Edited by: Mike Ashley
Cover Artist: Joe Roberts
Publisher: Running Press
Binding: Paperback
Publication Date: August 2008
don’t know what the phrase “extreme fantasy” means. To me the word “extreme” was best defined in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle : white water rafting in a convenience store, hang gliding off a cliff, drinking Mountain Dew and lastly listening to Total Eclipse of the Heart by Bonnie Tyler. The editor of The Mammoth Book of Extreme Fantasy defines extreme as “stories that took a basic idea, whether simple or complicated, and developed it to some extreme, beyond what the reader might normally expect.” That doesn’t sound too bad, but I like Harold and Kumar’s definition of extreme better.
For this review, I will give a brief synopsis of each story, followed by what I thought about the story and then finally the rating I give it out of 5. There are 24 stories in total making this one meaty, or mammoth if you will collection. Onto the first story:
1) Senator Bilbo by Andy Duncan. First published in 2001.
Story : A descendent of Bilbo Baggins fights for political power and immigration control in the fantasy land of the Shire.
Thoughts : Boring and overlong. Duncan is usually a good writer, but the characters in this are simply unsympathetic caricatures of Tolkien’s. I mean Gandolf-like magicians interacting with turn-of-the-century senators? Come on! Not a great way to start of a short fiction anthology.
Rating : 1/5
2) Sandmagic by Orson Scott Card. First published in 1979.
Story : A young boy watches his parents die of murder and disease and vows to seek vengeance upon the ones that caused his pain.
Thoughts : I liked the way Card expresses the concept of magic and the consequences caused by using something far greater than any one being. This story is very nicely done— heartbreaking and dark all at the same time. Now if only Card could keep his mouth shut and stop spouting his religious views on the evils of American Democracy and the Satanic undercurrents of homo-sexual marriages.
Rating : 3.5/5
3) Dream A Little Dream For Me… by Peter Crowther. First Published in 2000.
Story : A young man dealing with writers block travels to Germany to unwind and finds out he may be the key to saving God’s one true dream.
Thoughts : Crowther may be better known as the publisher of the great small press publishing house, PS Publishing. However, it also turns out that he is one heck of a good short story writer. This is a tale of how dreams can tempt us, rule us, and ultimately destroy us; how hope can turn to sorrow and regret in an instance. This one has a dreamlike melancholy feel to it— like dreaming of bunnies frolicking while your girlfriend breaks up with you.
Rating : 3/5
4) Lost Wax by Leah Bobet. First published in 2006.
Story : A young boy dreams of magic forbidden and learns that not all things wished for are beneficent and wanted.
Thoughts : A simple story with an abrupt ending. This one could’ve been more descriptive and a tad longer, but still was fun. Nothing much more to really say here, although I could never imagine myself collecting discarded wax shavings.
Rating : 2.5/5
5) Save A Place In The Lifeboat For Me by Howard Waldrop. First published in 1976.
Story : A bunch of old-time film comedians search for their destinies/purpose?
Thoughts : This is absurdist to the extreme. I don’t mind absurdist when it’s done well, like with Beckett, but this was not done well at all. Can comedy really save the world? I don’t know, but if it can, this ain’t it. If anything, this type of comedy will set things back by centuries.
Rating : 1.5/5
6) I Am Bonaro by John Niendorff. First published in 1964.
Story : A man who can turn into anything he wishes loses his mind in more ways than one.
Thoughts : An odd and short little story. This one is quite striking and will stay with you for days— or maybe like Bonaro, you’ll forget it. What wonder!
Rating : 2.5/5
7) The Old House Under The Snow by Rhys Hughes. First published in 2004.
Story : Two friends become trapped in a mansion surrounded by ice which slowly sinks, sending them deeper and deeper into a bottomless world.
Thoughts : The editor of this book, Mike Ashley, promotes this story as a nightmarish version of Alice in Wonderland, and I couldn’t agree more. This was quite the surreal one. Rhys has a definite way with words that will leave readers itching for more. I am officially a fan of his.
Rating : 3.5/5
Banquet of the Lords of Night by Liz Williams. First published in 2002.
Story : In a world of darkness where any concept of light means death, one man struggles to bring light to his life and save the world.
