Tuesday's Overlooked Films and/or Other A/V: the early links

Left: The Luis Ortiz biography of the Emshwillers referred to in the Carol Emshwiller interview.

Below: From the publisher's note: Carol Emshwiller's fiction has received an NEA grant and a Pushcart Prize, as well as the Philip K. Dick, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. In 2005 she received the World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement.

Thanks to all contributors and readers...and I suspect a few more links might be on their way in today...we shall see!

Bill Crider: Mr. Brooks (trailer)

Brian Arnold: comedian John Pinette; Tales of the Tinkerdee

David Schmidt: Curse of the Black Widow

George Kelley: Much Ado About Nothing (1993)

Iba Dawson: Rope

Ivan Shreve: Detective Story (1951)

James Reasoner: The Dakotas

Jerry House: An Interview with Arthur Conan Doyle (1927; early sound newsreel)

John Charles: Reel Injun

Juri Nummelin: The Jericho Mile

Lawrence Person: Frankenstein (1910)

Patti Abbott: Love with a Proper Stranger

Randy Johnson: The films of Herb Jeffries

Ron Scheer: Buchanan Rides Alone

Scott Cupp: The High Crusade

Stacia Jones: The Phantom Creeps (cont'd)

Todd Mason: The International Animation Festival (1977-78) and its components; the short films of Ed Emshwiller and an interview with Carol Emshwiller; from Roy Wheldon's musical setting of Rudy Rucker's novel, Like a Passing River (please see below)

Walter Albert: Michael Shayne, Private Detective (1940)

Yvette Banek: The Adventures of Tartu

Related matters:Brent McKee: The US Commercial TV Status Report

Ed Gorman: The Bride Wore Black

George Kelley: Page Eight; The Age of Movies: Selected Writings of Pauline Kael
Patti Abbott: Margin Call

Todd Mason:
MaxiCat was a Yugoslav cartoon character who flourished in a series of shorts for television out of Zagreb in the early 1970s; I first came across the cartoons in the thoroughly enjoyable International Animation Festival, aka the International Festival of Animation series on PBS, hosted by Jean Marsh, in 1977-78 (there were two seasons of 13 episodes each).


Sadly, some of the more clever MaxiCat cartoons aren't posted as yet, but perhaps they still exist somewhere. These two aren't bad examples:



And among the other work the Festival introduced many of us to was Munro, which I highlighted previously, and the 1974 short animation Oscar-winner, "Closed Mondays":


Or such National Film Board of Canada productions as "Hunger":


And the Hubleys' charming "Moonbird"


And what might well be the first animated film:


I'm pretty sure I first saw Ed Emshwiller's pioneering animation "Relativity" on the Festival as well, but alas that film doesn't seem to be up, either. But the also pioneering "Sunstone" is:


And "Thanatopsis":


And this study of landscapes and forms and of his wife, the writer Carol Emshwiller (also the film's title; she served as model for so many of the paintings he signed as "Emsh", such as the right-side-up one at the head of this post):


A brief interview segment, featuring Ed Emshwiller and Morton Subotnick:

Ars Electronica 1988 - Morton Subotnick, Ed Emshwiller from ars history on Vimeo.

And an interview with Carol Emshwiller, on her 90th birthday this year, about her work as a writer (and her Collected Stories) and tangentially about her work with her husband:


And, finally this week, the central song from Roy Wheldon's setting of Rudy Rucker's autobiographical novel All the Visions to music, the song "Like a Passing River" (featuring lyrics translated by Gary Snyder from the poet Han Shan):

FFB: THE COLLECTED STORIES OF CAROL EMSHWILLER; MISTER DA V by Kit Reed; A WITCH'S DOZEN by Janet Fox; JANE QUIET by K.A. Laity and Elena Steier

The issue including Kit Reed's first published short story...and quite an impressive lot else (please see below):

Essentially four books here, though the last listed is also the first issue of a continuing series of comics devoted to a psychic investigator named in honor of Algernon Blackwood's character John Silence.

The Collected Stories, Volume One...publisher Luis Ortiz keeps having one valuable, if not always cash-cow-like, idea after another, and the brilliant Carol Emshwiller, who has written many very important and many very odd stories in what has been a long career, has also long needed a comprehensive collection of her work...volume two might be a bit shorter, when it appears, as it mostly might be made up of stories still in inventory at magazines and more importantly in the contents of anthologies not yet published. Emshwiller, as the contents list below indicates, after a first sale to a (failing) regional magazine in 1954, started publishing mostly in the magazines edited by Robert Lowndes (the crime-fiction magazines and Future, Science Fiction and SF Quarterly), which were low-budget but open to experimental and off-trail writing (James Blish placed "Common Time" in one; William Tenn "The Liberation of Earth" likewise; Edward Hoch was always happy to note that he was first published by Lowndes). Such early Emshwiller stories as "Hunting Machine" did not often offer many variations on traditional narrative storytelling, but as she noted in her introduction, they came, to one degree or another, from what writer, critic, editor and writing instructor Damon Knight referred to as "deep inside"...they have a powerful resonance that sounds throughout the reader's psyche. This, as even Emshwiller (not the most self-promoting of writers) notes, only strengthened as she continued. Such brilliant, playful and influential work as "Sex and/or Mr. Morrison" and "Strangers" would follow, even as the earlier "Pelt" took another tack on the matter of "Hunting Machine" (both prime candidates for any anthology arguing for animal rights). Not reflected in this collection are her novels, such as the historical westerns Ledoyt and its companion Leaping Man Hill or the animal fantasy Carmen Dog and the challenging novel of alien conquest of Earth, The Mount. What is here is a generous sample of the work that has won her two Nebula awards, the Philip Dick award and the Life Achievement award from the World Fantasy Convention in 1995, as well as devoted readers in several different literary communities. (Please also see Ortiz's Emshwiller: Infinity x 2, a dual biography of Carol and her husband, painter/illustrator/filmmaker Ed Emshwiller, a remarkable book about remarkable subjects.) Here, a few examples of the cover paintings for which Ed Emshwiller used Carol and himself as models (click to enlarge):



















