Annal:1998 World Fantasy Award for Collection

The Throne of Bones

Brian McNaughton

• 1998 WFA–Collection winner
• 1997 IHG–Collection winner
• Score: 20.48

“You hold in your hands a book of stories that forced Brian McNaughton to write. Make no mistake: I don’t exaggerate. There’s a reason this book won the World Fantasy Award. The stories inside it are rich, fascinating stuff—creepy and unsettling and phantasmic. Imagine what Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings would have been like if Tolkien had tried to tell that story sympathetically from the point of view of the human denizens of Mordor and you’ll have the slightest sense of what you’re about to wade into—but only just a sense. These stories will make the same demands on you that they made on Brian: they will command and compel you, and fill you full of terrible wonder. And when you’ve finished them you’ll find yourself wanting more.” —Alan Rodgers

Giant Bones

Peter S. Beagle

• 1998 Mythopoeic-Adult finalist
• 1998 WFA–Collection nominee
• Score: 12.48

With the unique touch of a master, Peter S. Beagle has crafted this collection of six amazing novellas set in the same fantastic world as his bestselling classic The Innkeeper’s Song. Brimming with all the stylistic majesty and dazzling inventiveness that have earned him comparisons to J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, Giant Bones brings to life characters from the author’s previous works as well as new heroes with their own stories to tell.

“Lal and Soukyan” follows the last perilous escapade of a legendary mercenary duo now in their twilight years, while “The Last Song of Sirit Byar” tells the tragic truth of the kingdom’s most celebrated bard. In “Giant Bones”, a family legend takes on new meaning for an impressionable child, and the troupe of performers in “The Tragical Historie of the Jiril’s Players” find themselves trapped in a dangerous world of royal intrigue. With these and two other extraordinary tales, Peter S. Beagle draws us into his wondrous and magical world.

Driving Blind

Ray Bradbury

• 1998 WFA–Collection nominee
• Score: 6.48

The incomparable Ray Bradbury is in the driver’s seat, off on twenty-one unforgettable excursions through fantasy, time and memory, and there are surprises waiting around every curve and behind each mile marker. The journey promises to be a memorable one.

Fractal Paisleys

Paul Di Filippo

• 1998 WFA–Collection nominee
• Score: 6.48

Ten funky science fiction stories by the widely acclaimed author of Steampunk and Ribofunk. Irreverent, funny and sexy—samples of what Di Filippo calls “trailer park science fiction”—Fractal Paisleys explains the real reason for the disappearance of the dinosaurs, how John Lennon found inspiration, how the L’il Bear Bar in Providence, R.I., ended up with a talking moose head on its wall, why Republicans ruled the U.S. for an unbroken twelve years and many more secrets of life. The stories are united by Di Filippo’s fascination with the infinite variety of alternate worlds: “what-if” scenarios that place an ordinary Joe or Jane in command of the forces that power the universe. Invariably, the results are…unexpected, to say the least.

Fractal Paisleys includes two never-before-published tales: the other stories were published in such science fiction standbys as Amazing Stories, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and Interzone.

A Geography of Unknown Lands

Michael Swanwick

• 1998 WFA–Collection nominee
• Score: 6.48