Here’s the trouble with putting out that 5-Star List before the year actually ends. I should have known I’d end up adding one more!
Just as well, since I think Welcome to Bordertown deserves special attention, anyway.
The first three Bordertown anthologies – Borderland, Bordertown, and Life on the Border – came out in the mid-80s and very early 90s, just early enough to have passed out of print right at the time I would have loved them as a teen. (The Essential Bordertown came out later and is still in print, so I don’t really have any excuse for having missed it.) So, I’m a latecomer to the party. The one good thing about that is that I have some great books to track down and read now, and it looks like the editors are working on getting e-book editions out.
This is an absolutely fantastic collection. There’s a bit of everything: short stories, poems, a comic, even a faerie jump rope chant. My expectations were high going in, since the list of contributors includes some really big names, and I was not disappointed. My personal favorite was Tim Pratt‘s “Our Stars, Our Selves”. I love when an anthology introduces me to a great author I somehow missed. I love the whole world of Bordertown.
Tim Pratt is one of my best friends! He has a list of his free stories on his website (http://www.timpratt.org/?page_id=10) and I highly recommend his poetry. I sometimes react more strongly to one of his poems than I do to entire novels by other people.
That said, I haven’t read Bordertown yet. I’ll have to remedy that soon!