Not too different is the CV of Kit Reed, who also writes as Kit Craig (mostly her crime fiction thus); her driver's license presumably tags her Lillian Craig Reed. A decade younger than Emshwiller, she got her professional fiction-writing start half a decade later, in a ridiculously good issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from late in Anthony Boucher's editorship, for April, 1958...so ridiculous that I'll give the ISFDb listing of its contents:
5 • Guardian Spirit • novelette by Chad Oliver
39 • The Watchers • poem by Anthony Brode
40 • Obstinate Uncle Otis • [Murchison Morks] • (1941) • shortstory by Robert Arthur
48 • The Grantha Sighting • shortstory by Avram Davidson
56 • The Wait • shortstory by Kit Reed
70 • No Evidence • shortstory by Victoria Lincoln
78 • The Death of Each Day • shortstory by Margaret St. Clair [as by Idris Seabright ]
88 • The Witch of Ramoth • (1953) • shortstory by Mark Van Doren
93 • Recommended Reading (F&SF, April 1958) • [Recommended Reading] • essay by Anthony Boucher
93 •   Review: Spaceways Satellite by Charles Eric Maine • review by Anthony Boucher
93 •   Review: Rocket Power and Space Flight by G. Harry Stine • review by Anthony Boucher
94 •   Review: Wasp by Eric Frank Russell • review by Anthony Boucher
94 •   Review: Year 2018! by James Blish • review by Anthony Boucher
94 •   Review: They'd Rather be Right by Mark Clifton and Frank Riley • review by Anthony Boucher
94 •   Review: The Mind Cage by A. E. van Vogt • review by Anthony Boucher
95 •   Review: The Dreamers by Roger Manvell • review by Anthony Boucher
95 •   Review: Earthman's Burden by Poul Anderson and Gordon R. Dickson • review by Anthony Boucher
95 •   Review: Robots and Changelings by Lester del Rey • review by Anthony Boucher
95 •   Review: Those Idiots from Earth by Richard Wilson • review by Anthony Boucher
95 •   Review: Three Times Infinity by Leo Margulies • review by Anthony Boucher
96 • Broken Circuit • shortstory by Arthur Oesterreicher
100 • A Deskful of Girls • [Change War] • novelette by Fritz Leiber
125 • Poor Little Warrior! • shortstory by Brian W. Aldiss

...with that first story, which Reed, as noted below, had entitled "To Be Taken in a Strange Country" and would place it as such as the lead story in her first collection, Mister Da V. and Other Stories. (Among the other things Emshwiller and Reed share is that their first collections came far too late for any sense of justice in publishing...Reed's book was published in England in 1967 and would await its US edition for six years; Emshwiller's first collection, also her first book, Joy in Our Cause, didn't appear till 1974. The Reed collection also notably lacks any introduction, either to the book or the individual stories, a bit of sadness for those of us who love the headnotes and other interstitials provided by the likes of Isaac Asimov and Harlan Ellison in their books.) "Automatic Tiger" might've been the first Reed story to gain a lot of attention in the fantasy community, a heavily metaphoric tale of a young man who gains enormously in life through the purchase of a remarkably lifelike tiger mechanism, and what fate has in store for them both; it was certainly the first Reed story I read. Reed, too, is expert in resonance and playful wit, as she demonstrates throughout this collection, in her further collections and novels since, and in her short fiction that has appeared in fantastic-fiction, contemporary-mimetic and little, and crime-fiction magazines over the years since; happily, Reed is still writing, as Emshwiller, who has been having some health reverses, might not continue to do, though we can hope the latter is not stymied. One thing that connects such writers as these two, and, say, Kate Wilhelm, who got her start neatly between Emshwiller and Reed and has had a not dissimilarly eclectic career since, is that one senses their exploration of character from the "inside", while such colleagues and similarly complete artists as Theodore Sturgeon, Damon Knight and Fritz Leiber often seem to make their observation of character at a greater auctorial distance, not so much objective as simply more divorced from identification with the characters under discussion and on display.

Including the brilliant Arcana story "Demon and Demoiselle"; the Malzberg story is actually a (very funny) collaboration with Bill Pronzini, "Another Burnt-Out Case":
Also true of the younger, later-starting, and now late (as noted here at the time of her death's announcement) Janet Fox, who published the helpful market-guide and general-interest magazine about writers and the small press, Scavenger's Newsletter, for more than a decade; she was the first to buy my creative work, a poem, to be published in a national forum. More importantly, she began publishing her own fiction, with "Materialist"...another Robert Lowndes "discovery," I belatedly remember, for his Magazine of Horror in 1970, and the first in a series of horror stories in which she takes cliches and makes them happily (if usually disturbingly) literal. Perhaps the best of this series, "Screaming to Get Out" (from Weirdbook, the co-publisher Ganley's long-running little magazine of fantasy and horror) is included in this, 2003's A Witch's Dozen, the only collection of Fox's fiction to be published during her lifetime; the only other books she would publish were a series of novels under the pseudonym Alex McDonough. This continues to gnaw at me, given the excellence of these thirteen stories, which includes three of her fantasy series-characters, Scorpia and Arcana and Morrien, with a new story of the last as the book's one original publication. Well-illustrated by Stephen Fabian, it's a volume worth seeking out, and it needs a companion. Even in what little we have of her, she's one of the best sword and sorcery writers and one of the better horror writers we've seen.

A full-color page from the next Jane Quiet adventure (Quiet's future clients pictured rather than she herself; click to enlarge considerably):
And my friend Kate, K. A. Laity, and her friend Elena Steier decided to collaborate on a comic, as noted above, about a psychic investigator named in honor of John Silence; they decided further the challenge along by making this first adventure, at least, one with no dialog whatsoever, allowing Jane Quiet to live up to her name, at least as far as speaking was concerned. Steier's one proviso, as Laity notes in the introduction on the inside front cover, was that the monster be kick-ass...and so it is, as Lovecraftian (though, unlike HPL's, actually visible and seen in detail) as Mike Mignola (Hellboy) could ask for. Quiet and her confederates investigate the events that have killed one teen girl and hospitalized another, seemingly (to the survivor's terrified parents; we the "readers" are less uncertain) involving their daughter and her friend's dabbling in black magic. (Injokes: Quiet's office and probable residence is in a building that also might just house Algernon Blackwood, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Edith Wharton, or their ghosts; from some angles and in some panels, Steier draws Quiet to resemble Laity.) Things don't all go the way Quiet and company hope, but the ending, in yet another coincidence I've belatedly realized, rather reverses the situation found in Leiber's "A Deskful of Girls" (the cover story in the ridiculously good issue of F&SF detailed above). This issue, too, is great fun, and worth the procurement effort, if your local comics store is so foolish as to not have it at hand. Laity might be the literary child of Angela Carter and Peter Cook and Italo Calvino, and Steier the artistic child of Trina Robbins and Gahan Wilson and Jules Feiffer, and there's not a little dash of Joan Aiken in both, but none of that estranges them at all from the work of the other women too insufficiently celebrated here...

