Ellen Datlow - Off Limits

Cavafy’s work has seen me through four novels, now, and innumerable stories; the title of this one was taken from his poem of the same name. In the ancient Egyptian calendar, Athyr is the month which corresponds roughly to our October, the traditional time to honor the dead.

ELLEN DATLOW IS AN ACCLAIMED, AWARD-WINNING science fiction, fantasy, and horror editor.

Born and raised in New York, Datlow aspired to be a veterinarian when she was a child, but changed her plans when she realized how much she preferred reading and writing to math and science. Her first publishing job was in the New York office of Little, Brown & Co. in 1973. During the next eight years she worked at a handful of other publishing companies before finally finding her calling in 1981 as an editor of short fiction at OMNI magazine, where she worked until 1998. She has also worked at the online magazine Event Horizon and at scifi.com.

Datlow has edited more than fifty anthologies, including the bestselling collections Naked City: Tales of Urban Fantasy , Supernatural Noir , and Darkness: Two Decades of Modern Horror . She has published important science fiction and fantasy writers such as Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates, Ursula K. Le Guin, Clive Barker, William S. Burroughs, and many more.

She has also edited or co-edited numerous critically acclaimed anthologies of speculative fiction, including the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror series. She often collaborates with renowned co-editor Terri Windling, with whom she worked on Snow White, Blood Red , a work of adult fairy tales that has been one of their most successful projects together.

Datlow is the recipient of several awards, including multiple Shirley Jackson awards and Bram Stoker awards, Hugo Awards for Best Professional Editor, Hugo Awards for Best Short Form Editor, and Locus Awards for Best Editor, to name just a few. She also received the Karl Edward Wagner Award for “outstanding contribution to the genre.” In 2011, she was the recipient of a Life Achievement Award by the Horror Writers Association. Datlow also co-hosts a popular reading series, Fantastic Fiction, at the KGB Bar in New York City, where she resides.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Foreword by Robert Silverberg. Copyright © 1996.

Introduction by Ellen Datlow. Copyright © 1996.

“The Reality Trip,” by Robert Silverberg. Copyright © 1970 by Agberg, Ltd. First published in the May-June issue of If.

“The Tattooist,” by Susan Wade. Copyright © 1996.

“Dolly Sodom,” by John Kaiine. Copyright © 1996.

“The Lucifer of Blue,” by Sherry Goldsmith. Copyright © 1996.

“The Queen of the Apocalypse,” by Scott Bradfield. Copyright © 1996.

“Oral,” by Richard Christian Matheson. Copyright © 1996.

“Grand Prix,” by Simon Ings. Copyright © 1993 by Simon Ings. First published in different from in Omni magazine, June 1993 issue. Reprinted by permission of the author.

“The House of Mourning,” by Brian Stableford. Copyright © 1996.

“Fetish,” by Martha Soukup. Copyright © 1996.

“Red Sonja and Lessingham in Dreamland,” by Gwyneth Jones. Copyright © 1996.