Edited by Paula Guran
Now available!
Features: “The Tower of the Elephant”
Flashing swords and fearsome magicks . . . high adventure and wondrous wizardry . . . dread monsters and vast rewards . . .
Tales of sword and sorcery at their best offer keen wit, ingenious perception, freewheeling imagination, and canny invention. From its swashbuckling beginnings of good versus evil battles to clashes of more nuanced principles set in complex settings to havoc shaped by grittier perspectives, ambiguous morality, deep history, and expansive worldbuilding―readers continue to be thrilled by the exploits of great warriors and mighty mages.
Swords Against Darkness: an epic anthology of short stories and novellas from classic to modern, each tale a memorable vision from masters of mistresses of heroic fantasy past and present!
Contents
Paula Guran, Introduction: “Knowledge Takes Precedence Over Death”
Forging & Shaping
Robert E. Howard, “The Tower of the Elephant”
C. L. Moore, “Hellsgarde”
Clark Ashton Smith, “The Dark Eidolon”
Jack Vance, “Liane the Wayfarer”
Leigh Brackett, “Black Amazon of Mars”
Fritz Leiber, “Ill Met in Lankhmar”
Michael Moorcock, “While the Gods Laugh”
Normalizing & Annealing
Tanith Lee, “Hero at the Gates”
C. J. Cherryh, “A Thief in Korianth”
Karl Edward Wagner, “Undertow”
Katherine Kurtz, “Swords Against the Marluk”
Mercedes Lackey, “Out of the Deep”
Michael Shea, “Epistle from Lebanoi”
James Enge, “Payment Deferred”
John Balestra, “The Swords of Her Heart” (original)
Tempering & Sharpening
Joanna Russ, “Bluestocking”
Samuel R. Delany, “The Tale of Dragons and Dreamers”
Elizabeth Moon, “First Blood”
Saladin Ahmed, “Where Virtue Lives”
Scott Lynch, “The Effigy Engine: A Tale of the Red Hats”
Steven Erikson, “Goats of Glory”
Elizabeth Bear, “The Ghost Makers”
Kameron Hurley, “The Plague Givers”
Trade Paperback, 6" x 9", 576 pages, $19.95
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