...and did I happen to mention that I recently picked up a 1955 issue of the Cornell-based little magazine Epoch with some of the very young Joanna Russ's poetry in it? Inasmuch as it also has stories by R. V. Cassil and Lysander Kemp, it could've been an issue of F&SF as easily as Epoch, though the Philip Roth story would nudge it more in the Partisan Review direction (a 1962 issue I bought along with the elder features just two long stories by two young men just getting their legs at the time, Ronald Sukenick and Tom Pynchon, as the latter signs himself...this would also be the magazine which, a few years later, published the career-jump-starter for Joyce Carol Oates, "Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?"). Eh, later.


The Collected Stories of Carol Emshwiller, Volume 1, edited by Luis Ortiz and Carol Emshwiller (Non-Stop Press 2011, cover painting by Ed Emshwiller)
contents courtesy of Non-Stop Press:
Table of Contents:
Foreword by Carol Emshwiller
Built For Pleasure (Long Island Suburban, November 1954)
The Victim (Smashing Detective,Vol. 4, No. 2, September 1955)
This Thing Called Love (Future Science Fiction, no. 28, December 1955)
Love Me Again (Science Fiction Quarterly, Vol. 4, No. 2, February 1956)
The Piece Thing (Science Fiction Quarterly, May 1956)
Bingo And Bongo (Future Science Fiction, #31, Winter 1956-1957)
Nightmare Call (Future Science Fiction, No. 32, Spring 1957)
Murray Is For Murder (Fast Action Detective and Mystery, March 1957)
The Coming (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, May 1957)
Hunting Machine (Science Fiction Stories, May 1957)
Hands (Double-Action Detective, #7, Summer, 1957)
You’ll Feel Better… (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, July 1957)
Two-Step For Six Legs (Science Fiction Quarterly, Vol. 5, No. 2, August 1957)
Baby (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1958)
Idol’s Eye (Future Science Fiction, #35, February 1958)
Pelt (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, November 1958)
Day At The Beach (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 1959)
Puritan Planet (Science Fiction Stories, January 1960)
But Soft What Light… (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1966)
Chicken Icarus (Cavalier, October 1966)
Eohippus (Transatlantic Review, 1967)
Sex and/or Mr. Morrison (Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison, Doubleday, 1967)
Krashaw (A City Sampler, July 1967)
Lib (Triquarterly, 1968; New Worlds, March 1968)
Animal (Orbit 4, ed. Damon Knight, G.P. Putnam, 1968)
Methapyrilene Hydrochloride Sometimes Helps (New Worlds, July 1968)
White Dove (New Worlds, No. 188, March 1969)
I Love You (Epoch, vol. xix, no. 1, 1969)
The Queen of Sleep (New Directions, Vol. 22; New Worlds, 1970)
Peninsula (The Richmond Review, 1970)
Debut (Orbit 6, ed. D. Knight, G.P. Putnam, 1970)
The Institute (Alchemy and Academe, ed. Anne McCaffrey, Doubleday, 1970)
A Possible Episode In The Picaresque Adventures Of Mr. J.H.B. Monstrosee (Quark/2, Paperback Library, February 1971)
Woman Waiting (Orbit 7, ed. D. Knight, G.P. Putnam, 1970)
Yes, Virginia (Transatlantic Review, 1971)
Al (Orbit 10, ed. D. Knight, G.P. Putnam, 1972)
Strangers (Bad Moon Rising, ed. Thomas Disch, Harper & Row, 1973)
The Childhood of the Human Hero (Showcase, Harper & Row, 1973)
Autobiography (Joy In Our Cause, a Carol Emshwiller collection, Harper & Row, 1974)
Maybe Another Long March Across China 80,000 Strong (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
Joy in Our Cause (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
Biography of an Uncircumcised Man (Including Interview) (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
To the Association (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
Destinations, Premonitions and the Nature of Anxiety (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
Dog Is Dead (Joy In Our Cause, Harper & Row, 1974)
One Part Of The Self Is Always Tall And Dark (Confrontation No. 14, 1977)
Escape Is No Accident (2076: The American Tricentennial, ed. Edward Bryant, Pyramid Books, 1977)
Thanne Longen Folk To Goen On Pilgrimages (The Little Magazine, vol. 11, no. 2, summer 1977)
Expecting Sunshine and Getting It (Croton Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, summer 1978)
Omens (Edges, ed. Ursula Le Guin and Virginia Kidd, Pocket Books, 1980)
Abominable (Orbit 21, ed. D. Knight, Harper & Row, 1980)
The Start Of The End Of It All (Universe 11, ed. Terry Carr, Doubleday, 1981)
Slowly Bumbling in the Void (New Directions 42, 1981)
Queen Kong (13th Moon, 1982)
The Futility of Fixed Positions (Portland Review, Vol. 28, No. 2, 1982)
Mental Health and Its Alternative (Confrontation, Nos. 25-26, 1983)
Verging on the Pertinent (13th Moon, Vol. vii, Nos. 1-2, 1984)
There Is No God But Bog (Pulpsmith, Summer 1985)
Eclipse (The Little Magazine, vol. 15, no. 2, 1986)
The Circular Library of Stones (Omni, Feb. 1987)
If Not Forever, When? (PsychCritique, vol. 2, no. 2, 1987)
Vilcabamba (Twilight Zone Magazine, August 1987)
Fledged (Omni, December 1988)
The Promise Of Undying Love (Verging on the Pertinent, a Carol Emshwiller collection, Coffee House Press, 1989)
What Every Woman Knows (Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989)
Not Burning (Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989)
Being Mysterious Strangers from Distant Shores (The Village Voice Literary Supplement, March 1989)
Clerestory (Croton Review, No. 9)
Living At The Center (Ice River, No. 4, June 1989)
Yukon (Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989)
As If (Verging on the Pertinent, Coffee House Press, 1989)
Secrets of the Native Tongue (Ascent, vol. 14, no. 3, 1989)
Moon Songs (The Start of the End of it All, a Carol Emshwiller collection, The Women’s Press, 1990)
Acceptance Speech (The Start of the End of It All, The Women’s Press, 1990)
Looking Down (Omni, January 1990)
Peri (Strange Plasma #3 1990)
If The Word Was To The Wise (The Start of the End of It All, Mercury House, 1991)
There Is No Evil Angel But Love (The Start of the End of It All, Mercury House, 1991)
Draculalucard (The Start of the End of It All, Mercury House 1991)
Emissary (The Start of the End of It All, Mercury House 1991)
Mrs. Jones (Omni, August 1993)
Venus Rising (Edgewood Press, 1992, a chapbook)
Modillion (Strange Plasma, no. 8 1994; Green Mountain Review, 1994)
After Shock (Century, no.3, September-October 1995)
The Project (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, August 2001)
Foster Mother (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 2001)
Creature (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct./Nov. 2001)
Grandma (The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, March 2002)
Notes On Stories
About The Author
from the Locus Index:
A Witch’s Dozen by Janet Fox (Wildside Press/W. Paul Ganley 1-59224-048-8, Jul 2003, $30.00, 175pp, hc, cover by Stephen E. Fabian) Collection of 13 fantasy and horror stories, one original. This is a print-on-demand edition, co-published by Wildside Press and W. Paul Ganley. Paperback edition also available.

