The Fiction of John Crowley: Starts (1st of 3)

[Joe Bernstein]

The Fiction of John Crowley

John Crowley has, since 1975, published, that I know of, one four-
volume novel, seven other novels, two novellas, five novelettes, and
fourteen short stories. [1] This body of work has been enough, for
the past three decades, to make him prominent in the field of
speculative fiction, and at least known in that of literary fiction.
In both, he's clearly a "writer's writer", many of the most
enthusiastic comments on his fiction coming from fellow writers of
fiction.

I'd intended to finish the four-volume novel in November; then it
dawned on me that 1 December was his seventieth birthday, and, well,
here we are. I assess the twenty-nine prose fictions known to me,
plus a years-earlier novel excerpt and a poem, and more briefly his
five fiction collections; I arrange these assessments by publication
date, and mark time by noting in which decade of his life each work
was published.

The reading underlying this post happened mostly in November and
mostly in publication order, reaching that month <Endless Things>.
In December I read the following works in the listed order: <Four
Freedoms>, "And Go Like This", <The Girlhood of Shakespeare's
Heroines>, <Conversation Hearts>, "Somewhere to Elsewhere", "Glow
Little Glowworm". Of course, in the process of writing this post in
December, I did considerable re-reading (including essentially all
of _Ægypt_ [2]). In any event, all my reading up to publication
date 1994 was re-reading, with the arguable exception of "Somewhere
to Elsewhere"; the only things later than 1994, read by me before
November, are <The Translator> and about the first thirty pages of
<Dæmonomania>. I so consistently found myself re-reading the works I
hadn't read before, in order to write about them, that I made it a
policy, so no entry below is based on only one reading. (I also
wound up writing about these works at much greater length, by and
large.) However, I discuss "The Single Excursion of Caspar Last"
below without having read it *as such*, and more briefly discuss "The
Squire Completes His Tale", three known unpublished works, and two
possible published ones, without having read *any* of these *at all*.

Disclaimer: I ran, in the mid- and late 1990s, the first English-
language website about Crowley. It was unauthorised; I received two
e-mails, while the site was up, which I now believe really were from
him and his sister, but which I didn't answer at the time. Much
later, I met him in 2009, when he came to Seattle promoting <Four
Freedoms>, and we talked briefly about the site (though I'm not sure
he actually remembered mine, as opposed to later ones); he gave me an
e-mail address (that from which one of those 1990s e-mails had been
sent, in fact; I don't currently have access to that address, so
don't ask me for it, please). I may end up using parts of this post
in creating *another* Crowley website, probably unauthorised, in the
future, if I ever again run a personal website.

[1] Two relatively recent works strike me as near the edges of the
length categories: I list <The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines>
as a novelette, but it may be a novella; and I list "Glow Little
Glowworm" as a short story, but it may be a novelette.

[2] Properly, I should call the four-volume novel <Ægypt>, by my
usual system of noting titles of books (feature films, albums) with
less-than and greater-than signs. Unfortunately, there *is* a book
titled <Ægypt>, the first edition (or, depending what you mean by
"edition", the first several editions) of what should be called <The
Solitudes>, the first volume of the four-volume novel. So instead
I'm using for the complete work other people's usual system, noting
the title with underline signs.

Style and Motifs

Crowley doesn't really write in what we call a "transparent" style,
but he isn't far from it; I'd say he's about as hard to read as
Patricia McKillip. Like McKillip (and other authors), he sometimes
allows important events to go unremarked while narrating (in his
case, often clearly) something much less significant. He also tends,
in dialogue and in writing tighter to a POV, to use sentence
fragments in consistent ways - a trivial example is the greeting "Hi
hi hi" which several characters use.

His tightness to POVs varies considerably, except in his few clearly
first-person narratives. He tends to use an omniscient perspective,
but can go on for enough pages in a single character's POV to obscure
this. In his two latest longer books (<Endless Things> and <Four
Freedoms>) he occasionally uses a first-person voice seeming distinct
from all the apparent POVs, but the one in <Four Freedoms>, if
interpreted as an actual human, is impossible (a child in the 1950s
but an adult in the 1940s); I doubt any literal reading of either
apparent narrator has any value. (Both make considerable sense
metaphorically.)

Most of his novels are divided into parts, each part further divided
into chapters; either of these divisions can have epigraphs or titles
(the extreme case being <Little, Big>, which has many of each).
<Beasts> (divided into long chapters) and <Lord Byron's Novel> (for
whose structure see the relevant entry) are the exceptions.

He's well known for writing that engages with history (not only in
fiction; he's also written documentary films, mostly historical, for
over thirty years). On this reading, my first encounter with his
relatively splashy recent statements on the subject, I also concluded
that his writing has long engaged with *difference*, meaning
specifically characters different from a perceived norm in some
bodily, mental, or sexual way. Obviously, this is a formula for what
every writer who characterises does, so isn't useful left this vague.

More precisely, then, the only mental differences I see as
consistently interesting him have to do with a complex consisting of
vagueness, indecisiveness, and fecklessness; <Beasts> and <Little,
Big> offer contrasting pictures of this (with something akin to it in
<Engine Summer>), followed by much analysis in, in particular,
_Ægypt_, "In Blue", and "Little Yeses, Little Nos", and another
picture in <Conversation Hearts>. (I'd be shocked if he weren't
drawing on life here, depicting either his own psyche or one he knows
very well.)

Bodily differences - besides the obvious ones in, most notably,
<Beasts> and <Great Work of Time> - vary more widely; major
characters include two hunchbacks, an epileptic, two polio survivors,
and two people whose back problems put them on crutches. He has
not, however, written about superpeople, vampiric or otherwise,
except to the minimal extent of occasional very good-looking
characters, e.g. the narrator of "Snow". It's worth noting that
Straight Ahead Pictures, a documentary filmmaking company he and his
wife founded in 1989, focuses on the history of, more or less, the
human body, and claims to include a "Disability History Museum".

Sexual differences include both male and female homosexuality, each
treated both as an occasional practice and as an identity, as well as
bondage and domination, treated as an occasional practice, and
voyeurism, treatment not specified. On my website, I used to
complain specifically about his treatment of male homosexuality,
which at that time rather stood out in a chronological reading. In
<The Deep>, <Little, Big>, and <Love & Sleep>, male homosexual sex
appears as a sort of ne plus ultra of degradation for those who
engage in it (admittedly, it's less traumatic in "In Blue"); in
<Beasts>, if not also <Great Work of Time>, resisting homosexual
temptation comes in for a sort of applause that resisting
heterosexual temptation rarely elicits in Crowley's work; and not
only was the only clearly gay-identified character thus far (in
_Ægypt_) an extreme case of fecklessness, but both he and the male
homosexuals in <The Deep> fit stereotypes all too well. Crowley's
later books pay considerably less attention to the whole topic, but
in the second half of _Ægypt_ he introduces another, less campy, gay-
identified character as POV and deepens his portrayal of the first,
making it just possible to see it all in the less tendentious light
of the rest of his portrayals of difference, as above. He has never
seemed equally critical of lesbianism, which has bit parts in
<Little, Big> and _Ægypt_, is prominent in "In Blue" and <Lord
Byron's Novel>, and seems likely in the future of a major character
in <Four Freedoms>.

Several of Crowley's earlier works relate to the end of the world,
which at one level is _Ægypt_'s main topic. This end is not so much
the nuclear nightmare you might expect a writer of his age to focus
on (though <The Translator> later broached that apocalypse) as the
end which many of us on the left and in the counterculture imagined
in the 1970s, the gradual winding down or sudden crash of
civilisation under its own colossal weight. (One could without
difficulty argue that the left's enamourment with such apocalypses
was an excellent reason for America's rightward turn circa 1980. I
leave the present American right's fascination with them as an
exercise for the class.) It's conceivable, though implausible, that
the apocalypse that begins in <Little, Big> could be the same as that
we see midstream in <Beasts> and whose aftermath <Engine Summer>
depicts. After studying these ideas at their source (the 1970s
counterculture) in _Ægypt_, he seems to have fully outgrown the
theme.

One more trivial motif became obvious to me in this reading: His
stories set during his lifetime often have protagonists whose
birthdates could very well be the same as his own. This is most
obviously true of Pierce Moffett in _Ægypt_ and Christa Malone in
<The Translator>, but also of at least Evan S. Barnable (and no, I
hadn't caught that pun until this writing) in <Little, Big> and
either or both of the main characters in <The Girlhood of
Shakespeare's Heroines>; it's presumably true of a few of Crowley's
shorter first-person stories without any actual evidence, most
obviously "The Reason for the Visit". "Little Yeses, Little Nos",
<Lord Byron's Novel>, and "Glow Little Glowworm" feature more
problematic birthdates, which I discuss in the relevant entries.
But probably at least four, maybe more, of Crowley's protagonists all
turned seventy a month ago too.

A final motif: Just as Crowley is a writer's writer, he's a bookish
writer. His works frequently contain significant books, or meditate
on them, or on writing as an activity; in that sense, he's perhaps
the most English professorly of front-rank speculative fiction
writers. I haven't checked exhaustively, but my *impression*, after
this reading, is that when he refers to a book published well before
1900, it's likely to be real, but sometime in the late 19th century,
he switches to invented writers and books. (There are a few
exceptions; in particular, in _Ægypt_, several books referred to only
glancingly are real, as was Dame Frances Yates.) In this reading I
made no serious effort to note his references to others' real
writing, modern or not [3], but did, primarily in the works I read
for the first time, catch quite a few self-references.

[3] - _Ægypt_, in particular, offers numerous examples of phrases
or even words that suggest, without ever confirming, allusion to
other spec-fic works. For example, when Crowley writes "fuliginous",
is he really just indulging a wide vocabulary? Does his frequent use
of "medicine" in close association with "melancholy" reflect only the
same Renaissance source as another author's title? How about
"figures of earth", rather less often used? Almost the only non-
self-reference I note below is of this type.

Series

So references bring us to the relationships between his *own* books.

Four - <The Solitudes> (originally published 1987 as <Ægypt>), <Love
& Sleep> (1994), <Dæmonomania> (2000), and <Endless Things> (2007) -
form an explicit series, variously titled _Ægypt_ (the title I use
throughout this post) or "The Ægypt Cycle". Separately, the
protagonist of "Little Yeses, Little Nos" (2005) reappears (not as
protagonist, and a bit later in his life) in "Glow Little Glowworm"
(2012). I know of no other links among Crowley's works important
enough to make reading any one work significant for ordinary
comprehension in reading any other work. However, there are many
arguable links among his works, which I call, in this post, "self-
references". I tried to deal with them all up here, but ended up
with a mess, so instead I cover all this intertextuality work by
work, below.

Other stuff

I list award nominations and wins taken pretty much straight from
Locus's "SF Awards Database" (<http://www.sfadb.com/>), with no
attempt to convert into each award's actual year and award name
conventions. (I ran out of time.)

I list places where each work is "in print" just for the heck of it.
I'm well aware that used copies of most things are cheap and easy to
find online. (Finding used Crowley titles *offline* is somewhat less
cheap and easy.) Furthermore, bookstore shelves often have out of
print things on them; for example, <Conversation Hearts> is out of
print, but there's a copy at the University of Washington Bookstore's
main branch. And again, copies of most out of print titles are
available new as well as used online; not only is this the default
situation at Amazon, but when I went to DreamHaven's website to find
out whether <An Earthly Mother Sits and Sings> was still in print
(yes), I also found a bunch of other Crowley titles offered new.
Well, heck, we used to do something similar (with fewer titles, since
there *were* fewer, then) at The Stars Our Destination. (On the
other hand, some of the *prices* DreamHaven is charging...)

*Anyway*, all of that said, my listing is not a work of perfection.
There are probably anthologies, older than about 1995, that include
a Crowley story, that are still in print; I normally didn't bother to
check with anything that old. (I did, however, check at Random
House, which has absorbed both Doubleday and Bantam, Crowley's early
book publishers.) Also, I almost never stumbled on an example of
Crowley being in print *outside the US*; considering that most of his
work has been in print here for *years* [4], which was far from typical
in the 1980s and 1990s, that strikes me as odd, and suggests flaws in
my methods. I didn't take any notice of translations at all.

Several times below I refer to a collection of Crowley's papers at
the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of
Texas at Austin. This collection apparently results from purchases
in 1992, 1994, and 2000; it's therefore fitting that the "finding
aid" documenting it, and in particular the "biographical sketch"
beginning that document, which may have been written by Lisa Jones in
2001, exist in several states. The one I cite (and repeatedly
contradict) is that in Microsoft Word format, but the same things
appear in the HTML version; I didn't check the PDF. The (ugly and
possibly unstable) URL is:
<http://research.hrc.utexas.edu:8080/hrcxtf/view?docId=ead/00145.xml>
- or you can just reach it from the Wikipedia article on Crowley.

[4] Of my list of twenty-nine prose fictions, two - <The Girlhood
of Shakespeare's Heroines> and <Conversation Hearts> - are clearly
out of print, and one - "The Single Excursion of Caspar Last" - is
out of print as such, but in print as incorporated into <Great Work
of Time>. Outside that list, "Somewhere to Elsewhere" is out of
print as such, but in print as (re-)incorporated into <Little, Big>;
"The Squire Completes His Tale", and any hypothetical fiction in the
two publications mentioned as potential sites for it, are out of
print altogether.

Acknowledgements

To write this while homeless, and far from much of my own Crowley
collection, I needed several things: a computer to write on, places
to read, do research, and write (these latter requiring inter alia
power and net access for the computer), and copies of most of the
works (as well as some offline research materials).

Computer: David Goldfarb kindly sent me a laptop after my first was
stolen, and this post has been written entirely on that computer.

Workspace: All over the place. I've even worked on this post in a
doorway or two, but more substantially in:
* The Seattle Public Library, Central and Capitol Hill branches
* The Washington State Convention and Trade Center
* The Elliott Bay Book Co.
* Half Price Books, Capitol Hill branch
* Seattle University's Lemieux Library and its Student Center
* The University of Washington's Suzzallo & Allen Libraries, its
Husky Union Building, and its University Bookstore's U District
Branch

Power came from SPL, Elliott Bay, SU, and the UW libraries. SPL,
Elliott Bay, Half Price, and to a limited extent the other libraries
provided net access. SPL, the UW libraries, Elliott Bay, and also
Bulldog News, provided research assistance. All were surprisingly
welcoming to such a scruffy person as I've been, most of the time I
worked on this.

Books:
* The Seattle Public Library, Central branch (for <Otherwise>,
<Novelties & Souvenirs>, <The Translator>, <Four Freedoms>, and
"Little Yeses, Little Nos")
* Barnes & Noble, downtown Seattle branch, and the Seattle Public
Library, Capitol Hill branch (both for <Little, Big>)
* Seattle University's Lemieux Library (for "Little Yeses, Little
Nos", first reading)
* The University [of Washington] Bookstore, U District branch
(for <Otherwise>, error-checking only)
* The University of Washington's Suzzallo and Allen Libraries (for
"Somewhere to Elsewhere", books on Giordano Bruno, an editor's
name, and <Omni> issues)
* The Timberland Regional Library, Shelton branch, also known as
the William G. Reed Public Library (for <Conjunctions:39 The
New Wave Fabulists>, for <The Girlhood of Shakespeare's
Heroines>)
* The King County Library System, Fairwood branch (for
<Conversation Hearts>)
* Half Price Books, Capitol Hill branch (for <Beasts>, Blue-
hunting only)
* The Elliott Bay Book Co. (for Boswell and Chaucer)

My book logs have recorded my willingness to read whole books at
bookstores, and these months of being too broke to buy them have
hardly diminished that, but for this project, I actually read only
<Little, Big> thus (it arrived in my reading schedule during the
*one* week I *couldn't* get an SPL copy using the hold system!).
Otherwise, I only abused bookstores' stock as indicated above.

The bus fares to Shelton and Renton (Fairwood) were paid from money
that, rather to my surprise, people on the street have given me
simply for being visibly homeless.

Posting: Thank God, on New Year's Day Uncle Elizabeth's, an Internet
cafe near me, stayed open til midnight.

HIS 20S

"The Squire Completes His Tale", length ?, <Pegasus> ed ? 1964,
genre ?

