Christmas Magic

Christmas Magic edited by David G. Hartwell is a wonderful jaunt through the Christmas season. Famous and award-winning editor Hartwell has collected twenty-eight fantastical tales that run the almost complete gamut of different perspectives on the holiday season. There are ghost stories, a tribute to Charles Dickens, science fiction stories of past and future, intergalactic tales, and a few criticisms of the institution as well as some other kinds of tales…The original anthology was republished from 1994. Hartwell has since passed away. All the stories were not from that year.

Hard to know if this was a star-studded collection then, but we still remember many of the writers who were collected in the first hybrid edition now from more than twenty years ago. There is Alan Dean Foster, Harlan Ellison, Donald Westlake, Donald A. Wollheim, James Patrick Kelly, Gordon Van Gelder, and others who have stayed active in the field. The Christmas season certainly has a better vibe than the Halloween season, as shown here, but there are some politics. Christ and Santa Claus are big trend setters here, and as shown, the world has not forgotten them. Christmas Magic, though a bit dense and long, is a great way to celebrate the festive times.