{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3065", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 3065, "subject": "Rostrum, take up thy pitchfork (sorry, long)", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2002-03-21T21:11:49+00:00", "last": "2002-03-21T21:11:49+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mark Millman", "address": "millman at heimdallr.dyndns.org" }, "date": "2002-03-21T21:11:49+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Rostrum, take up thy pitchfork (sorry, long)", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rostrum,\n\nHere's some additional information about mantis' list of\nuncollected stories, which I've copied at the bottom of\nthis note.\n\nWith the exception of \"The River\", I own copies of all of\nthese stories and have read most of them (I haven't read\n\"The River\", and I don't remember reading \"Going to the\nBeach\", Remembrance to Come\", or \"Tarzan of the Grapes\").\nSome of the others I know I've read, but don't remember,\nso (as you suggest) they're probably not worth fighting\nto find.\n\nFirst, the bibliographic information:\n\nThe Arimapsian Legacy CS\n\nThis is a typo; the title is \"The Arimaspian Legacy\".\n\nAt the Point of Capricorn WT Spring 1988\nThe Boy Who Hooked the Sun WT Spring 1988, YBF #2\n\nBoth these stories appeared first as Cheap Street Winter\nSolstice chapbooks and were later collected in _Weird\nTales_.\n\nEmpires of Foliage and Flower CS, Crank! #2\n\nThis story is also anthologized in _The Best of Crank!_\nand should be fairly easy to find.\n\nLord of the Land Lovecraft's Legacy, BNH #2\n\nThere's another typo here--mantis means YBH #2.\n\nRobot's Story ADV\n\nThis is a short-short collected with two others by Wolfe\nunder the title \"Mathoms from the Time Closet\".\n\nSlow Children CS\n\nThe full title is \"Slow Children at Play\".\n\nWith the exception of \"Empires of Foliage and Flower\",\nall the Cheap Street items were published as Winter Sol-\nstice chapbooks. \"Empires of Foliage and Flower\" was ac-\ntually published as a short book, much like _Bibliomen_\n(another Cheap Street publication, before it appeared in\nan expanded version from Bryan Cholfin's Broken Mirrors\nPress; Cholfin also published _Crank!_). The Winter Sol-\nstice chapbooks are very short; they're usually eight to\ntwelve saddle-stitched pages, including front and back\ncovers, a title page, and a signature page, in small oc-\ntavo size (in fact, they were mailed in envelopes about\nthe same size as ordinary greeting-card envelopes), and\nthe stories published in them are correspondingly brief.\n(You can see on-line images of the chapbooks on Cheap\nStreet's site at http://www.cheapst.com/chapbooks.html.)\nOf the Cheap Street stories, \"Empires\", \"The Boy Who\nHooked the Sun\", and \"The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is\nthe Sun\" are Brown Book stories, and worth reading for\ntheir style alone. Of these, only \"Empires\" is actual-\nly mentioned in BotNS--I believe Thecla refers to it in\n_Shadow_. The remaining three chapbooks are modern fan-\ntasies, but I'm afraid I don't remember them well.\n\n(Digression: The chapbooks aren't hard to find--they're\nall available from Cheap Street--but they're expensive,\naveraging over $50 each for pamphlets, and \"Empires\" is\nonly available in (a) very costly editions, again from\nCheap Street; (b) the practically unavailable _Crank!_\n#2; and (c) the _Best of Crank!_ anthology--easy enough\nto find, and reasonably priced, but it still means buying\na whole book for a single Wolfe story. If anyone knows\nof a small publisher who might be interested (mantis?), a\ndeal similar to the one that Cholfin must have worked out\nwith Cheap Street and Wolfe could perhaps be arranged, by\nwhich a more affordable volume collecting \"Empires\" and\nthe chapbook stories would be published.)\n\n(Second digression: At this point, mantis' post \"mantis\npicks the hits\" arrived, and I read it. Herewith, my\ncommentary on the remaining stories.)\n\nMy pick of the non-New Sun Cheap Street chapbooks is\n\"Slow Children at Play\"; I pick this by default, because\nI hardly remember the other two--clearly, they made less\nimpression on me than did \"Children\".\n\nI have a particular fondness for \"Lord of the Land\", al-\nthough I don't think it's one of Wolfe's best stories.