Salon Fantastique — Ellen Datlow

Expand your vision of what a fantasy story can be with tales by Peter S. Beagle, Lucius Shepard, Catherynne M. Valente, Paul Di Filippo, and others.

Winner of the World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology

Inspired by the literary salons of eighteenth-century France, Salon Fantastique brings together renowned authors to create and share new tales that show the fantasy form at its best. The resulting stories form a conversation between established and emerging writers, historical and contemporary fiction, timeless folklore themes and the immediacy of modern politics, traditional linear narratives, and more experimental storytelling.

Kicking off the collection is Delia Sherman's “La Fée Verte,” in which a nineteenth-century prostitute takes a lover among the other women in a Parisian bordello, a mysterious wraith who sees the past, present, and future. In Catherynne M. Valente's “A Gray and Soundless Tide,” a woman shelters a selkie and learns her tragic story, while in Paul Di Filippo's “Femaville 29,” a tsunami gives birth to a glorious new city rising from the imagination of children. In the intimate company of today's master fantasists, you'll be gifted with stories that will take the genre in directions you never could have imagined . . .

“Bring[s] together mostly new fantasy writers, most of them contributors to previous Datlow/Windling books and perhaps forming a distinct ‘school.' Call it American magic realism.” -- Publishers Weekly

“A roster of fifteen contributors to make any lover of literary fantasy go weak at the knees. . . . an anthology that rewards reflection.” -- Strange Horizons