Demons & Dreams: The Best Fantasy and Horror 2

by Ellen Datlow (Editor), Terri Windling (Editor)

A collection of short works of fantasy and horror. Drawing on a very wide variety of sources, the editors have put together a selection of stories from arguably today's best story writers, including Gene Wolf, Ian Watson, Lucius Shepard, Ramsey Campbell, Joan Aiken and many more.

Genres: Anthologies, Fantasy, Horror

640 pages, Hardcover

First published February 15, 1990

About the author

Ellen Datlow has been editing science fiction, fantasy, and horror short fiction for forty years as fiction editor of OMNI Magazine and editor of Event Horizon and SCIFICTION. She currently acquires short stories and novellas for Tor.com. In addition, she has edited about one hundred science fiction, fantasy, and horror anthologies, including the annual The Best Horror of the Year series, The Doll Collection, Mad Hatters and March Hares, The Devil and the Deep: Horror Stories of the Sea, Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories, Edited By, and Final Cuts: New Tales of Hollywood Horror and Other Spectacles.
She's won multiple World Fantasy Awards, Locus Awards, Hugo Awards, Bram Stoker Awards, International Horror Guild Awards, Shirley Jackson Awards, and the 2012 Il Posto Nero Black Spot Award for Excellence as Best Foreign Editor. Datlow was named recipient of the 2007 Karl Edward Wagner Award, given at the British Fantasy Convention for "outstanding contribution to the genre," was honored with the Life Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association, in acknowledgment of superior achievement over an entire career, and honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention.

Reviews

[Robin Brown Clune]

Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight --
A world without toys --
Dx --
Friend's best man --
The snow apples --
Ever after --
My name is Dolly --
Author's notes --
Lake George in high August --
Csucskari --
The other side --
Pamela's get --
Voices in the wind --
Once upon a time, she said --
The circular library of stones --
Soft monkey --
Fat face --
Uncle Dobbin's parrot fair --
The pear-shaped man --
Delta sly honey --
Small heirlooms --
The improper princess --
The fable of the farmer and fox --
Haunted --
Dead possums --
Pictures made of stones --
Splatter: a cautionary tale --
Gentlemen --
Demon luck --
Words of power --
Jamie's grave --
The maid on the shore --
Halley's passing --
White trains --
simple sentences --
A hypothetical lizard --
Honorable mentions: 1987.

[Mavis Hewitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with any collection, it is a mixture, some I really enjoyed, some I couldn't even be bothered to finish. Note - according to these editors the majority of Best Fantasy & Horror for that year was American

[CJ Jones · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have over twenty of these. The four stars is less for the individual quality as for the amazing resource it serves. Each of these *thick* books has page after page after page of short stories carefully culled from the year's offerings. And each story is a potential lead to a new author to read on top of being well crafted. With short stories there is often the danger that I will stare blankly at the final page and say "idungeddit" but this is well worth the risk.