Like oak leaves in autumn, cascading on stiles

[sovay]

Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, R.I.P. I grew up on this series. Each year I bought the new collection, scoured used book stores for past years; I discovered writers through them—they were the reprint market to which all short stories and poems aspired. They were a field guide as well as a gathering of flowers. And I am not, not pleased to see them go.

Comments

[strange-selkie.livejournal.com]

Well, THAT's the cherry on the shit sundae.

Not ONLY are we not pregnant this month, I can't hoard up my Barnes and Noble GC from the holidays in order to run out and buy YBF&H.

I think I'm going to go engage in full-on nervous collapse now.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

As I wrote over at lcrw:

"This is just . . . wrong.

"YBF&H is what writers aspired to; where readers found the indispensable and undiscovered; where scholars read 'the abstract and brief chronicles of the time.' It has been truly an anthology, a garland of green.

"Many many thanks to all who worked on it, who made that long shelf of brilliant, provocative, astonishing stories and poems."

But field guide is perfect.

So bittersweet to see you in this last edition; so sad to think we'll never open next year's or the next to read a poem or a story by a rising friend, an immortal, a newfound voice...

Nine

[shirei-shibolim.livejournal.com]

. . . the hell? Why? The linked article doesn't explain.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm very sorry to hear.

They were good anthologies--I hope maybe in a couple of years they can get them back running again.

[gwynnega]

So sad and disappointing.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

You and me both. And an awful lot of other people too, to judge by my f-list.

My suspicion is that it's not gone for long, that some enterprising small press will pick it up (a series with that rep and an established readership? Oh, surely...). But I have been wrong before.

[mer-moon.livejournal.com]

Ditto.

A big part of me wonders whether a letter campaign of "please, don't" to St Martin's would have any effect on their decision.

[eredien]

Oh, what a shame. I guess this will encourage me to go out and read the volumes I haven't yet, but I was hoping to really sink my teeth into the next one, and when I was small kept thinking, "I want to be in that, one day"--and now, won't have the chance.