The Mysteries of the Faceless King

SYNOPSIS Darrell Schweitzer s career stretches back to the early 1970s. He has written novels, most notably The Mask of the Sorcerer (1995), which was expanded from a World Fantasy Award finalist novella, but he has probably most distinguished himself for a steady stream of short fiction which caused anthologist Mike Ashley (in The Mammoth Book of Sorcerers Tales ) to call him today s supreme stylist in the fantasy field. His work has appeared in a great variety of publications ranging from Amazing Stories and Rod Serling s The Twilight Zone magazine to Interzone and numerous PS Publishing anthologies. The present volume is the first major retrospective of his work. Once upon a time . . . None of the stories collected herein begin with those words, though some come close. But they might as well. For Darrell Schweitzer writes a very traditional sort of story. His fiction is almost always fantasy, which is a mode nested deep in the roots of Story, usually horror, a mode as old as nightmares, and very often weird fantasy, a much more recent mode but one that is dear to his heart. Most could have been written a hundred years ago or, with equal ease, a hundred years in the future. This is not a criticism. Timelessness is precisely what he is after. Michael Swanwick, from the Introduction