Eager, Edward(1911–1964)
Edward Eager was an American dramatist who
began writing children’s fantasies with Half Magic
(1954), in which a group of children find a magical
coin and use it to transport themselves into other
worlds, where they have various low-key adven-
tures complicated by the fact that the coin grants
only a portion of each wish. This first effort set the
pattern for the fantasies that followed. Eager’s
books for children are relentlessly good natured
and there is never any suggestion that the children
are in real danger. They are frequently reprinted
and often compared to the work of Edith NESBIT,
Lucy M. BOSTON, and similar writers.
Knight’s Castle(1956) transplants a different
group of children back through time to learn the
true story about one of England’s legendary
heroes. Magic by the Lake(1957, also published as
Magic or Not?) is another story of wishes granted,
in this case by a magical turtle. More children
travel through time in The Time Garden(1958),
this time with the assistance of a supernatural
toad. There is a genuine wishing well in The Well
Wishers(1960), and in Seven Day Magic(1962) a
charmed talisman answers requests with some-
times humorous results. Although all of Eager’s
fantasy novels have almost identical plots and the
characters do not grow or change during them, he
demonstrated a gift for telling a story that en-
thralls younger readers. Although they hold little
of interest for an older audience, they are charm-
ing examples of gentle fantasies. Eager produced
only a handful of titles during his lifetime, but
they have remained popular and were recently
reprinted in 1999.“Eat Me” Robert R. McCammon(1989)
The 1989 anthology Book of the Dead,edited by
John SKIPPand Craig SPECTOR, was designed as a
homage to the Living Dead films of George
Romero, whose premise is that some form of conta-
gious disease causes the dead to rise and feast on
the living, turning their victims into fresh legions of
zombies. The movie was, of course, intensely visual,
and the premise for a collection of stories based on
that setting seemed unpromising. A surprising num-
ber of the contributors found a fresh, interesting ap-
proach to the theme, most notably in “ON THE FAR
SIDE OF THE CADILLAC DESERT WITH THE DEAD
FOLKS” (1989) by Joe R. LANSDALEand in this
much shorter piece by Robert R. McCAMMON.
McCammon set his story much later in time,
after all the living in the world have died and only
the dead still walk the earth. During the interim
they have learned to speak again and have begun to
imitate their old lifestyles, although in very distorted
ways. The protagonist is Jim, one of the living dead,
who wonders one night just when it was that love
died in the world. He is lonely and without purpose,
and his wandering takes him to a restaurant that has
now become a kind of singles club for the living
dead, where rats are currency and dancing is dan-
gerous because the patrons’ decaying bodies are be-
ginning to fall apart. There he meets a shy dead girl,
Brenda, and the two go through a gentle parody ofE
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