Rogues edited by 832 pages. I have the softcover, and it’s very, very thick. Talk about a big fat book! (As George Kelley likes to say).
Gardner Dozois has won fifteen Hugo Awards and thirty-two Locus Awards for his editing work. I especially liked what he and Martin did with the Old Mars and Old Venus anthologies. If you like SF and haven’t read those, I encourage you to do so. I hope this one is as good, it looks, from the contents page, to be.
Rogues is a cross-genre anthology, with both science fiction and fantasy, even some mystery, featuring 21 original short stories from various authors. Some of these may sound familiar to you by this time, because of award nominations, reviews and discussions.
Contents:
- “Everybody Loves a Rogue” (Introduction) by George R.R. Martin
- “Tough Times All Over” by Joe Abercrombie – In the city of Sipani, a package goes through multiple owners, each providing a different viewpoint, starting with a courier who gets robbed.
- “What Do You Do?” by Gillian Flynn – A nameless sex worker and fortune teller is hired to spiritually cleanse a wealthy woman’s house but soon comes to believe she is in way over her head.
- “The Inn of the Seven Blessings” by Matt Hughes – A thief is interrupted in a haul when he touches an idol and soon finds himself rescuing its owner.
- “Bent Twig” by Joe R. Lansdale – Hap takes the law into his own hands to rescue a young woman from criminals in Tyler, Texas.
- “Tawny Petticoats” by Michael Swanwick – In a surreal Post-Utopian New Orleans full of zombies, two tricksters named Darger and Surplus attempt a huge con.
- “Provenance” by David W. Ball – The journey of a newly resurfaced Caravaggio through war and bloodshed to arrive in the present day.
- “The Roaring Twenties” by Carrie Vaughn – A tense confrontation in a speakeasy frequented by the magical crowd.
- “A Year and a Day in Old Theradane” by Scott Lynch – A retired thief is blackmailed into stealing an entire street within a year and a day.
- “Bad Brass” by Bradley Denton – When a group of high school students tries to sell stolen tubas, their substitute teacher plans on stealing their profits to teach them a lesson.
- “Heavy Metal” by Cherie Priest – A monster hunter is called in to a small town which is still recovering from a 150 year old ecological disaster.
- “The Meaning of Love” by Daniel Abraham – In the slums a prince is in hiding – but now he has fallen in love with a young woman about to be sold as a slave.
- “A Better Way to Die” by Paul Cornell
- “Ill Seen in Tyre” by Steven Saylor – A Greek poet and his apprentice stop in Tyre to purchase a magical tome.
- “A Cargo of Ivories” by Garth Nix
- “Diamonds From Tequila” by Walter Jon Williams
- “The Caravan to Nowhere” by Phyllis Eisenstein
- “The Curious Affair of the Dead Wives” by Lisa Tuttle
- “How the Marquis Got His Coat Back” by Neil Gaiman
- “Now Showing” by Connie Willis
- “The Lightning Tree” by Patrick Rothfuss
- The Rogue Prince, or, a King’s Brother by George R. R. Martin – Set in the Westeros of Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, hundreds of years before the events of A Game of Thrones, this is a prequel to The Princess and the Queen (2013) and focuses on the actions of King Viserys I Targaryen’s brother, Prince Daemon Targaryen.
I may try the one-story-a-day thing with this one, though some of them are pretty long for that.
Tip the Wink 
I wish I had time to read books like this, or do I mean the energy. All of the synopses sound interesting. I think this would take me a month of solid reading time to get through. Probably more. A lot more!
Hey, Steve! Yes, these huge anthologies take a lot of time, but parsed out over weeks at a story here and there, they are very enjoyable. I hope this one will be, but it’s a ways down in the TBR.
Very good collection. The only writer I was not familiar with was David Ball.
I’m not familiar with him either. We shall see. 🙂 There are several others of whom I’ve heard but have not read.
I enjoyed ROGUES. Martin and Dozois have assembled some wonderful anthologies!
Now I wonder if it was a post by you that made me aware of this one, George. I was thinking it was Black Gate.
That’s an average of 40 pages a story? I prefer shorter stories but it does sound good.
Jeff, looks like some are longer, and a few are closer to 20. Still, a lot of long stories. I’ll also mention that not having read any GRR Martin, [Oops, see my comment, below] I have no idea who the people in that blurb are or what to expect.
It’s funny. We were talking about Martin this week with Jeff Smith, who has known him since before he was a zillionaire. I’very read two of his early, pre-Game books, Fevre Dream (vampires on the Mississippi in the 19th Century) and The Armageddon Rag.
I liked them both.
Pre-Game books? I don’t understand the term. Come to think of it, I read Tuff Voyaging and liked that,
I just figured out you are referring to Game of Thrones. DUH.
Sorry, just meant they were his early books before he hit it big.
At the airport, ready to go home. The suitcase was 3 pounds overweight – I didn’t know what the limit was – so we took out a tablet, a Kindle, and a library book.
Up, up and away, in your beautiful, beautiful
balloonairplane!We actually left 15 minutes EARLY (unheard of!) and got home early too. The luggage came out quickly and we were home earlier than I’d estimated. Now that the airlines are charging for luggage more and more people seem to want to bring bags on the plane. They make a big deal about size but you never see anyone told, “no, that bag is too big, you need to check it.”
Anyway, this was an Embraer 190, a smaller plane with two seats on each side of the aisle, 25 rows (capacity 100, I guess. They announced it was a “full plane” but there were only 84 people, at least 10 fewer than the trip there). They called for volunteers to let them check bags at the gate, for free, so I gave them my heavy Bouchercon bag o’books, and it came down the chute right before the suitcase.
That worked out well.
I’ll say. Some people just lead charmed lives, I guess. If it had been me, they would have just asked ME to step off the plane, and then the weight would have been right. Bet you’re glad to be home and out of the heat.
Except. ..it is going to be 87 here tomorrow before we cool down.
Woah, this antho is not at all what I thought it was! I thought it was going to be mostly grimdark / epic fantasy, but sounds like it’s a little bit of everything, which makes it sound WAY more interesting!
Way more interesting indeed. Hell of a lineup, isn’t it? I’m sure you noticed… Scott Lynch.