The Mumpsimus

The latest issue of that venerable, mercurial, deeply occasional magazine THE REVELATOR is now available online for your perusal. It is filled with nothing but THE TRUTH AND ALL! The contents of this issue are so vast, variable, and vivacious that I can't even begin to summarize them here. There are excursions into history, into imagery, and into liquor. We attend the tale of a young man reading science fiction in Kenya. We discover the secret life of Elo­dia Har­win­ton, about whom I am sure you have heard much (but never this much!). For those of you who do not like words, there are not only some videos, but a wordless book(let) by the great Frans Masereel. And do not forget the Revelations , in which many secrets, some of them clearly obscene and pornographic, revealed! Resist not, o mortal! Surrender yourself to the siren call of The Revelator today!

Strange Horizons has just published a collection of short notices from reviewers about what they read and viewed in 2013 . I thought there were too many good things in 2013 for me to be able to even simply list them all in the 250 words I was allowed, so I decided instead to focus on the writer who had, to my knowledge, the best 2013: Richard Bowes. The other entries are also fascinating, so it makes for a great reading list. Thinking back on 2013 after I wrote my previous post looking back on the year, I realized I left two important books out that would have been there if I'd remembered they were 2013 books — for some reason, in my mind, they were 2012 books. The first is Kit Reed's extraordinary retrospective collection The Story Until Now . In a great year for story collections, this was among the absolute best. The other is the second published and translated volume of Reiner Stach's eventually 3-volume biography of Franz Kafka, Kafka: The Years of Insi...

Today is the 44th anniversary of the Stonewall riots , the symbolic beginning of the modern gay liberation movement. It comes a few days after the Supreme Court's recent decisions regarding marriage equality, something I doubt anyone at the Stonewall in 1969 would have predicted seeing in their lifetimes. There's still tons of work to be done, particularly regarding the rights of queer folks who happen to be less than rich or other than white or transgendered ... but the progress is impressive. For the 40th anniversary of Stonewall, I published Rick Bowes's memories of the event . It remains one of the things I'm happiest to have been able to bring to life here. That piece has been incorporated into Rick's extraordinary new book, Dust Devil on a Quiet Street , a semi-fictionalized autobiography that takes various things Rick has published over the years (including my single favorite piece of writing about 9/11, "There's a Hole in the City" ) an...

Blogging always slows to a crawl during the second half of a semester, but I was surprised to see that it's been almost a month since I last posted here. Egads. I've hardly had a moment to breathe, though. For now, I just want to capture a few moments of reading from the recent weeks.

Dear Nebula Voters, I know what your real purpose is with the nominees for this year's award.  Don't think you can hide your secret, conspiratorial goals from me!  I know what you really want to do is cause me immense angst by putting some of my favorite people up against each other in your various (nefarious!) categories.  You know when it comes to awards I root for the people I know and like before I even consider anything else, because of course the people I know and like are all the greatest writer in the world, but what am I supposed to do when you, for instance, put VanderMeer up against Barzak in the novel category?! I'm safe, at least, with the short story category.  Jim Kelly is the only writer I know well there, so obviously he should win.  Novelette is worse -- Paolo Bacigalupi is the one person whose short stories have caused me to write a long essay , and he's a really nice guy (well, as long as you don't burn lots of hydrocarbons in front...

Knowing Rick Bowes is a privilege for many reasons, but one of my favorites is that he is a wonderful historian of New York City. Walking the streets with Rick becomes a magical tour through the wondrous and terrible changes the city has seen over the centuries. Having lived in Manhattan for most of his life, Rick has also sometimes been an eyewitness to history, including the history made in the early hours of June 28, 1969 in Greenwich Village: The Stonewall Riots . Richard Bowes is the author of such books as Minions of the Moon , From the Files of the Time Rangers , and Streetcar Dreams . He has won the World Fantasy Award, the International Horror Guild Award, the Lambda Literary Award, the Million Writers Award, and been nominated for the Nebula Award. He reportedly likes writing but hates being a writer . Update (2024): Rick died in December 2023. These remembrances at  Uncanny Magazine , including my own, explore some of the effect he had on so many of us.   If you...

My latest Strange Horizons column has been posted: " Blasted Horrors ". Subjects this time around: horror fiction, libraries & children, Stephen King, Sarah Kane's Blasted , Robert Aickman. (For my previous thoughts on Kane, see this post .) I thought about dedicating this column to Rick Bowes, who went to see Blasted with me in New York this past fall. It's not the sort of play you can invite just anybody to go see with you. Rick was a good sport about it. Then he reported me to the police. I'll also note that yes, as of right now there is a problem of verb number and agreement in the second sentence. Entirely my fault. I'm terrible with even simple arithmetic. Among the wonders of online publication, though, is that such things can be fixed...

