All contributions by:

Elizabeth A. Allen

Poe: 19 New Tales of Suspense, Dark Fantasy, and Horror Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe, edited by Ellen Datlow

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ March 15, 2009

In Poe, Ellen Datlow collects 19 dark stories inspired by the master of mystery, mood, and horror, Edgar Allan Poe. Each story is followed by an author’s note describing the Poe influences on the foregoing tale.
Kim Newman starts the anthology with a humorous survey of man Poe tales in “Illimitable Domain,” about a B-movie house [...]

Returning My Sister’s Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice by Eugie Foster

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ March 1, 2009

Up till now, fans of Eugie Foster’s clever, crystalline fairy tales, drawn from Chinese and Japanese mythology, had to seek out single instances of her stories in various magazines and anthologies. However, with the March publication of Returning My Sister’s Face: And Other Far Eastern Tales of Whimsy and Malice, old aficionados can relish 12 [...]

Black Static 7: Transmissions From Beyond

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ November 30, 2008

Black Static 7: Transmissions From Beyond kicks off with Bruce Holland Rogers’s “The Reason for the Season,” where a boy with a bleak outlook on life creates a morbid Halloween costume. Goth without humor, Rogers reminds us that horror can still be unironic, existential, and, well, horrific.
Trent Hergenrader gives us a child’s-eye view of horror [...]

Sea, Swallow Me and Other Stories by Craig Laurence Gidney

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ November 12, 2008

Craig Laurance Gidney loves words…sensually, sexually, omnivorously. He streams out floods of them in his stories so that you, too, can taste their deliciousness. He wields them with abandon and precision to create little worlds that rise off the page and engulf you in snow globes of sparkling beauty and perceptiveness. Each story in his [...]

Wilde Stories 2008: The Best of the Year’s Gay Speculative Fiction, edited by Steve Berman

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ November 1, 2008

With Wilde Stories 2008, editor Steve Berman starts a new yearly series. He aims to collect the best gay speculative fiction of the preceding year. Each Wilde Stories anthology will feature the best of the previous year’s spec-fic dealing specifically with gay men and queer themes. So how’s the first crop?
“The Woman in the [...]

Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress XXIII, edited by Elisabeth Waters

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ October 28, 2008

For over 20 volumes, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies have combined many established authors with newcomers under the common themes. The 23rd installment in this long-running series is edited by Elisabeth Waters, and there are some real gems in the collection.
In Dave Smeds’s “A Morsel for the Plague Queen,” Verda is a peasant [...]

Clockwork Phoenix, edited by Mike Allen

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ July 1, 2008

Catherynne M. Valente makes good on her reputation for hallucinatory hothouse prose in the initial story in anthology Clockwork Phoenix (edited by Mike Allen), “The City of Blind Delight.” An unexceptional man, Gris enters an exceptional train station (with living billboards and human archways) and takes a train to the City of Blind Delight, [...]

The Duke in His Castle by Vera Nazarian

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ June 15, 2008

The Duke in His Castle by Vera Nazarian centers around the immortal and cursed Duke Rossian. He will live forever, unable to leave the grounds of his estate, unless he can tap into his own magic powers. Kept in suspension for years, Rossian exists in an overintellectualized state of static, petulant melancholy. He’s [...]

An Interview with Vera Nazarian: Taming Wild Herds of Thought Buffalo

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ June 15, 2008

Author Vera Nazarian talks to Elizabeth Allen about her recent novella, The Duke in His Castle, in metaphors explosive, sexy, and downright weird.
What originally sparked the idea of The Duke in His Castle? What did the rough draft look like when you were in college?
Oh Lord, what a fun question. The first draft [...]

An Interview with Catherynne M. Valente

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ May 15, 2008

In this interview with reviewer Elizabeth A. Allen, Catherynne M. Valente connects Snow White with CPR, late-night lamb roasts with her literary development, and writing with Katamari Damacy.
Tell me about your perspectives on archetypes. Did a certain class, book, or person introduce them to you? What do you think they are, and why do they [...]

An Interview with Ellen Klages – Metaphors for Short Stories: Petits Fours, Scrimshaw, and Training Bikes

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ March 15, 2008

So what exactly is a short story? Ask Ellen Klages, author of novel The Green Glass Sea and numerous pieces of short fiction (collected in Portable Childhoods), and she’ll give you five or six vibrant images to think about.
You are adept at writing from a child’s point of view with a combination of sympathy and [...]

Lace and Blade, edited by Deborah J. Ross

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ March 1, 2008

Lace and Blade, edited by Deborah J. Ross, kicks off the introduction with a quote from Alfred Noyes’s “The Highwayman.” Full of sensuous descriptions and melodramatic incident, this Victorian ballad poem also characterizes the themes of Norilana Books‘ anthology. Rogues, romance, and magic mix in these tales of an idealized period with lavish costumes and [...]

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 2008

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ February 5, 2008

In the March, 2008, issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction Alexander Jablokov sees the Cold War technology race through the eyes of “The Boarder,” Vassily, a Soviet ex-pat living in Andrew’s U.S. basement. As a metallurgist who helped to develop Sputnik, he follows the U.S. space program with avidity, influencing young Andrew with his criticisms. [...]

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2008

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ January 2, 2008

In the first short story, “Balancing Accounts” by James L. Cambias, of the February 2008 issue of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Annie is a sentient spaceship (I think) whose owners allow her the independence to seek out and trade for metal, electronics, and other supplies needed for interstellar travel. Mostly, Annie thinks in a [...]

Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Ellen Datlow

By Elizabeth A. Allen ⋅ December 7, 2007

All stories in Inferno: New Tales of Terror and the Supernatural had to conform to one requirement, editor Ellen Datlow (who says she’s not prolific, but she’s just being modest) says in the preface: They had to cause the reader “a sensation of fear so palpable that [he or she] feels impelled to turn up [...]

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