Originally appearing in Andrew Offutt's legendary Swords Against Darkness anthology, it's the Anderson short most likely to be familiar to S&S fans. The next story is 'The Tale of Hauk,' a frequently-reprinted story of Norse warriors, ill omens, and family obligations. In this tale, the unnamed narrator bears witness to a reunion of star-crossed lovers. People from any timeline or reality can meet there, and it's not remarkable to see Leonardo da Vinci sharing drinks with Albert Einstein, while Sancho Panza (of Don Quixote fame) hangs out with formless entities beyond comprehension. The Old Phoenix is a sort of cross dimensional watering hole, featured in several of Anderson's stories. The first story in the book is 'House Rule,' a tale of the Old Phoenix tavern. The groupings are, for the most part, logical. I mean they can be grouped by a rough similarity of theme or setting. By loosely-connected, I don't necessarily mean they share characters or continuity. The collection is divided into three sections, each featuring a group of loosely-connected stories and a non-fiction essay. Of those, at least half have rarely ever been reprinted. Of the eleven fiction pieces featured, six of them first appeared in 1960 or earlier. Part of the Jim Baen Presents line, Fantasy is weighted towards Anderson's older work, if only just. Which is just one reason why Fantasy, a 1981 title from Tor books, was such a rare treasure. Stories that mixed them as freely as Anderson did were plain out of fashion. To put it simply, by the 1980s, 'books with rocket ships' and 'books with swords' were distinct marketing categories. Even worse, much of Anderson's short work from those early days violated later, unspoken editorial taboos against 'genre mixing.' Single-author short story collections have historically been a hard sell. The reasons for this are certainly many, with shifting editorial tastes at the Big Publishing Houses probably being chief among them. That said, most of his earlier work has remained stubbornly out of print. Fact is, Anderson is one of the very best authors the the genre ever produced, effortlessly writing anything from Hard SF to retold Viking Sagas over his five-decade career. While it's hard for me to pick a favorite reprint volume off of DMR's impressive list, I'd say the edge goes to Poul Anderson's Swordsmen From the Stars. From DMR Books' earliest days, they've been committed to publishing high-quality reprints of unjustly forgotten classics of Sword & Sorcery, Science Fantasy, and Historical Adventure. If the only thing DMR Books ever did was introduce readers to new, kick-ass Sword & Sorcery writers, it would have been enough to earn them a place of honor on the shelves of every true genre fan.įortunately for us, Mr.

Mikromega by Poul Anderson