The Year's Best Fantasy Stories: 3 is a 1977 anthology of fantasy stories, edited by Lin Carter. It was first published in paperback by DAW Books. The book collects eleven novelettes and short stories by various fantasy authors, originally published in the years 1976 and 1977 that were deemed by the editor the best from the period represented, together with an introductory survey of the year in fantasy, an essay on the year's best fantasy books, and introductory notes to the individual stories by the editor. The piece includes a "posthumous collaboration" (the story by Smith and Carter).