Title The Unicorn Trade Series --- Author Poul and Karen Anderson Cover Art Tom Kidd Publisher Tor - 1984 First Printing Tor - 1984 Category Anthology Main Characters See below Main Elements SF, Fairies, Spirits, Hippogryphs, Sphinx, Centaurs, Gods

...There's a goodly trade in unicorns, in castles and their treasure,
Dragons are much demanded, endless caverns, eagly crags,
There's trade in rings of elven work, in songs of striding measure,
Star-smiting curses, aye, and quests, and splendid thumping brags.
Come buy! Come choose your heart's desire of these,
Fable and dream, wonderous commodities.
Already yours, these unicorns, as aught you owned yestre'en,
This castle, readl as memory, that none but you have seen.

• Fairy Gold
• The Innocent Arrival
• Dead Phone
• The Kitten
• Murphy's Hall
• Single Jeopardy
• A Feast for the Gods
• Treaty in Tartessos
• Landscape with Sphinxes
• The Piebald Hippogryph
• The Coasts of Faerie

I had picked this up originally because of its title, however there are no unicorns anywhere in this book except in the title poem (in fact the back summary blurb is that poem so if you only want the unicorn part, then that's everything you need to read) and even then it isn't about unicorns but about fantasy and imagination in general. Just so you know what expectations to have when you pick this book up, in fact it isn't even limited to fantasy. There's science fiction, horror, mystery and other genres, along with quite a bit of poetry. I'm not going to review the poems, I didn't find any I was particularly fond of, and I'm no poetry expert, in fact I'm so lacking in poetry appreciation I generally desire my poems to rhyme, or at least have some fixed rythm to it. I will say that the topics (science, space, Bela Lugosi, etc) were unusual topics for poetry so that was interesting in it's own way.

Fairy Gold - it starts off good, with a complex chain of events where amazingly where everyone gets something. After all we are talking fairies here who prefer to trick people out of their rewards. I liked this one.

The Innocent Arrival - con men on Earth decide to take on a lost Martian businessman only to find out they are way out of their league. This one was a lot of fun and I enjoyed the take on what Earther might think of Martians and Martians might think of Earthers one day.

Dead Phone - a noir mystery with a twist of the supernatural. This one I didn't enjoy so much, maybe because I wasn't prepared for something with only a touch of fantasy/sf to it, but it wasn't actually bad. But I've read similar since (though perhaps back in 1984 it was more unique)

The Kitten - for this story alone I want this book out of my house. A man attempts to kill a kitten in increasing gruesome and cruel ways culminating with him holding the kitten down in his fireplace while it meows in agony. Just because he can't take half an hour to bring the kitten to an animal shelter. Ok, I get it, it wasn't really a kitten, it was actually an aspect of his soul, but I don't think I will ever get this story out of my mind, I will in time forget the good stories but this one I wish I could scrub from my brain. At least I was smart enough to stop at the beginning of Poe's The Black Cat which may have inspired this tale. DO NOT READ IF YOU CAN'T HANDLE ANIMAL ABUSE! Maybe I can rip out the pages and keep the rest...and I'm someone that doesn't even like creating a fold in the binding of a paperback, imagine this story got me so bad that I want to abuse a book!

Murphy's Hall - I'll admit I didn't quite get this tale, but still a wonderful homage to astronauts past, present and future, and that perhaps there might be a kind of heaven just for them.

Single Jeopardy - No fantasy/SF here at all, it's not even a mystery though it is a tale of murder. It was ok (guess I'm fine with killing humans rather than cats, but the human didn't suffer nearly so much). A tale of revenge.

A Feast for the Gods - I enjoyed this one, though the ending was a bit overused now, but was probably fresh in 1984. Hermes is flying about, kind of bored, imagine living forever, you'd get really tired of ambrosia, even if it's the best food out there. So you try out the foods of the other gods, but remember, this is forever, so even that gets boring after a few millenia. So Hermes hears the prayers of one woman who seems to have a connection to a new god. It doesn't quite yet have a form, and one wouldn't say it really has a priests, but it's growing in power. Yes, it is big data, the internet, computers. This was in 1984, I'd love to see a sequel now as this new god has turned everyone into it's slaves, not just worshipping it, but addicted to it, on our phones we can't put down, on Facebook that knows more about us than we do. As Hermes said, data is the food for the gods that will never get boring.

Treaty in Tartessos - this one was different, it takes place during a war between centaurs and humans and both sides are starting to get tired of the fighting, figuring it won't end until both sides are wiped out. The centaurs would be happy to leave this land to the humans if they had somewhere else to go, a place the humans have just discovered that sounded ideal. The humans are a bit reluctant to give this up, not knowing what riches could be there, but on the other hand, what good are those riches if they are wiped out in the war. Interesting place this land turns out to be.

Landscape with Sphinxes - one thing I like about this anthology is the use of other magical creatures (more than made up for the disappointment of no unicorns). Here we have a family of sphinx, and I have never ever read a tale of sphinx that didn't involve riddles, let alone their family life! This one was good.

The Piebald Hippogryph - another rarely seen mythological creature, though I didn't quite get the point of the story, I just kept worrying the kid would never find his way home. Still, I enjoyed my brief foray with these half avian-half equine creatures.

The Coasts of Faerie - a girl goes out fishing with her father and sees in the distance a fuzzy smudge. Eventually she comes to the conclusion that it must be Faerie and she longs to go there, though her father never looks up when she points it out, saying that there is nothing there. But remember the rules, if you eat or drink in the land of the Fae, you can never go back.