On the evening of Tuesday, 1 May 2012, at its current venue, the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art on Sullivan Street in Manhattan, the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series presented the vastly different nightmarish visions of dark fantasy and dystopian sf adepts John Shirley [photo below left] and Michael Cisco [photo above right]. (Aptly, besides May Day, it was also Beltane.)
Appearing briefly, SGDA Proprietor John Ordover welcomed the audience and publicized the Gallery’s simulcast of SFWA’s (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America) Nebula Awards Banquet on Saturday, 19 May. (The event is being held in Arlington, Va.) Admission is $10. Then, as it was his birthday (his 50th), the assemblage sang “Happy Birthday” (mostly in harmony!) and drew distinction between age and maturity.
A few minutes later, the Series’ executive curator, Jim Freund, host of WBAI’s (99.5 FM) Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy (Thursdays, 1:30-3:00AM, greeted the audience, thanked Ordover, and announced upcoming readings: a second reading this month, on 22 May, guest-curated by Liz Gorinsky (who has just been nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Professional Editor—Long Form), and featuring Charlie Jane Anders and Brian Francis Slattery, and the next regular reading, on 5 June, guest-curated by K. Tempest Bradford, and presenting N.K. Jemisin and a second writer to be announced. (Freund took the opportunity to remind all to join and stay in touch through the Series’ mailing list and Facebook page.) Concluding his remarks, he introduced the first reader, Michael Cisco.
Cisco is the author of the novels The Divinity Student, The Tyrant, The San Veneficio Canon, The Traitor, The Narrator, The Great Lover and the upcoming Celebrant, and a short story collection, Secret Hours. His fiction has appeared in Lovecraft Unbound (from which he read at an earlier NYRSF Reading), Black Wings I: Tales of Lovecraftian Horror and elsewhere, and his “alleged scholarly work” (his words) has appeared in Lovecraft Studies and The Weird Fiction Review. The story that he read, “Violence, Child of Trust,” was published in Black Wings I, and centered on a family that practices human (woman) sacrifice to a nameless horror. He read softly, intensifying the tale’s chill, but, regrettably, making him inaudible at times.
After a short break, Freund introduced the final reader of the evening, John Shirley, the author of the Bram Stoker Award-winning story collection Black Butterflies, the cyberpunk trilogy A Song Called Youth, and the novels Demons, Bleak History, Bioshock: Rapture and Everything is Broken. With William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker (who read here in March), Pat Cadigan and Lew Shiner, he was one of the original cyberpunk novelists; indeed, Gibson has called him “cyberpunk’s Patient Zero, first locus of the virus, certifiably virulent. A carrier.” In addition, Shirley co-wrote the movie The Crow, as well as 18 songs recorded by the Blue Oyster Cult. The story that he read, “Raise Your Hand If You’re Dead,” appears in his newest collection, In Extremis: The Most Extreme Stories of John Shirley.
Set in 2035, a time of economic collapse, epidemics (pigeon flu, mutated malaria) and street gangs, a pair of siblings makes their living, such as it is, robbing the dead, floaters who have jumped—or were pushed—from the Golden Gate Bridge, scavenging their valuables and harvesting their organs. When they rescue a federal agent (she’d made it more profitable than drowning her), they discover an even more repellent scheme to rob the dead (and murdered), the rich and powerful uploading into new bodies. (Unfortunately, the transfer is of their memories only, so that they are now literally “soulless,” “empties,” sociopaths.)
The audience of 40 or 45 included Richard Bowes, Harold Garber, Karen Heuler, Kim Kindya, Barbara Krasnoff, John Kwok, Lissanne Lake, Danny Lieberman and Gordon Linzner. After the traditional folding-up of the IKEA chairs (the how-to was demonstrated earlier by Freund; they’re literally ass-backwards), the readers and members of the audience adjourned, as customary, to Milady’s, a nearby pub (or “dive bar”).
The New York Review of Science Fiction Reading Series usually (though not always) takes place on the first Tuesday of every month, and is free ($7 suggested donation). Funds collected are used to treat readers to dinner and drinks nearby, and provide light refreshments (apple cider, cheese and crackers).