Thoughts : This is a short yet suspenseful story. Each word read is filled with more and more dread, reaching a crescendo that explodes of the page. Liz Williams always creates interesting worlds and this is no exception. Reminded me a lot of the tall creepy things from Dark Crystal and Mirrormask .
Rating : 3/5
9) Charlie the Purple Giraffe was Acting Strangely by David D. Levine. First published in 2004.
Story : A purple giraffe becomes aware that he is in a comic book and wonders if there is existence if there are no readers.
Thoughts : A story that can be read many ways: of our cultures obsessions with being famous, of peoples need to feel, well, needed— or perhaps it really is just about a purple giraffe. I’d like to live in a world where comic characters have found out the truth and Batman’s pretty pissed off at us. We can all dream.
Rating : 2.5/5
10) Master Lao and the Flying Horror by Lawrence Person. First published in 2005.
Story : In fantastic ancient China, a demonic evil starts taking the heads of villagers to build its floating head army, and it’s up to a lustful temple acolyte and his aging mentor to save the day.
Thoughts : Clearly Mr. Person has seen many Chinese horror/comedy movies, because this story is like reading the movies I grew up watching in the 80’s. He is rather funny with his turn of phrases and uses them for many laughs. It also seems like there’s more stories set in this world— gives me something to look for. This one is very reminiscent of The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox by Barry Hughart, which I entirely love.
Rating : 3/5
11) Using It and Losing It by Jonathan Lethem. First published in 1990.
Story : A man who wishes to be apart from society makes himself forget the language of words, but soon finds out that like all animals, words aren’t the only ways to express.
Thoughts : Admittedly, I am not the biggest Lethem fan, but this was quite interesting. The concept of repetition to forget actually blows my mind and makes me wonder if it can work— another odd-ball tall from Lethem. Maybe I’ll have to re-read Glass Soup . Wait, that’s a different Jonathan. Hmm. Still, both Jonathan’s were enormously boring on NPR the other day, so I stand by not liking either Jonathan.
Rating : 2.5/5
12) The All-At-Once-Man by R. A. Lafferty. First published in 1970.
Story : A man seeks immortality by living all ages at once.
Thoughts : This one reminded me of the Great Gatsby . I can’t really pin-point the why but the main character of this story had a “Gatsby-ness” to him, and that’s brilliant. What bogs the story down is that it try’s to explain the “how” of immortality but doesn’t do it well. I wish the author just left it ambiguous. Still, a nicely thought out and quirky piece— the ability to live all ages at once is an remarkable concept.
Rating : 2.5/5
13) Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani by William Hope Hodgson. First published in 1919.
Story : Translated to mean, “my god, my god, why have you forsaken me.” This is the story of a scientist who while trying to initiate an experiment attempting to recreate the biblical Crucifixion finds more than he bargains for, with Lovecraftian results.
Thoughts : This is by far the oldest of the stories, and it really shows— the dialogue is painfully prolonged, while the explanations are devastatingly lengthy and esoteric. Another problem I had with the story is the many shifting narrative view points. This can get a bit confusing at times and every time one of the characters reads “I said”, I was left wondering who in fact was talking. This is not old-time good like Lovecraft, but rather old-time bad like Edward E. Smith.
Rating : 1.5/5
14) Boatman’s Holiday by Jeffrey Ford. First published in 2005.
Story : Everyone knows that when you die, you put a coin under your tongue to pay the ferryman to take you across the river Styx. But what do we know about the ferryman? Tired of ferrying people across for centuries on end, the ferryman decides to use the holiday granted him once a century to escape hell, if only for a week. But can there truly be escape when hell is just a concept?
Thoughts : I liked this one a lot. It’s like Dante’s Inferno mixed with the “cosmic.” The question has always raged: did man create hell or did it always exist? This story tries to answer that question through one man’s journey into himself. This one reminded me of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as well.
Rating : 3.5/5
15) The Detweiler Boy by Tom Reamy. First published in 1977.
Story : A detective searches for the murderer of an old friend but instead finds a string of murders leading back to something disturbingly cruel.