The title justifies me, I think, in assuming that this poem is
narrative fiction, whether it represents the completion itself, or
the situation of the squire completing. Chaucer's "Squire's Tale" is
indeed an incomplete narrative poem; it also mæanders some, and I
think it possible that Chaucer's depiction of the host praising it
and going on to the next teller may actually portray a diplomatic
shutting-up of the youngster. Chaucer's tale is fantasy (in the
first part, a diplomat shows up offering tons of magic items as
gifts, and the existing parts of the poem confirm the powers of two
of these), but I don't know whether Crowley's completion, *if* a
completion, is; if it's actually at the fictional level of the teller
rather than the tale, it probably isn't fantasy.

Although many periodicals have used the title <Pegasus>, I eventually
thought to check Crowley's alma mater, and turns out Indiana
University's English Department published a literary journal thus
titled, from 1962 to 1967. I think 1964 is the year Crowley
graduated. Near as I can tell, libraries with the relevant issue
include Indiana University's (duh), North Carolina State
University's, and the University of North Texas's. I hope, by making
some calls tomorrow, to see what more I can find out about this poem.

Not shown as *in* print by the publisher, but you could try calling
the department on a slow day to see whether anyone there is willing
to check their storage... I found no copies at Amazon nor at
abebooks.com (but both have issues described as coming from volume 4
in 1965, which is wrong, so for all I know they could actually have
the relevant issue from volume 2); Goodwill in Indianapolis tried and
failed to auction a lot of five issues last March, and might still
have them, but I don't know whether this issue was/is included.

(I refer to the *un*published early work below, in re <Love & Sleep>
and <Novelties & Souvenirs>. I haven't read any of it either.)

HIS 30S

I don't know when Crowley started writing the earliest of his
published prose, but do know that <The Deep>, <Beasts>, <Engine
Summer>, <Little, Big>, _Ægypt_, and <Great Work of Time> all had
gestations of at least a decade. Also, his *published* career (one
poem and one hypothetical aside) begins with novels, and especially
early on, shorter works are few (implying there wasn't much in the
trunk). The Texas "finding aid" makes it clear that he in fact
started with shorter works (stories as well as a play and at least
two poems), but most things from this period which he's seen fit to
publish, even revised, appear to be the novels.

??? [?, length ?, <National Peep> ed ? 1973, genre ?]

The Texas "finding aid" lists in its last box, which gets minimal
explanation, two copies of a July ?1972 issue of <National Peep>.
My best assessment of the testimonies of many websites is this:
<National Peep> is a four-page mock tabloid produced by John Waters
and/or Saliva Films in July, 1973 during Saliva Films' distribution
of <Pink Flamingos>. (This is presumably why Texas puts this to
1972 - the movie premiered late that year.) It was apparently given
to moviegoers, and is now rare. (No library admits to owning a copy
in Worldcat; auctions, which are most of the websites that mention
it, get decent prices.)

It wouldn't shock me if Crowley had something to do with this
tabloid, most obviously by writing some or all of it, for two reasons
beyond these copies' presence in the archive. First, see the roughly
contemporary involvement with a less lauded or successful boundary-
testing movie, by a character Crowley endows with many reflections of
his own biography, in <The Solitudes>. Second, Crowley's blog
includes an entry in which he remembers writing copy about <Pink
Flamingos> for a movie catalogue. Hypothesising that he also wrote
part of this, but didn't mention it in the blog, calls for only a
little failure of memory (which the following item renders plausible)
and/or, I think, a little discretion. It *would* surprise me if this
hypothetical writing were a lost great work of art, but given that a
reader on goodreads.com calls it "a fake scandal newspaper", it
probably would be fiction.

Out of print, obviously.

??? ["Somewhere to Elsewhere", novel excerpt, <The Little Magazine>
ed ? 1974, fantasy]
??? ["The Single Excursion of Caspar Last", short story, <Gallery>
ed ? 1974, science fiction]

As a Yale faculty member, Crowley has posted a curriculum vitae, from
roughly 2006, online; see
<http://english.yale.edu/sites/default/files/CV-crowley_0.pdf>.
This dates two publications to 1974. The bibliography at Wikipedia
and its numerous clones, which probably derives from that by Graham
Sleight, pp. 385-390 in <Snake's-Hands> (second edition) edited by
Alice Turner and Michael Andre-Driussi, Rockville, MD: Wildside
Press, 2003, however, dates them later, where I list one (the other,
later still). Note, by the way, that that CV provides an e-mail
address for Crowley, which is not the one I mentioned above. Since
I've never yet e-mailed him at any address, I can't say anything
about how promptly he replies.
I should emphasise that I don't own, and haven't read, <Snake's-
Hands>, in either edition, much though I'd like to. Needless to say,
there's no public copy near Seattle. I consulted Sleight's
bibliography, to the extent that I did, via Google Books, which is
willing to show one page per "preview".

<The Deep>, novel, Doubleday 1975, speculative fiction

<The Deep> is a strange beginning for the career that followed it.
Where <Engine Summer> and <Little, Big> (both by 1975 long begun) as
well as _Ægypt_ and <Beasts> (as yet unstarted, I think, though the
*idea* for <Beasts> is much older) are more or less pastoral and more
or less set in America (especially the part we in the US call "the
Northeast"), <The Deep>, a very *short* novel, has as setting a place
somewhat like some mythical takes on the world's structure, a disc of
a world supported by a pillar, around which wraps Leviathan; and
although some of its pages describe the landscape, it can hardly be
called pastoral. (In fact, pretty much the first insightful comment
I saw on <The Deep> compared it to drama.)

Its plot has two strands. It begins with a Visitor, wounded and
amnesiac and utterly unlike any other person on the disc in more than
"his" sexlessness, who knows "him"self made and seeks "his" purpose;
separately, it follows the politics of the disc, Red and Black and
Gray and Just, which seem to echo the Wars of the Roses (or at least,
I gather, Shakespeare's *dramas* of those wars), but to follow a
fated pattern, which the Visitor's arrival deflects into change.

One part of that pattern is the Just, a secret society of assassins.
The Just are the only people on the disc with guns. Each of the
Just has a Gun, and each has a name; and each Gun of the Just has a
name, and each name of the Just has a name. I mention all this
mainly because of a reference later books seem to make, but also
because it's the kind of exoticon Crowley's most exotic work
features.

In print in <Otherwise>, listed below.

<Beasts>, novel, Doubleday 1976, science fiction

Although <Beasts> is probably my least favourite of his novels, it
makes a much more plausible start for Crowley's later career than
does <The Deep>. It's far more pastoral, and its main setting is,
near as I can tell, the northeastern US. (Here "the Northern
Autonomy" in a balkanised US of the 2070s.) Here, differences are
the main theme: sometime prior to the action, several experiments
had resulted in a viable population of lion-men, as well as a sterile
fox-man and an intelligent dog; we get each as POVs. Some human POVs
show the "leos'" effects on some humans (perhaps Crowley's nearest
approach to the 1970s spec-fic obsession with transcendence); other
humans, not POVs, focus mainly on using the leos as Others for
political purposes, with typical bad behaviour resulting. We also
see the education of geese, hawks, and princes. This is Crowley's
nearest approach to an ordinary genre novel, in this case 1970s
mystical science fiction.

For comparison to future works, note that some villains spout the
phrase "holocompetent act-fields", and some other people are
described as "in Blue", without further explanation. One of the
first references to "Blue" suggests that these groups may overlap,
but this is never confirmed, and Crowley later describes the villains
as dressing quite differently.

In print in <Otherwise>, listed below.

"Antiquities", short story, <Whispers> ed Schiff 1977, fantasy

Crowley's first normally acknowledged published story is a bit of a
triviality, a "club story", a tall tale about the "Inconstancy
Plague" of Cheshire and its surprising cause. It is, however,
thoroughly convincing as such - the club, the narrator, and the
plague all well depicted.

This is the earliest of the seven stories in the 1993 collection
<Antiquities>, a title chosen, I'm pretty sure, more for the contrast
with the earlier collection <Novelty> than in honour of this
particular story. The copyright acknowledgements for the collection
<Novelties & Souvenirs> represent exactly these seven stories, only,
as having first been published "in a slightly different version". As
best I recall, I've read none as first published (though I do own
such copies of most), so technically, the versions I've read all have
1993 revision dates.

In print in <Novelties & Souvenirs>, and in <Tails of Wonder and
Imagination> ed Datlow, as a trade paperback from Night Shade.

"Somewhere to Elsewhere (part of a work in progress)", novel excerpt,
<The Little Magazine> ed Stephens & Thoet 1978, fantastique

Websites had already shown me that this appeared in volume 11,
dated 1977, before I saw a copy myself. So Crowley's CV is wrong in
dating the publication to 1974. The issue is copyright 1978, and the
editorial mentions February as publication date for this nominally
"summer" issue. The UW got its copy a year later, but the copyright
dates form a consistent and plausible chain from volumes 10 to 13
(when they gave up pretending to be a quarterly), so I'm going with
February 1978. No matter what, the 2000 album of this title by the
rock group Kansas (which I haven't heard, though I remain fond of
some of their music) is later.

Given Crowley's later career, and the reputation of "little
magazines", I'd better note that this particular <Little Magazine>,
at this particular time, drew no clear line between literary and
genre writers. This issue's other prose was by "Tom Disch" and
Carol Emshwiller, believe it or not; and the editorial group included
David Hartwell and Ginjer Buchanan. Other writers I recognised,
going through volumes 10-13, include Ursula Le Guin and Rudy Rucker,
not counting the poetry (volume 12 nos 3-4 features poems by a Judith
Moffett and a Wade Wellman, the latter "part of a series"; Disch had
poems in most issues).

Wikipedia asserts that this is the first chapter of <Little, Big>,
whose published first chapter indeed features the phrase "somewhere
to elsewhere" both in its text and in its argument. (I don't know
whether Kansas got the title from <Little, Big> or from here, but,
well, it's pretty obvious which is the likelier bet.) However,
it actually consists of earlier versions of the following text from
book one, "Edgewood": the first paragraph of chapter I; the final
section of chapter I, titled "Junipers"; and all the sections now
in chapter II, in the order they have there. I compared the first
paragraph and "Junipers" to the versions in <Little, Big>, and spot-
checked a couple more sections; the differences are mostly of the
polishing sort, though one sentence in this "Junipers" comes from
elsewhere in the later chapter I. At least two sentences refer to
the missing parts of the later chapter I. Which, by the way, include
all repetitions of the phrase "somewhere to elsewhere", which appears
in this issue of the <Little Magazine> only as a title. It's pretty
clear that something approximating the rest of chapter I already
existed, though not included in this publication.

On first reading, given that I'd just been comparing it to the novel,
I couldn't ignore my foreknowledge at all. On second reading, I was
just able to see how carefully at each step Crowley suggests, but
doesn't insist on, fantasy. This is, of course, similarly true of
the novel's opening, but I've long since lost the ability to ignore
my foreknowledge *there*. This excerpt narrates the preparations for
a wedding, but stops short of the wedding itself, so even without the
backward glances to absent chapter I, it's intrinsically incomplete.
I have no idea what the average reader of the magazine made of it, or
what *you*'ll make of it in the unlikely event that you look at this
before looking at <Little, Big>.

Since both the magazine and the distributor have folded, I'm fairly
sure this is out of print. Unlike the other out of print items
listed in this post, it's pretty easy to find in academic libraries.
Also, the experience of reading the listed sections of <Little, Big>
isn't much different.

"Her Bounty to the Dead", aka "Where Spirits Gat Them Home", short
story, <Shadows> ed Grant 1978, Gothic

In which a New England drive, by a priest and his aunt, ends badly;
in which faith and unbelief face each other. I never remember this
story properly, and so never think I understand it at all. It's
another <Antiquities> story.

For Texas's linkage of it with the unpublished story "Holy Saturday"
see footnotes [8] and [10] below sv <Love & Sleep>.

In print in <Novelties & Souvenirs>.

<Engine Summer>, novel, Doubleday 1979, science fiction

Nominee, 1980 John W. Campbell Memorial Award
Nominee, 1981 British SF Association Award for Novel
Nominee, 1980 American Book Award for SF Hardcover

Traditionally, a "masterwork" (or "masterpiece") was the work by
which a journeyman in a craft demonstrated mastery. By that
standard, though my old website called <Engine Summer> Crowley's
masterpiece, I suppose it was really <The Deep>, or at latest
<Beasts>.

But <Engine Summer> is certainly his first great novel.

This is the story of Rush that Speaks, a much-traveled teenager from
Palm cord in Little Belaire. Little Belaire is a settlement of
Truthful Speakers sometime probably centuries (rather than decades or
millennia) from now, in North America (and, I suspect, New England).
Rush tells of his boyhood in Belaire and the growth of his love for
Once a Day, until she leaves with the traveling merchants from Dr.
Boots's List; and how, (not many) years later, he too leaves,
questing to become a saint - which, in Little Belaire's terms, means
someone who can "tell all stories in the single story of [his] own
life" - or at least to find Once a Day; and perhaps to fulfill a
prophecy made in Belaire, that he'll live "many lives in the moment
between birth and dying". ("Many Lives" was apparently one working
title, and is the title of the first part. Among the Texas papers is
a draft with another working title, "Learning to Live with It".)

Much of what he learns, at home and still more so as he travels, has
to do with the "angels" who built the dead cities and Road, who
invented "medicine's daughters" and sent out the spaceships, whose
pursuit of Everything They Wanted finally brought them (us) to ruin;
only late in the book does he learn what Everything They Wanted
really meant. In the meantime his home and his experiences provide
the only other concentrated supply of the exotic, besides <The Deep>,
that Crowley has published to date.

Does summer ever end? Does summer ever come? I can't imagine coming
to this novel in middle age; I came to it younger than its narrator
[5], it's the work by Crowley that I've read the most times (ten or
so), and his depiction of human North America in its Indian summer
became part of my own understanding of the world. To that extent,
both Rush and Crowley succeeded in their quests, and I must fail in
mine, for ultimately I probably can't put into words what I find
great in this book.

In print in <Otherwise>. Scheduled to appear in the "SF Masterworks"
series 10 January 2013.

[5] Yes, strictly speaking, <Engine Summer> is in dialogue form,
and has no narrator. But considering that Rush, who speaks far more
than his interlocutor, does very little *but* narrate, I don't think
it's unreasonable to call him a narrator anyway.

??? [?, length ?, <Intermountain Express> ed ? 1979, genre ?]

The Texas "finding aid" lists, again in the last, little-annotated,
box, two copies of the August 24, 1979 issue of <Intermountain
Express>. I'm pretty sure this is a newspaper that published for
just under a year from Hillsdale, NY. August 24 was a Friday, as
were the start and end dates, so it was probably a weekly. Hillsdale
is very near the NY-MA state line, and some western MA towns I know
Crowley to have lived in around this time. Libraries I know to have
copies of issues of this newspaper are the New York State Library
(whose run ends in June 1979), Texas (as indicated), and Columbia-
Greene Community College's, of Hudson, NY, which like the center in
Texas is closed through today; I plan to call them tomorrow and see
what they can tell me. As with <National Peep>, these copies'
presence in this box could (but need not) mean Crowley had something
in that issue, but in this case there's no obvious reason to assume
that, if so, the work in question was fiction.

The newspaper went out of business a couple of months later; I'm
quite confident this issue is out of print.

"The Single Excursion of Caspar Last", short story, <Gallery> ed
Shapiro [6] 1979, science fiction

By <Gallery> I do mean the men's magazine. Since libraries don't
store this sort of magazine, and used bookstores don't buy such
obscure ones, I lack access to a copy, whether I'd only read it for
the articles or not. A magazine dealer's website provides the full
table of contents, complete with blurbs, and yes, the December 1979
issue is unequivocally the right one, contra Crowley's CV.

OK, so I haven't read this. I have, however, read <Great Work of
Time>, for which see below. And one of the problems I've always had
with <Great Work of Time> is solved by this story's existence (of
which I hadn't known until recently): it's all told from the POV of
Denys Winterset, except the bulk of the first section, which is in
Caspar Last's. The two POVs have very different tones, too: Last
sounds precise with just a touch of ebullience, Winterset almost
mournfully elegiac. So even though <Great Work> contains, in its
*third* section, an ironic ending to Last's story, I find perfectly
plausible Sleight's comment on this story: "Reprinted, with minor
revisions, as the first section of" <Great Work>.

