Introduction

This collection contains one long novella, The Firebird, which some critics regard as Edmund Cooper's finest work. Two stories were written especially for the collection, and the remaining stories were written and published over a number of years in various magazines but have not been collected together before in book form.

The theme of all the stories is fantasy. Edmund Cooper is fascinated by worlds of the imagination as much as the real world, which he sometimes satirises in his books. In this collection, there are elements of tragic fantasy and also of humorous and satirical fantasy. Here are the best of his fantasy stories in one volume.

This book contains the following:

Introduction
The Firebird
Jahweh
The Diminishing Dragon
The Snow Crystals
Second Chance
I Am a Ghost