On the evening of Tuesday, 3 January 2012, as if the Iowa Caucus wasn’t subversive enough, the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series opened the new year&#821l2;which promises to continue 2011’s “Year of the Protestor”—with an evening spotlighting the new anthology from Crossed Genres Publications, Subversion: Science Fiction & Fantasy Tales of Challenging the Norm. (See accompanying review.) Held at the Series’ current venue, the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art on Sullivan Street in Manhattan, the event, presenting readings by Barbara Krasnoff, Kay T. Holt and Daniel José Older, was guest-hosted by the compilation’s editor and co-publisher of Crossed Genres Publications, Bart R. Leib.
The Series’ executive curator, Jim Freund, host of WBAI’s (99.5 FM) Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy, greeted the audience, welcoming them back to the Series’ 21st season, thanked SGDA proprietor John Ordover (in absentia) and his associate Kim Kindya, and announced 7 February’s special Coast Guard-themed evening, featuring USCG Lt. (jg) Myke Cole (author of a fantasy about the US Coast Guard with sorcerers) and Coast Guard veteran Robert J. Howe, then turned things over to Leib.
Crossed Genres Publications, said Leib, began as a quarterly magazine before transitioning to a publisher of novels and anthologies. (Their upcoming anthology, of which he is co-editor, is Fat Girl in a Strange Land.) The changeover, he reported, is now complete; the final issue of the print quarterly has been published. The present anthology, which contains 16 original tales, arose from the idea that subversion is, in essence, a small, personal act, and doesn’t have to involve “explosions and violence”; it may be “subtler.” He then introduced the evening’s first reader.
Barbara Krasnoff chose not to read her story from the anthology, “Red Dybbuk,” as she had read it at the NYRSF Reading in April. Instead she offered a piece that had appeared in Clockwork Phoenix 2, “Rosemary, That’s for Remembrance.” In it, an old woman reminisces as she visits a beauty parlor that brainwashes and sets… that collects and preserves memories. (Those head-enveloping hairdryers always did remind us of the brain-transfer machines of too-many cartoons, or vice versa.) How subversive—in keeping with the theme of the night—the story is left to the reader.
The second reader, Kay T. Holt, Leib’s wife, and co-founder and co-publisher of Crossed Genres Publications, read her story from Subversion, “Parent Hack.” In a future where the foster care system assigns “perfect” android Guardians, two boys hire an outlaw hacker to alter their bots’ parenting sub-routines. But what is on the face of it subversive (they are, after all, “tampering with government property”), we soon see, goes to heart of family.
After a short break, Leib introduced the evening’s final reader, Daniel José Older, who read a selection from his story in the collection (and broke off, unapologetically, on a cliffhanger), “Phantom Overload.” Set in exotic Brooklyn, a “mostly dead” (due to a “botched resurrection”), independently minded (or smart-mouthed) Puerto Rican soulcatcher, an agent of the afterlife bureaucracy, is assigned to investigate when a pack of Latino ghosts—illegal immigrants, as it were—refuse to board the “ghost bus” and ride off gently into that good night. He soon finds himself in a street fight between groups of ghosts that threatens the living as the truth and hidden agendas slowly emerge. Though there were, as one would expect, elements of horror, the story frequently evoked hearty laughter from the audience.
Copies of the anthology (whose contributors also include RJ Astruc, Jean Johnson and Cat Rambo) were for sale at the back of the room.
The audience of close to 40 included Richard Bowes, Amy Goldschlager, N.K. Jemisin, Kim Kindya, Lissanne Lake, Danny Lieberman, Ama Patterson, and (briefly) Terence Taylor. After the ceremonial folding-up of chairs (the exhortation fell to Leib), the readers and members of the audience adjourned, as customary, to Milady’s, a nearby pub.