Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices

by Swapna Krishna (Editor), Jenn Northington

Overview

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: THE WASHINGTON POST • NPR • TOR

From the vast lore surrounding King Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table, comes an anthology of gender-bent, race-bent, LGBTQIA+ inclusive retellings.

Featuring stories by: Alexander Chee • Preeti Chhibber • Roshani Chokshi • Sive Doyle • Maria Dahvana Headley • Ausma Zehanat Khan • Daniel M. Lavery • Ken Liu • Sarah MacLean • Silvia Moreno-Garcia • Jessica Plummer • Anthony Rapp • Waubgeshig Rice • Alex Segura • Nisi Shawl • S. Zainab Williams

Here you’ll find the Lady of the Lake reimagined as an albino Ugandan sorceress and the Lady of Shalott as a wealthy, isolated woman in futuristic Mexico City; you'll see Excalibur rediscovered as a baseball bat that grants a washed-up minor leaguer a fresh shot at glory and as a lost ceremonial drum that returns to a young First Nations boy the power and the dignity of his people. There are stories set in Gilded Age Chicago, '80s New York, twenty-first century Singapore, and space; there are lesbian lady knights, Arthur and Merlin reborn in the modern era for a second chance at saving the world and falling in love—even a coffee shop AU.
 
Brave, bold, and groundbreaking, the stories in Sword Stone Table will bring fresh life to beloved myths and give long-time fans a chance to finally see themselves in their favorite legends.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780593081891
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/13/2021
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	95,474
Product dimensions:	5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

SWAPNA KRISHNA is a space, technology, and pop culture writer and journalist. Her work has been published at Engadget, The Verge, Polygon, StarTrek.com, StarWars.com, The A.V. Club, and more. You can find her on Twitter at @skrishna.

JENN NORTHINGTON is a former bookseller and a current reviewer, podcaster, and editor with Riot New Media Group. She's a lifelong book nerd and can be found primarily on Instagram at @iamjennIRL.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

Swapna Krishna & Jenn Northington

It was the summer of 2018, and we were sitting in Swapna’s living room. Swapna was pregnant with her first baby, and Jenn was bursting with an idea for an anthology. “Where are the gender-bent Arthur stories?” Jenn asked. “The race-bent retellings, the queered ones?”
We couldn’t easily find them—and we thought it just might be possible that not only did other people want them but also there were folks out there ready to write them, or who maybe already had.
As this collection came together over the past few years (it’s hard to believe we’ve been working on it for so long!), it’s been exciting to discover the published stories we missed and to see that we weren’t alone—there’s been a renaissance of “bent” Arthur retellings that we devoured. Even more elec­trifying for us are the authors who said yes when we asked, then proceeded to write stories that have blown our minds, knocked our socks off, and made our hearts grow too many sizes to count.
Each writer puts their own unique spin on a bit of Arthu­rian legend. One of the unexpected joys of editing has been watching the resonances develop among them, especially when none of the writers really knew what anyone else was working on except for barest details (character, general time frame, maybe genre). These stories have cousins and siblings the authors aren’t even aware of.

ONCE

Roshani Chokshi and Sarah MacLean deliver atmospheric stories heavy with longing and bursting with romance, albeit in very different ways, both giving voice to strong women we’ve fallen in love with. Ausma Zehanat Khan and Nisi Shawl bring the wider world to Camelot in ways that blur its boundaries and elevate the storytelling to something larger and more global. And Daniel Lavery and Sive Doyle make us laugh, make us cry, and give us two queer couples that abso­lutely deserve to be canon.

PRESENT

Then there’s Maria Dahvana Headley, who finds the Arthu­rian overtones of a muckraker in late-nineteenth-century America. Waubgeshig Rice and Alex Segura both incorporate baseball into their reimagined Arthur but in very different ways: in one, a pickup game on a reservation leads to an amaz­ing discovery; in the other, a washed-up minor-league player finds help where he least expects it. Anthony Rapp finds magic in the throes of the AIDS crisis, while S. Zainab Wil­liams explores that intangible search for belonging through a lonely girl in Singapore. Jessica Plummer and Preeti Chhibber both consider how it might look if a legend made itself known in modern life—with very different consequences.

