Bordertown: Where Magic Meets Rock & Roll

Here's the thing about Bordertown: it's more than it appears on the surface. As a shared world project, it's a solid one - the premise is interesting (for new arrivals: Fairyland has returned, causing various calamities and upheavals, and creating a 'border' region between the two worlds, where neither human machines nor elven magic work reliably), the writers work well together, and the voices were fresh and compelling at the time. They still are, more or less, but that's not why we love it so much.

When I was young, we didn't have Youtube, much less anything like the "It gets better" project. Yeah, ok, we had zines and we had records, and sometimes you could travel to a bigger town and mingle with a larger group of freaks, but we didn't have a lot of older freaks to tell us the things we desperately needed to hear. In the Bordertown anthologies, the original writers - a mix of queer folk and musicians and former street kids and other assorted weirdos - found a way to reach us. They told us that sometimes running away is ok, depending, but that you still have to make a home out of wherever you end up - it's not enough to just survive, though survival comes first. They told us that it was great to be strange, and that we didn't have to outgrow it if we didn't want to, that we could go on to be weird adults and be proud and happy, if maybe totally broke as well. They told us that we had to take care of each other, and that the families we chose were as real and important as the ones we were born with. Most importantly, they told us that the million small acts of creativity and self-sufficiency that we practiced every day - making our own clothes, baking bread, growing food, making music, telling stories - were as vital and as magical as anything any Elfland could ever produce.

Bohemia is always changing and always the same, but like any other culture, it needs a certain amount of continuity. The Bordertown books gave us that sense of solidarity, and they still seem to - which is why you find them creased and bent all to hell, passed around from person to person to person, and why people will shell out as much as fifty bucks for an old paperback copy. They're a lifeline and a beacon and a map. Like the best books for young people, they show us how to navigate the route between childhood and adulthood and arrive in one piece. I hope they bring comfort to the strange - young and old - for many more years to come. ( )

In this anthology of Bordertown, the mythology is deeper as the authors fill out the world that they created and other authors join in. Bordertown is full of art and music as well as elves with their complex society. A theme that moves through Bordertown is the idea of how do you know where you belong and who you are. In each of the stories, the characters struggle with understanding the choices they must make to be where they fit. From dealing with a murder mystery to a rich, young woman who takes a foolish risk that could end up badly instead becomes a lesson. These anthologies are great reads for the what the authors do with Bordertown and seeing their styles change and grow. ( )

Elfpunk: Faerie meets rock and roll! And surprisingly readable, too. The Kushner story was decent, I guess. Not what I was expecting; I need to reread. The de Lint was Good de Lint, which to me means archetypal Urban Fantasy, and the "Bach" (Shetterly?) story was also nice. ( )

In Bordertown, the city that lies between the human world and Faerie, magic and technology don't always work and misfits and runaways that don't belong in either world try to find their place. Fun shared universe with great world-building.

This anthology is the second (out of four). While I adore the premise and the world, the only story that really spoke to me was Will Shetterly and Emma Bull's "Danceland" -- a nice little Bordertown murder mystery. However, I'm biased... Shetterly's novel "Elsewhere" introduced me to Bordertown, so he and Bull's characters and style really make Bordertown for me... the other authors and their offerings just didn't sing to me in the same way. Your mileage, however, may vary. I'm giving it four stars just because I like the world and that one story a helluva lot. ( )