Michael Swanwick reading at the NYRSF Readings at SGDA, 10 September 2013. Photo by Barbara Krasnoff.
On the evening of Tuesday, 10 September 2013 – in much-appreciated relief from the day’s (phew, the year’s) New York City Primary – at its current venue, the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art on Sullivan Street, the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series’ official 23rd season opened (only somewhat Discordianly) with offerings from acclaimed sf/fantasy authors Michael Swanwick and Richard Bowes. (Covers of their books, along with photos of the writers themselves, were displayed imposingly on screens around the SGDA’s hall.)
The Series’ executive curator, Jim Freund, host of WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy (currently broadcasting and streaming every Thursday morning from 1:30-3:00 am on WBAI, 99.5 FM – and yes, the station is still on-air, despite what one might think after reading last week’s Village Voice cover story), greeted the audience, welcomed them to the new season, and announced upcoming readings. There will be two in October; the first, on the 1st, will be the Series’ annual vampire-themed event, guest-hosted, of course, by Margot Adler (who has read over 260 vampire novels, and whose book about our fascination with the undead, Out For Blood, is in release), and will feature Terence Taylor and Kate Locke. The second, to be scheduled, will present Moira Crone and her husband, Rodger Kamenetz. November’s event, also to be set, will likely be a tribute to a notable in the sf/fantasy field, one of the Series’ nicer traditions. He concluded by introducing the evening’s first reader.
Richard Bowes reading at the NYRSF Readings at SGDA, 10 September 2013. Photo by Barbara Krasnoff.
A familiar face at the Series, Richard Bowes, a recipient of the World Fantasy, Lambda, International Horror Guild and Million Writers Awards, read from “a reworking” of the title story, a World Fantasy Award-winning novella, in If Angels Fight, a collection of new and old stories, being published by Fairwood Press this month. The tale centers on the appearances of a guardian angel throughout the protagonist’s life. Bowes, who has been called “the [John] Cheever of urban fantasy,” masterfully crafts word-pictures of Manhattan locales’ history and character, particularly Greenwich Village (it takes a non-native, it seems, to capture its essence). Regrettably, though, Rick “has trouble with microphones,” and was often hard to hear. Copies of his books were for sale at the back of the hall. (“I’m old; I don’t want to carry them home,” he quipped.)
Following a short recess, there was a raffle (literally a blind drawing) for a CD of Bowes’s Lambda Award-winning 1999 novel, Minions of the Moon (republished earlier this year by Lethe) and the manuscript from which Swanwick was about to read (after he read, of course), signed and dated.
Michael Swanwick has received the Nebula, Theodore Sturgeon, World Fantasy, and Hugo Awards (though he modestly, self-mockingly notes that he has “the odd distinction of having been nominated for and lost more of these same awards than any other human being”). His selection was the first chapter of the just-completed Chasing the Phoenix, a follow-up to Dancing With Bears, another post-Utopian adventure featuring his far-future confidence tricksters, Darger and Surplus, the latter a “talking dog” (more exactly, a genetically-modified dog in a humanoid body), in which they accidentally conquer China. (We wonder if the name Darger is meant to suggest Dodger, as in Artful. Incidentally, previous readings by Swanwick at the NYRSF Series have also featured the duo: “The Pearls of Byzantium”, an alternate version of a chapter of Dancing With Bears, and, with Gregory Frost, a recreation of their podcast of his “The Art of the Swindle.”) As the piece opens, Surplus has schlepped Darger’s body, only temporarily dead, he trusts, from Mongolia to China in search of the Infallible Physician in hopes of bringing his partner back to life. The story, relatively self-contained, delighted the audience and provoked constant laughter.
The audience of 40 or 50 included Lynne E. Cohen Koehler, Ellen Datlow, Bill Freedman, D. L. Friedman, Amy Goldschlager, Kim Kindya, Barbara Krasnoff, Matt Kressel, John Kwok, Lissanne Lake, Gordon Linzner, Marianne Porter (Michael’s wife), Robert Rodriquez, James Ryan, Chandler Klang Smith and Terence Taylor (one of next month’s readers). A Series tradition continued with the ceremonial folding-up of the chairs (a ritual requiring intensive instruction), after which the guests and a number of audience members adjourned, also as customary, to Milady’s, a nearby pub.