Photo by Barbara Krasnoff.
On the evening of Monday (rather than its usual Tuesday), 2 December 2013, at the Soho Arthouse (the venue formerly and occasionally still known as the SoHo Gallery for Digital Art), the New York Review of Science Fiction Readings Series celebrated the December Holidays Season with its traditional (sixth) “Family Night.” For the fifth time (another tradition), it featured the family of Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, and was guest-hosted once more by Claire Wolf Smith, who had served as the NYRSF Reading Series’ third curator. In a spectacular first, though, departing from the expected evening of readings, the event offered us a live performance of selections from all three audiobooks of Kushner’s cult “mannerpunk” The World of Riverside series. Kushner and Sherman (co-author of The Fall of the Kings, the third novel in the series) narrated their own work, accompanied by many of the original cast of the “illuminated” audiobooks and brief excerpts from their original score by Nathanael Tronerud.
The Reading Series’ executive curator Jim Freund, host of WBAI-FM’s Hour of the Wolf radio program on sf and fantasy (which broadcasts and streams every Wednesday night/Thursday morning from 1:30 to 3:00 am), welcomed the crowd (and an overflow crowd it was), announced the next NYRSF readings – Tuesday, 7 January 2014, featuring Jenn Brissett and Sam J. Miller – and turned hosting duties over to Wolf Smith (making the evening “Hour of the Wolf Smith”), who introduced the evening’s first reader/narrator, Ellen Kushner, award-winning novelist (Thomas the Rhymer), editor (she recently co-edited Welcome to Bordertown), performer, klezmer devotee (The Golden Dreydl: a Klezmer “Nutcracker”; we should note that we are currently in the midst of Chanukah), co-writer of the historical/feminist/magic realist/shtetl radio musical drama The Witches of Lublin, and public radio personality (longtime host of the public radio show Sound & Spirit).
To the score from the Swordspoint (the award-wining first volume in the series) audiobook, Ellen and the evening’s cast – Robert Fass, Barbara Rosenblat, Katherine Kellgren, Jordan Smith, Ryan McCabe, Bill Rogers, and Doug Shapiro – took the proverbial stage, backed by pre-recorded music and sound reinforcement from David Shinn. There were, she noted, some differences from the audiobook. Several of the actors were part of the original cast, recreating their roles, while a few were, in credit to their talent, reading cold. Kushner narrated all of the non-dialog, not only descriptive passages, but, somewhat off-puttingly, text like “he said,” with the actors assuming multiple roles. In the scene presented, the protagonist, Alec Campion, has taken the prominent swordsman Richard St Vier to the theatre to attend a performance of The Swordsman’s Tragedy, a drama with a bad-luck reputation for swordsmen who see it. (St Vier is puzzled by the playacting; real swordsmen take contracts for money, not love or treachery, and don’t make long speeches before killing someone.) Yes, the actors played not only members of the drama’s audience, but its actors! (Kellgren, a multiple Audie Award-winning Golden Voice – the Audies, we were informed, are the audiobook equivalent of the Oscars, Tonys, or Hugos – was a stand-out as the overemoting tragic actress and as a highborn lady hiring St Vier’s services.)
Next, the versatile and multi-Audie Award-winning Golden Voice Barbara Rosenblat, who is a regular in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black, read three scenes from The Privilege of the Sword, the second in the series, set 15 years after Swordspoint, adroitly handling both female and male voices. (In the above scene from Swordspoint, she had filled in as St Vier.) In the first, Alec, now the Mad Duke Tremontaine, engages the actress known as the Black Rose as a spy and as a lover. Then two high society girls chat about one’s betrothal and the other’s lack of interest in her suitors; whereupon the latter young lady returns home to discover that her parents are fixing her up with an older, powerful, slimy lord (incidentally an archfoe of Tremontaine’s). The clever dialog and witty repartee often elicited chuckles.
After a short recess, during which the actors and authors posed for photos, and a raffle for a T-shirt and variety of the authors’ audiobooks, Wolf Smith introduced Delia Sherman, author of the Prometheus- and Andre Norton Award-winning The Freedom Maze (from which she has read at previous NYRSF Readings), who, joined by the male section of the cast, read a couple of scenes from her sections of The Fall of the Kings. Spoiler alert: In the first, a group of University students call on a supposedly ill History professor, only to find that he was “not a sick sheep, but a randy ram,” and later come upon the dead body of a friend who, disgraced, has committed suicide.
In a brief Q&A, Kushner revealed that her reading for the audiobooks was done apart from that of the actors’ and edited in; making the evening’s radio-play arrangement of all together, able to play off each other particularly vivid. Then her co-producer, Sue Zizza, owner of SueMedia Productions (who co-produced the evening with David Shinn), relating that Swordspoint had won the Audie Award for Audio Drama, presented Ellen with her own Audie. (The Privilege of the Sword was also Audie-nominated.) She added that The Fall of the Kings had made Audiophile Magazine’s Best of the Year in Audiobooks list.
At the back of the room, books and audiobooks were for sale. Not to be overlooked was Freund’s spiffy program brochure, containing author, producer and actor bios and color photos. (Photos of authors, talent and audiobook covers were on display on the Gallery’s wall screens.)
The more-than-capacity audience, as mentioned, was SRO and may have hit 55-60; people were turned away at the door (as they reported on Facebook and Twitter). (We’ll forego a “Dave Kyle says you can’t sit there” joke.) Among those present were Richard Bowes, K. Tempest Bradford, Amy Fass, D.T. Friedman, Amy Goldschlager, Kim Kindya, Barbara Krasnoff, Josh Kronengold, Lisa Padol, James Ryan, Chandler Klang Smith, and Terence Taylor. Following the ritual folding-up of the chairs, the guests and audience “milled around” and enjoyed cider, wine, cheese (some very smelly) and cookies. (Cutely, the toothpicks for the cheese were tiny plastic swords; there were, however, no duels.)
Happy holidays.