The story itself? Well, just as "Antiquities" is a club story, but a
club story as written by Crowley, this here is an adventurous jape -
Yet Another Variation on how to make lots of money with time travel,
without creating temporal mayhem - but an adventurous jape ... as
written by Crowley. It's pretty fun, which is part of why it so
poorly introduces the darker novella it's been incorporated into.

(Yes, I know, all other human beings disagree with me on this, and
consider <Great Work> the best thing Crowley's ever written. Fine,
but this is me posting, and you have every right to reply as *you*
wish. I'm just happy to have, at long last, an explanation for a
sizeable part of my problem with the novella.)

Not, as far as I know, in print as such, though the experience of
reading the described section of <Great Work of Time> presumably
isn't too different (and is, of course, what I described above).

[6] Shapiro's name is what I needed research assistance from the UW
to find. This was stupid of me, since the same web page that shows
the table of contents also shows the masthead, but anyway.
Crowley's blog includes a post in memory of Bob Guccione, who did
publish "Snow", probably his most famous short work; in that post he
remembers this story as also going to Guccione, but not so: Nils
Shapiro was both editor and publisher. This post on Guccione drew an
... interesting set of comments; a fair number that were more or less
what you might expect, mostly by men, and two by Ellen Datlow and
Elizabeth Hand that very professionally ignored all those guys to
focus on Guccione as buyer of fiction and/or employer.

"The Reason for the Visit", short story, <Interfaces> ed Le Guin &
Kidd 1980, fable

I see this, the third <Antiquities> story, as a turning point in
Crowley's career. He had written three more or less science
fictional novels, and stories for several markets in several manners.
But in this, whose narrator has met Max Beerbohm and Samuel Johnson
with some aplomb but finds in a visit from Virginia Woolf more food
for thought, he now appears to have asserted his subsequent métier,
to work with history.

I don't want to spoil what there is to this story, so I'll illustrate
instead with a striking anecdote told in _Ægypt_ (<Dæmonomania>,
"Uxor", chapter 13) by a character whose similarities to Crowley I'll
discuss below. Dr. Johnson's line, a second marriage is "the triumph
of hope over experience", is well known. But in Dr. Johnson's time,
second marriages rarely followed divorces; "experience" referred not
to discord, but to death. This - establishing just how something old
makes sense that either doesn't make sense now, or worse, makes it
wrongly - is just the kind of work with history this story announces
Crowley's intent to do; and of course the publication of this
anecdote represents his actually doing it.

(That said, turns out Crowley's character isn't 100% reliable as a
historian - nor, as we've already seen with his CV, is Crowley. The
actual source is a short paragraph midway through some disjointed
recollections which Boswell ascribes to Dr. William Maxwell: "A
gentleman who had been very unhappy in marriage, married immediately
after his wife died: Johnson said, it was the triumph of hope over
experience." Isn't this much nearer the modern meaning?)

In print in <Novelties & Souvenirs>.

[Joe Bernstein]

You should really read at least the first few paragraphs of post 1,
"Starts", before tackling this one.

"Starts" ends with "The Reason for the Visit", which I take as
Crowley's announcement that he will henceforth concentrate on
history.

"The Green Child", short story, <Elsewhere> ed Windling & Arnold 1981,
fantasy

So immediately he begins: this is a reasonably faithful retelling of
the account by two chroniclers, circa 1200, of "the green children of
Woolpit", which I'd call "meditative" if that didn't imply vagueness,
which this <Antiquities> story completely lacks.

In print in <Novelties & Souvenirs>.

<Little, Big; or, The Fairies' Parliament>, novel, Bantam 1981,
fantasy

Nominee, 1982 Hugo for Novel
Nominee, 1982 Nebula for Novel
Winner, 1982 World Fantasy Award for Novel
Nominee, 1983 British SF Association Award for Novel
Winner, 1982 Mythopoeic Award for Fantasy

*This* story, on the other hand...

So "Smoky" Barnable, he whose given name calls him to evanesce,
sometime probably in the late 1960s travels on foot from "the City"
(never explicitly Manhattan) to wed. And the book that follows
echoes both backward and forward from that moment in the family into
which he marries, a family which since sometime before 1890 has been
in regular communication with fairies, and which leads a small
population somewhere in upstate New York who know that there is a
Tale, and that they are in it; a Tale which in fact ends, very
surprisingly to those very people, sometime after 1990.

A recent Crowley story appears in a book edited by Ellen Datlow, who
repeats there what I've thought the common understanding (though
Brian Scott appears to disagree): that this book's Manhattan scenes
- first from Smoky's POV but mainly from his cousin-in-law's and
especially his son's - helped give rise to the 1980s trend of "urban
fantasy". In those scenes especially, there's much darkness, but
this book also offers much beauty, so much indeed that it more or
less by itself made Crowley known (I think probably wrongly) as a
"lapidary fantasist". Meanwhile, Crowley meditates, as his later
books more often do, on storytelling itself. So passages here
reappear almost verbatim in John Clute's discussions of Modernism in
<The Encyclopedia of Fantasy>; but other passages bring me joy or
sorrow, or awe for their sheer fey wonder.

In particular, here alone Crowley shows that particular mastery of
storytelling that lies in *tying up all loose ends*, providing that
majestic emotional reward that Tales really can have. Obviously, I'm
not calling this mandatory: <Engine Summer>, for example, gets from
its final *refusal* to tie up important loose ends much of its total
emotional power, in fact, as does <The Translator>. But the sheer
tidal momentum that this process brings to <Little, Big> goes far to
justify this move that literary writers so routinely eschew.

I came to this book, unlike <Engine Summer>, as an adult, and yet I
think it's reached me more deeply, and I'm sure it's greater still.

We meet "Act Theory" here, as a trend of the 1970s. I was firmly
convinced it really *was* one, before Crowley got hold of it, the
only one I'd managed not to hear about growing up in a mildly
countercultural household. Then during this reading I looked up
"holocompetent act-fields" and found Crowley saying on his blog that
he'd made it all up. "Act Theory" gets a lot more hits, but that's
because of "*Speech*-Act Theory", a more or less scientific idea
utterly unrelated to Crowley's three versions.

I'll also prepare for future references by mentioning <Little, Big>'s
Imaginary Bedroom, its Winged Messenger Service (whose symbol is a
caduceus), its Seventh Saint Bar and Grill, its soap opera <A World
Elsewhere> (on which, for several mostly unnarrated Manhattan years,
Smoky's son works), and the root for its title, a Theory of Faerie
which the text intermittently supports, and which can be summed up
"the further in you go, the bigger it gets"; in other words, <Little,
Big> refers far more often to the paradox of something bigger on the
inside than the outside, than to simple contrasts of size.

In print in trade paperback from HarperCollins.

HIS 40S

"Novelty", short story, <Interzone> ed Clute Dorey Greenland Kaveney
Ounsley & Pringle 1983, meta-fantasy

Nominee, 1984 British SF Association Award for Short Fiction

Whose narrator, a blocked writer, sitting in the Seventh Saint Bar
and Grill, conceives a brilliant idea for a novel (really, someone
should go get Crowley's permission to write the thing), one which
deals with Gnosticism, the Kentucky hills, conflicting systems of the
world ... in other words, a novel which is, mutatis infinitely
mutandi, _Ægypt_.

So if you're keeping score, this is the evidence that _Ægypt_ is a
book *in*, not *set* in, <Little, Big>'s fictional universe. We will
return to this matter twice below.

In print in <Novelty> and <Novelties & Souvenirs>, and in <American
Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now>
(huh?) ed Straub, as a hardcover from the Library of America.

"Snow", novelette, <Omni> ed Williams 1985, science fiction

Nominee, 1986 Hugo for Short Story
Nominee, 1986 Nebula for Short Story

Another first-person story, in which a technology which even then
wasn't that science fictional develops a problem which isn't at all
science fictional, and the lines between life and death are
reaffirmed, save in (certain kinds of) memory. This is the first
story Ellen Datlow bought from Crowley, and as this suggests, I think
it's his one true horror story: does winter ever end? It deserved
the honours it got. It's in <Antiquities>.

In print in <Novelties & Souvenirs>, and in <The Best of the Best:
20 Years of the Year's Best Science Fiction> ed Dozois, as a
hardcover or trade paperback from Macmillan; and in <The Norton Book
of Science Fiction> ed Le Guin & Attebery, as a trade paperback from
W. W. Norton; and in <American Gothic Tales> ed Oates, as a trade
paperback from Penguin; and in <Masterpieces: The Best Science
Fiction of the 20th Century> ed Card, as a trade paperback from
Penguin.

_Ægypt_, four-volume novel, Bantam 1987-2000 and Small Beer 2007,
fantasy

Crowley's magnum opus is also, for all practical purposes, his
departure from overt speculative fiction, although in fact most of
his writing has remained at least minimally spec-ficnal. It's
unequivocally a fantasy, but begins with none of the tropes of
fantasy, and adds few later. Most of the evidence for its fantastic
nature comes in moments, more or less subtle, that remind the reader
of the "passage time".

Before explaining that phrase, I want to talk about what *does*
occupy all those pages that don't have Just, leos, Truthful Speakers,
or fairies in them. Although much of this is pastoral, Crowley's
principal concern in these books is the stories of his many POVs,
and especially the four main protagonists, two to each of the work's
two main strands.

The majority of the pages belong to the modern strand, set from 1977
to 1979, with copious flashbacks going at least to the 1930s but
mainly to the 1950s, and with flashforwards including a coda that
reaches April 1992. This strand's main setting is the Faraway Hills,
a region somewhere west of New York City intended as at once a
pastoral and perhaps countercultural idyll, and an ordinary land in
which people do suffer and die; <Endless Things> not only explicitly
acknowledges this, but also gives us a not-Costa Rica as *another*
limited "Utopia". One protagonist is Rosalind (Rosie) Rasmussen, a
long-departed scion of the local aristocracy whose husband's job
brings her back there shortly before she decides on a divorce, in
turn shortly before the story begins. Her suitor Brent Spofford is
an actual shepherd, at once clearly a nod to the pastoral idea, and a
genuine picture of a 1970s back-to-the-lander; but Rosie becomes
increasingly convinced that she no longer has a heart. Spofford's
former teacher Pierce Moffett, *the* main protagonist of this strand,
now losing his grip on academe in the wake of a disastrous romance,
gets stranded in the Faraways en route to a last-ditch job interview,
and eventually decides to set up there as a free-lance historian.
(The similarity with Crowley's course, starting about the same time,
as flagged by "The Reason for the Visit", is just one of many -
another is both leaving Manhattan for small towns in the mid-1970s.
However, I have no reason whatever to think Crowley's life a source
for some pretty squick-inducing conduct of Pierce's in <Love & Sleep>
and <Dæmonomania>.) He quickly falls in love all over again, with
Rose Ryder, though it takes him a whole book to figure out that Rose
isn't Rosalind, Spofford's beloved; this is one of many signs, from
the start, that fecklessness (etc.) will be prominent in Pierce's
protagony.

A writer whose books Pierce reads as a child, and Rosie in the main
1970s storyline, the historical novelist Fellowes Kraft, lived in the
Faraways, and left everything to the Rasmussen Foundation. So Rosie
recruits Pierce to help her look the house over, where they find the
book within the books of _Ægypt_, Kraft's last and apparently
uncompleted novel. *Its* two main protagonists are Giordano Bruno,
from 1564 (but more from 1576) at least to his death in 1600, and
John Dee, from about 1582 to near his death in 1608 or 1609. Some of
Kraft's book is missing from _Ægypt_'s pages, but it isn't clear how
much; what's included more or less coheres as a book.

This book is important to Pierce because he, more or less rightly,
perceives that it is the historical-novel version of a book he
himself had just sold the historical-fact version of, and started to
write. That book's topic is the idea that "there is more than one
history of the world": that periodically the laws of the universe
*change*, but once they have changed, the universe is such that those
laws have always applied, so only those who live through a change - a
"passage time" - can, during that time, have any idea that more than
one history is possible. So, for example, today it has always been
true that magic and astrology don't work; but (ending) in Dee's and
Bruno's time, it had always been true that they do. For Pierce this
idea gets bound up with ideas from his childhood, the land lost to
(which?) history, "not Egypt but Ægypt", and its capital Adocentyn.
And he interprets the whole phantasmagoria of the 1960s and 1970s
through which he had already lived as evidence that a passage time
had come (a view the text strongly, if diffusely and exiguously,
confirms), and that he too could reach Ægypt.

Kraft's book is quite clearly about another passage time, making it
exactly analogous to _Ægypt_. (The obvious objection that in that
case people *can* contemplate _Ægypt_'s McGuffin outside passage
times is never really addressed; the fact that Kraft is supposed to
have written his book around 1970 isn't enough to resolve this, since
Pierce still finds it readable in 1992.) _Ægypt_ consists of twelve
parts, each titled after an astrological house, meaning not the signs
(Aries etc.) but parts of the sky ("When the moon is in the seventh
house...") and topics of astrological concern, and four prologues,
two of which are in the first book, none in the last. In keeping
with the analogy, Kraft's book begins with a "Prologue in Heaven"
whose first paragraph is (a somewhat different draft of [7]) the
first paragraph of _Ægypt_'s own "Prologue in Heaven". It also
mentions a book in code, whose first line can be deciphered in at
least two ways: one makes it the first line of the same prologue,
the other the first line of _Ægypt_'s first actual chapter. Later,
we watch Pierce write, for his own book (sold to "Cockerel Books"),
the author's note that precedes these. I return, twice below, to the
relationship between _Ægypt_'s fictional world and <Little, Big>'s;
here, note that _Ægypt_ isn't just a book in its *own* fictional
world (much as Sam Gamgee can read the incipient Red Book of
Westmarch), but *three* such books.

[7] Since _Ægypt_'s "Prologue in Heaven" is demonstrably not
identical to Kraft's, the rest of Kraft's, after the first paragraph,
is the one part of his book we clearly don't have as such, though we
have ... a somewhat different draft of it. <Endless Things> strongly
implies we're also missing other pages, but I'm not sure it actually
confirms this; in particular, we have no page corresponding to the last
page of Kraft's book, on which there's only a single, incomplete,
sentence - which we *do* have.

<The Solitudes>, aka <Ægypt>, novel fragment, Bantam 1987, arguably
fantasy

Nominee, 1988 World Fantasy Award for Novel
Nominee, 1988 Arthur C. Clarke Award

I used the 2007 Overlook Press edition. Overlook boasts of having
finally printed _Ægypt_ as Crowley wanted it printed, most obviously
by titling this book correctly. Um, mebbe so, but this isn't a
perfect text: first of all, there are several whole-line typos (I
didn't catch any *missing* lines, but duplications and such). Also,
and for this they're less culpable, several inconsistencies with the
later books. The differences between the monument on Mt. Randa seen
in chapter 9 of "Lucrum", here, and that seen at the end of <Endless
Things>, could, I suppose, be chalked up to the fact that the former
is seen during an out-of-body experience (though by someone who
probably *had* seen it in person), or even, I suppose, to the passage
time. (I'm pretty sure the passage time, rather than somebody's
mistake, is Crowley's intended explanation for the difference between
<The Solitudes> and <Endless Things> as to whether Spofford has a
shepherd's crook.) But I don't think any of these explanations work
for the difference between Pierce's childhood education as outlined
in chapter 6 of "Vita", and as narrated at great length at the
beginning of the next book, <Love & Sleep>.

That said, let me start with the titles. The source for Bantam's
stupid mistitling is obvious, though it's particularly cringe-
inspiring to see thus applied to Crowley an idiotic practice (making
the first book's title match the series title) normally restricted to
rather lesser authors. Anyway, at least three of _Ægypt_'s books get
their *real* titles from Renaissance books. <The Solitudes> is named
after the much-mocked and little-read pastoral poems, <Soledades>
(1613), of Luis de Góngora, a new translation of which Pierce has
brought along on his ill-fated bus trip, intending to review it. (I
know of no actual translation of appropriate date, but there were
three in the 1960s, one of which Crowley used to represent the one
under review, and I'm sure more have shown up since.) Since I've
read none of the books the books of _Ægypt_ are named after, even in
translation, I can at most vaguely describe relationships between the
eponyms.