7 · Witches · ss Tales by Moonlight, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson, Robert T. Garcia, 1983
19 · Small Magic · ss Amazing Jan ’82
41 · In the Kingdom of the Thorn [Scorpia] · ss Whispers Oct ’83
52 · A Witch in Time [Arcana] · ss Fantastic Sep ’73
68 · Demon and Demoiselle [Arcana] · nv Fantastic Oct ’78
88 · Morrien’s Bitch [Morrien & Riska] · ss Amazons!, ed. Jessica Amanda Salmonson, DAW, 1979
106 · Screaming to Get Out · ss Weirdbook #12 ’77
113 · Valentine · ss Shadows #2, ed. Charles L. Grant, Doubleday, 1979
123 · Taking Care of Bertie · ss Eldritch Tales #11 ’85
130 · The Skins You Love to Touch · ss Shadows #9, ed. Charles L. Grant, Doubleday, 1986
136 · Garage Sale · ss Twilight Zone Aug ’82
142 · Surrogate · ss Fears, ed. Charles L. Grant, Berkley, 1983
149 · Alliances [Morrien & Riska] · nv *

from the Contento index:
Mister Da V. and Other Stories Kit Reed (London: Faber and Faber, 1967, 21/-, 219pp, hc); Also in pb (Berkley Medallion Jul ’73).

11 · To Be Taken in a Strange Country [“The Wait”] · ss F&SF Apr ’58
31 · Devotion · ss F&SF Jun ’58
42 · The Reign of Tarquin the Tall · ss F&SF Jul ’58
59 · Ordeal [“The Quest”] · nv Fantastic Universe Jan ’60
(70) · Judas Bomb · ss F&SF Apr ’61 (in the pb)
95 · Piggy · ss F&SF Aug ’61
113 · Mister Da V. · ss Seventeen May ’62
128 · The New You · ss F&SF Sep ’62
141 · Automatic Tiger · ss F&SF Mar ’64
(136) · I Am Through with Bus Trips · ss *
172 · Golden Acres · nv *
195 · At Central · ss *
209 · Janell Harmon’s Testament · ss *
Script by K. A. Laity; art by Elena Steier; published in 2008 by Steier and Laity; 40pp.

Aside from the images of the review items (from their publishers' sites), images courtesy of Galactic Central or ISFDb and their Visco files.

Short Story Wednesday: Carol Emshwiller and Bobbie Ann Mason select favorite stories of their own, "But Soft, What Light..." (1966) and "Memphis" (1988) respectively

• SF: Authors' Choice 4
• Editor: Harry Harrison
• Date: 1974-01-00
• ISBN: 0-399-11188-3 [978-0-399-11188-4]
• Publisher: Putnam
• Price: $5.95
• Pages: 248
• Format: 
  hc
• Type: ANTHOLOGY
• Cover: SF: Authors' Choice 4 by Paul Lehr

• Warrior • [Childe Cycle] • (1965) • short story by Gordon R. Dickson
• Bad Medicine • (1956) • short story by Robert Sheckley [originally as by Finn O'Donnevan]
• Old Hundredth • (1960) • short story by Brian W. Aldiss
• The Forgotten Enemy • (1948) • short story by Arthur C. Clarke
• The Last Flight of Dr. Ain • (1969) • short story by James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon)
• The Man Who Loved the Faioli • (1967) • short story by Roger Zelazny
• The Autumn Land • (1971) • short story by Clifford D. Simak
• A Sense of Beauty • (1968) • short story by Robert Taylor
• But Soft, What Light ... • (1966) • short story by Carol Emshwiller
• The Fire and the Sword • (1951) • novelette by Frank M. Robinson
• The Misogynist • (1952) • short story by James E. Gunn
• Ullward's Retreat • (1958) • novelette by Jack Vance
• Et in Arcadia Ego • (1971) • short story by Thomas M. Disch
• All of Us Are Dying • (1961) • short story by George Clayton Johnson
• Fair • (1956) • short story by John Brunner [originally as by Keith Woodcott]

New American Short Stories 2: The Writers Select Their Own Favorites edited by Gloria Norris, Penguin/New American Library/Plume 1989

