The Fair Folk

Why elves? On the other hand, why not elves? The Science Fiction Book Club wanted to do a new anthology, and elves are a nice broad subject that lets the authors stretch out. So we asked a half-dozen of our favorites to each tell us a story about that old, powerful and eternally fasinating species. There were only two requirements: each tale had to be novella-length, and there had to be at least one genuine elf in it. Beyond that, the sky (or the hollow hill) was the limit. So Patricia McKillip went back to the turn of the 19th century to tell about a group of artists whose bohemian ways don't prepare them for an encounter with a kelpie. Megan Lindholm's contemporary hero has to cope with a brownie who moves into his apartment. You think it would be great having someone do all your housework and never ask to be paid? But what if the brownie's taste in homedecorating isn't yours? Kim Newman tells a darker tale about two Victorian children who vanish on their way to school. The boy reapears a few days later, aged by decades. Then his sister is found, unharmed_or is she? For something has changed about young Maeve... Craig Shaw Gardner's Wuntvor, the Eternal Apprentice, and his mismatched set of Compaions are always good for a laugh; when they're invited to an elven party, not even the elves could anticipate the outcome. Tanith Lee's discontented young heroine, plagued by a remarkably unpleasent family, has the luck to encounter an elven prince. But is it good luck_or bad? And Jane Yolen and Midori Snyder bring us a pair of sisters cast into exile by the Faery Queen and trying to cope with the very unmagical 21st century. Though it's not as unmagical as it was before the sister's arrival... It's with great pride and pleasure that we offer you these stories. We hope you enjoy reading them as much as we did.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.