Wizards, Inc.

Wizards, Inc. is the 2007 Orson Scott Card anthology (co-edited with Keith Olexa), a themed urban-fantasy collection on the premise that magic operates more or less as a corporate industry, with contracts, hiring committees, regulatory exposure, and quarterly profit pressure. The contributors include Esther Friesner, Lawrence Watt-Evans, Karen Joy Fowler, Mark Wandrey, Eugie Foster, and Steven Savile, among others. Card’s introduction is brief but useful as a framing essay on workplace fantasy as a subgenre.

Themed anthologies live on consistency, and Wizards, Inc. is more consistent than most. The Esther Friesner contribution (a comic procedural about a midtown wizardry HR department) is the standout, the Karen Joy Fowler entry is the most literary of the set, and the Lawrence Watt-Evans piece is the most efficiently plotted. A couple of stories lean on the workplace-fantasy gimmick rather than developing characters around it. The Card editorial hand is light. As a topical sampler this collection succeeds; as a genre statement it sits somewhere just under the high bar Charles Stross’s The Atrocity Archives set in the same lane.

Recommended for fans of office-fantasy comedy (the Charles Stross Laundry Files novels, Genevieve Cogman’s The Invisible Library series) and for readers looking for books like Wizards, Inc. in the corporate-magic anthology subgenre. Three solid stars.