Introduction / Gloria Norris The Pacific / Mark Helprin -- (ss) The Atlantic Monthly March 1986 Squirrelly's Grouper / Bob Shacochis -- variant form: "Fancy’s Grouper", (ss) Playboy March 1989 The Unfaithful Father / Judith Rossner -- (ss) Mademoiselle August 1986  Smorgasbord / Tobias Wolff -- (ss) Esquire September 1987 (Full Text) The Wars of Heaven / Richard Currey --  High Plains Literary Review, 1986 Temporary Shelter / Mary Gordon -- from her 1987 collection Temporary Shelter Research / Max Apple -- (ss) Harper’s Magazine #1640, January 1987 Lawns / Mona Simpson -- Iowa Review, 1984 Facing the Music / Larry Brown -- Mississippi Review, 1986 Cooker / Frederick Barthelme --  (ss) The New Yorker August 10 1987 A Lot in Common / Veronica Geng -- (hu) The New Yorker January 25 1988 Orpha Knitting / Isabel Huggan -- Western Living, 1987 The Phantom of the Movie Palace / Robert Coover -- from his 1986 collection A Night at the Movies Travel / Sue Miller -- from her 1987 collection Inventing the Abbotts and Other Stories The Curse / Andre Dubus -- (ss) Playboy January 1988 The Gift of the Prodigal / Peter Taylor -- (ss) The New Yorker June 1 1981 Be-bop, Re-bop & All Those Obligatos / Xam Wilson Cartier -- excerpted from her 1987 novel Be-bop, Re-bop Wejumpka / Rick Bass -- Chariton Review, 1988 Memphis / Bobbie Ann Mason --  (ss) The New Yorker February 22 1988 Queen for a Day / Russell Banks -- from his 1986 collection Success Stories Two anthologies, both the last in their sequences for editors Harrison and Norris, despite good reviews and an almost fool-proof concept for an anthology (or a short series of them)...get impressive authors to choose their own best, or at least for this purpose currently most favored, short fiction (a few novelettes or even a novella or two sneak into both volumes), and ask the writers to provide a headnote (Harrison's books) or an afterword (Norris's) to their story choices, which can lead to various sorts of amusement when not also enlightenment. Norris, perhaps shortsightedly, asked in both her volumes for stories published in the last three years or so that had remained favorites, making for anthologies that, for devoted fans of the writers in question (and regular readers of The New Yorker particularly), provided a litany of often familiar (and still fresh in memory) stories...Harrison, conversely, asked for overlooked stories from his contributors, which allowed them to range freely through their careers, and at times pick out something from their key developmental steps, as they were finding their way.  Happily, Carol Emshwiller's 1966 story, as she describes in her headnote, takes on both her early attempts to move away from traditional plot and the increasing irritation she'd been feeling at the plethora of human-robot/AI romance stories she'd been reading, many of them ignoring the apparent warning of Lester Del Rey's early and much revered story on this subject that those who would seek out such a relation would tend to be emotionally stunted...one wonders what Emshwiller made of the technological developments already in place at the time of her death a few years ago allowing for greater ease of simulated romance and/or sex with hardware and software, if not quite up to the limited sentience of the stories (and similar narratives) in question. "But Soft, What Light..." not only posits an experimental robot and AI programmed to be a writer, but a machismic writer in the mode of Norman Mailer and his less flamboyant brethren, and its human companion, a young woman hired by the engineers and the robot's support staff in the Department of Contemplative and Exploratory Poetry to be its "vestal virgin"...and she displays all the self-deluding behaviors of the women who put up with "genius behavior" from their writing (or otherwise artistic) men, up to treasuring the knowledge that she is somehow loved by her artificial narcissist companion more than she worries about the minor and not so minor abuses she suffers, consistently excusing and praising her artificial guy. A blackly comic story, seemingly coming in part out Emshwiller's observations of too many women in the artistic communities she was a part of (with her painter and filmmaker husband and their Levittown house being a sort of Long Island bohemian locus).  Emshwiller notes that she considered this story also part of her attempt to write more bluntly and honestly about sex and the relations around those interactions, and she was surprised this particular story had never been picked  up for reprinting (after its first book publication here, it wouldn't be reprinted again, as far as I can tell, till Emshwiller included it in her 1990 collection The Start of the End of It All, and eventually in the first volume of her Complete Stories). She also notes that she didn't think this made her part of "the New Wave", though she enjoyed the work so tagged for the most part, since they had Agendas...not fully admitting that her agenda wasn't too far from those usually ascribed to the (admittedly somewhat amorphous) New Wave in sf. Bobbie Ann Mason's protagonist Beverly is only slightly better off with her choice of life-partner, father of their two children and now ex-husband, a man who, like Beverly, isn't too sure of what he wants but has certainly lurking dread of what he doesn't want, and has some difficulty figuring out how to actively work for the former rather than letting resentment allow him to act out abruptly and sullenly (though, at least, not violently so much as to a certain degree selfishly, something Beverly realizes she isn't immune to, either, though she tries to be less disruptive and sulking than her ex). To further complicate matters, they aren't done with each other sexually, at least not in terms of both lust and empathy, and share custody of the children...which will be made more difficult as he intends to take a job in South Carolina, quite some distance away from their current abodes in western Kentucky, not too far a drive from Memphis, TN. The story is rich in details of their lives and those of their friends and extended families, and elegantly casual references to pop music and science-fictional films and related matters. Beverly is as effortfully trying to find a reasonable life for herself and help those around her find one as well, as much as the relentlessly nameless protagonist of Emshwiller's story is trying to invest herself in the notion of her self-abnegating sacrifice being for the Greater Good for her artificial partner and the great works it's going to be capable of, Real Soon Now. Mason notes in her afterword to the story that she envisioned a catastrophic ending for Beverly in the first draft, which among other unsatisfying respects left the impression of Beverly punished for leaving her husband; the next draft ended with what she suggests is The English Department ending: "Beverly was gazing at tantalizing visions of ambiguity in the reflections of the sky in the picture window"...and in final form Mason simply had Beverly going about the business of life, including that pertaining to her ex.  Emshwiller, more in farce than minimalism in her story, has the budding AI/robot poet compose: I love you. "Let me count the ways." One, two Three, four Ear neck leg Adam's apple (Five) Wrinkle under arm Big toe. That's seven But that's not all.  Let one who can count, count, And in a microsecond,  To thousands. Charms have never been better catalogued Than this From whorl of fingertip through pubic hair line I love you. Its later work is slightly more adept, if no less comically so. For more of this week's Short Story Wednesday entries, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

ffb: JOY IN OUR CAUSE: Short Stories by Carol Emshwiller (Harper & Row, 1974)

