The Big Book of Modern Fantasy
Edited by Ann and Jeff Vandermeer
Vintage, 2020

The most natural follow-up imaginable to Ann and Jeff Vandermeer’s The Big Book of Classic Fantasy from last year has arrived promptly: The Big Book of Modern Fantasy, in a lovely floppy oversized double-columned paperback from Vintage. The Classic Fantasy volume was a rock-solid anthology, finely balanced between household names and far more obscure, and this latest volume - 875 pages, more than 90 stories - is every bit as strong as its predecessor in all of its predecessor’s strongest points. 

The parameters here are clear and generous: stories written after the end of World War II in which supernatural elements play a predominant part (“the story,” the Vandermeers write, “is permeated by the fantastic”), and once again the sheer ambit of the selections is stunning. It’s hard to imagine even the most die-hard fantasy reader not encountering plenty in these pages from authors they’ve never read before, including such things as “All the Water in the World” by Chinese writer Han Song (translated by Anna Holmwood) or “Kaya-Kalp (Metamorphosis)” by Pakistani writer Intizar Husain (translated by CM Naim), or “Mogo” by Mexican author Alberto Chimal - the first appearance of this author’s work to appear in English (in a translation by Lawrence Schimel). A great many of the stories in this volume are works in translation - and some, like Sumanth Prabhaker’s “A Hard Truth About Waste Management,” that only read like sloppy translations:

The family liked so much to flush their trash down the toilet that they sold their TV and used the money to buy three chairs to arrange in the upstairs restroom. This was a time when trash flushing was not an uncommon practice, but, even so, the extent of the family’s enjoyment was rare. Where most families we resorted to trash flushing were ashamed of their behavior, this family looked forward to the sight of their trash bins filling up. They would recline in their chairs and watch their trash get sucked down into the hole at the well of the toilet, where a black gossamer ring had grown, and they would cheer and punch their fists together.

The stories vary in tempo and concentration and length, with one of the shortest being “The Man Who Sold Rope to the Gnoles” by Margaret St. Clair, rightly describe by our editors as “unjustly lesser-known,” with its effortless skill at concision:

No path leads to the house of the gnoles, and it is always dark in that dubious wood. But Mortensen, remembering what he had learned at his mother’s knee concerning the odor of gnoles, found the house quite easily. For a moment, he stood hesitating before it. His lips moved as he repeated, “Good morning, I have come to supply your cordage requirements,” to himself. The words were the beginning of his sales talk. Then he went up and rapped on the door.

There are titanic, well-anthologized tales here as well, of course: George R. R. Martin’s “The Ice Dragon,” two from the great Angela Carter, “The Luck in the Head” by M. John Harrison, “The Dreamstone” by CJ Cherryh, “The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers” by Samuel Delany, “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Ursual Le Guin, and half a dozen others, including Jane Yolen’s terrific “Sister Light, Sister Dark” (“Under the eye of the leprous moon, two shadows pulled themselves along the castle wall. The ascent had been laborious: a single step, a single rock gained”). 

It’s a big fat volume to savor, in other words, both for old friends and new finds. It also sharply increases the eagerness for the Vandermeer’s next anthology.

—Steve Donoghue is a founding editor of Open Letters Monthly. His book criticism has appeared in The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The American Conservative. He writes regularly for The National, The Vineyard Gazette, and The Christian Science Monitor. His website is http://www.stevedonoghue.com.