Today, the bards and wizards of story writing and movie making have created a new unicorn. A unicorn that has no true definition. . .
Peter S. Beagle knows the stuff of fairy tales. The Last Unicorn qualifies as no less than a classic in the annals of fantasy literature. Beagle's language and writing style are almost as magical as the Unicorn herself and do her only justice. I suggested this as reading to even the oldest Unicorn lover.
Immortal Unicorn is an anthology - the first in a two volume series. The overall requirement of each stories theme is immortality but the Unicorn is the integral symbol. It is an interesting collection of short stories by some of the best known authors in Speculative Fiction. Including a story by Peter S. Beagle himself as well as a beautiful introduction. Each story is introduced with a little reflection by each of the editors, so you know how they felt about the story, and at the end of the story there is a little "About the Author" and most of them tell how the author felt about that story and/or his or her writing career.
Table of Contents:
Preface By Janet Berliner
Foreword By Peter S. Beagle
Sea Dreams By Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta
Old One-Antler By Michael Armstrong
Professor Gottesman and the Indian Rhinoceros By Peter S. Beagle
The Same But Different By Janet Berliner
Big Dogs, Strange Days By Edward Bryant
Gilgamesh Recidivus By P. D. Cacek
Seven for a Secret By Charles de Lint
What the Eye Sees, What the Heart Feels By Robert Devereaux
Stampede of Light By Marina Fitch
The Brew By Karen Joy Fowler
Mirror of Lop Nor By George Guthridge
The Hunt of the Unicorn By Ellen Kushner
The Devil on Myrtle Ave By Eric Lustbader
Winter Requiem By Michael Marano
Daughter of the Tao By Lisa Mason
A Rare Breed By Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
A Plague of Unicorns By Robert Sheckley
Taken He Cannot Be By Will Shetterly
The Tenth Worthy By Susan Shwartz
Survivor By Dave Smeds
A Thief in the Night By S. P. Somtow
Dame a la Licorne By Judith Tarr
Convergence By Lucy Taylor
Half-Grandma By Melanie Tem
The Trouble with UnicornsBy Nancy Willard
Three Duets for Virgin and NosehornBy Tad Williams
We Blazed By Dave Wolverton
In the far future, when humankind has expanded across the galaxy in a Uinified Federation but no other sapient life forms have been discovered, three independent miners: Calum Baird, Declan "Gill" Giloglie, and Rafik Nadezda discover an unusual jettisoned escape pod while they are on a mining expedition into an asteroid belt. The pull the capsule in to discover metal of an alloy no human has ever created and identification written in a language and script that belongs to no human planet. Inside is a toddler, a little girl with some odd deformities. Immediately the miners suspected that what they've discovered does not come from any human ship, and they feel bad for the young girl who's lost her family. So, they name her Acorna and quickly come to love her as their own daughter.
I very much enjoyed this book, which my best friend purchased for me as a graduation present two years ago. I find that McCaffrey and Ball did a wonderful job of anthropomorphizing a unicorn. Acorna's unicornesque qualities extend into phisiology as well as strange abilities. Her lower body is covered with a light silver fur, she lacks a joint in each of her fingers, her feet consist of two hard, irregularly shaped toes, and a small horn protrudes from her forehead. As well, she has the ability to purify air and water as well as heal most types of wounds. I certainly suggest this book to any unicorn fan. It's fast reading, and anything bearing Anne McCaffrey's name is always well written.
This is a wonderful book of poetry aimed toward young readers, but I think it's great for people of all ages. Shel Silverstein not only writes his own poetry but illustrates all of it in his own unique style. The reason I put this book on my page is because one of the poems in this volume, Where the Sidewalk Ends is entitled "The Unicorn." It's one of the longer poems in the book, and may I say, it's also one of my favorites. It was shown to me by my best friends, as it's always been one of her favorites. The topic of the poem is the story most unicorn lovers have heard before of how Noah forgot the unicorn when he took the animals on the ark.... this is a story I intend to add to my pages in the future (along with many others. I admit that I have been lazy.)
