—from bestselling authors Ann and Jeff VanderMeer

Step through a shimmering portal ... a worn wardrobe door ... a schism in sky ... into a bold new age of fantasy. When worlds beyond worlds became a genre unto itself. From the swinging sixties to the strange, strange seventies, the over-the-top eighties to the gnarly nineties—and beyond, into the twenty-first century—the VanderMeers have found the stories and the writers from around the world that reinvented and revitalized the fantasy genre after World War II. The stories in this collection represent twenty-two different countries, including Russia, Argentina, Nigeria, Columbia, Pakistan, Turkey, Finland, Sweden, China, the Philippines, and the Czech Republic. Five have never before been translated into English.

From Jorge Luis Borges to Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock to Angela Carter, Terry Pratchett to Stephen King, the full range and glory of the fantastic are on display in these ninety-one stories in which dragons soar, giants stomp, and human children should still think twice about venturing alone into the dark forest.

Completing Ann and Jeff VanderMeer's definitive The Big Book of Classic Fantasy, this companion volume to takes the genre into the twenty-first century with ninety-one astonishing, mind-bending stories.

A VINTAGE ORIGINAL

“"Encyclopedic. . . . Encompasses undeniable masterworks. . . . Offer[s] beloved cult figures. . . . A treasure trove." -- Publishers Weekly "Comprehensive. . . with an impressively wide variety of stories . . . . This doorstopper of an anthology will surely entertain fantasy fans." -- Kirkus”

WINNER OF THE WORLD FANTASY AWARD FOR BEST ANTHOLOGY

“An anthology of this breadth and depth will have stories that will please almost any kind of fantasy reader . . . an essential read for any passionate reader, period.” —Booklist, starred

“Encyclopedic. . . . Encompasses undeniable masterworks. . . . Offer[s] beloved cult figures. . . . A treasure trove.” —Publishers Weekly

“Comprehensive. . . with an impressively wide variety of stories . . . . This doorstopper of an anthology will surely entertain fantasy fans.” —Kirkus 

“Over 800 pages of bliss-inducing non-mimetic goodness . . . Every item in this book justifies its inclusion . . . The VanderMeers might be hanging up their editorial Indiana Jones hats and bullwhips, but they have left a definitive legacy that will be hard to top.” —Paul Di Filippo, Locus

"This collection is truly unique, worthy of a read, or better yet, deserves a place on anyone’s literary bookshelf." —Authorlink

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, work for which she won a Hugo 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.

JEFF VANDERMEER is the New York Times bestselling author of the Southern Reach trilogy, the first novel of which, Annihilation, won the Shirley Jackson Award and was made into a film by Paramount Pictures. His recent novel Borne has been selected for the NEA Big Reads program and was a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award.

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