FUTURE

No Arthurian collection would be complete without a look forward, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia brings us to a near-future Mexico City in a story both eerie and prescient. Ken Liu takes us even farther out, into a universe in which identity shifts from one moment to the next . . . but past mistakes can haunt you forever. A little closer to home is Alexander Chee’s story, set on our neighboring planet and contemplating public ver­sus private personas, secrets, and games.

This collection has been a privilege and a joy to curate and has shown us just how much room there is to play. We hope that you’ll enjoy these stories as much as we do, and that these stories are merely the tip of the iceberg for inclusive Arthu­rian fiction. Everyone deserves to see themselves on the page, and even if you don’t find your specific identity within these stories, perhaps you’ll see some small part of yourself inside these characters and these old, and yet entirely new, legends.

Table of Contents

Introduction by Swapna Krishna & Jenn Northington
 
ONCE
Ausma Zehanat Khan, “The Once and Future Qadi”
Roshani Chokshi, “Passing Fair and Young”
Daniel M. Lavery, “How, after Long Fighting, Galehaut Was Overcome by Lancelot Yet Was Not Slain and Made Great Speed to Yield to Friendship; Or, Galehaut, the Knight of the Forfeit”
Nisi Shawl, “I Being Young and Foolish”
Sarah MacLean, “The Bladesmith Queen”
Sive Doyle, “Do, By All Due Means”
 
PRESENT
Maria Dahvana Headley, “Mayday”
Waubgeshig Rice, “Heartbeat”
Anthony Rapp. “Jack and Brad and the Magician”
S. Zainab Williams. “The Quay Stone”
Alex Segura, “Black Diamond”
Jessica Plummer, “Flat White”
Preeti Chhibber, “Once (Them) & Future (Us)”
 
FUTURE
Silvia Moreno-Garcia, “A Shadow in Amber”
Ken Liu, “White Hempen Sleeves”
Alexander Chee, Little Green Men”

Acknowledgments
About the Editors
About the Contributors
Permissions Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

★ 04/05/2021

Krishna and Northington bring together 16 diverse retellings of Arthurian legend to create an anthology of breathtaking breadth, depth, and creativity. Daniel M. Lavery’s “How, After Long Fighting, Galehaut Was Overcome by Lancelot Yet Was Not Slain and Made Great Speed to Yield to Friendship; Or, Galehaut, the Knight of the Forfeit” is an utter revelation that casts the concept of chivalry in a new light. Other standouts include Waubgeshig Rice’s moving, gorgeous “Heartbeat,” about an Anishinaabe preteen named Art who unearths a stone to find long-hidden ancestral drums; Jessica Plummer’s hilarious “Flat White,” in which the Lady of Shalott acts as Lancelot’s barista; Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s haunting, understated “A Shadow in Amber,” which follows a nameless narrator as she obsesses over Lancelot, whose illegally trafficked memories she pays to experience; and Alexander Chee’s “Little Green Men,” a Mars-set exploration of reality TV celebrity culture filtered through “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” There isn’t a bad story in the bunch, and the anthology offers such a variety of style, theme, and genre that die-hard Arthurian fans and more casual readers will be equally delighted. This is a must-read. Agent: Kate McKean, Howard Morhaim Literary. (July) Correction: An earlier version of this review misidentified the number of stories contained in the collection.

