Borderland (book series)

Last updated January 23, 2022

The Borderland series of urban fantasy novels and stories were created for teenage readers by author Terri Windling. Most of the series is set in Bordertown, a dystopian city near the border between "the Elflands" and "The World". The series consists of five anthologies and three novels. The series has spawned fan groups, gaming groups, costumed events (such as the Borderzone parties in Los Angeles), and was discussed in The Fence and the River: Culture and Politics at the US-Mexico Border by Claire F. Fox.^[1]

Bordertown is the name of the shared universe created by Terri Windling, and a fictional place within that universe. The premise of the Borderland books is that the "Elflands" - a realm of magic populated by post-Tolkien elves ^{[ clarification needed ]} have "returned" to "The World". The region of juxtaposition of the Elflands and the World includes Bordertown or "B-Town", and the "Borderlands" which lie between Bordertown and the World. In the liminal environment of Bordertown and its environs, neither magic nor technology functions "normally", and unpredictable combinations of the two may emerge.

The geographic location of Bordertown in relation to our world is unspecified, although it usually seems to be within North America. Like New York City, Bordertown has a neighborhood named "Soho"; Bordertown's Soho is a largely depopulated part of the city given over to youth from both the World and the Elflands. Some have run away to Bordertown; others have run from something. The stories set in Soho often combine urban fantasy of various forms with a vaguely post-apocalyptic atmosphere.

The Borderlands series, created for teenage readers, focuses primarily but not exclusively on the disenfranchised youth culture of Bordertown, as manifest in gang violence, race relations, and miscegenation, impromptu forms of social organization, class conflict, generation gaps, and literary criticism. The music of the 1980s is a significant influence.

The Bordertown Series

Borderland, edited by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold (1986)
- Farrel Din: "Introduction"
- Steven R. Boyett: "Prodigy"
- Bellamy Bach: "Gray"
- Charles de Lint: "Stick"
- Ellen Kushner: "Charis"
Bordertown, edited by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold (1986)
- Farrel Din: "Introduction"
- Emma Bull & Will Shetterly: "Danceland"
- Midori Snyder: "Demon"
- Bellamy Bach: "Exile"
- Ellen Kushner & Bellamy Bach: "Mockery"
Life on the Border, edited by Terri Windling (1991)
- Will Shetterly: "Nevernever"
- Ellen Kushner: "Lost in the Mail" (II)
- Kara Dalkey: "Nightwail"
- Ellen Kushner: "Lost in the Mail" (III)
- Midori Snyder: "Alison Gross"
- Ellen Kushner: "Lost in the Mail" (IV)
- Charles de Lint: "Berlin"
- Ellen Kushner: "Lost in the Mail" (V)
- Michael Korolenko: "Reynardine"
- Ellen Kushner: "Lost in the Mail" (VI)
- Craig Shaw Gardner: "Light and Shadow"
- Ellen Kushner: "Lost in the Mail" (VII)
- Bellamy Bach: "Rain and Thunder"
- Emma Bull: "For It All" (lyrics)
- Ellen Kushner: "Lost in the Mail" (VIII-IX)
The Essential Bordertown: A Traveller's Guide to the Edge of Faerie, edited by Terri Windling and Delia Sherman (1998)
- Terri Windling: "Introduction"
- Terri Windling: "How to Get There #1: From the World to the Border"
- Patricia A. McKillip: "Oak Hill"
- Terri Windling: "How to Get There #2: The Path from the True and Only Realm to the False Lands and The City of Illusion (Translation for Humans: How to Get from Elfland to Bordertown)"
- Midori Snyder: "Dragon Child"
- Terri Windling: "First Things First: So You Need a Place to Stay"
- Delia Sherman: "Socks"
- Terri Windling: "The Gangs: And Life's Other Little Annoyances"
- Donnard Sturgis: "Half Life"
- Terri Windling and Teresa Nielsen Hayden: "What to Eat: A Tasteful Guide to Border Cuisine"
- Ellen Kushner: "Hot Water: A Bordertown Romance"
- Terri Windling and Teresa Nielsen Hayden: "The Music Scene: What's Up and What Ain't"
- Michael Korolenko: "Arcadia"
- Terri Windling: "Nightlife: Where to Find It"
- Elisabeth Kushner: "Changeling"
- Terri Windling: "So You Want to Be a Star: Get Real"
- Charles de Lint: "May This Be Your Last Sorrow"
- Terri Windling: "Uptown: How the Other Half Lives"
- Caroline Stevermer: "Rag"
- Terri Windling and Teresa Nielsen Hayden: "The Peculiar Joy of Cooking on the Border"
- Steven Brust: "When the Bow Breaks"
- Terri Windling and Mimi Panitch: "Culture Clash #1: A Human Guide to Elvin Etiquette"
- Ellen Steiber: "Argentine"
- Terri Windling: "Culture Clash #2: A Trueblood Guide to Human Peccadillos"
- Micole Sudberg: "Cover Up My Tracks with Rain"
- Terri Windling: "Famous Last Words"
- Felicity Savage: "How Shannaro Tolkinson Lost and Found His Heart"
Welcome to Bordertown, edited by Holly Black and Ellen Kushner (2011)
- Holly Black: "Introduction"
- Terri Windling: "Introduction"
- "Bordertown Basics"
- Ellen Kushner and Terri Windling: "Welcome to Bordertown"
- Cory Doctorow: "Shannon's Law"
- Patricia A. McKillip: "Cruel Sister"
- Catherynne M. Valente: "A Voice Like a Hole"
- Amal El-Mohtar: "Stairs in Her Hair"
- Emma Bull: "Incunabulum"
- Steven Brust: "Run Back Across the Border"
- Alaya Dawn Johnson: "A Prince of Thirteen Days"
- Will Shetterly: "The Sages of Elsewhere"
- Jane Yolen: "Soulja Grrrl: A Long Line Rap"
- Janni Lee Simner: "Crossings"
- Sara Ryan (Writer) and Dylan Meconis (Illustrator): "Fair Trade"
- Jane Yolen: "Night Song for a Halfie"
- Tim Pratt: "Our Stars, Our Selves"
- Annette Curtis Klause: "Elf Blood"
- Nalo Hopkinson: "Ours Is the Prettiest"
- Delia Sherman: "The Wall"
- Christopher Barzak: "We Do Not Come in Peace"
- Jane Yolen: "A Borderland Jump-Rope Rhyme"
- Holly Black and Cassandra Clare: "The Rowan Gentleman"
- Neil Gaiman: "The Song of the Song"
- Charles de Lint: "A Tangle of Green Men"

