The Third Bear

by Jeff VanderMeer

  - Jeff VanderMeer, March 3, 2010, Tallahassee, Florida

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to my first readers: Kelly Barnhill, Laird Barron, Tessa Kum, Alistair Rennie, Jonathan K. Stephens, and Ann VanderMeer. Thanks to all of the editors who have championed my short fiction over the years. Finally, many thanks to Jacob McMurray for the design of this book, as well as Jill Roberts and Jacob Weisman from Tachyon, and Marty Halpern, for their many kindnesses.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jeff VanderMeer grew up in the Fiji Islands and has had fiction published in over twenty countries. His books, including the bestselling City ofSaints & Madmen, have made the year's best lists of Publishers Weekly, LA Weekly, Amazon, the San Francisco Chronicle, and many more. Considered one of the foremost fantasy writers of his generation, VanderMeer has won two World Fantasy Awards, an NEA-funded Florida Individual Writers' Fellowship and Travel Grant, and, most recently, the Le Cafard Cosmique Award in France and the Tahtifantasia Award in Finland. He has also been a finalist, as writer or editor, for the Hugo Award, Bram Stoker Award, IHG Award, Philip K. Dick Award, Shirley Jackson Award, and many others. The author of over three hundred stories, his short fiction has appeared recently in Conjunctions, Black Clock, Tor.com, and Songs of the Dying Earth, among several other original and year's best anthologies, and Library of America's American Fantastic Tales, edited by Peter Straub. Collections include Secret Life and The Third Bear.

  He reviews books for, among others, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book World, and the Barnes &Noble Review, as well as being a regular columnist for the Omnivoracious book blog. Current projects include Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for the 21st-Century Writer, the noir fantasy novel Finch, and the forthcoming definitive Steampunk Bible from Abrams Books. He currently lives in Tallahassee, Florida, and serves as assistant director for Wofford College's Shared Worlds writing camp for teens (Spartanburg, South Carolina), in addition to conducting workshops and guest lecturing all over the world.

  Table of Contents

  • The Third Bear

  • The Quickening

  • Finding Sonoria

  • Lost

  • The Situation

  • Predecessor

  Fixing Hanover

  • Shark God Versus Octopus God

  Errata

  • The Goat Variations

  • Three Days in a Border Town

  • The Secret Life of Shane Hamill

  • The Surgeon's Tale (with Cat Rambo)

  • Appoggiatura

  269. Afterword

  273. About the Author