It’s the simple comfort of knowing you’re in supremely competent hands, and it’s the sort of comfort I found myself feeling before opening either book, or even glancing at the table of contents (since I’ve reviewed both authors fairly frequently).

Here the comfort doesn’t derive from the content of the fiction – there are decidedly unsettling and even brutal moments in the work of both writers – but from its execution. But there’s another sort of comfort reading that has less to do with the tales than with the tellers, and no better examples can be found than two important new retrospective collections, The Best of Elizabeth Hand and The Neil Gaiman Reader.

I suppose fantasy does leave room for endless retellings of familiar tales with familiar heroes, but the most memorable fantasies are those which subvert and question that very familiarity, like Lavie Tidhar’s recent deconstruction of Arthuriana in By Force Alone. After all, the very idea of horror fiction involves discomfort, and SF characteristically challenges our sense of the stability of everything from nations to our bodies to the planet itself. I’ve always distrusted the notion of “comfort reading,” especially as it applies to our little corner of the swamp.

Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand