[Editor’s note: Once again, the editor wasn’t able to attend the reading to write a review, but the intrepid Eugene Myers stepped up to the plate and wrote this review for SFScope. Thanks, Eugene! And to anyone else who attends an interesting event: feel free to write up a review for SFScope. The editor is willing to edit and give you all the credit; just send it to editor at sfscope dot com.]
The New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series brought two new fantasy authors to the South Street Seaport Museum’s Melville Gallery, Sarah Beth Durst and Felix Gilman. The event was produced by Jim Freund (host of WBAI’s speculative fiction radio program Hour of the Wolf), and guest-curated by author and reviewer Paul Witcover. Though the rainy evening was perfect for relaxing and listening to fiction, the wet weather likely drove away many of the series’ regular attendees; the audience was fairly cozy with about twenty-five or thirty people.
Freund started things off on a somber note, with an announcement of Robert Legault’s death last week. He shared some memories of Legault and read one of his blog entries, “Secret Master”, which is available online at this link. Witcover then took the podium and introduced the first reader, Sarah Beth Durst.
Durst quickly cheered up the room with her enthusiasm and energy as she provided a recap of her first young adult fantasy, Into the Wild (in which Rapunzel’s twelve-year-old daughter Julie ventures into the fairy tale to rescue her mother), then read a fun excerpt from early in the novel: Julie’s bike comes to life and abandons her, and she tries to save a forty-year-old businesswoman who is being forced to act out the role of Little Red Riding Hood. Durst followed this with a selection from the sequel, coincidentally titled Out of the Wild, which is due out this June. Durst’s bright voice breathed life into her characters, especially the young heroine Julie, and was well-suited to the humorous tone and fast pace of the pieces she read.
After a short intermission, Witcover introduced Felix Gilman, who read from the beginning of his debut novel, Thunderer, an urban fantasy set in the labyrinthine city of Ararat. Gilman’s prose is like poetry; it’s easy to lose yourself in his words, just as his characters become lost in the tricky city of gods. His unaffected reading style effortlessly draws you into the imaginative setting, taking you on the same engaging journey his characters face. Thunderer is an impressive first novel, and an equally impressive effort for his first reading. You can check out the opening chapter of the book for yourself at felixgilman.com, but if you want a real taste of what you missed, you may be able to listen to a recording of Durst and Gilman’s readings on Hour of the Wolf on WBAI 99.5 FM—check the schedule at hourwolf.com.
The enjoyable evening ended at the nearby Ryan Maguire’s pub, as they often do after readings, where most of the small audience gathered to dine, drink, socialize, and bump elbows with the authors.
——Eugene Myers
Producer Jim Freund adds:
The next first Tuesday is April first, so I’m announcing that our readers will be Thomas Pynchon and JD Salinger. In the event they don’t turn up, due to bad weather or whatever, it’s likely that Andy Duncan and Elizabeth Glover will read instead.
“As producer, I recuse myself from telling your audience what a scintillating evening was had by all that attended, and even those who weren’t there were envious of us all for having attended such a wonderful event.
“At any rate I enjoyed it.”
[Editor’s note: Well, he may recuse himself, but as the editor of SFScope, I reserve the right to put his comments right back in there. Freund also provided this link to his photos of this and previous readings.]