Bending the Landscape: Fantasy - Hardcover

Mark Shepherd; Ellen Kushner; Lisa S. Sliverthorne; Simon Sheppard; Robin Wayne Bailey; Jessica Amanda Salmonson; Don Bassingthwaite; Tanya Huff

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1565048369 ISBN 13: 9781565048362

Publisher: White Wolf Publishing, 1997

Synopsis

They are extraordinary characters living outside the bounds of reality. But you will recognize them... It's about being gay, being straight, falling in love, sorrowful partings, death, and fantastic circumstances. Bending the Landscape stretches the standard fantasy genre. In the groundbreaking anthology, queer writers write fantasy for the first time, and genre writers explore queer characters. But don't expect the usual fantasy backdrops-these stories will give you a frisson, a thrill, as they fizz off the page.

About this title

Review:

Bending the Landscape will be a series of anthologies focused on homosexual issues in genre fiction, but this one isn't so neatly pigeonholed as all that. Gayness, or someone's discovery of his or her gayness, is indeed a common motif to all the stories, but in some it is central; in others, it's just a quality a character has--they happen to be having or have had a relationship with someone of the same sex. It's generous in size, 22 stories, and generous in its embrace, ranging in tone from sitcom-like light entertainment ("In Mysterious Ways," by Tanya Huff, and "Magicked Tricks" by K. L Berac), to realism ("Gestures Too Late on a Gravel Road" by Mark W. Tiedemann, and "Full Moon and Empty Arms" by M. W. Keiper), to realistic horror ("The House of the Man in the Moon" by Richard Bowes). Mythic fantasy, fairy tales, and ghost stories are all here too, so this is more like reading a survey than a tightly thematic anthology. The variety is appropriate. Neither fantasy nor sex comes in just one flavor. If you're at all interested in anything besides vanilla, sample this.

About the Author:

Nicola Griffith's novels include Ammonite, Slow River, Stay and The Blue Palace. She has been awarded the Lambda Award numerous times as well as the Nebula Award. Stephen Pagel is an award-winning editor, president and co-owner of Meisha Merlin Publishing, Inc., and a former national buyer for science fiction and fantasy for Barnes & Noble.

About this edition

• Publisher: White Wolf Publishing
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 1565048369
• ISBN 13: 9781565048362
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: Nicola Griffith, Stephen Pagel