On the evening of Tuesday 9 August (the second Tuesday of the month), at its current venue, the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art on Sullivan Street, the New York Review of Science Fiction (or NYRSF) Readings Series hosted sf/fantasy authors Laura Anne Gilman and Keith R.A. DeCandido.
In prefatory remarks, Jim Freund, the Series’ executive curator and host of WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy (now broadcasting and streaming every Thursday morning at 1:30AM on WBAI, 99.5 FM), welcomed the crowd, and repeated, yet again, his riff on the Series’ two-year 20th anniversary season (“Twentieth Season 2.0”). Then, breaking with tradition, he introduced both of the evening’s readers at once, and then got out of the way.
The Keith and Laura Anne show (or as the cognoscenti have come to know it, “Goo the Tall and Meer the Small”) made their bid to be this generation’s Burns and Allen. They’re not quite there, but they’re better sf writers. They let the audience choose who was going to read first: Gilman’s dark and depressing, or DeCandido’s light and fluffy. The audience went for dark first, dessert second, and DeCandido sat down.
Laura Anne Gilman is the author of nine Cosa Nostradamus novels, including the forthcoming (in November) Tricks of the Trade, and the Nebula Award-nominated Vineart War fantasy trilogy (Flesh and Fire, Weight of Stone and, in October, the concluding volume, The Shattered Vine). Having been chosen to read first, she offered the audience one of two selections from her current collection, Dragon Virus, and then managed to convince them to go for the “very depressing”—but more effective standalone—piece, section 5. The book chronicles a gene-altering mutation plague that strikes the entire population, with fewer “norms” born each generation, and extends into the post-apocalyptic world. In this story, a Changed boy’s baby sister is born normal, and we hear of hate crimes committed on both sides of the double-helix. The audience was rapt.
After a brief break, Keith R.A. DeCandido took the stage. He is the author of more than 40 novels, dozens of novellas, short stories and comic books, as well as non-fiction pieces. He, too, offered the audience a choice of two pieces: a standalone short story, or a piece of a novel. The audience went for a selection from the first volume of his SCPD (Super City Police Department) series, The Case of the Claw. His selection couldn’t have been more different from Gilman’s. Set in the titular metropolis, ordinary, non-super cops try to maintain law and order in a city of costumed vigilantes and superheroes, and super-villains, such as the half-man/half-avian, taloned serial killer, the Claw. (It should appeal to fans of Brian Michael Bendis’ comic-book series Powers, which DeCandido says that he has never seen. As it happens, DeCandido also writes high-fantasy police procedurals, Dragon Precinct and the current Unicorn Precinct, which, he related, one reviewer had described as “Dungeons and Dragnet.”) DeCandido’s presentation was further enhanced by his voice characterizations (imagine Fozzy Bear speaking with Kermit’s voice).
Freund returned to the podium to conclude the evening and season (the Series seems to have become a year-round event, with no summer hiatus), and to announce that the 21st Season would open on 13 September with past curator Amy Goldschlager guest-curating, and continue on 4 October with Margot Adler guest-curating and Susan and Clay Griffith reading.
The audience of about 40 included NPR’s Margot Adler, Amy Goldschlager (at the door), Ruth & composer Steve Rosenhaus, SFScope‘s Ian Randal Strock, and Terence Taylor. After the chairs were folded up and stacked, the guests and a number of audience members adjourned, as customary, to Milady’s, a nearby pub.