Product Description
First hardcover edition, reprint of DAW paperback original. 1990 Locus Poll Award, Best Anthology (Place: 10). Introduction by Isaac Asimov; The Giving Plague, by David Brin (nominated, 1989 Hugo Award); Peaches for Mad Molly, by Steven Gould (nominated, 1988 Nebula Award, 1989 Hugo Award); Shaman, by John Shirley; Schrödinger's Kitten, by George Alec Effinger (winner, 1988 Nebula Award, 1989 Hugo Award, 1989 Sturgeon Award, 1989 SF Chronicle Award); The Flies of Memory, by Ian Watson (1989 Locus Poll Award, Best Novella (Place: 18)); Skin Deep, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch; A Madonna of the Machine, by Tanith Lee; Waiting for the Olympians, by Frederik Pohl (1989 Locus Poll Award, Best Novella (Place: 13)); Ain't Nothin' But a Hound Dog, by B. W. Clough; Adrift Among the Ghosts, by Jack L. Chalker; Ripples in the Dirac Sea, by Geoffrey A. Landis (winner, 1989 Nebula Award; nominated, 1989 Hugo Award). ... Read more

Product Description
Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Chapters: Banjo Paterson, Wayne Bennett, Phil Gould, Jason Stevens, Ray Stehr, Trevor Gillmeister, Jack Reardon, Ian Walsh, Billy Cann, Roy Masters, Sean Fagan, Harry Sunderland, Peter Frilingos. Excerpt:Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson The Gladesville cottage Rockend, where Paterson lived in the 1870s and 1880s Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson OBE (C) (17 February 1864 5 February 1941) was an Australian bush poet , journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson's more notable poems include "Waltzing Matilda ", "The Man from Snowy River " and "Clancy of the Overflow ". Biography Banjo Paterson was born at the property "Narrambla", near Orange, New South Wales , the eldest son of Andrew Bogle Paterson, a Scottish immigrant from Lanarkshire and Australian-born Rose Isabella Barton, related to future Prime Minister Edmund Barton . Paterson's family lived on the isolated Buckinbah Station in the Monaro until he was five when his father lost his wool clip in a flood and was forced to sell up . When Paterson's uncle died, his family took over the uncle's farm in Illalong, near Yass , close to the main route between Melbourne and Sydney. Bullock teams , Cobb ... Read more

Product Description
An exploration of the benefits of a fantasy life for victims of childhood abuse combines the works of such author as Charles de Lint, Jane Yolen, and Steven Gould with essays on the transforming powers of fairy tales. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (8)

Amazing
These are retold fairy tales, but not the funny ones. Still, by exploring the tragedy, warmth, and soulfulness of these tales, deeply talented authors delve into the soul and try to find comfort int hese new flavors of fairy tales.

Fairy tales are not just for children
This anthology is one of the most emotionally wrenching and satisfying collections of stories that I've read-not just from fantasy authors, but from anyone.Dealing with the darker aspects of childhood, including abuse and alienation, the stories and poetry are full of depth and transformation; magic, despair, and ultimately hope.Some exceptional stories are "The Armless Maiden" by Midori Snyder, "The Juniper Tree" by Peter Straub, "The Lion and the Lark" by Patricia McKillip, "The Lily and the Weaver's Heart" by Nancy Etchemendy, "In the House of My Enemy" by Charles De Lint, and "In the Night Country" by Ellen Steiber.The poems are all beautiful.This book is definitely on my desert island list.

Dead-serious fairy tales
I love adult fairy tales, but it seems that all too often, writers pump up the sex and violence to render the tales "adult", rather than more deeply exploring the human emotional dramas in the stories. Maybe that's why I love _The Armless Maiden_. The tales and poems here do include sex and violence, yes, but at their heart is the triumph of the human spirit.

If we look carefully at fairy tales, many of them are actually about what we would now call child abuse. Cinderella was neglected. Handel and Gretel were abandoned. Donkeyskin suffered incest. And there are so many more. And in most of the stories, the protagonist rises above the situation somehow--in the old versions, usually by gaining fortune and position. In the stories in _The Armless Maiden_, the triumph is more often psychological. I read once--I think it was in a book by Marina Warner--that the essential theme of the fairy tale is transformation. In these stories, we see victims transformed into survivors.

These are serious fairy tales for our times, and I recommend the book both to abuse survivors and to those who did not suffer abuse (trust me, everyone knows someone who did). My personal favorite contributions are Emma Bull's poem about Cinderella's stepsister regretting the friendship they never had, and Ellen Kushner's "Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep", the story of a young girl in the custody of a cold-hearted guardian, and haunted by the ghost of the woman's unhappy daughter.

Why is this book out of print?
This is a short review.

Actually, this is not a review atall, although I should say it, shortly and to the point: The ArmlessMaiden is a gorgeous anthology, one of the best I've ever read.

This is just a message to people who might stumble upon it in a bookstore or library.

The message is: read it.

You will not be disappointed.

