The Best Fantasy Stories from the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

I choose this book to read the Bob Leman story. I looked through the offerings and picked some more must reads before I give the book back to library. There is no way I'm reading the whole thing. It's almost 800 pages and 40 stories.

- Stephen King - The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet - 5*
That was fun, I hope to read this one again at some point.
Look at the cover from The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1984


- Robert Aickman - Pages from a Young Girl's Journal - DNF - Too much unsaid. I need my stories more clear.

- Thomas Burnett Swann - The Manor of Roses - DNF - or hardly start but it looks like he writes stories I would like so I must not be in the mood. I think it's unfamiliar territory so it felt like work.

- Thomas M. show more Disch (he wrote The Brave Little Toaster) - Downtown - 2* - Did I see this story as a Twilight Zone episode? I wish more was explained in this too short story.

- Shirley Jackson - One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts - 2.5* - Readable, held my interest. A man set about making everyone happy he met, meanwhile his wife did the opposite. It ended with them saying they were ready to trade roles as if this was their regular routine. On deeper analysis (google searches) "People are capable of choosing to be good or evil - or at least, to act in good or evil ways. They have free will." Maybe I should be concerned with myself for not understanding the intention of this story.

- Jack Vance - Green Magic - DNF - I researched this one too because I know Vance is worthy of some attention. I liked the summary of the story I found on the internet but I really couldn't read the story. My brain and his writing style didn't mesh. If someone is sitting in a truck observing "the vistas of the green realm" and in the next section found sitting at a cocktail bar, I must be given a bit of direction on how he got there or at least some closure to the previous activity. show less

Inherited. Need to get this big old hardcover off my shelves.
I may not read it all, as I'm not as fond of fantasy as I am of SF.
No intro., no discernible order (not title nor author's name, not original publication date...).

- "Far from Home" by Walter S. Tevis - short, lovely
- "My Dear Emily" by Joanna Russ - imo unreadable, dnf
- "The Man Who Painted the Dragon Griaule" by Lucius Shepard - amazing novelette: original & lyrical and I will absolutely look for more by the author
- "The Vanishing American" by Charles Beaumant - snappy satire
- "The Cloud-Sculptors of Coral D" by J. G. Ballard - nice try but cliched, sexist, ableist, also just badly written
- "The Invasion of the Church of the Holy Ghost" by Russell Kirk - novelette on subjects show more that do not interest me, dnf
- "The Accountant" by Robert Sheckley - darkly funny (well, yeah, it's Sheckley)
- "The Fire When It Comes" by Parke Godwin - ah... no... G. is not drawn as a real woman; is this what they mean when they say 'male gaze' - ?
- "My Boy Friend's Name is Jello" by Avram Davidson - anecdote meant to be witty, p'raps satirical, but fails due to misogyny
- "San Diego Lightfoot Sue" by Tom Reamy - meant to be both romance and fantasy, but the fantasy seems shoe-horned in to, as it turns, wreck the romance and the story too
- "Sooner or Later or Never Never" by Gary Jennings - satire of missionaries in Australia, pretty funny
- "Jeffty is Five" by Harlan Ellison - sentimental nostalgia in a story you've prolly seen in other anthologies
- "The Third Level" by Jack Finney - sentimental nostalgia you've seen on Twilight Zone and in Finney's novels
- "The Silken-Swift" by Theodore Sturgeon - a wicked witch and a noble unicorn
- "Another Orphan" by John Kessell - a love letter to *Moby Dick* that just might get the original a few more readers
- "The Manor of Roses" by Thomas Burnett Swann - skipped, I don't like the setting or the 'voice'
- "Please Stand By" by Ron Goulart - starts out funny, gets adventurous; I'd like to find more
- "Downtown" by Thomas M. Disch - short surreality
- "Man Overboard" by John Collier - playboy seeks sea serpent
- "One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts" by Shirley Jackson - about a man who does nice things... or so it seems
- "Yes, We Have No Ritchard" by Bruce Jay Friedman - about a man who thinks he's nice enough to go to heaven... but...
- "The Ballad of the Flexible Bullet" by Stephen King - analysis of madness assoc. w/ writers... better than it sounds, and better than expected
- "That Hell-Bound Train" by Robert Bloch - very short 'trick the devil' story
- "Will You Wait?" by Alfred Bester - clever the first time I read it in another anthology, but not again
- "Sule Skerry" by Jane Yolen - I didn't appreciate this dark fairy tale or whatever it is
- "La Ronde" by Damon Knight
- "Narrow Valley" by R. A. Lafferty - funny story with a topology gimmick
- "Not Long Before the End" by Larry Niven.
- "$1.98" by Arthur Porges - clever but offensive vignette
- "The Tehama" by Bob Leman - a bit Lovecraftian. The 'Indian' culture is interesting but totally made up.
- "Ghost of a Crown" by Sterling E. Lanier - I struggled to >1/2 but had to give up, not to my taste
- "Pages from a Young Girl's Journal" by Robert Aickman - just another vampire story, I read to the end only because I saw hints that Mama and Papa were already long-lived or something, but no
- "Narapoia" by Alan Nelson - clever short satire
- "Born of Man and Woman" by Richard Matheson very short horror, response to a mutant scare?
- "Mythago Wood" by Robert Holdstock - dnf, too gothic-ish
- "Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - skipped, didn't need the umpteenth reread
- "Four Ghosts in Hamlet" by Fritz Leiber - sort of funny, I guess? Gotta be a drama major to fully appreciate I think
- "Gorilla Suit" by John Shepley - short satire, worth reading
- "Green Magic" by Jack Vance - not my thing, skipped
- "Black Air" by Kim Stanley Robinson - not my thing, skipped

Ok, to sum. I shoulda skipped more. I was surprised by how much I liked the King story, my interests in Tevis and Sheckley are confirmed, and I might try something more by Goulart. Marked dnf so I wouldn't have to give it a low rating... some of you might like it a lot more. Posting to paperbackswap. show less