The Essential Bordertown: A Traveller's Guide to the Edge of Faerie

by Terri Windling, Delia Sherman

Overview

Bordertown. Once a normal American city, now a perilous nexus between the World and returned Elfland. From the banks of the addictive Mad River to the all-night clublands where young elves and humans fight and play, all the way up to glittering dragon's Tooth Hill, where high society seals itself away from the street—this is no city to trifle with.

Bordertown. A place of hidden magic, flamboyant artists, runaway teenagers, and pagan motorcycle gangs. The city you always knew was there.

Bordertown was created by Terri Windling, multiple World fantasy Award-winning editor, artist, and writer. Now thirteen of modern fantasy's finest writers return to Bordertown once again, to tell a new cycle of tales of the city. Here are Charles de Lint, Ellen Kushner, Patricia A. McKillip, Felicity Savage, Delia Sherman, Midori Snyder, Caroline Stevermer—and here is bestselling author Steven Brust with "When the Bow Breaks," chosen as a finalist for the Nebula Award after the hardcover publication of this volume.

Bordertown. It's an attitude and a state of mind. It's elfin light and human sweat. It will never let you go.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312867034
Publisher:	Tor Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/08/1999
Series:	Borderlands , #4
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	251,419
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.86(d)

About the Author

Terri Windling is a writer, editor, artist, and passionate advocate of fantasy literature. She has won six World Fantasy awards for her editorial work and the Mythopoeic Award for her novel The Wood Wife. She has edited over thirty anthologies, many in collaboration with Ellen Datlow—including the Snow White, Blood Red adult fairy-tale series, The Armless Maiden, Sirens, The Green Man, and Swan Sister. She has also written children's books and articles on myth and folklore, and she edits the Endicott Studio Online Journal of Mythic Arts website. She divides her time between homes in Devon, England, and Tucson, Arizona.

Delia Sherman is a highly acclaimed fantasy writer. She lives in Boston and New York.

Table of Contents

Terri Windling & Delia Sherman / Introduction

How to Get there #1: From the World to the Border

Patricia A. McKillip / Oak Hill

How to Get There #2: The Path from the True and Only Realm to the False Lands and the City of Illusion (Translation for Humans: How to Get from Elfland to Bordertown)

Midori Snyder / Dragon Child

First Things First: So You Need a Place to Stay

Delia Sherman / Socks

The Gangs: And Life's Other Little Annoyances

Donnard Sturgis / Half LIfe

What to Eat: A Tasteful Guide to Border Cuisine

Ellen Kushner / Hot Water: A Bordertown Romance

The Music Scene: What's Up and What Ain't

Michael Korolenko / Arcadia

Nightlife: Where to Find It

Elisabeth Kushner / Changeling

So You Want to Be a Star: Get Real

Charles de Lint / This May Be Your Sorrow

Uptown: How the Other Half Lives

Caroline Stevermer / Rag

The Peculiar Joy of Cooking on the Border

Steven Brust / When the Bow Breaks

Culture Clash #1: A Human Guide to Elvin Etiquette

Elen Steiber / Argentine

Culture Clash #2: A Trueblood Guide to Human Peccadillos

Micole Sudberg / Cover Up My Tracks with Rain

Famous Last Words

Felicity Savage / How Shannaro Tolkinson Lost and Found His Heart

Editorial Reviews

Irresistible: this is what the universe ought to be like.” —Interzone

“There isn't a weak story in the book.” —Vector

“The stories are personal ones, not epic stories with empires or worlds in the balance. A rock 'n' roll atmosphere pervades the stories. there is something about a punked-out, mohawked el in a leather jacket that shatters the Tolkien mold, that allows the characters to be different, to be apart from the previous mythologies....The chronicles of the Borderlands are heartily recommended.” —Different Worlds

From the Publisher

Windling's fecund premise for the series of short-story collections and novels devoted to Bordertown (beginning with Bordertown and Borderland, both co-edited with Mark Alan Arnold, both published in 1986) involves the mingling of the mundane and the freakish that is the earmark of contemporary fantasy writing. These 13 stories share the same setting, place names and ambience. In Bordertown, teeming with runaways from both the human world and "The Realm," magic and science mitigate one another in strange ways. Here, spells are no more exotic than Kleenex. A guidebook written by editors Windling and Sherman is interspersed throughout the current text and is a perfect, hilarious counterfeit of the genuine item, with sly tips to the tourist for saving money and avoiding untoward enchantments. Stylistically, the stories range from Steven Brust's highly literate and exquisitely turned riverboat saga, "When the Bow Breaks," to Midori Snyder's straightforwardly sentimental coming-of-age story, "Dragon Child." More than a few shoot precipitously into undeserved conclusions, relying on sudden dramatic invention or some archetypal subtext insufficiently articulated, as if the authors had become habituated to Bordertown's facile spells. In Michael Korolenko's "Arcadia," a magical videographer's tale, the plot is heavy-handed and the resolution platitudinously tacked on. This is the exception, however; most of these pieces, even those that are more fantastic vignette than story, satisfy. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

From the best way to enter the city on the edge of human and elven realms to how best to sample the delights and avoid the pitfalls of a place where the magical and the mundane meet, this collection of 13 stories explores the shared universe of Bordertown. Contributors to the latest installment of the Borderlands series include Patricia McKillip, Midori Snyder, Charles de Lint, Steven Brust, and other veteran fantasy and sf authors. In addition to its obvious appeal for series fans, this title should attract first-timers who enjoy fantasy with a modern edge.

Library Journal

Of that egregious title, readers might well demand: 'Essential' to whom? Still, fans of Emma Bull's Finder (1994) and the various other Bordertown yarns that have appeared over the years will be familiar with the urban-fantasy backdrop: magical Elfland has reappeared, slap in the middle of contemporary America; the buffer zone between Elfland and the US is Bordertown, where both science and magic work, though intermittently and unreliably, and where refugees, misfits, strays, and runaways congregate. Among the 13 contributors here are Patricia A. McKillip, Midori Snyder, editor Sherman, Elisabeth Kushner, Charles de Lint, Caroline Stevermer, and Steven Brust, while editor Windling (she dreamed up the whole shebang) provides most of the "guide pieces" that should help newcomers orient themselves. Beware, however, of the aggressively elfpunk approach: "We're going to give you a history lesson instead. Shut up, pay attention." The jury's still out on shared-world anthologies. Do they inspire the deeper exploration of themes and issues, yield richer concepts through the wider creative input, and show the f/sf community's true cooperative spirit? Or do they merely featherbed mediocre or lazy authors, encourage a clubby atmosphere, and kill originality stone dead? Over to you.

Kirkus Reviews