The New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series opened its 20th anniversary season on the evening of 6 October by bringing back as guest curator Gordon Van Gelder, who founded this Series and was its first curator. In a happy coincidence, wearing another hat (or, rather, T-shirt), Van Gelder is the current publisher and editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction (familiarly, F&SF)—for which he has been honored with the Hugo Award and the World Fantasy Award—and so the event was a celebration as well of the 60th anniversary of that acclaimed publication.
The evening began with the Series’ current executive curator, Jim Freund, host of WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy, welcoming the audience to the new season. The 5th floor space in the main building of the South Street Seaport Museum, at 12 Fulton Street, he noted, was the Series’ fourth venue at the Seaport within seven years, and, regrettably, would only be available through February due to renovations. He then turned the hosting duties over to Gordon. Equally uncertain as Jim whether the Series began in 1989 or 1990, Van Gelder (who had donned an orange F&SF T-shirt) expressed his pride in shepherding the legacy of F&SF—which he compared to taking over as manager of the Yankees—and introduced the first of three readers, all of whom were contributors to its diamond anniversary issue.
Paul Di Filippo was the “neophyte” of the readers, having had his first piece published in F&SF only in 1985 (though his readership goes back to 1967). He opened by reading an unpublished piece (which he believes will never see print), “His Nerves Quivered from That Stunning Array of Words”, aptly looking back fondly to old-time sf, specifically, an Ace Double featuring stories by A.E. van Vogt and George O. Smith. (In a neat bit of serendipity, the book featured covers by Ed Emshwiller, and Emsh’s widow Carol was another of the evening’s readers.) Next, he presented from his humor column, “Plumage from Pegasus”, in the commemorative issue, “Sugar and Spice, and Everything Licensable”. Taking off from the permutations of Neil Gaiman’s Coraline into a variety of media (from book to film to stage play), his author’s iconic character is similarly adapted into film and Broadway show, then her image is licensed subsequently for juice boxes, underwear, peanut butter and, ultimately, for police tasers and the instrumentality of a totalitarian state.
Carol Emshwiller’s association with The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction began in the mid-1950s, but, in addition to her fiction, as a model for Emsh, she appeared on its covers and in interior art. She has been honored with the World Fantasy lifetime achievement award, the Nebula Award, and the Philip K. Dick Award. As she set up to read, it became painfully obvious that the room’s acoustics were sub-par, and its lighting particularly so for a self-described “old lady”. (Carol is 87 years young.) In a bizarre turn, her reading light was provided by Jim Freund’s electric hat (yes, Jim was light-headed). Her selection in the October/November issue, “The Logicist”, “one of my war stories,” concerned a teacher, a spectator of a battle, who stumbles off the field of war into an oasis of peace and serenity that’s an enclave of enemy civilians.
After a recess, Van Gelder presented the final reader of the night, Ron Goulart, sf and mystery writer (this reviewer has a soft spot for his humorous sf, and is a great fan of his mysteries featuring Groucho Marx as a sleuth), and expert on pulps and comic books/comic art (not to mention his being William Shatner’s ghostwriter/collaborator). Goulart was first published in F&SF in 1952, and, appropriately, instead of reading his story in the current issue, “I Waltzed with a Zombie”, offered his “longer and better” introduction to it, along with “annotations” (or digressions, or possibly ramblings). At times even harder to hear than Carol had been, Goulart said that he had “made myself a career” because of F&SF, describing how, as a boy in Berkeley, he had moved up the magazine racks from comic books to pulps and sf magazines. (Ray Bradbury, he said, was his idol.) He had signed up for a writing course with Anthony Boucher, co-editor (with J. Francis McComas) of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and, at 19, sold him a story, a parody. He reminisced about meeting Bradbury, about Phil Dick, Poul Anderson, and the renowned San Francisco Bay Area sf club, the Elves’, Gnomes’, and Little Men’s Science Fiction, Marching, and Chowder Society.
Gordon closed by half-promising to do this again in 10 years. Copies of the current issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction were on sale. Copies of back issues from the late 1990s, left out on a freebie table, quickly vanished.
The audience, which exceeded 50, included John Joseph Adams, Gregory Benford, Richard Bowes, Richard Friedman, Harold Garber, David Hartwell, Barbara Krasnoff, Gordon Linzner, Jon Messinger, and Andrew Porter. As customary, a number of the audience adjourned to a nearby pub for refreshment and further conversation. (We did not, for old time’s sake, as we did two decades ago, head over to Gordon’s apartment.)