<The Solitudes>'s astrological houses are Vita, Lucrum, and Fratres,
which relatively strictly translated mean Life, Wealth, and Brothers:
beginning, what we begin with, and who we begin with. So this is our
introduction (and Pierce's) to the Faraways; there are indeed a few
chapters each from Dee's and Bruno's POVs, and more than a few
flashbacks to Pierce's adult life to date (mostly in Manhattan), but
it's mostly set in the late 1970s (covering about half of the main
span, August 1977 to maybe June 1978). It contrasts the pastoral
Faraways with Pierce's Manhattan of drugs, porn and other sexual
deviance, and chaos, not (obviously) in the latter's favour. Rosie,
meanwhile, is also beginning, beginning her independent life,
including divorce proceedings. Really, much of this book's plot is
actually covered (um, yes, spoiled) by the series introduction above,
leaving me little more to say.

That out of body experience is the nearest approach to overt fantasy
in this volume's modern strand; flipside, this is the only book of
_Ægypt_ in which I find no obvious references to any of Crowley's
previous work. (Unless a passage late in "Lucrum", Pierce looking at
a locked Manhattan park to which he'd like to have a key, refers to a
chapter in <Little, Big>...) But, as noted above, it does refer
copiously to itself!

In print as a trade paperback (titled <The Solitudes>) from the
Overlook Press.

"The Nightingale Sings at Night", novelette, 1989, fantasy

This is, well, hmm. I want to call it a Just So story, except that
there's nothing even remotely Kiplingesque about it. (For that, see
the *next* story.) It's more like a riff on the Creation myth and
the Fall of Man, except that here instead of God we have "Dame Kind"
(who also figures, much much later, in <Little, Big>, of course).
And instead of the Snake, the Moon. And for POV the Nightingale,
with his cheery song and eventually his one new idea. I'm pretty
sure I'm not the only one to underrate this story.

In print in <Novelty> and <Novelties & Souvenirs>.

<Great Work of Time>, novella, 1989, science fiction

Nominee, 1990 Nebula for Novella
Winner, 1990 World Fantasy Award for Novella

I may, however, be the only one to underrate this one, whose award
record you see, and which went on two years later to become Crowley's
first chapbook (from Bantam).

It begins (modulo one paragraph) with "The Single Excursion of Caspar
Last", but quickly switches to Denys Winterset, whom we meet in
several stages of his careers. One of those careers involves the
Otherhood, a sort of Legion of Time who aim to maintain the British
Empire, and though I do not love this book, I never forget the London
Winterset eventually finds resulting from their work, nor the image
its residents paint of a still more final goal.

I suspect in this quote an allusion to _Ægypt_: "no more than men or
beasts can we Magi remember, once the universe has become different,
that it was ever other than it is now."

Out of print as a chapbook (actually, in mass market paperback), but
in print in <Novelty> and <Novelties & Souvenirs>, and in <The
Science Fiction Century> ed Hartwell, as a hardcover from Macmillan;
and in the 2007 ed of <A Science Fiction Omnibus> ed Aldiss, as a
trade paperback from Penguin.

"In Blue", novella, 1989, science fiction

Obviously, this story's title points back to <Beasts>: we're in a
world whose revolutionary "cadre" dress "in Blue", and espouse "Act
Theory". Hare, our protagonist, is a fecklessly failing member of
cadre, supposed to be writing textbooks on coincidence magnitude
calculations, who instead gets interested on one hand in his possibly
lesbian new neighbours, and on the other in history, about which
nobody in the revolutionary world need care. Things go well neither
for him nor for those around him. As a calm, often pastorally
beautiful, picture of fecklessness driving catastrophe even in a sort
of Eden, this story offers much; as a plea for history even in Eden,
more.

Note, please, that here cadre dress "in Blue" and spout "Act Theory",
whereas in <Beasts> Act Theory spouters and Blue-wearers seem not to
overlap. *Furthermore* none of the theory we hear from Hare has
anything to do with the fragments we heard in <Little, Big>. The
more we see of Act Theory, the less there is of it, and I must
conclude that I was quite wrong to claim here, some years back, that
it makes of at least these three stories a "series". It's just a
relatively arcane tool Crowley uses in self-reference.

In print in <Novelty> and <Novelties & Souvenirs>.

<Novelty: Four Stories>, collection, Doubleday 1989

Nominee, 1990 World Fantasy Award for Collection

Crowley's first collection includes "The Nightingale Sings at Night",
<Great Work of Time>, "In Blue", and "Novelty". It thus instantiates
the *theme* the writer in "Novelty" had envisioned: the first and
last stories treat of Novelty, the middle two of Security.

In print (surprise!) as a trade paperback from Random House, and all
the stories also appear in <Novelties & Souvenirs>.

"Missolonghi 1824", short story, <Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction
Magazine> ed Dozois 1990, fantasy

The first of Crowley's two Byron stories so far (and yes, of course,
that's what this is) has him telling in 1824 of a much earlier
encounter. On this reading, following my so far incomplete reading
of Byron himself, I find this actually more persuasive than the
longer and more famous work. It's in <Antiquities>.

(The Texas "finding aid" says this story appeared under the title
"Satyros" in <Omni> in 1990. This is untrue, one of at least two
errors I've caught that sketch in - and yes, I've physically checked
the relevant issues, as well as my bibliographies. I'm confused;
where would they get this idea? Do Crowley's diaries, also at Texas,
record nonexistent sales?)

In print in <Novelties & Souvenirs> (which see below for more on
Crowley and Byron), and (to my mind incongruously) in <Poe's
Children: The New Horror> ed Straub, as a trade paperback from
Random House.

<Beasts/Engine Summer/Little, Big>, collection, Book of the Month
Club 1991

I trust the contents of this second collection are obvious.

Out of print as such, replaced by two volumes in Harper's current
presentation.

HIS 50S

The list up above, of works with long gestations, covers everything
longer than "In Blue" up to the year 2000. The novels that began
appearing just before he turned sixty aren't included, because I
haven't found anything discussing how long he worked on them; I can
imagine that they might differ from the older works in that respect,
but I don't actually know. I have no idea whether it's relevant that
the Texas papers include nothing concerning <The Translator>, <Lord
Byron's Novel>, or <Four Freedoms>, given that they also include
nothing concerning <Endless Things>, which an interview I *did* find
said he'd finished by 2001.

"Exogamy", short story, <Omni Best Science Fiction> ed Datlow 1993,
fantasy or meta-fantasy

I didn't remember this last of the <Antiquities> stories *at all*,
and am pretty sure that's because I didn't like it. I still don't.
It's a rather nasty picture of courtship from the male point of view;
I'm pretty sure the satire is actually aimed at the impossibility of
men's ideal images of women, but that doesn't make the scatology and
such composing that satire any more fun for me.

In print in <Novelties & Souvenirs>.

<Antiquities: Seven Stories>, collection, Incunabula 1993

Nominee, 1994 World Fantasy Award for Collection

As exhaustively documented above, the third collection includes most
of Crowley's short fiction thus far *not* included in <Novelty>,
namely "The Green Child", "Missolonghi 1824", "Antiquities", "The
Reason for the Visit", "Her Bounty to the Dead", "Snow", and
"Exogamy". (With the probable exception of the last pair, this order
is chronological: 12th century before 1824 before the 1880s before
Virginia Woolf before the present before the future before ...)

Out of print as such, but all the stories appear in <Novelties &
Souvenirs>, apparently with their texts taken from here rather than
from their original publications.

<Love & Sleep>, novel fragment, Bantam 1994, fantasy

Nominee, 1995 World Fantasy Award for Novel

The title this time refers to the <Hypnerotomachia Poliphili> of
1499, attributed to Francesco Colonna. (The first English version,
attributed to Robert Dallington, appeared incomplete in 1592 as <The
Strife of Love in a Dream>; the first complete translation, by
Joscelyn Godwin, in 1999 under the original title.) The astrological
houses are Genitor, Nati, and Valetudo, or Parent, Children, and
Health.

"Genitor" is almost wholly devoted to the part of Pierce Moffett's
1950s childhood spent in Kentucky; fittingly, it manages to fore-
shadow practically everything else in the tetralogy in the process.
In particular, it introduces the main fantasy trope in the novel's
modern strand, an immemorial struggle between werewolves and witches
over the harvest, conducted at the Ember Days [8]; but in this
volume we see it only through the POV of an old man of little
learning and bizarre beliefs. The rest of the book returns to the
1970s (summer 1978) and gives us some more of Kraft's book. It all
remains bucolic enough, but this is a darker book than <The
Solitudes>; it starts and ends with Pierce in dreadful flight from
his own deeds and his own heart, and starts and ends also with
epilepsy; along the way, besides werewolves and witches, we meet a
ghost.

A TV show seen in Pierce's 1950s home is <A World Elsewhere>, on
which Smoky Barnable's son works in <Little, Big>'s 1990s. So this
is the evidence that <Little, Big> and _Ægypt_ share a fictional
universe. Note the contrasts with the evidence adduced above and
below. Meanwhile, Crowley here emphasises the identities between
himself and his fictional authors: Kraft, by quoting Charles Nicol's
famous closer to his <Saturday Review> review of <Engine Summer> as
from a reviewer writing of Kraft's corpus, "that hilly country on the
borderlands of literature" [9] (this whole passage seems relevant
to Crowley's own early career, and presages what I read as comments
on _Ægypt_ itself in the later books); Pierce, by noting his
publisher, "Cockerel" Books, as "a giant publisher of paperbacks".

In print as a trade paperback, claiming 2008 revision, from the
Overlook Press.

[8] Wikipedia here started me on a weird quest. It claims that
Crowley originally wanted to title the whole book <Ember Days>, and
Bantam wanted to publish "Genitor" separately. Its reference is the
Texas "finding aid", but what that document *actually* says is that
Bantam wanted to publish "Genitor" separately *under the title <Ember
Days>*. Texas also says the collection contains drafts of a story
"Holy Saturday" later published in <Shadows>. Near as I can tell,
that last clause is untrue [10], which makes two publication errors
I've caught that document in. (It also misspells Nicol's name.) Oy
vey, bibliography is tougher now than it was in the 1990s...

[9] The whole condescending sentence is actually worth quoting:
"Crowley has published some science fiction previously; here he has
gone beyond his genre into that hilly country on the borderlands of
literature." Finding this was what I needed research help from the
Seattle Public Library for. It's in the 14 April 1979 issue of the
<Saturday Review>.

[10] The obvious explanation is that Crowley revised "Holy Saturday"
into the story eventually published as "Her Bounty to the Dead",
which did appear in <Shadows>. Well, for all I know this is true,
but what the document actually says is
The four stories collected in <Novelty> ... are present, as are
five of the seven short stories collected in <Antiquities>
...[list]... and "Her Bounty to the Dead" (published as "Where
Spirits Gat Them Home" in a collection called <Shadows>, 1978).
There are two draft versions (1962 & 1967) of *another* story, "Holy
Saturday," which was also published in <Shadows>. ^ emphasis mine
I'm not sure whether I own this first volume of <Shadows>, and it's
conceivable that Grant printed two stories under one table of
contents listing, and William Contento, compiling the bibliography I
use, missed it. But that *really* isn't how I'm betting. In
particular, if Contento missed it, so did Worldcat, which has tables
of contents for each volume except #8.

<Three Novels>, aka <Otherwise>, collection, Bantam 1994

This time the novels collected are <The Deep>, <Beasts>, and <Engine
Summer>.

In print as a trade paperback titled <Otherwise> from HarperCollins.

"Gone", short story, <Fantasy and Science Fiction> ed Rusch 1996,
science fiction

Nominee, 1997 Hugo for Short Story
Nominee, 1997 Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award
Winner, 1997 Locus Award for Short Story

One of Rosie Rasmussen's difficulties, in the middle books of
_Ægypt_, is conflict with her ex (who joins a scary "Christian" sect)
over custody of their daughter. Here Crowley's POV is another
divorcée whose "Christian survivalist" ex takes off with her kids
while she's distracted by an "elmer" [11], one of millions of helpful
aliens who have appeared all over the world. One way Crowley's
characters have often ruminated on their own fecklessness is by
imagining that there's some switch that can be pulled, that will make
them, and their lives, work properly again. Well, this story
portrays an attempt to pull that switch.

It's a good story, but I can only take its awards record as evidence
either of a slow year in the field, a belated attempt to make up for
some earlier results, or both.

In print in <Novelties & Souvenirs>.

[11] This name by way of the 1939 New York World's Fair. Yes, we're
still doing history.

"Lost and Abandoned", short story, <Black Swan, White Raven> ed
Datlow & Windling 1997, meta-fantasy

Here we have two riffs on "Hansel and Gretel", the first in first
person. Each is, by itself, interesting and a little scary; their
juxtaposition, strongly suggesting they're the *same* story, is
really scary.

In print in <Novelties & Souvenirs>.

<Dæmonomania>, novel fragment, Bantam 2000, fantasy

This time we get the title, taken from Jean Bodin's <De la
Démonomanie des sorciers> of 1580, in its Latin version (Randy
Scott's 1995 abridgement is the first English translation); Pierce
explains that it means not a fad for demons but obsession with them.
The houses are Uxor (the seventh house; I don't know for which, if
any, scenes the moon is in it), Mors, and Pietas, or Wife, Death,
Piety. The ninth house is also called Iter, or Journeys. The 1970s
plot spans autumn 1978.

<Love & Sleep> introduced the Powerhouse, a success religion
masquerading as a fundamentalist Christian sect, whose doctrine is
that God grants you anything you pray for. (Although <Dæmonomania>
is really quite crowded with bits of fantasy, some of the most
memorable are increasingly improbable examples of this doctrine
coming true.) In this book people close to both Rosie and Pierce
join the Powerhouse, and each struggles to extricate someone from it,
leading to outright rescue attempts in "Pietas". (These attempts
involve other POVs, more directly connected to this book's fantasy,
who also complicate the simplicity of taking the Powerhouse as
villains, and allow "Mors" - subtitled, as it happens, "Ember Days" -
to concentrate on the werewolves and witches in the modern as well as
the historical strands.)

As <Dæmonomania> shares the Powerhouse and the werewolves with <Love
& Sleep>, it shares other matter with <Endless Things>. One is a
technique Crowley adopts of narrating something straight for a page
or twenty - and then suddenly saying "But of course he didn't really
do that", or "And then he woke up", or like that. I realise this
sounds incredibly annoying, but my own experience of it, reading
these books for the first time, was instead that it enriched the
narrative, offering scenes and images that otherwise wouldn't have
been there, while pointing up by contrast the implications of the
'actual' alternative. (Crowley used this technique for *much*
briefer passages in the first two books, consistently as dreams.)

<Dæmonomania> also shares with <Endless Things> significantly more of
Crowley's self-references. Much is to <Little, Big>. Early in
"Uxor", Rosie and her daughter twice call each other "you little" and
"you big". No use of "little" by or in relation to the daughter
(whose rôle in _Ægypt_'s fantasy I'm carefully avoiding), thereafter,
reads to me as innocent, and the last two books of _Ægypt_ find many
other uses for "little" and "big". Note the contrast with <Little,
Big>'s own way of pointing to its title (which Crowley *also* uses,
less often, in these books). Anyway, added to this we have Pierce's
"Invisible Bedroom", and a "Quicksilver Messenger Service", whose
reference to Mercury (prominent as Hermes throughout this book)
recalls <Little, Big>'s caduceus-marked "Winged Messenger Service".
But, admittedly stretching, I *think* Crowley *also* alludes here to
his first three novels. Most obviously, in this book John Dee learns
of a dangerous gift "its name, or the name of its name". This is
the first of three places in the series that I read as referring to
this aspect of the Just of <The Deep>. Less clearly, I read the
Powerhouse's emphasis on getting things from God as a fine example of
<Engine Summer>'s "angels" seeking "Everything They Wanted". And at
maximum stretch, this book alone names dogs Rosie keeps. "Alf and
Ralph" certainly seem to refer to Cordwainer Smith's 1961 story
"Alpha Ralpha Boulevard"; the stretch is to link that story's
intelligent humanoids with non-human mammals' genes to those in
<Beasts>. On top of all this, right at the beginning of "Uxor" the
narrative talks about "charting" coincidences, in other words, "In
Blue"'s McGuffin.