Carol Emshwiller has been a sophisticated prose artist from, at latest, not long after first publication in 1954, and this fact became impossible to miss by the appearance of her first stories to gain widespread attention, such as "Hunting Machine" (1957), "Pelt" (1958). and "Day at the Beach" (1959); one might correctly gather she's had a keen interest in analyzing the expression of cruelty from the first two titles. This volume, from 1974, was her first collection, and with about half the contents published here for the first time, the book is among a number of other things partially autobiographical fiction (at times verging on essay) and not solely in those aspects a rumination on love, marriage, and the lives of women who are both artists and domestically wives and mothers. Emshwiller had begun publishing fiction with a short story in a regional general-interest magazine, then published nearly all of her next dozen or so stories in the crime fiction and science fiction magazines edited by the adventurous Robert Lowndes, to whom her husband had been steadily selling his illustrations (Emshwiller and Edward Hoch can be said to be Lowndes's chief writer discoveries in those years). By the mid/late 1960s, Emshwiller had begun placing notable stories with the likes of avant-garde anthology series New Directions and the little magazines such as TriQuarterly and Epoch, and so she would continue in these modes, though adding more fantasy and dropping crime fiction per se, and eventually writing highly unusual western novels in the 1990s, beginning with Ledoyt. This volume has only seen the Harper hardcover first edition; ridiculously, no paperback nor foreign editions...rather too much like another excellent collection I've reviewed here before, Wilma Shore's Women Should Be Allowed.

The contents of this book are also included in (the previously cited here) The Collected Stories, Volume 1, but they are arranged here for desired effect rather than by date of publication in the later volume, and this furthers the effect of the often linked nature of the stories in Joy. 


from the Contento/Locus indices, with a few added citations:

Joy in Our Cause Carol Emshwiller (Harper & Row 0-06-011234-4, 1974, hc)
• 1 · Joy in Our Cause · ss
• 11 · The Queen of Sleep · ss New Directions Vol. 22; New Worlds 1970
• 16 · Strangers · ss Bad Moon Rising, ed. Thomas M. Disch, Harper & Row 1973
• 21 · Autobiography · ss
• 30 · Lib · ss New Worlds Mar 1968; TriQuarterly, 1968
• 36 · Eohippus · ss Transatlantic Review 1967
• 45 · Destinations, Premonitions and the Nature of Anxiety · ss
• 56 · To the Association · ss
• 60 · Biography of an Uncircumcised Man (Including Interview) · ss
• 72 · Yes, Virginia · ss Transatlantic Review  1971
• 78 · The Childhood of the Human Hero · ss Showcase, ed. Roger Elwood, Harper & Row 1973
• 84 · Animal · ss Orbit 4, ed. Damon Knight, G.P. Putnam’s 1968
• 96 · Sex and/or Mr. Morrison · ss Dangerous Visions, ed. Harlan Ellison, Garden City, NY: Doubleday 1967
• 106 · Dog Is Dead · ss
• 111 · I Love You · ss Epoch Vol. XIX, No. 1, 1969
• 117 · Peninsula · ss The Richmond Review 1970
• 129 · Chicken Icarus · ss Cavalier Oct 1966, as “A Dream of Flying”
• 143 · Al · ss Orbit 10, ed. Damon Knight, G.P. Putnam’s 1972
• 155 · Methapyrilene Hydrochloride Sometimes Helps · ss New Worlds Jul 1968
• 161 · Maybe Another Long March Across China 80,000 Strong · ss

For more of today's books, please see Patti Abbott's blog.

Memorial for Carol Emshwiller: 27 July 2019, 1-5pm, at Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave, New York, New York 10003

Some of the proceedings were recorded and an audio selection will be posted eventually, according to Susan Emshwiller.

Eve, Susan and Stoney Emshwiller have announced a memorial for their mother Carol, 

on Saturday, 27 July from at 1 PM – 5 PM

at Anthology Film Archives, 32 Second Ave, New York, New York 10003; (212) 505-5181

"Eve, Susan, and Stoney cordially invite you to join us for a memorial celebrating the life and work of our mom, Carol Emshwiller.

"During the ceremony we’ll be welcoming folks to share remembrances, recite a poem, sing a song, or read something appropriate, if so inclined.

"We hope you can make it, but even if you can’t: please spread the word about this event. If you think of someone missing from our guest list who you believe would be interested in the memorial, feel free to invite them (we’ve adjusted the settings of this Facebook Event so that anyone can add invitees). The more family members, friends, peers, editors, publishers, former students, fellow authors, and fans of her work, the better. Come one, come all!

"After the ceremony, we’ll offer a little nosh and humble snack or two at the same location. Maybe even a beverage. Nothing too fancy, or our mom would be ticked off about all the 'fuss' we’ve made and strike us down with a lightning bolt."

(Carol Emshwiller on Sweet Freedom)

FFB: WFC: WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION 2007 souvenir book: convention guests of honor and special guests Carol Emshwiller, Lisa Tuttle, Kim Newman, "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud, Joseph Bruchac, Barbara & Christopher Roden, George Scithers, Betty Ballantine, Diana Wynne Jones, and more; edited by Lorna Carlson & Chris Logan Edwards

Index slightly amended from the ISFDB listing:

• Publication: WFC: World Fantasy Convention 2007
• [World Fantasy Convention Souvenir Books • v. 33] 
  
  
• Editors: Lorna Carlson, Chris Logan Edwards
• Date: 2007-11-01
• Pages: 114
• Format: 
  trade paperback
• Type: NONFICTION
• Cover: World Fantasy Convention 2007 by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud

4 • The Committee (World Fantasy Convention 2007) • essay by uncredited

about Carol Emshwiller:

7 • Dancing with Carol • essay by Gavin J. Grant

7 • A Conversation with Carol Emshwiller • interview of Carol Emshwiller • interview by Liz Holliday

11 • Carol Emshwiller Bibliography • essay by uncredited

about Lisa Tuttle:

13 • Looking for Lisa • essay by George R. R. Martin

16 • Lisa Tuttle Bibliography • essay by uncredited

about Kim Newman:

19 • 20 Years Ago • essay by Paul J. McAuley

21 • Kim Newman Bibliography • essay by uncredited

about "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud:

23 • Moebius: The Art of the Numinous • essay by Stephen Hickman

25 • Moebius & Gir • essay by Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr.

