Currently Reading - The Year's Best Science Fiction: Fourth Annual Collection

[aesmael]

7. “Into Gold” by Tanith Lee

For most of this story I was dreading what it appeared it might be - the daughter of a Jewish peddler bewitches and brings to ruin the people of an Imperial Roman tide-pool.

Fortunately this was not the case. Rather, a nifty retelling of a certain fairy tale, and no villain but the curving of fate to tragic conclusion. Ultimately I quite liked this one. [edit] Actually the undoing comes from the protagonist’s anti-Semitism so never mind.[/edit]

Not science fiction, though. (and I should keep an eye out for more by Tanith Lee. I quite liked “Nunc Dimittis” in the first collection, although there is a particular scene in it which still haunts me at times. also her “Foreign Skins” in the second was a bit… colonial IIRC.)