\nIt's one of the three Sam Cooper stories (the other two\nbeing \"The Nebraskan and the Nereid\", collected in _En-\ndangered Species_, and \"The Fat Magician\", in the anthol-\nogy _Such a Pretty Face_); Cooper is a folklorist, and my\nundergraduate degree is in folklore. The story is an ex-\nample of Wolfe's tributes, in which he uses materials\ncharacteristic of another author in his own fashion (for\nanother example, see \"A Traveler in Desert Lands\" in _The\nLast Continent: New Tales of Zothique_); in this case,\nthe author is H.P. Lovecraft.\n\n\"The Tale of the Four Accused\" is Wolfe's second short\nstory for the _Arabesques_ anthologies (of which I know\nof two); it follows \"The Tale of the Rose and the Night-\ningale (And What Came of It)\", published in the first\nvolume and collected in _Endangered Species_. \"Four Ac-\ncused\" has much of the same flavor about it as the earli-\ner _Arabesques_ story, though it's not directly related,\nand is well worth reading.\n\n\"Houston, 1943\" captures the suffocating heat of a summer\nnight in Texas very well, and makes of it a horror inde-\npendent of the story's events.\n\n\"Game in the Pope's Head\" is reminiscent of \"Parkroads:\nA Review\" and \"A Criminal Proceeding\" in its superficial\nchaos and disjointedness, but rewards re-reading. It has\nan hallucinatory quality like that of \"Lukora\".\n\nI'm very fond of \"The Monday Man\", which is one of the\nfirst-person character stories; it's set in the Depres-\nsion, and is about role reversal.\n\n\"Read Me\" is an Alice pastiche, and appears in an anthol-\nogy of 100-word stories. As such, it's necessarily lim-\nited by its format, but if you see the book I recommend\nyou pick it up, as it's interesting in its own right.\n\nMark Millman\n(Nacre)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 21 Mar 2002, Rostrum (Michael Straight) wrote:\nOn Thu, 21 Mar 2002, mantis\n(Michael Andre-Driussi) wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "There's an awful lot of\nuncollected short stories\nout there, so I was won-\ndering if those of you\nwho have tracked them down\nmight suggest which are\nthe most worth chasing.\nWhat are some of the best\nWolfe stories not found in\nthe common anthologies\n(e.g., the ones I have):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Ah, this is the trickiest part of\nyour request. First we have to\nfind at least two people who have\nread a fraction of these stories,\nthen we have to argue over rating\n/ranking them. Big Job!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm sorry. I had the impression that you\nand some of the other folks on the list\nhad read a lot of these stories in maga-\nzines or elsewhere and might have a favor-\nite to recommend. I'd hate to go to just\npick one at random, work hard at tracking\nit down, only to find it as forgettable\nas...that one online about the new presi-\ndent, the name of which I forget.\n\nIf you'd read something as wonderful as\n\"Tracking Song\" or \"Forlessen,\" you\nwouldn't need to argue about whether to\nrecommend it!\n\n-Rostrum" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "mantis' list:\n\nThe Arimapsian Legacy CS\nAt the Point of Capricorn WT Spring 1988\nThe Boy Who Hooked the Sun WT Spring 1988, YBF #2\nEmpires of Foliage and Flower CS, Crank! #2\nThe Friendship Light F&SF 10-89\nGame in the Pope's Head Ripper!, YBF #2\nGoing to the Beach Showcase (Elwood)\nHouston, 1943 Tropical Chills (Sullivan)\nHow the Bishop Sailed to Inniskeen Asimov's 12-89\nIt's Very Clean Generation (Gerrold)\nKing Under the Mountain WIF 11/12-70\nLoco Parentis ADV\nLord of the Land Lovecraft's Legacy, BNH #2\nThe Monday Man Monochrome: Readercon Anth.\nThe Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin\n Is the Sun CS\nRead Me The Drabble Project\nRemembrance to Come Orbit 6\nThe River Amazing 5-83\nRobot's Story ADV\nThe Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun Grails: Quests of the Dawn (Gilliam)\nThe Seraph from the Sepulcher Sacred Visions (Greeley)\nSlow Children CS\nThe Tale of the Four Accused Arabesques 2 (Shwartz)\nTarzan of the Grapes F&SF 6-72, MWALB (Farmer)\nThou Spark of Blood WIF 4-70\nTry and Kill it Asimov's 10-11/96\n\n\"ADV\" = Again, Dangerous Visions (Ellison)\n\"CS\" = Cheap Street\n\"F&SF\" = The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction\n\"MWALB\" = Mother Was A Lovely Beast\n\"WIF\" = Worlds of If magazine\n\"WT\" = Weird Tales\n\"YBF\" = Year's Best Fantasy\n\"YBH\" = Year's Best Horror" } ] } ] }