Publishers Weekly

A LOCUS AWARD FINALIST

“Splendidly edited . . . builds a kaleidoscope of Arthurian mythography. . . . The pieces are dazzlingly different while overlapping and interweaving like chain mail.” 
—Amal El-Mohtar, The New York Times Book Review

“Sword Stone Table is an anthology with a lot to say. It is an ambitious, thematically-sound anthology, with a robust central thesis. . . . A labour of love—a carefully-assembled ‘Round Table’ of eclectic creative talents all writing on one of fantasy’s most established tropes. This is a thematic anthology that doesn’t simply concatenate random stories, but has a lot to say as a text in its own right.” 
—Jared Shurin, Tor.com

“Intriguing. . . . As with any great compilation of stories, Sword Stone Table lends itself to being picked up and perused at one’s leisure. . . . the stories in Sword Stone Table certainly are . . . up to Sir Thomas Malory’s level.” 
—Drew Gallagher, The Free Lance-Star

“This collection revisits the Arthurian mythos through a variety of perspectives that make even the most familiar stories yield new fruit. . . . . Whether or not the reader is familiar with the intricacies of Arthurian tales, each of these new additions is well worth savoring—these are legends that don’t just allow the gender-bending, race-bending, and queering that the editors aimed for, they flourish with the additions.” 
—Regina Schroeder, Booklist

“An anthology of some of the best writers working today—people like Danny Lavery, Ken Liu, and Silvia Moreno-Garcia—re-imagining Arthurian legends from all different kinds of marginalized perspectives, in all different kinds of times and places. . . . A great read even if you, like me, only know the basics when it comes to King Arthur.” 
—Petra Mayer, WBUR

“Remarkable . . . vast and varied. . . . A must-read.”
—Margaret Kingsbury, BuzzFeed

“This singular anthology will enchant with its bright, shiny new takes on medieval classics including more genders, more races, more eras, and more fabulousness than ever before.” 
—Karla Strand, Ms. Magazine

“An anthology of breathtaking breadth, depth, and creativity. . . . There isn’t a bad story in the bunch, and the anthology offers such a variety of style, theme, and genre that die-hard Arthurian fans and more casual readers will be equally delighted. This is a must-read.” 
—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Editors Krishna and Northington have brought together a selection of quietly moving and well-paced stories, spanning the historic past and the distant future. A highly creative and enchanting anthology.” 
—Kristi Chadwick, Library Journal (starred review)

“Compelling. . . . The collection takes readers across time and cultures, breathing new life into one of the oldest Western myths. . . . . Sure to please fans of Arthurian legend.” 
—Suzanne Krohn, Shelf Awareness

“With a premise this fun and a lineup this good, this anthology is a collection of treasures, to be marveled at and admired. Thought-provoking and immensely entertaining.”
—Charles Yu, National Book Award-winning author of Interior Chinatown

"Each tale in Sword Stone Table is a piece of sorcery. Each remakes the legend of the once and future king—a historical story of larger-than-life people who could have existed, and perhaps did—to include those whom the original excluded. In place of rich and beautiful straight white people we have an Islamic law judge; women of all ages, sizes, and shapes; an albino Ugandan sorceress (and her nonbinary cat); the working poor; queer folk; BIPOC drummers, students, and isolated wealthy; and those who think they can never live up to their parents' standards of success. Each tale remakes the legend of what could have been into something that should have been. Stories are magic, so perhaps as we read this wonderful collection they will reweave our world into one in which they were, are, or will become true."
—Nicola Griffith, author of Hild and So Lucky

From the Publisher

★ 07/01/2021

Arthurian legend is well-trodden subject matter, but the 16 shorts in this collection (divided into sections called "Past," "Present," and "Future") reimagine the legends with new details and diversity (of race, religion, geography, gender, and sexuality). In "The Once and Future Qadi," by Asuma Zehanat Khan, an Islamic judge from the Maghreb travels to Camelot to uncover the truth about the queen's fidelity. A baseball player must decide if he can follow in his famous father's footsteps, using his bat Excalibur, in Alex Segura's "Black Diamond." In Silvia Moreno-Garcia's "A Shadow in Amber," a nameless woman becomes fixated on Lancelot when she purchases his memories. Editors Krishna and Northington have brought together a selection of quietly moving and well-paced stories, spanning the historic past and the distant future. VERDICT A highly creative and enchanting anthology. Will please Arthurian devotees and readers who are new to the legends.—Kristi Chadwick,Massachusetts Lib. Syst., Northampton

Library Journal