The New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series closed out its 18th season (the chronology was determined finally after an archive search) on the evening of Tuesday 3 June 2008, with fiction from two writers, longtime master Thomas M. Disch and brilliant newcomer Karen Russell.
The readings are curated by Jim Freund, host of WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf—a weekly program on sf and fantasy. Due to a booking mishap, the event was unexpectedly relocated from its usual venue at the South Street Seaport Museum’s Melville Gallery (those entering the Gallery were treated to an enthusiastic round of sea chanteys) to a somewhat smaller space at a nearby branch of the Museum at 12 Fulton Street on Schermerhorn Row. (The new site, on the building’s 4th floor, had the distinction, it’s said, of being haunted, a murder having been committed there in the early 19th century.) Despite the last-minute move, it was an impressive turn-out. The audience of nearly 40 included John Joseph Adams, Rick Bowes, Howard Garber, David Hill, Barbara Krasnoff, Gordon Linzner, Jon Messinger, Andy Porter, Linn Prentis, Bob Rodriguez, and Norman Spinrad, as well as folks from Mobile Libris (and perhaps a ghost).
The first reader, Karen Russell, has been featured in both The New Yorker‘s debut fiction issue and New York Magazine‘s list of 25 writers to watch under the age of 26. The 2005 recipient of the Transatlantic Review/Henfield Foundation Award; her fiction also recently appeared in Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, and her recent collection, St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves, has received rave reviews. Russell’s selection for the evening, from the anthology Granta 97: Best of Young American Novelists, Vol. 2, was “The Barn from the End of Our Term”, a strange and absurdly amusing tale about Rutherford B. Hayes and ten other Presidents of the United States (among them Eisenhower, Jackson, Grant, Wilson, Garfield, and Harding—but not Polk, the original “Dark Horse”) enigmatically reincarnated as horses (entire horses, not just their hindquarters, ha ha) on a seemingly, but perhaps not so, ordinary farm.
Thomas M. Disch, Hugo-honored author, poet, and critic, best-known for Camp Concentration, 334, and The Brave Little Toaster, followed. The evening’s heretical theme continued and crescendoed as Disch read from his latest—and playfully blasphemous—novel (though he calls it a memoir, a true story), The Word of God, Or the Holy Writ Rewritten. In it, Disch reveals his sudden elevation to Godhood. (But to retain it, he must do battle with the recently reincarnated Philip K. Dick, which would apparently make PKD the Devil! How’s that for a theology?) Disch elaborated that he is not a jealous God, that he allows his acolytes (“Thomasites”) to have other gods, and indeed instructs people to read religious texts skeptically and write their own Scripture. After reciting a poem from the volume and reading the introduction to the chapter, the divine and most holy Disch treated the audience to Chapter 6, “The New Me”, in his characteristic deadpan delivery. (Assertiveness training and the quest for spiritual strength seem to share much.)
Afterward, as customary, the guests and a number of the audience adjourned to a nearby pub for dinner and conversation. (Does this being the last gathering of the season make it the Last Supper?)