25 •  Moebius & Gir • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud

27 •  From the Book "Le Chasseur Déprime" • (2007) • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud

28 •  "Manipulation" • (2003) • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud

29 •  "Arzach" • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud

30 •  From the Book "Inside Moebius Tome 3" • (2007) • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud

31 •  Study form the Animated Film "Little Nemo" • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud

32 •  "Les Maîtres Du Temps" • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud

33 •  From the Book "40 Days Dans Le Désert B" • (1999) • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud

34 •  "L'Homme À L'Étoile D'Argent" • (1967) • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud

about Joseph Bruchac:

37 • Joseph Bruchac — Storyteller • essay by uncredited

38 • Joseph Bruchac Bibliography • essay by uncredited

about Barbara and Christopher Roden, of Ash-Tree Press (among other work):

41 • Dig Us No Grave • (1986) • essay by Ramsey Campbell • Fantasy Review, March 1986

44 • Ash-Tree Press Titles • essay by uncredited

44 •  The World, the Flesh, & the Devil (cover) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for The World, the Flesh, & the Devil 2006)

44 •  Shadows and Silence (cover) • (2000) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for Shadows and Silence)

44 •  The Attic Express and Other Macabre Stories (cover) • (2007) • interior artwork by Keith Minnion (variant of cover art for The Attic Express and Other Macabre Stories)

44 •  The Captain of the 'Pole-Star': Weird and Imaginative Fiction (cover) • (2004) • interior artwork by Paul Lowe (variant of cover art for The Captain of the 'Pole-Star': Weird and Imaginative Fiction)

45 •  The Undying Monster (cover) • (2006) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for The Undying Monster)

45 •  Nightmare Jack and Other Stories (cover) • interior artwork by Douglas Walters (variant of cover art for Nightmare Jack and Other Stories 1998)

45 •  The Passion Play and Other Ghost Stories (cover) • (2006) • interior artwork by Keith Minnion (variant of cover art for The Passion Play and Other Ghost Stories)

45 •  A Pleasing Terror: The Complete Supernatural Writings (cover) • interior artwork by Paul Lowe (variant of cover art for A Pleasing Terror: The Complete Supernatural Writings 2001)

46 •  Hauntings: The Supernatural Stories (cover) • (2002) • interior artwork by John Singer Sargent (variant of cover art for Portrait of Vernon Lee 1881)

46 •  The Executor And Other Ghost Stories (cover) • (1996) • interior artwork by Douglas Walters (variant of cover art for The Executor And Other Ghost Stories)

46 •  Mr Justice Harbottle and Others: Ghost Stories 1870–73 (cover) • (2005) • interior artwork by Douglas Walters (variant of cover art for Mr Justice Harbottle and Others: Ghost Stories 1870–73)

46 •  Conference with the Dead (cover) • (2000) • interior artwork by Douglas Walters (variant of cover art for Conference with the Dead 1996)

47 •  Acquainted with the Night (cover) • (2004) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for Acquainted with the Night)

47 •  The Five Jars (cover) • (1995) • interior artwork by Antony Maitland (variant of cover art for The Five Jars)

47 •  At Ease with the Dead (cover) • (2007) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for At Ease with the Dead)

47 •  Cold Harbour (cover) • (2007) • interior artwork by Jason Van Hollander (variant of cover art for Cold Harbour)

about George Scithers (editor/publisher of Amra and Owlslick Press, founding editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine [now Asimov's Science Fiction], later editor of Amazing Stories and the revived Weird Tales magazine, among other work):

49 • Even More About George Scithers (Beyond His Innate Wickedness) • essay by Darrell Schweitzer

53 • Profile • essay by Holly Ordway

54 • Bibliography • essay by Guy Gavriel Kay

about Betty Ballantine (cofounder of Ballantine Books, among other work): 

57 • Tribute to Betty • essay by Frederik Pohl

57 • Profile • essay by Charles N. Brown

58 •  Starchild (cover) • (1965) • interior artwork by Bill Edwards (variant of cover art for Starchild)

59 •  The Secret Oceans (cover) • interior artwork by Jeffrey Mangiat (variant of cover art for The Secret Oceans 1994)

about Diana Wynne Jones:

61 • On Discovering Diana Wynne Jones • essay by Neil Gaiman (slightly revised from its appearance in the Boskone 32 Program Book, 1995)

64 • Gone ... But Not Forgotten: 2005—2007 • short obituaries by Stephen Jones

67 •  A Wrinkle in Time (cover) • (1983) • interior artwork by Diane Dillon and Leo Dillon (variant of cover art for A Wrinkle in Time)--see below.

78 • World Fantasy Award Nominees: 2007 • essay by uncredited

80 • International Horror Guild Award Nominees: 2007 • essay by uncredited

82 • Past World Fantasy Convention Award Winners & Nominees (World Fantasy Convention 2007) • essay by uncredited

105 • History of the World Fantasy Conventions (World Fantasy Convention 2007) • essay by uncredited

109 • Membership List (World Fantasy Convention 2007) • essay by uncredited

back cover •  "Arzach" [2] • interior artwork by "Moebius"/Jean Henri Gaston Giraud     

the Diane and Leo Dillon new-edition cover for the L'Engle: 

The Awards and Shortlists (courtesy SFADB): Where and When: World Fantasy Convention, Saratoga Springs, NY : November 4, 2007

Eligibility Year: 2006
Judges: Gavin J. Grant, Ed Greenwood, Jeremy Lassen, Jeff Mariotte, Carsten Polzin

Life Achievement

• Winner: Betty Ballantine
• Winner: Diana Wynne Jones

Novel

• Winner: Soldier of Sidon, Gene Wolfe (Tor)
• The Lies of Locke Lamora, Scott Lynch (Gollancz; Bantam Spectra)
• Lisey's Story, Stephen King (Scribner; Hodder & Stoughton)
• The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden, Catherynne M. Valente (Bantam Spectra)
• The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner (Bantam Spectra; Small Beer Press)

