The “K” in “KGB” stood for Kelly as, on the evening of Wednesday, 18 January 2012, the KGB Bar in Manhattan’s East Village, the venue for the Fantastic Fiction Readings Series, hosted readings by authors James Patrick Kelly and Kelly Link. (The Two Kellys thus joins The Two Mrs. Carrolls, The Two Ronnies, The Two Jakes, The Two Georges and the Two Langans—John and Sarah—in memorable parings.)
The Bar, known for its red walls and Soviet era-themed décor, was noticeably less dimly lit than it used to be, and the room was SRO within minutes of opening. (It’s a testament to the Series’ readers that some members of the audience were willing to stand for over two hours. Nor were they deterred by the biting winds and bitter cold.)
The evening of “two different Kellys” began with the Fantastic Fiction Readings Series co-host Mathew Kressel welcoming all and introducing the first reader, James Patrick Kelly. A recipient of the Hugo, Nebula and Locus Awards for his short fiction, Kelly put in a plug—and shared the URL—for his ezine James Patrick Kelly’s Strangeways (on Kindle and Nook), wherein he reprints his stories. The story from which he read two selections, “The Last Judgment,” is appearing in—indeed, is featured on the cover of—the April-May issue of Asimov’s. Set, as was a previous story (“Men Are Trouble”), in a world without men, 40 years after aliens (called “devils,” they may have inspired our image of devils) have “disappeared all the men” (we’ve been blamed for rape, war and genocide; picky, picky, picky, as Pat Paulsen used to say), hard-boiled private eye Fay Hardaway (who displays all of the familiar tropes and smart-ass attitude, which frequently elicited audience chuckles) is hired to recover the titular Hieronymus Bosch painting which has been stolen from her unpleasant client’s collection. (Even in the absence of men, there is still robbery and murder.)
After a break, Series co-host Ellen Datlow reported on upcoming events in the Series (details available at http://www.kgbfantasticfiction.org/), and introduced the second Kelly reader. Kelly Link is the author of three collections of stories, and her fiction has won three Nebula Awards, a Hugo Award, and a World Fantasy Award. The story from which she read the middle part, “Two Houses,” is slated to be published in an anthology honoring Ray Bradbury. Aptly, much as Bradbury’s stories blurred science fiction and fantasy (The Martian Chronicles is, shall we say, far from hard sf, his Mars unrecognizable to the Mars Rovers), so does Link’s story. On a spaceship on a voyage to Proxima, at a birthday party for one of the astronauts, “true” ghost stories are shared. In the tale from which the title derives, a house in which murders have been committed is removed from Arizona and rebuilt brick by brick on an English country estate (the reverse of the American robber barons who transported English castles to Upstate New York) as part of an art installation. Next door to it, an exact copy (even down to the bloodstains and the canned goods in the pantry) is built from scratch, the art work’s other half, so that which is the haunted house and which the “real” one is unknown and unidentifiable. The question becomes even more puzzling when one of the two (which?) burns down. (Also, when a haunted house is relocated, are its ghosts? Can they tell the two houses apart? And if it were their house destroyed, would they simply move into the other? Can a haunted house be built from scratch?)
Copies of Kelly’s books were for sale at the back of the room.
As usual, Datlow scurried around snapping photos of the readers and audience. We expect her photos to be available on her Flickr page soon. [Amended on 23 January: the photos are here.]