Empty Your Heart Of Its Mortal Dream

Best American Fantasy: Epicedium

Chorus

I came in haste out of the house
to carry libations, hurt by the hard stroke of hands.
My cheek shows bright, ripped in the bloody furrows
of nails gashing against the skin.
This is my life: to feed the heart on hard-drawn breath.
And in my grief, with splitting weft
of ragtorn linen across my heart’s
brave show of robes
came sound of my hands’ strokes
in sorrow whence smiles are fled.

Aeschylus, The Libation Bearers

You have probably already heard, Best American Fantasy has official been discontinued after three volumes. One of, if not the best, of the annual anthologies, under Matt Cheney’s editorship and the always well chosen guest editors, it provided a wonderful selection of the best of speculative fiction from great writers like Rachel Swirsky, Elizabeth Hand, Jeff Ford, Kelly Link and more. The most interesting thing for me though, was the selections made from those outside the usual genre markets. In scouring a number of literary journals, Cheney and co. provided a wealth of material that I (and most other people I expect) would be unlikely to read otherwise.

I echo Jeff in saying that the saddest thing about this is the situation of my dear friend Larry, who I know has worked hard on selecting the material over the summer and has now lost out on a good opportunity. While I’m sure Larry is disappointed, I’m not worried, Larry has a translation coming out in a major anthology sometime soon and I know there will be other opportunities for him in editing because he would make a fantastic editor. If nothing, at least he has more experience  and made connections and I’m sure he’ll be able to carry those into another project sometime in the future. If you haven’t seen it already, you can find some of the stories he had submitted for consideration here, I’ll certainly be trying to track them down myself.

In the end, it is better to celebrate something than to mourn it. For the three volumes that it ran, Best American Fantasy lived up to its promise to provide the best thanks to fantastic work by Cheney and his guest editors and that is something to feel good about. All three volumes are still available on Amazon and I strongly recommend picking them  up while you can.

Farewell Best American Fantasy, we hardly knew thee. Two coins for the Ferryman and one last kiss.

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