Finally, one more thing the last two books of _Ægypt_ share is an
oracular voice commenting on _Ægypt_ itself. Here that voice appears
at a masked ball, where Pierce is wearing a donkey's head, and
belongs to someone portraying Fellowes Kraft (who may, of course,
*be* six-years-dead Kraft). Kraft had once tried to put on Marlowe's
<Faustus> at the ball's setting, an abandoned "castle" resort:

"What happened?" [Pierce] asked. "To your production?"
... "Well I've failed. I failed. Yes I think that's evident
now." He said this with what seemed great anguish. "The
conception was just too huge, the parts too many. No matter how
long it was let to go on, it got no closer to being done."
"It's a corrupted text," Pierce said. "I believe." ...
"I so much wanted it to *knit*," the other said. He interlaced
his own fingers. "Past and present, then and now. The story of
the thing lost, and how it was found. More than anything I wanted
it to *resolve*. And all it does is *ramify*.
"You take this party, or ball," he said, lifting his glass as if
to toast it. "I mean it's hardly the *Walpurgisnacht* that was
promised for so long."
...
"And take yourself for another instance," he said. "How are
you to be understood now? The Golden Ass? Dionysus? There's
Bottom, of course. Whose dream hath no bottom."
"Well it wasn't what I planned," Pierce said. ... "Not at all
what I intended." [He, here, probably means his costume.]
"No. No. Not at all. I'm so sorry. Well at a certain point
invention flags, you see; you begin to repeat, helplessly. You
keep coming upon the same few conceptions over and over, greeting
each other with glad cries, yes! Yes! The way on! Until you
realize what it is, oh here I go again, the same story again, as
ever. And you feel so damned."
[Further conversation makes it clear that this really is the
author apologising to his character, ending with:] By the sound
of his voice Pierce could tell he had removed his mask, but
nothing would have induced him to look back to see who was beneath
it. -- "Pietas", chapter 10

<Dæmonomania> is the darkest book in the sequence, and appeared when
Crowley had been working twenty years on it; I can't blame him for
second thoughts. It begins and ends "When the world ends"; in
the book within it, both John Dee and Giordano Bruno die. It is not
a book to re-read for comfort. But it is the structure on which the
more comforting materials of <The Solitudes> and <Endless Things>
rely for support.

In print as a trade paperback, again revised 2008, from the Overlook
Press.

<An Earthly Mother Sits and Sings>, short story, DreamHaven 2000,
fantasy

This is the first of Crowley's short works to appear *originally* as
a chapbook, illustrated by Charles Vess; but I read it without
illustration, in <Novelties and Souvenirs>.

It's the tale of Ineen Fitzgerald, whose ex-priest father, posted to
the west Irish coast, has gone mad of his disappointment, and of the
man who comes to her the night some ships of the Armada got too near
that coast. Although we only get actual confirmation that it's
fantasy on the final page, this is the last work covered in this post
that can easily be placed in any speculative genre. It is, of
course, at least a good story, but beyond that, I'm not sure yet what
I think of it. The prose is in four sections, headed by lines from a
folk song; then, the story over, we get the other eight lines. That
suggests to me a continuing story, but what do I know?

In print in the original edition, as a chapbook from DreamHaven
(which I'd love to own), and in <Novelties & Souvenirs>, and in <The
Year's Best Fantasy and Horror: Fourteenth Annual Collection> ed
Windling & Datlow, as a hardcover or trade paperback from Macmillan.

[Joe Bernstein]

You should really read at least the first few paragraphs of post 1,
"Starts", before tackling this one.

<The Translator>, novel, Harper 2002, fantastique

We meet Christa (Kit) Malone in February 1961 at the White House, in
a group of budding poets meeting President Kennedy, who tells her a
Russian poet has just settled in her state. We then hear of a poem
this poet - Innokenti Isayevich Falin - wrote in Berlin, and revised
en route. "The original - later lost with all the others - is a
sonnet, fourteen lines in Falin's own peculiar rhyme scheme. The
unrhymed rough translation that Kit Malone later worked out with
Falin looked like this:"

Nearly the whole book is in Kit's POV; only this, of Crowley's other
novels, is dominated by a single perspective nearly as much as
<Engine Summer>. (And only this, period, gives most of its pages to
female POV.) It's also like <Engine Summer> in that its material
cuts off before the protagonist's 21st birthday, except for what
little we get of her later life courtesy of a sort of framing plot
(a Falin conference in Russia) set in the early 1990s. But <The
Translator> differs from the earlier book in that Crowley now moves
expertly among his strands - the main plot of January to October
1962, in chronological order; the flashbacks to Kit's life before
college; and the 1990s story, also, I think, in chronological order.
It also differs, of course, in that this, as Crowley's first book
aimed squarely at the literary fiction market, has none of <Engine
Summer>'s science fictional exotica. Instead it has the historical
exotica of the 1950s in retrospect and the 1960s in prospect (we get
Vietnam and a protest). Oh, and it has "the angels of the nations",
to which I'll return shortly. In a coda, Kit, voicing this idea, is
reminded of Kennedy's assassination. So yeah, Crowley was born in
the 1940s, and just *has* to tell us where Kit was when she heard
(but, to be fair, he *hadn't* told us where any previous protagonist
with his birthdate was) - but then he uses this simultaneously to
strengthen the idea that makes this a bona fide example of Todorov's
fantastique, and to give us the only epilogue we get to Kit's 1962
story.

Which is a story suffused with poetry, including eleven poems either
by Kit or by Falin, and hence by Crowley (they're good), a college
story, a story of terrible losses, a love story ... Kit's
bildungsroman is nearly as rich as Rush's, gains at least as much
from the cavernous uncertainties it leaves behind, and is still more
skillfully written. Although Kit has ignorances appropriate to her
age and time, she's perhaps the least feckless of all Crowley's
protagonists. I strongly recommend this book at *least* to anyone
with a high opinion of <Engine Summer>.

In print as a trade paperback from HarperCollins.

"The War Between the Objects and the Subjects", short story, <Embrace
the Mutation> ed Schafer & Sheehan 2002, fable

Um. A very brief military history of the central topic of
epistemology. Strange, though not totally unexpected from its
author: "The objects' strategy had an advantage and a disadvantage,
from the objects' point of view, a point of view which certainly did
not exist." On first reading, I figured it was funny-once, but when
I made myself re-read it, I actually enjoyed it more.

In print in <Novelties & Souvenirs>.

HIS 60S

<The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines>, novelette, <Conjunctions:39
The New Wave Fabulists> ed Straub 2002, not speculative fiction

Yes, you're right, there's a title problem up there, but not the
ones you think. This appeared in <Conjunctions> three years before
the chapbook from Subterranean Press; and yes, <Conjunctions> really
uses colons like that. However, the line-break hides the fact that
the title actually reads something like this:
<Conjunctions:39 The New Wave Fabulists>. Oh, and yes, that's
Peter Straub this literary magazine got to guest-edit their special
issue. Oh, and *yes*, I know <Locus> and Contento call it a novella
and for all I know Subterranean did too. But it's 43 pages in
<Conjunctions>, and I just don't buy that it's that many words.

ANYWAY. The narrator, who never names himself (and who's at least
calendrically unreliable - 4 July follows 10 July), tells from the
vantage point of 1981 the story of the summer of 1959, when he and
Harriet Ingram had "apprentice positions" at the first Indiana
Shakespeare Festival in Avon, Indiana. [12] The plays in question
are <Henry V> and <The Tempest>, but Harriet's story (and this is,
much more than the narrator's, Harriet's story), amid the clutter of
a disabled festival funder's Baconian theories and library copies of
Mary Cowden Clarke's <The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines> [13],
is a tragedy.

This story has won so much praise that a standard adjective for it is
"much-praised"; in particular, it's correctly described as "delicate"
and "poignant". Which, um, aren't exactly Shakespearean adjectives,
and I find myself unable to accept the implied comparison between
Harriet's fate and those of Shakespeare's heroines. (It also, as my
genre classification above implies, shows nothing of Crowley as
"fabulist".) This was the single hardest story discussed in this
post for me to find to read [14], which may bias me further; and I
certainly don't want to imply that I was so disappointed as to
recommend *against* reading it, should you be so fortunate as to come
across a copy. It is delicate, it is poignant, it nevertheless has
pages of superbly written comic business in its middle, and it's well
worth reading. But it doesn't, in the end, work for me as well as I
want it to, let alone as well as Crowley's stories usually do.

Both <Conjunctions:39> and the Subterranean Press separate edition
are out of print at the publishers. For much more on how to get
<Conjunctions>, see below sv "Glow Little Glowworm", but of the
sources mentioned there, only Ingram *might* have physical copies
(and I wouldn't bet on that). <Conjunctions:39> is *much* cheaper
than the Subterranean Press edition on the used market. At the
<Conjunctions> website (<http://www.conjunctions.com/>), you can
read the story's first few pages to help you decide whether to take
the trouble.

[12] Rick Kleffel's "Agony Column" review, which I last saw 12
December at <http://trashotron.com/agony/news/2005/03-14-05.htm>,
incorrectly calls Avon "imaginary". Um. The current town of Avon
was incorporated in 1995, but if you consult the history compiled by
8th-graders at <http://www.avongov.org/egov/docs/1239985278_708923.pdf>,
also last seen triple 12, you'll find that the settlement in question
has existed, under that name, since the 19th century. The Avon
version of the Indiana Shakespeare Festival, as opposed to a later
Bloomington edition, does seem to be imaginary, or at least has left
no trace in that history or anywhere else on the Web. Separately,
the medical information presented in the story seems to be, if not
actually medically correct, pretty much what intelligent, interested
people in 1981 would have *thought* medically correct.

[13] This is a real book which I intend to read sometime soonish. It
was printed an amazing number of times between original publication
in 1850 and the end of the 19th century, then apparently forgotten
the minute the year changed, and let sit until the recent Google
Books-ripoff publishers moved in a few years back. It consists of a
total 15 stories, apparently always published in three "series" of
five stories each. (The only combined edition at Google Books is an
abridgement by Clarke's sister. The five-story volumes run about 400
pages each.) Clarke had previously published the first serious
concordance to Shakespeare.

[14] I managed to live here six years without traveling outside King,
Pierce, and Snohomish Counties, that is, Seattle's, Tacoma's, and
Everett's counties, which are the most populous counties in
Washington and quite large, physically. But for some reason the
University of Washington let its subscription to <Conjunctions> lapse
for a while, and nobody else had a copy, so I wound up trekking
across *four* counties (King, Pierce, Thurston, and Mason) to
Shelton, WA, whose library doesn't subscribe but does have this
issue, shelved as an anthology, to find this story. This cost most
of my then-available cash. Undoubtedly this was a factor in my
disappointment: I really *wanted* the story to justify all that
trouble.
In one consolation, the trip was more spec-ficnal than the story:
not only did I learn that Sleater Kinney was a road in Lacey before
it was a band, but I also found out that there's an "Enchanted
Parkway" near Federal Way. Probably fortunately, the buses I took
didn't go that way.

<Novelties and Souvenirs: Collected Short Fictions>, collection,
Harper 2004

Crowley's most recent collection includes all his published short
prose fiction to its date *except* <The Girlhood of Shakespeare's
Heroines> (well, if you ignore all the more obscure pre-1980 stuff
above, it does), so it includes all the contents of <Novelty> and
<Antiquities>. The stories are given mostly in publication order, as
follows: "Antiquities", "Her Bounty to the Dead", "The Reason for
the Visit", "The Green Child", "Novelty", "Snow", "The Nightingale
Sings at Night", <Great Work of Time>, "In Blue", "Missolonghi 1824",
"Exogamy", "Lost and Abandoned", "Gone", <An Earthly Mother Sits and
Sings>, "The War Between the Objects and the Subjects".

(The Texas "finding aid" lists "Souvenirs" as a, presumably
unpublished, 1967 "typescript". Sleight amplifies: it's sometimes
titled "Souvenirs of Lord Byron" and is an "unproduced play".
Obviously, Crowley's interest in Byron long precedes "Missolonghi
1824", let alone <Lord Byron's Novel>.
Sleight and Texas also list "The Love Song of Menelaus", a poem.
I've already mentioned "Holy Saturday" above. As far as I know,
which isn't very far, these three works exhaust Crowley's unpublished
juvenilia, except things that were later revised into published
works.)

In print as a trade paperback from HarperCollins.

"Little Yeses, Little Nos", novelette, <The Yale Review> ed McClatchy
2005, science fiction

OK, so <The Little Magazine> and <Conjunctions> turned out to be
improbable havens for spec-fic in the literary world. Lightning did
*not* strike thrice: I don't recognise a single name on this one's
masthead as spec-fic related. (To be fair, the only name I recognise
*at all* is McClatchy's, and his not by much.)

At any rate, the story <The Yale Review> accepted from Yale "Senior
Lecturer" Crowley is science fiction, but not by much. Harry Watroba
lives with his daughter, following a house fire that we eventually
learn resulted from Harry's own fecklessness. We also eventually
learn that the doctor he's talking with as the story opens thinks he
can *cure* Harry's fecklessness. That's the sf aspect.

The story itself is a good one, more cheerful than <Girlhood>, and
science fictional in another sense, too. For all the fecklessness
Harry's POV exposes us to (and the mournfulness, at that), this story
in fact has the dial twisted *way* over toward human effectiveness,
rather than fatedness; of Crowley's previous fiction, only "The
Single Excursion of Caspar Last" is even in the neighbourhood. So
I certainly recommend it to anyone interested who has access to this
volume of the <Yale Review>.

Harry Watroba is "only just past sixty" as the story begins in
November, but in December turns out to be "sixty-three". With the
publication date of 2005, this would seem to establish him as another
character born 1 December 1942. "Glow Little Glowworm" retroactively
denies this, but actually it doesn't work too well on its own either:
this issue is a spring issue, so the naïve publication date
assumption should have Harry born in 1941.

<The Yale Review> may not be all spec-fic friendly, but it does get
the e-commerce idea. I know of no publication of this story except
in this issue of the review, but if you go to
<http://www.yale.edu/yalereview/backissues/932.html> it looks like
you can buy that without any difficulty; also, their publisher,
Wiley, has long made a business of selling online access to content,
and are perfectly happy to do things that way too.

<Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land>, novel, Harper 2005, meta-
speculative fiction

This is a pretty curious textual object. It consists of twenty
sections separated by pictures of Ada, Countess Lovelace, with a
string of numbers superimposed. (Always the same numbers.) The
sections divide in two main ways. First of all, the odd ones are
all ephemera: a web page (the first, two-page, section), a
postcard, two letters, and one hundred twenty-six e-mails. The
even sections are all parts of a book, which has sixteen chapters,
each with some endnotes, two introductions, and various other
stuff not included. In the fourth section, you learn from Countess
Ada that she believes - and surely Crowley's novel must ask *you* to
believe - that those sixteen chapters are a novel written by her
father, George Gordon Byron, Lord Byron; she claims authorship of the
endnotes. So the other way to divide the sections is modern, Ada,
Byron.

Now, I have a choice here. I can talk about this novel as an
emotional experience, in which Crowley orchestrates once again strong
emotions, parallel stories, cavernous uncertainties, and excellent
prose into a majestic ending whose final lines - just the dateline of
an introduction - carry preposterous and fulfilling weight. In which
case I have to shut up right about here, because any more detail
would constitute major spoilers, and you can already get a profusion
of those from Harper's blurbage. (OK, one thing I *can* mention:
Unexpectedly, given Byron's reputation, Crowley here pretty much
replaces not only fecklessness but also sex, as preoccupations, with
something else, which is: action without will. Byron's novel offers
several examples important to the plot, including somnambulism,
hypnosis, and - here's the unequivocal spec-ficnal aspect - zombies;
both Ada and the modern plot imply that computers are another
example.)

