Smoke and Mirrors (story collection)

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions

Author	Neil Gaiman
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Short stories & Poems
Publication date	1998
Media type	Print (Hardback & Paperback)
ISBN	ISBN 0-06-093470-0 (US-paperback)
OCLC	47662916

Smoke and Mirrors: Short Fictions and Illusions is a collection of short stories and poems by Neil Gaiman. It was first published in the US in 1998, and in the UK in 1999.

Many of the stories in this book are reprints from other sources, such as magazines, anthologies, and collections (including ten stories and poems from Gaiman's earlier small press miscellany Angels and Visitations).

Contents

The included stories and poems are different between some of the editions. The US, UK, and eBook editions have some differences in the stories they contain (see table to right):

• Reading the Entrails - a Rondel about the pleasures and perils of fortune-telling
• The Wedding Present - a story included in the introduction
• Chivalry - a story about the Holy Grail written for an anthology by Marty Greenberg
• Nicholas Was... - a very short story (100 words) used for a Christmas card
• The Price - on the subject of cats and angels
• Troll Bridge - an adult retelling of The Three Billy Goats Gruff written for the anthology Snow White, Blood Red by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
• Don't Ask Jack - inspired by a demonic jack-in-the-box sculpture by Lisa Snellings
• The Goldfish Pool and Other Stories
• Eaten (Scenes from a Moving picture) ^†
• The White Road - a narrative poem retelling some old English folktales
• Queen of Knives (for Eric Stern's opera of the same name see Queen of Knives) - a narrative poem about stage magic
• The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch ^†‡
• Changes - written for Lisa Tuttle about gender reflection
• The Daughter of Owls - written in the style of John Aubrey
• Shoggoth's Old Peculiar
• Virus - written for the anthology Digital Dreams by David Barrett about computer fiction
• Looking for the Girl - commissioned by Penthouse for their 20th anniversary issue
• Only the End of the World Again
• Bay Wolf - a story poem retelling Beowulf as a futuristic episode of "Baywatch"
• Fifteen Painted Cards from a Vampire Tarot ^†
• We Can Get Them For You Wholesale
• One Life, Furnished in Early Moorcock - written for an anthology of Elric stories by Michael Moorcock
• Cold Colors - inspired by computers and black magic
• The Sweeper of Dreams - inspired by a Lisa Snellings statue
• Foreign Parts
• Vampire Sestina - a poem originally published in Fantasy Tales and later reprinted in the Mammoth Book of Vampires by Stephen Jones
• Mouse - a short story inspired by Raymond Carver and written for Touch Wood, edited by Pete Crowther
• The Sea Change
• How Do You Think It Feels? ^†‡
• When We Went to See the End of the World by Dawnie Morningside, age 11¼
• Desert Wind - written for Robin Anders of Boiled in Lead to accompany one of his tracks
• Tastings - included in the anthology of erotic fantasy stories, Sirens by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling
• In the End ^†*
• Babycakes - written to include in a benefit for PETA
• Murder Mysteries - a detective story written for the anthology Midnight Graffiti by Jessie Horsting
• Snow, Glass, Apples

Translations

• Dym i lustra (Polish), ISBN 83-87968-54-4
• Дым и Зеркала [Dym i Zerkala] (Russian)

• Fumaça e Espelhos (Portuguese), ISBN 85-86932-62-0

• Tükör és Füst (Hungarian), ISBN 963-85914-9-8

• Die Messerkönigin (German), ISBN 3-453-17798-3 (named after the translated title of the included short story Queen of Knives); also released a 3-disc audio-book of the same title (containing 6 of the short stories), ISBN 978-3-7857-3746-0