PUBLISHERS WEEKLY praises the forthcoming Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman’s THE UNICORN ANTHOLOGY.

This slender but rich anthology compiled by Beagle and Weisman (THE NEW VOICES OF FANTASY) centers on the mythical beast for which Beagle is best known, thanks to his classic novel The Last Unicorn. The 15 stories and one poem reinterpret the unicorn myth across genre and style.

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Themes of innocence lost, first love, and yearning for transcendence pervade all of the stories in this collection, giving it a haunting and melancholy feel. Readers who love the mystery and elegance of unicorns will find this a lovely homage. 

NONSTOP READER enjoys the anthology to the tune of five stars.

THE UNICORN ANTHOLOGY is a collection of 16 pieces of short fiction by some literal titans of speculative fiction. Every single story in this collection is top-shelf, there are no weak stories.  All of these have been published previously and date from 1975-2017. Many of the older stories are quite difficult to find and several were new to me in any form.

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One reason I prefer collections and anthologies is that short fiction is really challenging.  It’s spare and the author doesn’t have a wealth of wordage to develop characters or the plotting.  Well written short fiction is a delight. I also love collections because if one story doesn’t really grab me, there’s another story just a few pages away.  I can only recall a few times where I’ve read a collection (or anthology) straight through from cover to cover.  This one I did. I even re-read the stories which I had read before.

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Just a really super collection of short stories.

Five stars

To the surprise of almost no one, THE UNICORN PAGES includes the anthology (with no comment) in a list of forthcoming books that excited them.

At TOR.COM, Jaclyn Adomeit confesses “Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn Taught Me How To Love.”

The Last Unicorn was the book that taught me how to love.

And it didn’t have anything to do with the doomed Prince Lír and the titular unicorn—although an immortal creature learning about regret certainly taught me other lessons. I first learned what true love was from Molly Grue and Schmendrick the magician.

Fantasy taught me that love is not a first look, nor a grand gesture. Love is built from a hundred tiny sacrifices toward a common goal. Love is reaching the end of a trial or adventure and celebrating not just one’s own achievements, but what two were able to accomplish together.

This is an old lesson, but one that deserves to be revisited and reiterated, and deserves to be mirrored in the stories of our own lives. In life, as in The Last Unicorn, “there are no happy endings because nothing ends”—but in fantasy stories, readers can uncover a path to joy in our numbered days. In the continuous river of a life, it is the moments we share with our loved ones, the ones we partake in as equals, and the things we conquer together that build true love.

Sandra Baltazar Martínez for UC RIVERSIDE NEWS reports on the celebration around the 50th anniversary of the Easton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

This year, the Eaton Collection of Science Fiction and Fantasy, a world-renowned science fiction archive, celebrates its 50^thanniversary. The collection currently has more than 300,000 pieces of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and utopian literature, making it one of the largest collections of its kind in the world. When it was acquired in 1969, the collection included 7,500 hardback publications.

To commemorate its half century, the fourth floor of the Tomás Rivera Library will showcase an exhibit titled “50 Books for 50 Years,” along with a wall-mounted timeline highlighting award-winning publications or books that are representative of a particular genre. The exhibit, located in Special Collections, opens Jan. 22 and runs through May 31; throughout those weeks, a selection of the 50 books will be rotated until all 50 have been showcased. The exhibit is free and open to the public.  

In the exhibit visitors will see items such as:

• 1596 copy of “The Faerie Queene” by Edmund Spenser
• 1955 copy of “The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction” by Theodore Sturgeon
• 1961 copy of “The Ship Who Sang” by Anne McCaffrey
• 1964 copy of “Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings” by Jorge Luis Borges
• 1969 copy of “The Last Unicorn” by Peter S. Beagle
• 1975 copy of “The Female Man” by Joanna Russ
• 1988 copy of “Adulthood Rites” by Octavia Butler

The 50-book list also has more recent titles, including Ted Chiang’s “Stories of your Life and Others,” Nnedi Okorafor’s “Binti,” and “The Salt Roads” by Nalo Hopkinson, a professor of creative writing at UCR.

For more info about THE UNICORN ANTHOLOGY, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Thomas Canty
Design by Elizabeth Story

For more info about THE LAST UNICORN: THE LOST JOURNEY , visit the Tachyon page .

Cover by Thorsten Erdt
Design by Elizabeth Story