Thoughts : This one genuinely hit the spot. I question if this belongs in a collection of “fantasy” stories, but I really don’t care. It was a nice break and a damn fine story. More crime-horror than fantasy, but not totally without since all horror contains some sort of fantastical events. Like a side-show coming to town, this one’s a can’t miss. Total Recall anyone?
Rating : 3.5/5
16) The Fence at the End of the World by Melissa Mia Hill. First published in 2002.
Story : Two young girls are told never to leave their yard for fear of falling off the edge of the world.
Thoughts : This is the shortest story in the collection and being so short tells more of a tale than a story. This is about the children we forget that are locked up from the world by parents who are more dictators than family. I feel that there could be more to this tale, but it was in the middle of blossoming before it was cut off.
Rating : 2/5
17) Elric at the End of Time by Michael Moorcock. First published in 1981.
Story : Elric finds himself stranded at the End of the World with his soul sucking sword out of energy and trapped at the mercy of bored immortals.
Thoughts : Besides the previous story by Howard Waldrop, this is the probably the most controversial choice for this collection. Elric has always been a polarizing figure in the fantasy community, and as I get older I tend to come across more people that hate him rather than love him—I for one am a huge fan. The Elric series were the reason I started reading fantasy back when I was 13. Of course I was far too young to understand the underlying themes at play in each Elric tale, but I enjoyed them nonetheless. So the Elric stories always hold a special place in my heart. Kafka may have gotten me to start taking literature seriously, but it was Elric that made reading “fun”— so much so that I own this story in probably a dozen different collections. This is one of Elric’s later, more playful tales, and is in its own way probably the most assessable of his stories— perhaps that’s reason enough to include it. As the editor of this collection, Mike Ashley states, “it was impossible to compile this anthology without something by Michael Moorcock.” I couldn’t agree more.
Rating : 4/5
18) Cup and Table by Tim Pratt. First published in 2006.
Story : A secret society searches for a holy cup that, predating man, will allow them to talk to God and ask him any question, any plea. And only a junkie who can see through time knows the true plea that all of mankind truthfully desires.
Thoughts : I’ve been a fan of Pratt’s since his short story masterpiece, Impossible Dreams — it’s the nearest any story has gotten to a dream after my own heart. This one is another home run. I love the way Pratt shifts through time, layering more and more questions with more and more answers. He does in 18 pages what lesser writers take whole books to do. Love this guy and love his work. Buy everything he does people!!
Rating : 4/5
19) I, Haruspex by Christopher Priest. First published in 1998.
Story : In the early days of the 20th C. a man consumes the flesh and maladies of the dead in order to maintain a balance, keeping demons from overrunning the world.
Thoughts : Most people know Christopher Priest for his novel The Prestige , but he has had a prolific short story career for over 30 years now. This story starts off really slow and builds to a slow finish. Maybe it’s just me, but I felt that this story really slowed the flow of reading the overall collection— like the editor was reloading for something exciting to come so he needed a lull to fill the space. Not one of Priest’s better stories, but it had an interesting, if at times confusing and entirely disturbing, premise.
Rating : 2.5/5
20) Radio Waves by Michael Swanwick. First published in 1995.
Story : The ghost of a man seeking understanding and remembrance is chased by an “entity” in a dead world surrounded by radio waves.
Thoughts : This is an existentialistic story about choices. How even after death, the pain we caused and choices made still ripple against the tide. Can we forgive ourselves even long after the ones we hurt no longer care? This one is a nice, albeit surreal, look at death that reminded me a bit of the Japanese movie After Life .
Rating : 3/5
21) Tower of Babylon by Ted Chiang. First published in 1990.
Story : After centuries of building, The Tower of Babylon is finally finished, and a group of miners makes the 4-month trek to the top, attempting to dig upwards into the vault of heaven. But what they find isn’t exactly what they were expecting.
