In keeping with the family theme of the December holidays season, the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings on the evening of Tuesday 8 December 2009 featured (as last December) couple Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman. As part of the Series’ 20th season celebration, past curator Claire Wolf Smith returned to present the evening’s readers and to reminisce. The event was held at the NYRSF Readings Series‘ current venue, the 5th floor of the South Street Seaport Museum, 12 Fulton Street in Manhattan.
After welcoming the audience and announcing upcoming readings (the Series will continue at this location through February) 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 Wolf Smith, its third curator (1994-96). Slipping into the role of historian, Claire began by praising the Series’ founder, Gordon Van Gelder, for making “the New York science fiction scene better” by establishing the reasonably-priced (still only $5 suggested donation), fun, and exciting monthly reading series. The stellar line-up of readers over the years (which she recited) said it all. She next related how she came to curate the Series (the first time by accident) and recalled the early days (and mishaps) at Dixon Place and its relocation, and the famous orange post cards (hand-addressed in those days). Finally, after briefly forgetting to present the readers before leaving the podium, Claire introduced Sherman and Kushner.
In the first half of the evening, Sherman read one of her fantasy stories, with Kushner jumping in to read several sections. The charming fantasy, “How the Pooka Came to New York City”, set in Five Points in 1855, told of the arrival of an Irish immigrant and his companion, a dog-shaped pooka suffering from iron sickness. (A pooka, for those who’ve never seen Harvey, is a trickster, and the Five Points section, not far from South Street, may be most familiar from the film Gangs of New York.) The pooka, we see, is not the only member of “the fair folk” in town; he’s joined by selkies, leprechauns, and sidhe.
Following a break, the order was reversed, with Kushner reading an unpublished story, “The Man with the Knives”, and Sherman chiming in to read sections. The engaging, though staccato, tale centered on two outsiders, the reclusive daughter of a physician and one herself, and the titular stranger, a foreigner who comes to the wooded island wounded (today we’d call him a cutter), grieving, and haunted by visions of his drowned love. They soon become lovers, but, though she heals him, curing him is a different matter. The tag-team arrangement did not work as well with this piece, as the switch-off between Ellen and Delia seemed particularly random, coming in the middle of scenes. Perhaps, as another audience member and this writer discussed afterward, there being two readers and two protagonists, each should have taken one of the characters’ periodic reminiscences and read it all the way through, instead of only midway, which was somewhat distracting and confusing.
Kushner also plugged the Vital Theatre’s adaptation (running Saturdays and Sundays through 3 January) of The Klezmer Nutcracker, based on her radio special/CD/book, The Golden Dreydl (an audience member, who’d seen it with her kids, gave it an unsolicited rave as “the highlight of the Chanukah season”; Chanukah, by the way, begins at sundown on Friday 11 December), neatly concluding the evening’s sort-of holiday theme. Books written and edited by Sherman and Kushner, solo and jointly, were on sale at the back of the room.
The audience of just about 50 included Richard Bowes, S.C. Butler, Vanessa Felice (Jenna’s sister), Harold Garber, Amy Goldschlager (next month’s returning guest curator), Justin Howe, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Barbara Krasnoff, Josh Kronengold, Gordon Linzner, Jon Messinger, Lisa Padol, Terence Taylor, and Genevieve Valentine. Afterward, as customary, the guests and a number of audience members adjourned to a nearby pub for dinner and conversation.
Happy holidays.