This is an exellent series of books. (I'm currently reading Dhiammara.) They are Maggie Furey's first books and are truly written in the tradition of high, epic fantasy. The basic premise is the race of Magefolk are dying out, and they're current Archmage is evil and corrupt. The young Mage Aurian must collect the Four Ancient Artifacts of Power to defeat him. A very enthralling and beautifully written series.
The reason I have chosen to include these in my pages is, you guessed, there is a unicorn in this series. Now, this may seem a bit odd because the unicorn is only present in the second and thrid books. Ms. Furey has chosen a lovely representation of the unicorn: she is made completely of light.... yet, basically invisible to the human eye. She guards one of the Artifacts, and the One who will weild it must find a way to see her (and thus she will be changed back to her original human form) or the One must fight and defeat her. That's a pretty tough trick with an invisible unicorn.
The cast includes: 
Alan Arkin.... Schmendrick(voice)
Jeff Bridges....Prince Lir(voice)
Mia Farrow....Unicorn/Amalthea(voice)
Tammy Grimes....Molly Grue(voice)
Robert Klein (I)....The Butterfly(voice)
Angela Lansbury....Mommy Fortuna(voice)
Christopher Lee....King Haggard(voice)
Keenan Wynn....Captain Culley, the Harpy(voice)
Paul Frees....Rukh(voice)
Ren� Auberjonois....Talking Skull(voice)
In addition to staying true to the novel, the screenplay is by Peter S. Beagle, there are some beautiful songs performed by America.
Check out all the details here: Last Unicorn, The (1982)
This movie is a beautiful story of the struggle between Light and Dark. The Light of the world resides in two Unicorns. And Darkness knows that to regain power he must kill the Unicorns. That can only be done through Innocence...
Jack and Lily are the innocents of the story. Young and in love in a completely inncent way, they unknowingly lead the dark minions to the unicorns. After that they must fight Darkness to fix what he has undone...
Cast: (in credits order) 
verified as complete
Tom Cruise....Jack
Mia Sara....Princess Lily
Tim Curry....Darkness
David Bennent....Gump
Alice Playten....Blix
Billy Barty....Screwball
Cork Hubbert....Brown Tom
Peter O'Farrell....Pox
Kiran Shah....Blunder
Annabelle Lanyon....Oona
Robert Picardo....Meg Mucklebones
Tina Martin....Nell
Ian Longmur....Demon Cook
Mike Crane....Demon Cook
Liz Gilbert....Dancing Black Dress
Eddie Powell....Mummified Guard
Check out all the details here: Legend (1985)
Nothing seems to be going right in Bastian's life; he's the one who gets picked on and doesn't have any friends. His father is not much of a comfort after his mother's recent death, and so he reads. One day he gets chased into a used book shop by the class bullies and "borrows" an enchanting looking book which turns out to be a whole lot more than he had bargained for. . . .
Okay, this is another obscure one, but I felt it deserved a place on this page. This has always been one of my favorite movies, I relate to Bastian very well. The reason I feel it deserves a place on my unicorn web page is for one line in the movie. *grin* At the beginning, Bastian's teacher claims he has been drawing horses in his mathbook, and Bastian's only response is "Unicorns, they were unicorns."
Complete credited cast:
Check out all the detail here: The Neverending Story (1984)
Noah Hathaway .... Atreju
Barret Oliver .... Bastian
Patricia Hayes .... Urgl
Sydney Bromley .... Engywook (Engywuk)
Gerald McRaney .... Bastian's Father
Drum Garrett .... 1st Bully
Darryl Cooksey .... 2nd Bully
Nicholas Gilbert .... 3rd Bully
Thomas Hill .... Koreander
Deep Roy .... Teeny Weeny
Tilo Pr�ckner .... Night Hob
Alan Oppenheimer .... Falkor's Voice
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