Novels

Elsewhere, Will Shetterly (1991)
Nevernever, Will Shetterly (1993)
Finder , Emma Bull (1994)

Related Research Articles

Steven Karl Zoltán Brust is an American fantasy and science fiction author of Hungarian descent. He is best known for his series of novels about the assassin Vlad Taltos, one of a disdained minority group of humans living on a world called Dragaera. His recent novels also include The Incrementalists (2013) and its sequel The Skill of Our Hands (2017), with co-author Skyler White.

Emma Bull is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Her novels include the Hugo- and Nebula-nominated Bone Dance and the urban fantasy War for the Oaks. She is also known for a series of anthologies set in Liavek, a shared universe that she created with her husband, Will Shetterly. As a singer, songwriter, and guitarist, she has been a member of the Minneapolis-based folk/rock bands Cats Laughing and The Flash Girls.

Michael Kandel is an American translator and author of science fiction.

Ellen Kushner is an American writer of fantasy novels. From 1996 until 2010, she was the host of the radio program Sound & Spirit, produced by WGBH in Boston and distributed by Public Radio International.

Terri Windling is an American editor, artist, essayist, and the author of books for both children and adults. She has won nine World Fantasy Awards, the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and the Bram Stoker Award, and her collection The Armless Maiden appeared on the short-list for the James Tiptree, Jr. Award.

Will Shetterly is an American writer of fantasy and science fiction best known for his novel Dogland (1997). The novel is inspired by his childhood at the tourist attraction Dog Land owned by his parents. He won the Minnesota Book Award for Fantasy & Science Fiction for his novel Elsewhere (1991), and was a finalist with Nevernever (1993); both books are set in Terri Windling's The Borderland Series shared universe. He has also written short stories for various Borderland anthologies.

Caroline Stevermer is an American writer of young adult fantasy novels and shorter works. She is best known for historical fantasy novels.

Delia Sherman American writer (born 1951)

Cordelia Caroline Sherman, known professionally as Delia Sherman, is an American fantasy writer and editor. Her novel The Porcelain Dove won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award.

Elizabeth E. Wein is an American-born writer best known for her young adult historical fiction. She holds both American and British citizenship.

Year's Best Fantasy and Horror was a reprint anthology published annually by St. Martin's Press from 1987 to 2008. In addition to the short stories, supplemented by a list of honorable mentions, each edition included a number of retrospective essays by the editors and others. The first two anthologies were originally published under the name The Year's Best Fantasy before the title was changed beginning with the third book.

Bellamy Bach was a group pseudonym used by several New York-based writers in the 1980s, some of whom still remain anonymous. Terri Windling has used the pseudonym when writing stories for the anthologies Bordertown and Life on the Border, which were part of the Borderland series of urban fantasy stories and novels for teenage readers.

Cats Laughing is a folk rock band, founded in the late 1980s in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and revived in 2015. Several of its members, including Emma Bull and best-selling author Steven Brust, are better known as writers of fantasy and science fiction.

<i>Finder</i> (novel) 1994 fantasy novel by Emma Bull

Finder is a fantasy novel written by Emma Bull and published in 1994.

Gregory Frost is an American author of science fiction and fantasy, and directs a fiction writing workshop at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Iowa. A graduate of the Clarion Workshop, he has been invited back as instructor several times, including the first session following its move to the University of California at San Diego in 2007. He is also active in the Interstitial Arts Foundation.

Endicott Studio was a nonprofit organization, based in the United States and United Kingdom, that is dedicated to literary, visual, and performance arts inspired by myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the oral storytelling tradition. It was founded in 1987 by Terri Windling, and is co-directed by Windling and Midori Snyder. In 2008, Windling and Snyder won the World Fantasy Award for the Endicott Studio's website and web magazine, The Journal of Mythic Arts.

Ruby Slippers, Golden Tears is the third book in a series of collections of re-told fairy tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

Black Thorn, White Rose is the second book in a series of collections of re-told fairy tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

Snow White, Blood Red is the first book in a series of collections of re-told fairy tales edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling.

The Horns of Elfland is a 1997 fantasy anthology edited by Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman and Donald G. Keller.

The Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest is an anthology of fantasy stories edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It was published by Viking Books in May 2002. The anthology itself won the 2003 World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology.

References

↑ Fox, Claire F. (1999). The Fence and the River: Culture and Politics at the US-Mexico Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 130–133. ISBN 0-8166-2998-6 . Retrieved 2020-08-24.

External links

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.

[fox-1] Fox, Claire F. (1999). The Fence and the River: Culture and Politics at the US-Mexico Border. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 130–133. ISBN 0-8166-2998-6 . Retrieved 2020-08-24.

[1]