So I might as well take the other choice, and talk, for the rest of
this entry, about the games Crowley plays, because in this book alone
he lets those spill over from _Ægypt_ (and, I suspect but am not
sure, even refer to _Ægypt_). Just to start with, let's tackle birth
dates. The modern strand's McGuffin is of course the rediscovery of
the novel. In earlier drafts of this post I wasn't sure whether
the seller of the documents, this McGuffin's starter, was worth
mentioning as possibly born 1 December 1942. (There's another
candidate, but we learn even less about his age.) Then, re-reading,
I finally noticed that the name the seller goes by is an acronym.
And that name is "Roony J. Welch". To make matters still worse, we
get a description of Mr. Welch; and this description matches way too
well the description Ada gives of the guy who sold the manuscript of
the novel to her. So essentially, Crowley is explicitly *telling* us
that he as author holds all the cards, drives all the plots. [15]
(If you've read the book, go back to the lines about Charles Babbage
in the final introduction, and realise to whom they really refer.)
So much for trying to convince us this is really a novel by Byron.

There's a passel more games. I see the following as self-references,
all from Ada's notes: "The beasts that Descartes regarded as
*automata* without more feeling than a clock-work will one day be
shewn to be more like ourselves - or, ourselves to be more like them
- than we can now conceive" (note 5 for the 1st chapter; <Beasts>).
"There is a mystery in coincidence that, in centuries hence, may be
reduced, by tools we as yet know not of, to mathematical
description." (note 5 for the 2nd chapter; "In Blue"). "But what if
all was wrongly encypher'd and yet when decypher'd returned a book,
but a different book" (note 12 for the 11th chapter; <The
Solitudes>). And, clearest of all, "I sometimes think that we lead
many lives between birth and dying" (note 7 for the 12th chapter;
<Engine Summer>).

Crowley also seems to make Ada his voice for other things. His
acknowledgements end "The great dead need no acknowledgement from
me." But I thought I caught several cases where he uses Ada's notes
to refer to *later* great novels, of which that in note 8 for the
10th chapter - "Happy endings are all alike; disasters may be unique"
- even I couldn't miss. You needn't, however, credit me with all
that about action without will above; see note 5 for the 13th chapter
(and compare, again, the final lines on Babbage: "or like one of the
busy mechanical people he loved to show off, whose motives are
unreadable, perhaps nonexistent, and whose powers are unguessable").
I found note 3 to the 13th chapter particularly interesting: "Here
it may be of interest to note that (as far as I am aware) there are
no supernatural or ghostly occurrences in the works of Lord Byron.
Those dramas such as <Manfred> and <Cain> which may seem to
contradict this statement may be, indeed ought to be, viewed as
philosophical rather than supernatural. Of tales that picture
realistically our common life or historical experience, into which
are intruded ghosts, prophecies, revenants, angels, &c., there are I
believe none." (As regards what I've read, that's true enough for
government work.)

She goes on to say, essentially, that her father would've seen the
zombie not as fantasy but as sf. Which is my ground for saying "meta-
speculative fiction" above rather than getting more specific. But in
fact, Crowley either failed or succeeded too well here. Having
recently read much of Byron's work (including <Manfred>, which is in
fact a spectacular and stunning secondary-worldish fantasy, but not
<Cain>), I found the ostensible novel hard to swallow as his: it
begins in his "Oriental" mode though supposedly begun at a time when
he'd pretty conclusively abandoned that mode; and although <Manfred>,
as much as anything, shows that he had by then learnt to plot (plot
being by far the most glaring *weakness* of Byron's actual "Oriental"
tales), none of what I've read demonstrates that he could plot *this
well*. Still, I should emphasise that these are the *only* ways I
found the book un-Byronic. I'm too well aware that when I return to
Byron, I'm going to find it difficult to remember he didn't really
write some of this novel's scenes. On the other hand, on first
reading I felt that the novel failed to hold up its end, as against
Ada's notes and the e-mails, in the ending. (A second reading,
foreshadowing clearer, felt less lopsided.)

So I've already noticed that the ostensibly Byronic novel isn't what
draws me to this book, but that doesn't mean I'm not drawn. I've now
re-read this once, and expect I will again, pulled in by the modern
story and its counterpoint in Ada's notes (and, yes, by Crowley's
games), only then finding the novel within necessary too. If you've
read this far and I haven't entirely ruined your interest in the
book, you'll probably find it worthwhile too.

In print as a trade paperback from HarperCollins.

[15] The sellers' descriptions do *not* match what I remember of
Crowley's own appearance, for whatever that's worth.

<Endless Things>, novel fragment, Small Beer 2007, arguably fantasy

This is Crowley's shortest novel since <Engine Summer>, if not
<Beasts>. It's the only part of _Ægypt_ without a "Prologue", and
there's no epilogue either. Each of the strands loses one of its
main POVs, although some new POVs make up for some of this.
Crowley's "Last Author's Note" says "The present volume has been
largely finished for some years". Did he cut it to get it printed
at all? I'm pretty sure he didn't. I'm pretty sure the dropped main
POVs' stories are well concluded in <Dæmonomania> [16]; the ending
is fine without an epilogue; and the structure, unlike the previous
books', more or less precludes a prologue. Moreover, Crowley in
interviews has mentioned finishing this "short" book in 2001. I
think we have what he intended, modulo some typographical oddities.

In each of the first three volumes of _Ægypt_, Pierce Moffett
explicitly discusses the book the volume's named after. This time,
we get "endless things" mainly as a sort of curse used by Fellowes
Kraft's Gnostic mother in flashbacks. For normal Gnostics,
including her, "things" in general are Eeeevil, and the Demiurge,
their creator, sometimes identified with the Christian God, the main
evil deity. At times in the Middle Ages, the Church would accuse
some group of being, essentially, reversed Gnostics, loving the
material universe - to the Church, this invariably meant "holding
orgies" - instead of condemning it, rather as I understand at least
some forms of Taoism to reverse the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism.
_Ægypt_ essentially, through and through, despite a limited number of
sex scenes that includes no orgies, promulgates this kind of reversed
Gnosticism. For _Ægypt_, as for Kraft and his character Bruno,
"endless things" is more prayer than curse. That said, Wikipedia sv
_Ægypt_ claims, without reference, that this title "probably alludes
to" Bruno's own 1591 book <De innumerabilibus, immenso, et
infigurabili>. If this is true, we've gone, by straightforward
steps, from the frequently-translated <Soledades> to a work never yet
Englished [17]; nor does any US library claim to have Erika Rojas's
German version, though some hold Eugenio Canone's Italian.

The houses this time are Regnum, Benefacta, and Carcer, or Kingdom,
Friendship, and Prison. This book parallels <The Solitudes> not only
in its lack of overt modern-strand fantasy, but also in that its
sections, houses, are chronologically separate. "Regnum" and
"Benefacta" chronicle Pierce on a trip to Europe in February and
March 1979, though "Benefacta" is actually dominated by the last we
see of Kraft's book, including a *thirty-two page* section Kraft
(Crowley) ends by retracting! They're *framed*, however, by fairly
substantial sections taking Pierce's POV much later, in an abbey.
Only in "Carcer" does Crowley connect these dots, narrating Pierce's
life from his March 1979 return to and beyond the abbey frame, and
so only in "Carcer" do we find the sort of comforting pastoral that's
much of what I, at least, take away from _Ægypt_ as a whole.

Pierce is, this time, our oracle, describing _Ægypt_ by describing
Kraft's final book, near the end of "Benefacta":
The book itself, Kraft's original, had turned out to be less
complete even than Pierce remembered it being. As the pages had
silted up Kraft had seemingly begun making the worst of fictional
errors, or ceased correcting them: all those things that alienate
readers and annoy critics, like the introduction of new major
characters at late stages of the story [18], unpacked and sent out
on new adventures while the old main characters sit lifeless
somewhere offstage, or stumble to keep up. New plot movements,
departing from the main branch of the story for so long that they
*become* the main branch without our, the readers', agreement or
assent. All of it inducing that sense of reckless haste or -
worse - droning inconsequence that sooner or later causes us - us,
the only reason for any of it, the sole feelers of its feelings,
sole knowers of its secrets - to sigh, or groan in impatience, or
maybe even end (with a clap) the story the writer seems only to
want to keep on beginning.
At the beginning of the pile it began to turn into alternative
versions, partial chapters, stuff that seemed to be maybe even
from some other book entirely as the plot ran down or ran away.
Pages started off hopefully with a standard coupling (*Meanwhile
in another city*) only to be abandoned after a few sentences, or
contained only a single paragraph of thought or explanation left
floating alone on a blank sea. Then it just stopped.
Comfortingly, Pierce reverses these opinions almost immediately.
First, however, he ruminates on endings, ruminations he resumes after
changing his mind, in chapter 10 of "Carcer". So in a sense Pierce
does explain the title to us this time too, just not in terms of any
Renaissance book.

Before he gets out of New York, he judges even more harshly some
books too similar to his planned volume: "Or - everyone was reading
it, Pierce saw its glossy black covers everywhere - a long tract
about fairies, and their world inside this one, and an endless winter
they will turn at last to spring." Those who don't remember <Little,
Big>'s first (trade paperback) edition may not realise how exact, if
anachronistic (and, yes, overstating sales), a description this is.
So at long last, this is our evidence that <Little, Big> is a book
*in*, rather than *set in*, _Ægypt_'s fictional universe, which of
course contradicts the testimony far above sv "Novelty" and <Love &
Sleep>. I cannot imagine that these contradictions are accidents,
though it's kind of mind-boggling to think of Crowley planning them
across two decades.

In more conventional self-reference, we get the "Invisible Bedroom"
again, two more hints at the Just (a character "whose name was
called Roo", but more convincingly, of a city: "Not its name, but
what its name is called"), and, catching up, "the angels of the
nations" from <The Translator>. As for <Lord Byron's Novel>, of
course the book-within-the-book thing is a sort of presage, but I'm
more interested in how <Endless Things> again and again refers to
action without will. On top of all this, the author bio is headed
by an old visa to Czechoslovakia, in Crowley's name, which matches to
a T Pierce's visa, described in detail in chapter 6 of Regnum.

In print as a hardcover from Small Beer Press, which annoyingly used
"I" for "1" everywhere except page numbers, so the last of the many
years the book names becomes I9II. (<Water Logic> by Laurie Marks
and <Generation Loss> by Elizabeth Hand are other books published by
Small Beer in 2007, but I haven't had a chance to check whether they
share this oddity.) The trade paperback published by Overlook Press,
presumably in this case without revisions (except, I hope,
"I" -> "1"), is out of print.

[16] I've already given away, by default, that Rosie is the dropped
protagonist in the modern strand - she gets fewer than twenty pages
as POV in this book. Without spoiling <Dæmonomania> I can anyway
note that in the first three books she repeatedly thinks of her lost
"heart" in terms of "her dog Nothing". So when her actual dogs get
names, in <Dæmonomania>, this suggests her story is getting resolved.

[17] Library catalogues (followed by Google Books) and reference
works claim this book *is* translated, but they're misinformed. In
London in 1584, Bruno published a dialogue in Italian titled <De
l'infinito universo et mondi>. Dorothea Singer has translated this
into English in her 1950 biography of Bruno, and there's an older
German version at Google Books. Both make it perfectly clear that
their text is not the Latin poem, which is not a dialogue, published
in Frankfurt in 1591.
Not only are there no translations, but this hypothetical title
source lacks a summary in Wikipedia just as in _Ægypt_. So I'll
quote from page 78 of <Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science> by
Hilary Gatti (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, [1999]):
"The books of the <De immenso> define the nature and infinity of
space; discuss the Aristotelian arguments in the <Physics> and the
<De caelo> against an infinite universe; redefine the movements of
the earth as part of one solar system within an infinite number of
worlds; discuss the matter of which all earths and all suns are
composed; deny the Platonic and neo-Platonic transcendental ideas;
and equate the divine light with the light that illuminates an
infinite and divine universe."
Note the title Gatti uses; this book's title seems strangely
labile, Gatti's full version being <De immenso et innumerabilibus>.
And although Pierce doesn't talk about it, Crowley does have Kraft
mention it, also as <De immenso>, at the beginning of "Pietas" in
<Dæmonomania>: "Giordano Bruno left thankless Prague for Frankfurt
in November. He carried two long Latin poems he wanted printed
there, <De minimo> (on the Little) and <De immenso> (on the Big)."
Surprise, another reference to <Little, Big>, but this is actually
more or less true: Bruno published three books in 1591 which Gatti
calls "the Frankfurt Trilogy", which both she and Singer consider
Bruno's most important works, and which Singer and Wikipedia title
<De triplici minimo et mensura> (the "minimo"), <De monade numero et
figura> (the also-ran, in everyone's discussions, originally printed
in the same volume as the next), and our <De innumerabilibus,
immenso, et infigurabili> (the "immenso").

[18] Much of the penultimate chapter uses the POV of a 19th-century
scholar previously nothing but a name. That name is Hurd Hope
Welkin. Symbolic much?

<Conversation Hearts>, novelette, Subterranean 2008, meta-science
fiction

This is Crowley's second (and so far last) shorter work first
published in chapbook form.

It's also his third consecutive book containing another book. This
time, we follow a family - John Nutting, third-grade Perry, first-
grade Lily - worried that a Valentine's Day blizzard could delay or
risk mother Meg, off meeting her agent in Boston. The agent (from
the agency Pierce deals with in _Ægypt_) tells Meg she can't sell her
latest kids' book (which gives Crowley the chance to make some pretty
specific complaints about publishing, expectations, and misreading);
so of course that's the book within the book. It's a didactic
science fiction story dressed up in whimsy, Crowley, as much earlier
in his career, showing he can do yet another story type: "(On the
planet Brxx, they don't have weekends, but they do take two days off
in the middle of the week, and that's called the weekmiddle.)" On
Brxx, they all grow thick fur, and hard soles on their feet, so when
Trxx is born with soft feet and no fur to speak of, her family's in
for endless issues; and so the didacticism turns out to be about ways
of thinking of, um, not handicaps, um, not disabilities, um, I don't
think the characters in *either* of these stories would even accept
"bodily differences from a perceived norm". A co-worker told me
earlier this year that there are those within the deaf community who
object to discussing the *perception* that deafnesss is a
"disability", because they object to admitting that people exist who
have that perception. Crowley's position here seems less
counterfactual, but I'm not sure how much so.

I'm not entirely surprised that the original Subterranean Press
edition is the only publication known to me, nor that that's gone out
of print. Mind, this is pretty strong evidence that Crowley *can't*
write badly, even when his matter isn't remotely equal to his manner;
I found my two readings worthwhile, and suspect you would too. But
if you have to allocate effort, when it comes to the out of print
stories, I strongly recommend giving <Girlhood> the priority.

<Four Freedoms>, novel, Harper 2009, not speculative fiction

Um. Well, there is a character who's in contact with a spirit, but
the text doesn't encourage us to believe in that spirit, and she
isn't a central character.

Of whom there are a bunch, but the freedoms of speech, of religion,
from want, and from fear that President Roosevelt put forward as
should-be universals in 1941 are only, well, conveniently titular
here (though the characters do allude to them pretty often). What
the title really means is that four characters *obtain* freedom,
indeed *take* it, in this book, given the opportunity by World War
II. The specific McGuffin is an airplane factory Crowley invents,
in Ponca City, Oklahoma, and Crowley's enough in love with flying
to give us the plant's owners, when young pioneers of flight
themselves, as POVs, and then a woman pilot as one last POV (and,
yes, grasper of freedom) near the end. But just as in _Ægypt_ his
characters come before his ideas, so here they come before either
planes or what pastoral there may be in Oklahoma.

Above I said <The Translator> was the only majority female POV book
Crowley has written. When I tell you that three of the four main
freedom-takers, the four whose stories each dominate one of the
book's four parts, are women - the fourth, the man who gets involved,
in different ways, with each of them - you may doubt me. But in
fact we get much more from Prosper Olander's perspective than from
those of the women; if he changed enough, this would be his bildungs-
roman, but, well, he doesn't. So we mostly watch him be part (never
all) of what changes these three women, in between considering
his astonishing resistance to limits, for this is another, like
<Conversation Hearts> and a work for which it's a spoiler, of
Crowley's "relatively splashy recent statements" on the subject of
disability, and Prosper one of those who walk with crutches.