Essential for everyone, but especially survivors of abuse.
This book has a myriad of short stories, poems, & essays about survivors of child abuse. They are all worked around fairy-tale themes but not Disneyified: no handsome prince comes to rescue a child; instead, thesechildren escape through their own courage & perseverance. An AMAZINGbook. A shame it is out of print--but I've seen copies used & inremainder bins at bookstores so do yourself a favor & keep looking!This book will make you shudder, weep, cringe, but ultimately leaves youw/a feeling of hope. All the pieces are good, but standouts include TerriWindling's, Charles De Lint's, Ellen Steiber's, & Munro Sickafoose's.Another wonderful aspect is that Windling ignores genre boundaries &hence you see authors such as Sharon Olds & Anne Sexton represented aswell. Highly recommended! ... Read more

Product Description
Triad official Steven Wong is the "paper fan," a thirty-nine-year-old Hong Kong-born mobster. Raised in New York’s Chinatown, he matured into crime in Vancouver, where he founded and headed the murderous Gum Wah Gang in the late 1980s and early ‘90s. In 1992, Wong "died" in a traffic accident in a remote area of the Philippines before he could be sent to jail for heroin trafficking, just after he’d taken out a million-dollar life insurance policy. His urn may be interred in a Vancouver cemetery; but today, Interpol has a "Red Alert" arrest warrant out for Wong. His updated file reads like a Hollywood action film—an organized criminal adventure that circles the Pacific Rim, from Macau to Japan, from Cambodia to the Philippines. For eleven years, award-winning writer Terry Gould tracked Wong through the organized crime circles of six countries, where politicians, police, businessmen and criminals run in one big pack, sometimes nipping each other’s heels, licking each other’s faces, and inviting one another home for all-night mah-jongg parties. Four times, Gould has traced Wong and pinned him down, but the law has let him slip away. Paper Fan includes telling photographs in this unforgettable hunt for one man. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

"Young & Dangerous"
Triad members are very secretive of their organization. One must be initiated to be a member. Young recruits will usually start as a street soldier. In order to rise up the rank one need to be able to be a good earner. With $$ come power. Eventually that will lead to more "heng dai" brothers working under him. Which in hand controls different biz and Enterprises. This book is a good read for those that want to know more about the Chinese Triad. Catch the Hong Kong movie Young & Dangerous and you'll get an even better idea how Triads operates. You hv to give all due respect to them cause they do operate much better then most large Corp. Peace Steven.

Interesting enough story, terrible writer
This book needed a strong editor.We get too much of the writer's thoughts, his interaction with people, and his supposedly brilliant investigative work.Information that should be summarized in a paragraph become pages long.Cut the fat and stick to the story: why is Steven so dangerous, what crimes did he commit, how did he escape, where is he now?

If you need to know more about Asian crime, I guess you should buy this.Otherwise, there are much better books.

Terry Gould is a coward!! Long live Steven Wong!
While I found the subject matter of this book fascinating, I was disgusted with the man who wrote it. Written with cockiness, subtle racist ovetones and overall bad attitude, he made the book almost unreadable. He is constantly building himself up as some kind of tough guy who is smarter than the criminals who he bashes in this book. If he's so smart how come he still hasn't found Steven Wong? It is clear that deep down he wants desperatly to be like these gangsters, he just doesn't have the guts. He acts like he launched this whole campaign on a moral level, but really it's all about a story and fame for Terry Gould. He is a coward. What I found especially offensive was his depiction of Asian women. My wife is Asian so I was personally offended. He constantly feeds into the stereotype that all Asian women are prostitutes, referring to the gangsters' girls as "tarts" and describing the poor Filipino girls who approached him as "a plague". Clearly this guy has no concept of what it's like to grow up with nothing, having to do things you'd rather not do to survive. He tells his pathetic sob story of how he got beat up once, his mother's friend was raped and he was a witness to violence as a kid. Boo hoo. I used to get beat up every day until I decided to start fighting back like a man. I know plenty of people who've been through all those terrible things and more. Terry Gould is a typical cocky New Yorker who thinks he's better than everyone. In reality, he is a scared, cowardly wannabe-gangster, wannabe-cop and worst of all a wannabe-snitch. I hope he never finds Steven Wong, rather I hope Wong and his friends find him.

Great book.......
Terry Gould came to my school and discuss his book and the gave us in insight of the Triads and Kwan Kung. Just as he did when he came to the school, his book gives great information of how the Triads were created and why they chose the God Kwan Kung. Many more intresting facts he provides in his book. It is intresting and difficult to put down.

I was there. Therefore, I know.
While Steven Wong the Triad Gangster rose through the ranks in Vancouver's Gangland, I was a Vancouver cop who had many dealings with him. I probably knew Wong, and of his activities, more so than anyone in the Vancouver Police Department, other than a handfull of other cops who might be inclined to say the same thing. I was a cop who used Wong to my own end, while Wong used me to his. I still don't know who, if anyone, came out on top.
Due to my personal knowledge of Wong and his Red Eagles, his rivals the Viet Ching, Jung Ching and Lotus Gangs, plus their victims etc., I feel competant to say, "In writing Paper Fan, Terry Gould did an excellent job describing Wong and the events of the day." Terry knows his stuff, and he tells his story extremely well. It is not often one can learn such an immense amount of true information while at the same time be entertained. The book reads like a novel. ... Read more