In the 14th century, Geoffrey Chaucer advanced the fantasy story even furthur byincorporating legends andmyths into his seminal "Canterbury Tales".Among the stories of the various pilgrims traveling to Canterbury is the Pardoner's tale of the tree thieves who each meet Death personified in appropriate ways. One of the first to use the frame story device, Chaucer combined the myths and the folktales of his time with archetypes of real people, making his work accessible to the common man.

The Elizabethan Age Brought an Explosion of literary fantasy to the torefront of public consciousness. Beginning with Christoipher marlowe's "Doctor Faustus", perhaps the first deal-with -the-devil story in which the church has only a secondary role next to tangled web taht entagles the power-hungry doctor. At the same time, William Shakespeare was starting his meteoric rise to glory, with his historical, tragic, and comedic plays sweeping the imagination of England like no one had ever before him. Fantasy was a major element in several of his plays, in particular " A Midsummer Night's Dream", "The Tempest", ANd "Macbeth", and he paved the way for the fantastists of the following centuries. Another important author of the time was Wdmund Spenser, whose romantic masterpiece "The Faerie Queene" wa sdedicated to Queen Elizabeth.

The 18th century was a period when fantasy blossomed once again, beginning with Jonathan Swift's political satire "Gulliver's Travel" and ending with William Blake's " Songs opf Expirience" and"The Marriage to Hell and Heaven".By rejecting the standards of the then-contemporary life and writing about his driving passions, Blake blazed a new trail for fantasy writers to follow. Horace WAlpole wrote the precursor to the Gothic Romance "The Castle of Ontario"in the lkater half of the century.

The dawning of the 19th century brought with it the seminal novel "Frankenstein" by Mary Wollstonetcraft Shelley, which straddled the boundary between fantasy and science fiction. Later, in the respective Victorian Age, was Charles Dickens, whose novel "A Christmas Carol" is perhaps one of the best known fantasy novels the world over.The firs half of the 1800s also witnessed the development of America's great fantastist, Edgar Allan Poe, whose melancholy, macabre works weren't fully appreciated until decades after his dreath in 1849. During the last years of the 19th century, two wrote novels that prorhesied the shape of things to come: Jules Verne, with his fantastic sea adventure story "20000 Leagues Under the Sea", and H.G Wells, hile ckloaked in the trappings of early sci-fi, opened the door for dozens of future fanatsy authors to step through.

Which brings us to the 20th century. a time in which a book that came out nowhere defined fanatsy for several generations of readers. That book, of course is " The Hobbit". John Ronald Reuel Tolkien's charming fable, originally conceived as a serial bedtime story for his son, made fantasy accesible to every reader, and continued the cycle of warrior protector( howver unlikely a hero Bilbo Baggins is , he is still a hero) vs warrior destryer, in the guise of the ancient dragon Smaug.

With Tolkien's work sweeping America, and coupled with the rise of the pulp magazine era, fantasy enjoyed a renaissance ina maerica. Authors such as Robert E. Howard, H. P. Lovecraft, August Derleth, Jorge Luis Borges, Lewiss Carroll, and Ray Bradbury rose to prominence during this era. Dozens of fanasy worlds were created and explored during this ascendancy of the fanatsy genre.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the emphasis of fanatsy genre has shifted somewhat. Instead of the single novel, we now see trilogies, or perhaps multivolume works that span thousands of pages along with thousands of years of imagined history. Authors such as Tad Williams, Robert Silverberg, Roger Zelazny, Melanie Rawn, Stephenr. Donaldson, Ursula K. Le Guin, marion Zimmer Bradley, Robert Johnson, Lloyd Alexander, George R.R. martin, David Edings, and Merceds ALckey reinvented the fantasy novel as the epic series, covering their created worlds and characters in exhaustive detail, yet still leaving enough surprises to keep their readers coming back for more, volume after volume. Of course, the legions of writers whoa are still tackling fantasy in all its myriad forms are too many to count. Authors such as Michael Moorcock, Harlan Elilison, Charles de Lint, Jonathan Lethem, Orson Scott Card, Joan D. Vinge, Lucius Shepard are taking the fantasy story to bold new plateaus.

With such a rich and varied history to draw upon, chosingone story would seem to be an impossible task. Yet taht is what we asked seeral of today's preeminent fantasy writers to do, pick the one fantasy story that spoke to them, touch them, made them reexamine the genre in a new light. And they answered, withthe results in this book you're holding right now. From ornate passages of Charles Dickens to the lean, understated, yet richly evocative prose of Roger Zelazny, some of the best fantasy of two centuries is presented here, chosen by the very people who know it best-- those who write it.Each story is preceded by a brief ( or not so brief, in some cases) introduction by the author who selected it, telling why they still remember that particular story. So prepare yourself for a journey of imagination unlike any you've ever expirienvced as you read these stories chosen by today's top fantasy authors as their favourites.

Martin H. Greenberg


THE END

When You Dream, There are no Rules!