Novel Ideas-Fantasy

by Brian M. Thomsen (Editor)

How do novels get their start? The answers to that question often prove as varied as the authors who create them. In Novel Fantasy , seven of the genre's most talented tellers of tale are represented by eight masterful short works--many of them award winners--which laid the groundwork for some of the most acclaimed fantasy novels and series in the field.

Genres: Fantasy, Anthologies

320 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published March 7, 2006

About the author

Brian Thomsen was a founding editor of the Questar Science Fiction line of books, and served as managing fiction editor at TSR, Inc.; he also wrote over 30 short stories, and collaborated with Julius Schwartz on Schwartz's autobiography. He also worked as the publisher for TSR's Periodicals Department at one point. He was a consulting editor at Tor Books; as an author he was a Hugo Award nominee.

He died on September 21, 2008, at his home in Brooklyn at the age of 49. He was survived by his wife, Donna.

Reviews

[Werner]

I started this book with the story related to the only novel of the eight that I'd read, Seventh Son. But I discovered that although "Hatrack River" was published as a separate short story, it's actually the first few chapters of the novel, repeated verbatim. When I'd bought the book, I'd expected the eight stories to be distinct works --related to the later novels and suggesting them, obviously, but not simply excerpting them. (Generally, I don't read novel excerpts; my position is, if you're going to read an author's work, to be fair to him/her, you need to at least attempt to read the whole thing, not just a snippet.) But it's now apparent that the collection may consist, wholly or largely, of what became the initial chapters of later novels --in effect, a collection of excerpted beginnings. (And it isn't clear from the introductions whether or not this is true, or in what cases it may be true.) So, I've decided to pass on this one. That's just me; others may find it an appealing sampler of the various authors' work!