Okay, now the world feels small. For the first time, I know someone in all the fiction categories of the Nebula nominees . And not just like encountered on Facebook once (though there is that...) -- but was roommates at the World Fantasy Convention with (Dave Schwartz), wrote a story with (Jeff Ford), have known since I was in the 7th grade (Jim Kelly). Rick Bowes keeps my first child in a basement in Hell's Kitchen. Kelley Eskridge I know the least of the group, but she's among the awesomest people on Earth, so I have to claim her anyway. (She's teaching my second child to dance.) John Kessel I met for the first time this summer, but I think he was the one who convinced Rick that my first child needed a basement and some electrodes. It's a good thing I'm not a SFWA member, because my approach to awards is to root for my friends, and I would have trouble voting with so many good people nominated. I think I'd advocate for mud wrestling to determine the win...

The lack of substantive posts continues at a furious pace around these here parts, but I do want to take a moment to note the reading and book signing this Sunday (11/11) by contributors to So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction at Housing Works Used Book Cafe . Copies of the anthology have been donated by the publisher, Haworth Press , and proceeds from sales will go to local homeless people living with HIV. The reading starts at 5pm. Steve Berman edited So Fey and scheduled readers include Mumpsimus contributor Craig Gidney , Rick Bowes, Eric Andrews-Katz, Tom Cardamone, Cassandra Clare, Ruby deBrazier, Joshua Lewis, and Sean Meriwether.

Rick Bowes doesn't have a blog, but he's been a huge supporter of Chris Barzak for years, and so it made no sense for Barzak Day to happen without some words from him. When asked about Barzak, here is what Bowes said: Chris Barzak is a better dancer than any other novelist in the world. And he’s a better novelist than any dancer in the world. And: Chris Barzak’s car just broke down, which is a sin and a shame. I think it would be lovely if a rich patron who wished to keep his or her identity a secret would buy Chris a new car. Nothing too ostentatious or sporty (because he’ll be driving it in Youngstown, after all).Something Japanese would be good. He likes that.

Since moving to Hoboken, lots of people have asked, "How are you doing? Are you settled? Are you euphoric? Are you crazy?" I tend to mumble an answer, trying to find a word that sounds simultaneously like yes and no . Even though this particular part of the Earth is one of my favorites, there's nothing easy about pulling up stakes after a decade of pretty stable living. I tend to avoid blog posts about my life and all that, partly because there's not a whole lot of all that to it, but I do want to take this lazy Saturday to chronicle a few things and offer some public thank yous. I start work at a new school this coming week, and before I get all tangled up in that post-summer life, I want to preserve here a few great moments. I owe thanks for sustenance and company to all sorts of people, including Gordon van Gelder, Liz Gorinsky, Juliet Ulman, and other friends new and old. Including one I'll mention at the end of this post. Rick Bowes is one of the gr...

I seem to be in a congratulatory mood these days, perhaps because there are so many things to congratulate people about. I'm particularly happy today to offer congratulations to Rick Bowes, whose beautiful and deeply moving story "There's a Hole in the City" has won the storySouth 2006 Million Writers Award for Fiction .

I am too shocked and saddened by the news that SciFiction will be ending to be able to say anything coherent and without profanity. Ellen Datlow has done a phenomenal job with the site for years, and I have long appreciated her willingness to publish traditional adventure stories alongside the gonzo weird stuff I'm particularly fond of. The classic reprints made obscure work available to a large audience. I could go on, and I'm sure I will once the shock wears off. For now, let me just point you to some stories to read. SciFiction published two of my favorite stories this year: "There's a Hole in the City" by Richard Bowes and "Heads Down, Thumbs Up" by Gavin Grant. (See the sidebar for links to what I had to say about each.) I was going to give a little list of a few stories that are particular favorites of mine, but once I started looking at the archive , choosing seemed foolish. Just go read. We can mourn that a favorite publication is st...

More unedited, unorganized, uneloquent notes on Readercon before I forget everything that happened.... First, something I forgot yesterday: I met both Rudi Dornemann and Rick Bowes (whose story "There's a Hole in the City" I recently praised ). I got to spend a bit of time with Rudi as we wandered from one thing to another, but only talked with Rick for a moment in a doorway. It was a good talk, but I do hope to get the chance to speak with him again sometime in a different location, such as, perhaps, a hallway. As for Rudi, just before coming to the convention I'd read his story "The Sky Green Box" in Rabid Transit: Menagerie and loved it -- one of the most inventive stories I've read since Christopher Rowe's "The Voluntary State" . Now to today. I began with a panel called "Genre-Switching for Fun and (Lack of) Profit", because who could resist a panel with the following people on it: Michael Blumlein, Samuel R. Delany, J...

I tried hard to dislike Richard Bowes's story "There's a Hole in the City" . Because it somehow seems crass to write fiction about September 11, 2001, to use real tragedy to evoke a reader's sympathy for imagined characters. Because it's so easy to become maudlin and sentimental about tragedies, to invoke God and Hallmark, to trivialize. Because a short story just shouldn't try to encompass all that. Because we risk losing real emotion through knee-jerk responses. Because. But the story gripped me with more force than anything I've read in months. The matter-of-fact, journalistic tone helps make the emotions of the story truthful rather than overblown. The details of life in the altered landscape of downtown Manhattan are convincing, and I found the story particularly haunting because I was a student at NYU for three years and lived and worked in the area Bowes describes, though by 2001 I was in New Hampshire. The story is complex, even enig...