On the evening of Wednesday, 6 March 2013, at the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art on Sullivan Street in Manhattan, the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series presented a special spotlight on Oz Reimagined: New Tales from the Emerald City and Beyond, the just-released anthology of new tales inspired by L. Frank Baum’s much-beloved wonderland, edited by John Joseph Adams and Douglas Cohen, hosted by Cohen.  (An intended Skype hook-up with Adams, unfortunately, fell through. Also, they were unable to arrange for a tornado, and we instead got a relatively mild nor’easter, no blizzard of Oz.) The collection boasts contributions from some of the most honored fantasy and sf writers working today, including Orson Scott Card, Tad Williams, Seanan McGuire, Jane Yolen, Simon R. Green, Jonathan Maberry, David Farland, Jeffrey Ford, Gregory Maguire, Theodora Goss, Rachel Swirsky, Kat Howard, Dale Bailey, Rae Carson & C.C. Finlay, and the two readers for the evening, Ken Liu and Robin Wasserman.

As the Series’ executive curator, Jim Freund, quipped, March is coming in like a cowardly lion. Besides the present anthology, Oz is being reimagined in Disney’s OZ – The Great and Powerful, and the Heritage Square Museum in Los Angeles is hosting a month-long show (running through the 31^st) entitled “Visions of Oz: A Celebration of Art from Over the Rainbow.”

Freund opened the event by welcoming the audience and introducing the SGDA’s proprietor, John Ordover, who called attention to the “bacony,” “porcine”-themed refreshments, such as bacon strips, bacon butter, even (I’m not making this up) bacon Bloody Marys (there was, mercifully, also bacon-free cheese and apple cider), leftovers from “Bacon-Palooza,” a fundraiser for his autistic son’s school, and indicated several items for sale, particularly a limited-edition bacon-themed collection of stories, both original and suitably revised, from a litter of authors … undoubtedly the most non-kosher anthology around. Returning to the podium, Freund, the host of WBAI’s (99.5 FM) Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy, called attention to flyers that solicited donations for WBAI’s antenna rent crisis. He concluded by announcing upcoming readings – on Tuesday, 2 April, Karen Heuler and Kit Reed, and on Tuesday 7 May, readings hosted by guest curator Ron Hogan – and introducing host Douglas Cohen, the former editor of Realms of Fantasy Magazine and co-editor of Oz Reimagined.

Cohen, after extolling Adams, who has been called “the reigning king of the anthology world” and been nominated for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards, read from their introduction to the anthology, “There’s No Place Like Oz.” Oz has transcended the popular books – and the epic movie musical – and become imbedded in American, indeed, world culture. In this volume, an homage to Baum’s classic books – rather than to the MGM film (for instance, it may be noted that on the cover, Dorothy’s footwear is silver, not ruby red slippers) – Oz is revisited, and the adventures of Dorothy and her companions “take a delightful right turn,” “refashioned and transformed in radical ways – to new times, new places, and even new dimensions – all while remaining true to the spirit of Oz” (an arguable claim).

Lead-off reader Robin Wasserman, appropriately wearing ruby red boots, half-apologized that her story was the only one without any science fiction or fantasy elements. As might be surmised from her title, “One Flew Over the Rainbow,” Dorothy and her friends are recast as mental patients (Dorothy has been committed by her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry, who live in a “gray, lifeless world,” and her sparkly silver combat boots confiscated), with the orderlies dubbed “monkeys” and its Nurse Ratched referred to by them as the “Wicked Bitch of West.” The disquieting story was fairly graphic (Tina, the counterpart of the Tin Woodman, is a cutter and has sex with the Wizard, who, of course, lives in Green wing), something unexpected from the author of several books for children and young adults. (Hmm, the stage version of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was written by Dale Wasserman.)

A raffle drawing was then held for ten copies of Oz Reimagined, after which there was a short recess. Cohen then presented the evening’s second and final reader, Ken Liu.

Ken Liu has won a Hugo, a World Fantasy, a Nebula (furthermore, remarkably, he has three Nebula nominations this year alone!) Award, and a Science Fiction & Fantasy Translation Award, and been nominated for the Sturgeon Award. Aptly, in his contribution to the anthology, the translator of speculative fiction has translated Baum’s story, though not between languages, but between cultures. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is considered by many a political allegory, and “The Veiled Shanghai” sets Dorothy and the gang in 1919, in a fantastical colonial Shanghai amid the tumult of the May Fourth Movement, a precursor of and inspiration for Tiananmen Square (May-June 1989). (Liu explained that the students of the 1919 protest were both anti-imperialist and pro-Western; to them, their goals were not in conflict – they opposed traditional China and wanted to create a Chinese version of Western culture, but without European domination.) The story from which he read an excerpt veered between exotically imaginative and shameless in its analogs. Dorothy is a Europhile Chinese girl who gets lost in the chaos of a demonstration and finds herself in the other Shanghai, a darker, magical city. She’s not on Kansu Road anymore. She is counseled by a Buddhist nun of the North to seek out the wizard Oz of Emerald House for help to get home to Uncle Heng and Aunt En. Setting out along the Road of Golden Yellow Bricks, she is joined by a scarecrow of a boy looking not to be foolish anymore, a once-human steampunk automaton, a steel woodman who had his heart replaced and wants it back (he’s an ex-lumberjack and he’s not OK), and an ex-Boxer hoping to regain his lion-like courage. (Oh my!)

The audience of nearly 50 included K. Tempest Bradford, Harold Garber, Barry Goldblatt, Amy Goldschlager, Justin Golenbock (of Amazon Publishing), Karen Heuler (one of next month’s readers), Kim Kindya, Barbara Krasnoff, Lissanne Lake, Joe Monti, Robert Rodriquez, and James Ryan. After the traditional folding-up of chairs, members of the audience adjourned, as customary, to Milady’s, a nearby pub.