Going all the way back to Homer's "Odyssey", the "quest" is a popular and well-respected story-telling format in Western literature, seen in such classics as "The Pilgrim's Progress", "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and the legends of the knights of the Round Table's search for the Holy Grail. It is also a theme that appears regularly in modern fantasy stories, including "The Lord of the Rings" - the epitome of a modern fantasy quest novel. In some cases, the "quest" is a rite of passage or internal search for self-knowledge. But often it's a journey that takes the hero (and his plucky band of companions) far afield to explore strange new lands and resolve dangerous challenges and obstacles with his wits and his brawn. By his very survival the hero proves himself worthy of his goal. Margaret Weis has assembled a collection of such stories including tales from by Neil Gaiman, C.J. Cherryh and Marion Zimmer Bradley and the Mercedes Lackey story "The Cup and The Cauldron".