I'm in a Facebook group hosted by D. F. Lewis, called Hyper-Imaginative Literature, where Des is seeking at getting at the kind of fiction (as I understand him to mean) that tends to shake up perceptions, at least to some extent...the other week, members had been offering potential 12-entry anthologies of some of the relevant fiction...I was sleepy but not successfully winding into sleep, so I decided to play along, but hadn't noted fully the dozens rule, and Des wondered if I would pare my 18-entry item down (it echoed the Robert Arthur-edited Alfred Hitchcock Presents: volumes even down to including a novel, in that first batch only Kate Wilhelm's Death Qualified, which is my favorite of her most qualifying novels, though most of hers would qualify). So, I did two dozens, instead, with a Calvino novel-of-sorts in multiple Tarot-driven vignettes among the added, instead. (Since I was sleepy still, I was lazy enough to add my two better relevant very short stories, or at least the choice of one of the two.)
6 comments:
Interesting line-ups for both, Todd. I'd buy them.
I would buy them also, but I am not sure all of the stories would be to my liking.
I read "Prowl" by Barry N. Malzberg at archive.org and I loved it. Not a story I would have expected to like at all.
I also want to read "David's Friend, the Hole", but it is longer and I cannot read it right this minute.
Also, Wilhelm's DEATH QUALIFIED is at the top of my list of books to acquire later in the year. I will check the book sale first. I have read the first book in her other mystery series, and have books 2 and 3.
Sadly, I don't think (even more sadly, the late) Barry liked "Prowl" very much, since he was a father and it gets at the (undesired, usually) resentment of parents toward their children (hard to extirpate, we being human and all), but damn did it resonate with 13yo me. Glad you were able to find it relatively easily...aside from its first publication in FANTASTIC, in was in a little magazine called INHUMAN, and Barry was surpised to learn about that when I mentioned it to him (which does make one wonder).
Thanks, Jerry and Tracy...I might refine the lists/TOCs further (certainly revisit some of the fiction, since it's been decades in some cases) were I to get more serious about this (such as charge someone for these in any sort of formal package/book).
More links to come. A few are not online, I fear...but there are worse fates than buying or borrowing a copy of A. A. Attanasio's BEASTMARKS, his first collection. (My story "Bonobos" was only in Claude Lalumiere's webzine LOST PAGES so far, and LOST PAGES has been offline and too lost for some years now.)
"Bedtime" isn't online for fear of Harlan Ellison's resistance to his story being online, since the April 1994 issue was the only TOMORROW SPECULATIVE FICTION to include stories by either Ellison or me. Mine was added at the last minute, so I am the only fiction-writer not credited on the cover, since the Yerka cover painting, one of those Ellison wrote his MINDFIELDS stories around, didn't fit the usual dimensions of a TOMORROW cover, and so all the other fiction contributors were given cover credit.
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