On the evening of Tuesday 5 May 2009—Cinco de Mayo—the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series featured a second evening of readings by members of the New York speculative fiction writers’ group, Tabula Rasa. The event, billed as “The Writers of Tabula Rasa: Episode II”, was (as was “Episode I” in March) guest-curated and emceed by Richard Bowes at the NYRSF Readings Series’ current venue, the main building of the South Street Seaport Museum, at 12 Fulton Street.
Following brief opening remarks about future readings before the audience of nearly 40 (the crowd began small, then swelled into one of the largest audiences of the season), the Series’ executive curator, Jim Freund, host of WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy, turned things over to Bowes.
Rick, himself an award-winning author, introduced Saladin Ahmed, who read from the beginning of “Where Virtue Lives”, a sword-&-sorcery tale set in a world about which he has written before, a setting with a strong Arabian Nights influence. (Ahmed, born in Detroit, is an Arab-American.) With so much fantasy based in Celtic and Nordic myth, culture, and folklore, the change of scenery was refreshing. Despite his rookie status, Saladin read well, changing voices as appropriate, and the story about an old ghoul hunter and his would-be apprentice, a young dervish, was amusing and captivating.
The second reader was Andrea Kail, and her selection, from her Le Nouveau Dieu, similarly transported us to a less familiar fantasy milieu, that of the West Indian voodoo gods, for the reminiscences of a sorcerer-priest (or witch doctor) and his sacred quest. Both her story and reading style were quieter than Ahmed’s, but the audience was nonetheless rapt.
After a break, Freund reintroduced Rick, who presented the third reader, writer and editor Robert J. Howe (he was originally scheduled to read at March’s “Tabula Rasa: Episode I”). Howe read from the beginning of his novella, “Pinocchio’s Diary”, in which the wooden puppet is sent to school, where he is given the unflattering nickname (meaning “pine eye”—”knothole” or “anus” in Howe’s story, but, in actuality, “pine nut” in the local Italian dialect) and taunted by his classmates for not being a real boy. As Bowes remarked, the 19th-century didactic character (Carlo Collodi’s original tale—like the Disney cartoon—is a moralistic fable about always being truthful, obedient, and hard-working) is shown in a new light.
The audience included Tempest Bradshaw, Christopher M. Cevasco. Kris Dikeman, Justin Howe, Nora (N.K.) Jemisin, David Barr Kirtley, Barbara Krasnoff, Matt Kressel, Ellie Lang, Gordon Linzner, Terence Taylor, and Genevieve Valentine. Afterward, as customary, the guests and—as was less customary—nearly all of the audience adjourned to a nearby pub for dinner and conversation.