This is more like _Ægypt_ than like Crowley's more clearly emotional
books (<Engine Summer>, <The Translator>, even <Lord Byron's Novel>).
It's a quicker, less recondite, study of a large cast, focusing on
fewer. Perhaps this is why one Christopher Beha felt moved to call
it "perhaps his most accessible novel", or perhaps he was moved by
its greatest distance from spec-fic. Whatever. I found it worth the
two readings, but not all of you will agree.

In print as a trade paperback from HarperCollins, which did a really
poor job of editing; I found a grammar error (apparently resulting
from at least one lost clause, not, of course, ignorance) in chapter
2 of part one, a continuity error in chapter 5 of part two, and just
plain wrong use of 24-hour time in chapter 3 of part three. Shame
on them.

"And Go Like This", short story, <Naked City> ed Datlow 2011, fable

This is a joyful story with a really silly premise:

There is room enough indoors in New York City for the whole 1963
world's population to enter, with room enough inside for all hands
to dance the twist in average nightclub proximity. - Buckminster
Fuller

Take this as literal instructions, add narrator, and mix. The
narrator is somewhat interested in the implications on a global
scale, somewhat interested in telling his personal story, and more
interested in describing the practical complications of the project,
sort of how you'd expect an average American man in 1963 to rank the
priorities. The full title of Datlow's anthology is <Naked City:
Tales of Urban Fantasy>, and you just *know* this isn't what she had
in mind, but I'm really glad she printed it anyway, and if there's
*anyone* who's gotten this far in this preposterously long post
without deciding what to think about Crowley, I'm happy to suggest
this story as a relatively easy to find and fun starting point.

In print in <Naked City>, in hardcover and trade paperback from
Macmillan.

HIS 70S

"Glow Little Glowworm", short story, <Conjunctions:59 Colloquy> ed
Morrow 2012, not speculative fiction

This is twenty pages long, so may actually be a novelette.

For further evidence of <Conjunctions>'s friendliness to spec-fic,
this issue's table of contents is pretty helpful: there's also two
"More Little Tales of the Internet" by Jonathan Lethem, and a whole
section (colloquy?) "On the Monstrous", edited by Peter Straub and
comprising works by him, China Miéville, Theodora Goss, and James
Morrow.

This is both a thematic and an actual sequel to "Little Yeses, Little
Nos". The thematic element is again medical - this time a more (but
not really) placid tale on a less comfortable topic, marital sex, as
between POV Stan (we get no surname), 63, and his 53-year-old wife
Terry - but none of the medical material is speculative. The actual
sequeling is more trivial - Stan knows Harry Watroba. Since this
story runs from spring 2001 to spring 2002, and follows "Little
Yeses", it conclusively establishes that both Stan and Harry are
older than Crowley. Anyway, I found it, as I said, uncomfortable to
read at first, but it's growing on me.

In print in the current issue of <Conjunctions>. However, getting
<Conjunctions> can be difficult. It used to be distributed by
Bernhard DeBoer's, a leading distributor of "little magazines" for
many years. (They were <The Little Magazine>'s distributor for
volumes 10 through 12 or so, at least, in the late 1970s.) They went
out of business in 2007 fairly suddenly. Several Seattle retailers
told me their shops had stopped carrying <Conjunctions> at that time.
<Conjunctions> is now carried by two major distributors, but both
seem to have drawbacks. I can't figure out exactly what the
drawbacks of Ubiquity Distributors *are*, but have heard that they
went out of business or charge extra-high prices (neither is true).
Ubiquity's founder and president, Jeff Massey, was very helpful when
I spoke with him by accident; his theory is that the problem is
Seattle-specific, because a smaller but competing distributor of
obscurer magazines is located here. Ingram's drawbacks are more
straightforward: you have to order <Conjunctions> as a book, which
means booksellers can't just get it automatically as they normally do
with magazines (though Barnes & Noble apparently gets it from
Ingram), and it's delayed nearly two months (this is the clue re B&N)
- issue 59, though released on Ubiquity 12 December, won't be
available via Ingram until 31 January.

Ubiquity and Ingram are both wholesalers, so basically, I've been
telling you what you'd need to tell your friendly neighbourhood
bookseller if you had your heart set on buying <Conjunctions> from
*them*. Alternatively, you can order a copy from the magazine's
website, <http://www.conjunctions.com/>. Confusingly, all their e-
commerce is under the link "subscribe", but I *think* you can order
issue 59 without subscribing.

Joe Bernstein

whew! done at last! And yes, I will make those phone calls tomorrow.

[Joe Bernstein]

Last round with the mistakes and additions.

Post by Joe Bernstein
HIS 60S
<The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines>, novelette, <Conjunctions:39
The New Wave Fabulists> ed Straub 2002, not speculative fiction
Both <Conjunctions:39> and the Subterranean Press separate edition
are out of print at the publishers. For much more on how to get
<Conjunctions>, see below sv "Glow Little Glowworm", but of the
sources mentioned there, only Ingram *might* have physical copies
(and I wouldn't bet on that).

And see below this time for a bunch more places that very probably
do *not* have issue 39.

Post by Joe Bernstein
<Endless Things>, novel fragment, Small Beer 2007, arguably fantasy
In print as a hardcover from Small Beer Press, which annoyingly used
"I" for "1" everywhere except page numbers, so the last of the many
years the book names becomes I9II. (<Water Logic> by Laurie Marks
and <Generation Loss> by Elizabeth Hand are other books published by
Small Beer in 2007, but I haven't had a chance to check whether they
share this oddity.) The trade paperback published by Overlook Press,
presumably in this case without revisions (except, I hope,
"I" -> "1"), is out of print.

I don't know that I'll be able to see a copy of the Overlook Press
edition, but I have now seen <Water Logic>. Its text contains, to
judge by a fast page-through, *no* numerals, and the chapter numbers
are in a fancy font. But there are "I"s in the ISBNs. So it looks
like this oddity really was Small Beer at that time, and not Crowley.

As mentioned in the first corrections post, these next two entries
were written at Uncle Elizabeth's less than an hour before posting.
Unsurprisingly, they're first drafts.

Post by Joe Bernstein
<Four Freedoms>, novel, Harper 2009, not speculative fiction
"And Go Like This", short story, <Naked City> ed Datlow 2011, fable

I normally found myself revising my first drafts quite a bit as I
wrote this, so it makes a difference, but I posted that night because
I desperately needed to shut this project off, and refuse now to
regain the right mindset to revise.

Post by Joe Bernstein
HIS 70S

This is the only decade-heading I neglected to centre, because I'd
already written about "Glow Little Glowworm" so I figured upon
finishing "And Go Like This" I was done. Oops. So in the unlikely
event that anyone's read closely enough to wonder what I meant by
not centring this particular line, well, now you know.

Post by Joe Bernstein
"Glow Little Glowworm", short story, <Conjunctions:59 Colloquy> ed
Morrow 2012, not speculative fiction

I looked at this story several times after first reading, and re-read
big chunks of it, but I'm not positive I actually sat down and re-
read it start to finish.

Post by Joe Bernstein
In print in the current issue of <Conjunctions>. However, getting
<Conjunctions> can be difficult. It used to be distributed by
Bernhard DeBoer's, a leading distributor of "little magazines" for
many years. (They were <The Little Magazine>'s distributor for
volumes 10 through 12 or so, at least, in the late 1970s.) They went
out of business in 2007 fairly suddenly. Several Seattle retailers
told me their shops had stopped carrying <Conjunctions> at that time.
<Conjunctions> is now carried by two major distributors, but both
seem to have drawbacks. I can't figure out exactly what the
drawbacks of Ubiquity Distributors *are*, but have heard that they
went out of business or charge extra-high prices (neither is true).
Ubiquity's founder and president, Jeff Massey, was very helpful when
I spoke with him by accident; his theory is that the problem is
Seattle-specific, because a smaller but competing distributor of
obscurer magazines is located here. Ingram's drawbacks are more
straightforward: you have to order <Conjunctions> as a book, which
means booksellers can't just get it automatically as they normally do
with magazines (though Barnes & Noble apparently gets it from
Ingram), and it's delayed nearly two months (this is the clue re B&N)
- issue 59, though released on Ubiquity 12 December, won't be
available via Ingram until 31 January.
Ubiquity and Ingram are both wholesalers, so basically, I've been
telling you what you'd need to tell your friendly neighbourhood
bookseller if you had your heart set on buying <Conjunctions> from
*them*. Alternatively, you can order a copy from the magazine's
website, <http://www.conjunctions.com/>. Confusingly, all their e-
commerce is under the link "subscribe", but I *think* you can order
issue 59 without subscribing.

I'm notified by Micaela Morrissette, their managing editor, that you
can indeed order issues under that link without subscribing. She
also objects to my list of distributors, saying:

1) they have no formal agreement with Ingram, which presumably gets
whatever copies it has from some other distributor,

2) bookstores should get <Conjunctions> from Distributed Art
Publishers (<http://www.artbook.com/>) - well, maybe they should,
but both the retailers and the people at Ubiquity I spoke with
considered Ubiquity a distributor capable of selling to bookstores
(even if those bookstores didn't want to do business with them).
That said, obviously Distributed Art is another option for your
friendly neighbourhood bookseller. Alas, they also lack issue 39;
and they, like Ingram, won't sell issue 59 until 31 January.

3) Ubiquity is supposed to be selling to *libraries*, as are several
other distributors including EBSCO, Swets, and Cox. I haven't
looked these up.

Also, this is the area where I got research assistance from staffers
at Elliott Bay and Bulldog News. (As well as Ubiquity, and
<Conjunctions>, and for that matter a couple of other stores...)

Post by Joe Bernstein
whew! done at last! And yes, I will make those phone calls tomorrow.

So yeah, sorry, I spaced out on the time zone difference just when I
needed not to, but at least I got organised today.

Joe Bernstein

[Joe Bernstein]

Errors and omissions part 2.

Post by Joe Bernstein
<Little, Big; or, The Fairies' Parliament>, novel, Bantam 1981,
fantasy
Nominee, 1982 Hugo for Novel
Nominee, 1982 Nebula for Novel

Nominee, 1981 Nebula for Novel

Post by Joe Bernstein
Winner, 1982 World Fantasy Award for Novel
Nominee, 1983 British SF Association Award for Novel

Nominee, 1982 British SF Association Award for Novel

Post by Joe Bernstein
Winner, 1982 Mythopoeic Award for Fantasy

Winner, 1982 Mythopoeic Award for Fantasy Literature

Post by Joe Bernstein
In print in trade paperback from HarperCollins.

I'm pretty sure the Fantasy Masterworks series edition is out of
print; when I hunted for it on Gollancz's website, all I got was the
announcement of the SF Masterworks edition of <Engine Summer>.

I've never been all that clear on whether the much-ballyhooed 25th
anniversary edition, which I'da thunk shoulda come out years ago,
has actually been published yet - in which case I assume it's sold
out and out of print - or not.

Post by Joe Bernstein
HIS 40S
"Novelty", short story, <Interzone> ed Clute Dorey Greenland Kaveney
Ounsley & Pringle 1983, meta-fantasy
Nominee, 1984 British SF Association Award for Short Fiction

Nominee, 1983 British SF Association Award for Short Fiction

Post by Joe Bernstein
"Snow", novelette, <Omni> ed Williams 1985, science fiction
Nominee, 1986 Hugo for Short Story
Nominee, 1986 Nebula for Short Story

Nominee, 1985 Nebula for Short Story

Post by Joe Bernstein
<Great Work of Time>, novella, 1989, science fiction
Nominee, 1990 Nebula for Novella

Nominee, 1989 Nebula for Novella

Post by Joe Bernstein
Winner, 1990 World Fantasy Award for Novella

And that's it for this one, yay!

Joe Bernstein

[Joe Bernstein]

Ah well. I'd hoped someone else would've posted to this thread
before this post, but life goes on. Updates and corrections follow.

Post by Joe Bernstein
The Fiction of John Crowley
John Crowley has, since 1975, published, that I know of, one four-
volume novel, seven other novels, two novellas, five novelettes, and
fourteen short stories. [1]

No change. Sorry!

Post by Joe Bernstein
However, I discuss "The Single Excursion of Caspar Last"
below without having read it *as such*, and more briefly discuss "The
Squire Completes His Tale", three known unpublished works, and two
possible published ones, without having read *any* of these *at all*.

I've now read a published work which is *not* fiction (and not very
interesting either). I have hopes of reading "The Squire Completes
His Tale" soon, but do not expect to have any further information on,
let alone an assessment based on reading, "The Single Excursion of
Caspar Last", "Holy Saturday", "The Love Song of Menelaus",
"Souvenirs", or <National Peep>, in each case basically for lack of
money. (The archive I refer to as "Texas" in the posts is a very
professionally run outfit, meaning they have a mechanism, and an
associated price, for handling any request.)

Post by Joe Bernstein
Style and Motifs

I forgot to revise a paragraph after re-reading <Four Freedoms>, a
re-reading which I finished about an hour before posting.

Post by Joe Bernstein
Sexual differences include both male and female homosexuality, each
treated both as an occasional practice and as an identity, as well as
bondage and domination, treated as an occasional practice, and
voyeurism, treatment not specified. On my website, I used to
complain specifically about his treatment of male homosexuality,
which at that time rather stood out in a chronological reading. In
<The Deep>, <Little, Big>, and <Love & Sleep>, male homosexual sex
appears as a sort of ne plus ultra of degradation for those who
engage in it (admittedly, it's less traumatic in "In Blue"); in
<Beasts>, if not also <Great Work of Time>, resisting homosexual
temptation comes in for a sort of applause that resisting
heterosexual temptation rarely elicits in Crowley's work; and not
only was the only clearly gay-identified character thus far (in
_Ægypt_) an extreme case of fecklessness, but both he and the male
homosexuals in <The Deep> fit stereotypes all too well. Crowley's
later books pay considerably less attention to the whole topic, but
in the second half of _Ægypt_ he introduces another, less campy, gay-
identified character as POV and deepens his portrayal of the first,
making it just possible to see it all in the less tendentious light
of the rest of his portrayals of difference, as above.

I'm not sure how I'd have worked it in, but <Four Freedoms> has
what's got to be the least hostile depiction of male homosexual
activity Crowley has yet written.

(I also, to be fair, should have pointed out somewhere that Fellowes
Kraft, the author in _Ægypt_ with whom Crowley so clearly identifies
himself, as I discussed at length in the relevant posts, *is* that
other, "less campy, gay-identified character". Which, even before
his POV chapters appeared, put a fairly big hole in my complaint.)

Post by Joe Bernstein
He has never
seemed equally critical of lesbianism, which has bit parts in
<Little, Big> and _Ægypt_, is prominent in "In Blue" and <Lord
Byron's Novel>, and seems likely in the future of a major character
in <Four Freedoms>.

That remark still strikes me as true, but isn't the only way
lesbianism shows up in the book; I should've just said "is somewhere
in between".

Post by Joe Bernstein
Other Stuff
I list award nominations and wins taken pretty much straight from
Locus's "SF Awards Database" (<http://www.sfadb.com/>), with no
attempt to convert into each award's actual year and award name
conventions. (I ran out of time.)

OK, I'm trying to fix it this time.

Post by Joe Bernstein
Acknowledgements
Workspace: All over the place. I've even worked on this post in a

I should also have credited Uncle Elizabeth's here, since I wrote the
entries on <Four Freedoms> and "And Go Like This" there. They offer,
of course, as an internet cafe, power and net access.

Post by Joe Bernstein
SPL, the UW libraries, Elliott Bay, and also
Bulldog News, provided research assistance.

I forgot to credit Elliott Bay and Bulldog News in the relevant place,
which is the availability of <Conjunctions>, sv "Glow Little Glowworm"
(at the end of the 3rd post).
I can now add Columbia-Greene Community College, part of the State
University of New York, to the list, for "A Good Compromise", which
is, however, not fiction.

