Lee - Gold Unicorn

In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britains oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English languages finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were and remain landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of todays leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.

Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

Welcome to the SF Gateway.

To John Kaiine,
My Husband and Good Angel.

Tanith Lee (1947 )

Tanith Lee was born in London in 1947. She is the author of more than 70 novels and almost 300 short stories, and has also written radio plays for the BBC and two scripts for the cult television series Blakes 7. Her first short story, Eustace, was published in 1968, and her first childrens novel The Dragon Hoard was published in 1971. In 1975 her adult fantasy epic The Birthgrave was published to international acclaim, and Lee has since maintained a prolific output in popular genre writing. She has twice won the World Fantasy Award, and been a Guest of Honour at numerous science fiction and fantasy conventions including the 1984 World Fantasy Convention in Ottawa, Canada. In 2009 she was awarded the prestigious title of Grand Master of Horror. Tanith Lee is married to author and artist John Kaiine, and lives in the southeast of England.

Birthgrave

The Birthgrave (1975)

Vazkor, Son of Vazkor (1977) (aka Shadowfire)

Quest for the White Witch (1978)

Novels Of Vis

The Storm Lord (1976)

Anackire (1983)

The White Serpent (1988)

Four-BEE

Dont Bite the Sun (1976)

Drinking Sapphire Wine (1977)

Silver Metal Lover

The Silver Metal Lover (1981)

Metallic Love (2005)

Tanaquil

Black Unicorn (1989)

Gold Unicorn (1994)

Red Unicorn (1997)

Blood Opera

Dark Dance (1992)

Personal Darkness (1993)

Darkness, I (1994)

Lionwolf

Cast a Bright Shadow (2004)

Here in Cold Hell (2005)

No Flame But Mine (2007)

Other Novels

Volkhavaar (1977)

Electric Forest (1979)

Day by Night (1980)

Lycanthia (1981) (aka The Children of Wolves)

Sung in Shadow (1983)

Days of Grass (1985)

A Heroine of the World (1989)

The Blood of Roses (1990)

Heart-Beast (1992)

Elephantasm (1993)

Eva Fairdeath (1994)

Vivia (1995)

When the Lights Go Out (1995)

Reigning Cats and Dogs (1995)

White as Snow (2000)

LAmber (2006)

Greyglass (2011)

Collections

Cyrion (1982)

Tamastara (1984) (aka The Indian Nights)

The Gorgon: And Other Beastly Tales (1985)

Women as Demons (1985)

Dreams of Dark and Light (1986)

Forests of the Night (1989)

Nightshades: Thirteen Journeys into Shadow (1993)

(The Story as Told in Book One: Black Unicorn)

Sixteen-year-old Tanaquil, the red-haired daughter of the red-haired sorceress Jaive, lives with her mother in a fortress in the desert. Tanaquil wants to leave. Her mothers spells cause constant havoc, and besides, Jaive has little time for her. Tanaquil has never even been able to find out who her father was.

Around the fortress live desert animals called peeves, which, due to spillages of Jaives magic, have learned to talk. One of these peeves unearths a collection of beautiful bones, which Tanaquilwho has no apparent talent for sorcery, but can mend thingsfixes together. She discovers these form the skeleton of a unicorn. One night the unicorn puts on flesh and comes alive, a black beast with a glimmering, starry horn. It leads Tanaquiland the peeveaway into the desert.

Alternately helped and hindered by the unicorn, Tanaquil crosses the desert and reaches a large exotic city by the sea. Here she meets Lizra, the daughter of the citys ruler, and next the ruler himself, the cold, difficult Prince Zorander, and his evil counselor Gasb. Tanaquil learns that Zorander is her father, and Lizra, therefore, her half-sister.

The city has a legend of a fabulous unicorn, and during a procession to celebrate this beast, the real unicorn appears, disrupting everything and attacking Prince Zorander. It steals from him two white fossils.

Tanaquil has realized that the unicorn is a creature of another world, finer than her own. It wishes only to return there, and she can help it by mending the sorcerous gate-between-worlds, which she has found in the cliffs beside the sea. Tanaquil mends the gate, using the fossils as keys, and the unicorn goes through. But the peeve follows it, and so Tanaquil must follow too.

The unicorns world is the Perfect World, putting Tanaquils to shame. Everything there is beautiful, balanced, peaceful, good. To her horror Tanaquil sees that her mere presence can wound this perfection, and so she prepares to leave. Before she does so, the unicorn touches her, and the peeve, with its starry horn.

Back in her own world, Tanaquil destroys the gate and keeps the fossils to safeguard the unicorns country. When Gasb presently attempts to have her killed, Tanaquil learns that the unicorn has made both her and the peeve safe from physical dangerthey are invulnerable.

She must now face up to the fact that she is, with her incredible knack of mending, in her own way a sorceress. And the peeve is her familiar.

Gasb has been murdered, and Zorander has become sickly and weak after the unicorns assault. Lizra declares that she must stay with her father. Tanaquil, however, sets out with the peeve, on her travels, to see her own world, of which she knows so little. She sends a letter to her mother, promising that she will come back