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Fantasy fiction has a long and honorable history of parodying its own traditions and, in The Flying Sorcerers, Peter Haining has collected a wide range of comic fiction from the genres of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. The 24 stories span the century, from P.G. Wodehouse's hilarious "A Slice of Life," about the inventor Wilfred Mulliner and the dastardly baronet Sir Jasper ffinch-ffarrowmere, through the likes of C.S. Lewis, Kurt Vonnegut, and Mervyn Peake to stories by more recent favorites such as Roald Dahl and, of course, Terry Pratchett, whose story "Turntables of the Night," featuring DEATH, opens the collection.
The stories range from Michael Moorcock's hilarious spoof of heroic fantasy, "The Stone Thing," to more considered twists on conventional themes, as in Angela Carter's story of a reluctant vampire, "The Lady of the House of Love." Arthur C. Clarke even manages to find humor in the end of the world with the closing story "No Morning After."
Haining introduces each story with a brief but informative biography of the writer. This makes the collection an excellent introduction to the wide range of comic fantasy and science fiction writing produced this century.
Source: Elizabeth Sourbut, Amazon.com.
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