Thoughts : Besides the Elric story, this was the only other story I had read previously. This is the story of the nature of faith— the accepting of truth when there has never been any proof. Much praise has been heaped on Chiang and this story and deservedly so. What’s even more astounding is that this is Chiang’s first published story? What?!! It’s like finally making the majors and your first career at bat is pinch hitting in the bottom of the ninth in a game seven of the World Series and hitting a grand slam. Again, what?!! This has been discussed and dissected for years in the literary circle and I’m always amazed that by each re-reading of it I find out something new— some new layer previously undiscovered. It’s that good!! What I like most about this story is the way Chiang describes the agriculture surrounding the tower as one goes higher. Since whole communities live along the tower, mini-towns have sprout up and the need for food is ever prevalent. The mid-parts of the tower where water is scarce can only grow onions, while higher up where there is rain, they grow beans and fruits. It’s the little details that show how much care Chiang took into creating this world. Utterly brilliant.
Rating : 5/5
22) Jack Neck and the Worry Bird by Paul Di Filippo. First published in 1998.
Story : A day in the life of Jack Neck (at least I think that’s what it’s about).
Thoughts : This story is just odd. The reader is constantly getting smacked around by words and phrases that are made up and make no sense. I’m sure to Di Filippo, the words made sense in his mind, but since I don’t have the fortune to rent real estate there I didn’t get what’s going on. It’s truly like reading a story in a foreign language. You can maybe pick out every 100th word. Di Filippo is usually such a strong and defined writer. I think for this story he was given too much free reign and probably created a story he has been carrying around since childhood. It’s like reading a Dr. Seuss story if Dr. Seuss didn’t rhyme and made less sense. I have to give it to the magazine that first bought and published this story. That took a lot of guts, and good or bad, the future of short stories needs more of that.
Rating :1/5
23) The Dark One by A A Attanasio. First published in 1994.
Story : A young barbarian is gifted with power and immortality from an ancient sorcerer. Through centuries the barbarian walks, searching for his peace known as darkness, which eventually he hopes will lead him to destroying the world.
Thoughts : The one thing that stands out about this story is that it tries way too hard. Its message of spiritual bliss is laid on pretty thick, like syrup on a stack of pancakes or lotion on a fat guy’s belly. The message of this story is that no matter how much time changes, all things remain the same: empires will always rise and fall, man will always be greedy and selfish— and only darkness is the salvation. This story is all about how religion is faith and that is good, while science is truth and truth is death— how the worst invention ever founded by man is science. I was waiting for Keyser Soze to suddenly appear and say, “and another thing: the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to convince the world that he didn’t exist.” I mean it’s like reading some “emo” kids poetry. However, what really bothered me about this piece is that towards the end there’s a huge shift in POV which is extremely jarring, I thought I suddenly was reading another story— like I had skipped the ending or something. This is sadly not the worst story in this collection, but it’s brutal to get through nonetheless.
Rating : 1.5/5
24) A Ring of Green Fire by Sean McMullen. First published in 1994.
Story : A peasant with a penchant for the ladies is cursed with his “member” being surrounded by a green ring of fire. After spreading his wanton onto hundreds of unsuspecting women, a group of men newly infected hunt him down to make him pay.
Thoughts : This one is quite interesting. One of the notable aspects of this story is how beautifully it progressed: from the inanely comedic to the tragically possible— like a message surrounded by a lollipop. I’ve always been a fan of stories that say something profound while still being entertaining. This story is about how even to a healer, some wounds can never be healed; how only through pain can many of us find compassion and hope. This is a fantastic way to end a short-story collection. Heartbreaking and completely spot on.
Rating : 3.5/5
So that’s the end of the collection. I hope that at least someone was interested with what I had to say and will pick up this one up. While this was not by any means the best collection I have ever read (that honor goes to Haruki Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman ), it was still quite good. There were more interesting and excellent stories than there were of dreadful ones. Generally what I find from collections that contain numerous authors is that the overall quality dips pretty low—since every reader has different tastes, some editors try to meet all expectations within a single book, which is frankly impossible. Still, surprisingly enough, this collection worked. There were around 6 stories that I found were poor, 10 that were average to good, and 8 that ranged from great to incredible. Those might not seem to be great odds, but generally in short story collections, the poor stories far outweigh the good ones and the average stories in this were still better than most. The one complaint I had with this book is the “extreme” tag the editor chose. I know I have a different definition of extreme, but none of these stories felt particularly excessive. What would have been better would have been to call this collection, The Mammoth Book of Fantastic Stories to Read While Cliff-Diving or Parasailing — or maybe not.
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