Novella

• Winner: “Botch Town”, Jeffrey Ford (The Empire of Ice Cream)
• Dark Harvest, Norman Partridge (Cemetery Dance)
• “The Lineaments of Gratified Desire”, Ysabeau S. Wilce (F&SF Jul 2006)
• “The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train”, Kim Newman (The Man from the Diogenes Club MonkeyBrain)
• “Map of Dreams”, M. Rickert (Map of Dreams Golden Gryphon)

Short Fiction

• Winner: “Journey Into the Kingdom”, M. Rickert (F&SF May 2006)
• “Another Word for Map is Faith”, Christopher Rowe (F&SF Aug 2006)
• “Pol Pot's Beautiful Daughter (Fantasy)”, Geoff Ryman (F&SF Oct/Nov 2006)
• “A Siege of Cranes”, Benjamin Rosenbaum (Twenty Epics All-Star Stories)
• “The Way He Does It”, Jeffrey Ford (Electric Velocipede #10, Spr 2006)

Anthology

• Winner: Salon Fantastique, Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling, eds. (Thunder's Mouth Press)
• Cross Plains Universe: Texans Celebrate Robert E. Howard., Scott A. Cupp & Joe R. Lansdale, eds. (MonkeyBrain and the Fandom Association of Central Texas)
• Firebirds Rising, Sharyn November, ed. (Firebird)
• Retro Pulp Tales, Joe R. Lansdale, ed. (Subterranean Press)
• Twenty Epics, David Moles & Susan Marie Groppi, eds. (All-Star Stories)

Collection

• Winner: Map of Dreams, M. Rickert (Golden Gryphon Press)
• American Morons, Glen Hirshberg (Earthling Publications)
• The Empire of Ice Cream, Jeffrey Ford (Golden Gryphon)
• The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories, Susanna Clarke (Bloomsbury)
• Red Spikes, Margo Lanagan (Allen & Unwin Australia; Knopf)

Artist

• Winner: Shaun Tan
• Jon Foster
• Edward Miller
• John Picacio
• Jill Thompson

Special Award, Professional

• Winner: Ellen Asher, for work at SFBC
• Deanna Hoak, for copyediting
• Greg Ketter, for DreamHaven
• Mark Finn, for Blood and Thunder: The Life and Art of Robert E. Howard
• Leonard S. Marcus, for The Wand in the Word: Conversations with Writers of Fantasy

Special Award, Non-professional

• Winner: Gary K. Wolfe, for reviews and criticism in Locus and elsewhere
• Leslie Howle, for her work at Clarion West
• Leo Grin, for The Cimmerian
• Susan Marie Groppi, for Strange Horizons
• John Klima, for Electric Velocipede
•  below, a 1990 World Fantasy Award trophy, for Jack Vance, in the Gahan Wilson-designed H. P. Lovecraft statue format in use from 1975 till 2015:The purpose of a convention souvenir book is more a matter of a token of appreciation, usually, rather than a lasting monument. Even one, such as this one, with some full-color panels of Moebius's comics work, on heavy, slick paper (as opposed to the rather good if stiff non-clay-coated pages of the rest of the large-format booklet)...something to read while, if waiting alone for a panel or ceremony or speech or reading to start, one sits in audience chairs or otherwise has a downtime moment. Also, to give those who don't know why this person or that one might be speaking or performing, some information...even if the good Ramsey Campbell essay, from his long-running "Ramsey Campbell, Probably" column, barely mentions the Rodens' Ash-Tree Press, at the very end of a survey of 20th Century, including then-recent, attempts to praise the ghost-story tradition, while prematurely burying it...Ash-Tree and the Rodens being singled out as a shining example of those not doing so (though illustrated, as noted above by ISFDB, with a number of Ash-Tree edition covers, in black and white photos). The Campbell column is the best piece of prose in the book, but this doesn't make the heartfelt, if at times insufficiently copy-edited, other short essays and interviews unworthy nor inutile, but someone certainly should've corrected Carol Emshwiller's memory-slip, in a valuable late interview with her, that had her most supportive early editor Robert A. W. Lowndes taking her stories for Thrilling Wonder Stories, a science-fiction magazine with a pulp-legacy title that was also featuring rather sophisticated fiction in the early 1950s...as then edited by Samuel Merwin, then Samuel Mines, while Lowndes was editing rather lower-budget magazines for Louis Silberkleit's Columbia Publications, such as Science Fiction Stories and Double-Action Detective and several western titles. The interviewer overconfidently refers to them as pulps, when the vast majority of her early sales were to digest-sized magazines, which proliferated in the '50s as the pulp format was being phased out.

  

  A not-unique example of an issue with a Carol Emshwiller story within, and with a cover by Edmund Emshwiller (for the Scortia story) with the married couple as the models.
  

Carol Emshwiller, unsurprisingly, is proud of her offspring who are writers, not least that her son Peter writes egalitarian portraits of female as well as male characters, given how she was raised as a "defective boy" in her family of brothers...and recalls the various frustrations and impediments that dogged her even as she would manage to publish distinctive and acclaimed work, as consistently as life would allow. 

The other essays in the booklet tend to be more or less good brief introductions to the works of the convention guests highlighted, including Neil Gaiman's slightly updated appreciation of Diana Wynne Jones (originally written for her 1995 appearance at the Boston annual convention Boskone), and certainly Darrell Schweitzer's, about his long-term work colleague and friend George Scithers, is easily among the most fully-informed about its subject, though several others (such as Stephen Hickman on "Moebius"/Giraud and Locus co-founder Charles Brown on the hugely innovative and accomplished Betty Ballantine) provide some data-points that were new to me (I've never been the biggest fan of Heavy Metal magazine, the US version of Moebius's most prominent market, Metal Hurlant, but he has been among the most influential artists of theirs, if not the single most influential comics artist of his generation). George R. R. Martin on Lisa Tuttle was more in the nostalgic, jokey mode of much fannish writing; Paul J. McAuley just a bit more formal, not too much, in his piece on Kim Newman; the anonymous profile on Joseph Bruchac more briskly professional, though touching rather well on the variegated nature of his career. 

As a further reminder of how ephemeral this was meant to be, the glue holding the cover onto the spine completely gave way as I finished reading it this morning, though I think it can be reapplied carefully. I didn't attend this convention (I managed to drop in on one earlier WFC), but was kindly given this volume. along with others, some years back by Kate Laity, who was lightening her load.