Post by Joe Bernstein
HIS 20S
"The Squire Completes His Tale", length ?, <Pegasus> ed ? 1964,
genre ?

"The Squire Completes His Tale", short poem, <Pegasus> ed McMullen
1964, genre ?

Post by Joe Bernstein
The title justifies me, I think, in assuming that this poem is
narrative fiction, whether it represents the completion itself, or
the situation of the squire completing. Chaucer's "Squire's Tale" is
indeed an incomplete narrative poem; it also mæanders some, and I
think it possible that Chaucer's depiction of the host praising it
and going on to the next teller may actually portray a diplomatic
shutting-up of the youngster. Chaucer's tale is fantasy (in the
first part, a diplomat shows up offering tons of magic items as
gifts, and the existing parts of the poem confirm the powers of two
of these), but I don't know whether Crowley's completion, *if* a
completion, is; if it's actually at the fictional level of the teller
rather than the tale, it probably isn't fantasy.

I hope to be able to read it within a week, so will reserve comment
until then.

Post by Joe Bernstein
Although many periodicals have used the title <Pegasus>, I eventually
thought to check Crowley's alma mater, and turns out Indiana
University's English Department published a literary journal thus
titled, from 1962 to 1967. I think 1964 is the year Crowley
graduated. Near as I can tell, libraries with the relevant issue
include Indiana University's (duh), North Carolina State
University's, and the University of North Texas's. I hope, by making
some calls tomorrow, to see what more I can find out about this poem.

It appeared in the summer 1964 issue, which is volume 2, number 2, on
pages 25 and 26.

Post by Joe Bernstein
Not shown as *in* print by the publisher, but you could try calling
the department on a slow day to see whether anyone there is willing
to check their storage...

The person I spoke with was reluctant to check their storage (apparently
visitors to the warehouse are advised to wear hard hats), but willing to
see what she could find out. I hope to hear back soonish, but no longer
anticipate anything today.

Post by Joe Bernstein
I found no copies at Amazon nor at
abebooks.com (but both have issues described as coming from volume 4
in 1965, which is wrong, so for all I know they could actually have
the relevant issue from volume 2); Goodwill in Indianapolis tried and
failed to auction a lot of five issues last March, and might still
have them, but I don't know whether this issue was/is included.

I don't plan to call Goodwill.

Post by Joe Bernstein
HIS 30S
<Engine Summer>, novel, Doubleday 1979, science fiction
Nominee, 1980 John W. Campbell Memorial Award
Nominee, 1981 British SF Association Award for Novel

Nominee, 1980 British SF Association Award for Novel

Post by Joe Bernstein
Nominee, 1980 American Book Award for SF Hardcover

Nominee, 1980 American Book Award for Science Fiction (Hardcover).
Also note that this is the American Book Awards administered then by
the Association of American Publishers and now (under the original
name, National Book Awards) by the National Book Foundation, not the
American Book Awards administered then and now by the Before Columbus
Foundation.

Post by Joe Bernstein
??? [?, length ?, <Intermountain Express> ed ? 1979, genre ?]
The Texas "finding aid" lists, again in the last, little-annotated,
box, two copies of the August 24, 1979 issue of <Intermountain
Express>. I'm pretty sure this is a newspaper that published for
just under a year from Hillsdale, NY. August 24 was a Friday, as
were the start and end dates, so it was probably a weekly. Hillsdale
is very near the NY-MA state line, and some western MA towns I know
Crowley to have lived in around this time. Libraries I know to have
copies of issues of this newspaper are the New York State Library
(whose run ends in June 1979), Texas (as indicated), and Columbia-
Greene Community College's, of Hudson, NY, which like the center in
Texas is closed through today; I plan to call them tomorrow and see
what they can tell me. As with <National Peep>, these copies'
presence in this box could (but need not) mean Crowley had something
in that issue, but in this case there's no obvious reason to assume
that, if so, the work in question was fiction.

It wasn't. It's a restaurant review titled "A Good Compromise", by
"john crowley and linda hacker". Ms. Hacker is not the woman he
married six years later. It's well written, but if I saw this in
a weekly today, I wouldn't for a moment imagine that the author was
already an accomplished novelist, with greater things ahead. ("The"
author? In this regard, yeah. A good chunk of it is in first
person, the POV is his, not hers, and that's the most interesting
part.) It occupies maybe half of page 7 of the issue.

I did not get confirmation that the paper actually was a weekly.
I also didn't think to ask whether there were other restaurant
reviews by Crowley (with or without Ms. Hacker). And since it
wasn't fiction, I didn't want the editor's name. I don't plan to
bother Columbia-Greene with any more questions, so if anyone else
wants these answers, they should first *post saying so*, to
forestall multiple callers, and then call. The only phone # for
the library on the Web is for Circulation; the people who
answered that number are the people who helped me.

Although Crowley had recently enough been writing copy for movie
catalogues, for example, I don't think it's necessary to assume
he was doing this primarily for the money; I have a little
experience with weeklies myself, and there can be elements of both
fun and duty involved as well.

The review is of La Cocina in Pittsfield, MA, which is now closed but
appears to have lasted long enough to produce an online afterlife in
review websites and such. There also appears to have been a record
label with the same name and location.

Post by Joe Bernstein
The newspaper went out of business a couple of months later; I'm
quite confident this issue is out of print.

And this post's worth of corrigenda is out of material, far as I know
anyhow. On to the next.

Joe Bernstein

[Joe Bernstein]

Post by Joe Bernstein
Ah well. I'd hoped someone else would've posted to this thread
before this post, but life goes on. Updates and corrections follow.

This is my last post to this thread unless someone else actually
posts to it first, in a way that convinces me to respond. In other
words, folks, if y'all remain uninterested, don't worry, I won't
keep putting more of this on your servers. And I do apologise for
what apparently was a massive waste of server space, but I'll still
complete what I said I'd do.

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
The Fiction of John Crowley
John Crowley has, since 1975, published, that I know of, one four-
volume novel, seven other novels, two novellas, five novelettes, and
fourteen short stories. [1]

No change. Sorry!

And again no change, so there I leave it.

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
However, I discuss "The Single Excursion of Caspar Last"
below without having read it *as such*, and more briefly discuss "The
Squire Completes His Tale", three known unpublished works, and two
possible published ones, without having read *any* of these *at all*.

I've now read a published work which is *not* fiction (and not very
interesting either). I have hopes of reading "The Squire Completes
His Tale" soon,

Hopes tonight fulfilled.

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
Acknowledgements

I can now add Columbia-Greene Community College, part of the State
University of New York, to the list, for "A Good Compromise", which
is, however, not fiction.

The pages sent me re "The Squire Completes His Tale" included the
masthead, which bears a copyright notice which my source violated.
So I won't acknowledge that person, nor the institution involved,
publicly.

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
HIS 20S
"The Squire Completes His Tale", length ?, <Pegasus> ed ? 1964,
genre ?

"The Squire Completes His Tale", short poem, <Pegasus> ed McMullen
1964, genre ?

Post by Joe Bernstein
The title justifies me, I think, in assuming that this poem is
narrative fiction, whether it represents the completion itself, or
the situation of the squire completing. Chaucer's "Squire's Tale" is
indeed an incomplete narrative poem; it also mæanders some, and I
think it possible that Chaucer's depiction of the host praising it
and going on to the next teller may actually portray a diplomatic
shutting-up of the youngster. Chaucer's tale is fantasy (in the
first part, a diplomat shows up offering tons of magic items as
gifts, and the existing parts of the poem confirm the powers of two
of these), but I don't know whether Crowley's completion, *if* a
completion, is; if it's actually at the fictional level of the teller
rather than the tale, it probably isn't fantasy.

I hope to be able to read it within a week, so will reserve comment
until then.

It's a lyric poem, not a narrative, after all. It isn't the squire
speaking, and only glancingly (though repeatedly) refers to his tale;
the quote with which it opens is halfway through, not at the end.
It's a fairly chilling meditation on growing older and dying, an order
of magnitude more mature (as well as better written) than the poem I
wrote on similar topics at about the same age. It's much more like
<The Deep> than like any of Crowley's other early writing, sort of
a missing link in that regard; it also gives some idea where the
lyric poetry in <The Translator> came from.

Crowley, in interviews related to that latter book, said he wanted,
when young, to become a poet, but gave it up for reasons I vaguely
remember as amounting to his own doubt that he'd become excellent.
I don't read enough modern poetry (and this is certainly modern) to
assess that. This student poem is weightier than most of those I
see in magazines, both in substance (which is, from me, a compliment)
and in form (he had to use enough long Latinate words to give his
concerns their own weight: words like that belong in prose more
than poetry).

I now see no reason to assume that "The Love Song of Menelaus" is
narrative either (it already struck me as less likely, just from the
titles), but my interest in reading that, "Holy Saturday", and
"Souvenirs" is certainly much stronger than it was.

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
Although many periodicals have used the title <Pegasus>, I eventually
thought to check Crowley's alma mater, and turns out Indiana
University's English Department published a literary journal thus
titled, from 1962 to 1967. I think 1964 is the year Crowley
graduated. Near as I can tell, libraries with the relevant issue
include Indiana University's (duh), North Carolina State
University's, and the University of North Texas's. I hope, by making
some calls tomorrow, to see what more I can find out about this poem.

It appeared in the summer 1964 issue, which is volume 2, number 2, on
pages 25 and 26.

And "John M. Crowley" - which should help put paid to the apparently
eternal confusion between him and the scholar John William Crowley -
is listed on its masthead; McMullen was editor-in-chief, and Crowley
was one of two "editors" presumably one rung down.

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
Not shown as *in* print by the publisher, but you could try calling
the department on a slow day to see whether anyone there is willing
to check their storage...

The person I spoke with was reluctant to check their storage (apparently
visitors to the warehouse are advised to wear hard hats), but willing to
see what she could find out. I hope to hear back soonish, but no longer
anticipate anything today.

Bev Hankins (graduate program secretary) wrote back the next day. She
had consulted an emeritus professor who averred that the department had
never kept copies of this, which was obviously a student publication
given Crowley's role. Unless eventual excavations in the warehouse
produce a surprise, I think we can assume this is just as rare as it

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
I found no copies at Amazon nor at
abebooks.com (but both have issues described as coming from volume 4
in 1965, which is wrong, so for all I know they could actually have
the relevant issue from volume 2); Goodwill in Indianapolis tried and
failed to auction a lot of five issues last March, and might still
have them, but I don't know whether this issue was/is included.

I don't plan to call Goodwill.

Or do anything further. So again, my apologies for wasting anyone's
time or server space, but I'm all done now.

Joe Bernstein

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
Ah well. I'd hoped someone else would've posted to this thread
before this post, but life goes on. Updates and corrections follow.

This is my last post to this thread unless someone else actually
posts to it first, in a way that convinces me to respond. In other
words, folks, if y'all remain uninterested, don't worry, I won't
keep putting more of this on your servers.

I'm interested, I just don't have much to say. I'm about halfway
through LITTLE, BIG, but I bogged down while ill (pain pills make it
hard to concentrate on subtle writing) and will have to back out and
start again.

And I haven't read any other Crowley.

But I've liked what I've read and expect when I finish the book, I'll
dig this thread up and reread it. There's been a few Crowley threads of
late, and they don't seem to get much response but they probably got a
fair number of readers, at least.

kdb

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
Ah well. I'd hoped someone else would've posted to this thread
before this post, but life goes on. Updates and corrections follow.

This is my last post to this thread unless someone else actually
posts to it first, in a way that convinces me to respond. In other
words, folks, if y'all remain uninterested, don't worry, I won't
keep putting more of this on your servers.

I'm interested, I just don't have much to say. I'm about halfway
through LITTLE, BIG, but I bogged down while ill (pain pills make it
hard to concentrate on subtle writing) and will have to back out and
start again.
And I haven't read any other Crowley.

You should read ENGINE SUMMER. It's not much like his later work, but
I like it, and I think you would, too.

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
Ah well. I'd hoped someone else would've posted to this thread
before this post, but life goes on. Updates and corrections follow.

This is my last post to this thread unless someone else actually
posts to it first, in a way that convinces me to respond. In other
words, folks, if y'all remain uninterested, don't worry, I won't
keep putting more of this on your servers.

I'm interested, I just don't have much to say. I'm about halfway
through LITTLE, BIG, but I bogged down while ill (pain pills make it
hard to concentrate on subtle writing) and will have to back out and
start again.
And I haven't read any other Crowley.

You should read ENGINE SUMMER. It's not much like his later work, but
I like it, and I think you would, too.

It's out on Kindle in an omnibus edition (third in the book) so I can't
sample it, and the used copies aren't cheap. Bah.

I'll put it on my list, though, and get to it at some point.

kdb

[Joe Bernstein]

Post by Kurt Busiek

You should read ENGINE SUMMER. It's not much like his later work, but
I like it, and I think you would, too.

It's out on Kindle in an omnibus edition (third in the book) so I
can't sample it, and the used copies aren't cheap. Bah. I'll put it
on my list, though, and get to it at some point.

Hmmm. There's a $5 copy at abebooks.com right now, though all the
others are higher. There are several $6 copies of <Otherwise>
there too. (Copies of the earlier <Three Novels> and the still
earlier <Beasts / Engine Summer / Little, Big> are more.)

I also wanted to note the recent release of the SF Masterworks
edition, but apparently that's not going to appear in North America
because of the Harper edition:
<http://www.sfgateway.com/books/e/engine-summer/>.

So I guess it depends on your idea of "cheap". If I had a working
credit card, <Engine Summer> would be cheaper than most of the things
currently causing me to regret lacking a working credit card.
(Though not cheaper than the e-book version of Catherynne Valente's
<Descent of Inanna>.) But to each their own.

Joe Bernstein

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Kurt Busiek

You should read ENGINE SUMMER. It's not much like his later work, but
I like it, and I think you would, too.

It's out on Kindle in an omnibus edition (third in the book) so I
can't sample it, and the used copies aren't cheap. Bah. I'll put it
on my list, though, and get to it at some point.

Hmmm. There's a $5 copy at abebooks.com right now, though all the
others are higher. There are several $6 copies of <Otherwise>
there too. (Copies of the earlier <Three Novels> and the still
earlier <Beasts / Engine Summer / Little, Big> are more.)
I also wanted to note the recent release of the SF Masterworks
edition, but apparently that's not going to appear in North America
<http://www.sfgateway.com/books/e/engine-summer/>.
So I guess it depends on your idea of "cheap". If I had a working
credit card, <Engine Summer> would be cheaper than most of the things
currently causing me to regret lacking a working credit card.
(Though not cheaper than the e-book version of Catherynne Valente's
<Descent of Inanna>.) But to each their own.

The used copies I was referring to were the ones on Amazon, where the
cheapest it gets is around $11, including shipping. Not hugely
expensive, but not cheap, either. Even five bucks plus shipping, while
not terribly expensive for a book I know I want still feels pricey for
a battered mass-market paperback in a world of Kindle samples and
penny-plus-shipping like-new hardcovers.

It's a function of "cheap" and "I have such a huge to-be-read pile,"
mostly. My to be read pile isn't merely a full bookcase any more, it's
a bookcase plus several additional stacks plus various other piles
around the house. I add to it when things come out I know I want or
when something I know I want to read is cheap enough not to resist --
I've bought a few more additions thanks to the "Stuff Like Stonefather"
and "Stuff Like War For The Oaks" threads, and a couple of Steinbecks
just because otherwise there'll always be something to read before I
get to them -- but paying close to ten dollars for a fair-condition
MMPB that I wouldn't have time to read soon anyway doesn't feel like a
bargain.

Unless it's the right price/format/timing, my shelves are groany enough
that I'm content to let others store a lot of the books I haven't yet
got to.

But I've still got LITTLE, BIG, and I've got Kindle samples of LORD
BYRON'S NOVEL and FOUR FREEDOMS now. Maybe by the time I'm through
those, there'll be an e-book of ENGINE SUMMER or a new edition or
cheaper copies of a nice hardcover.

Or by then, maybe "I want to read it now" will weigh more than "that
much for a used MMPB?" Right now, the dynamic is the other way.

kdb

[Joe Bernstein]

Post by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Joe Bernstein
This is my last post to this thread unless someone else actually
posts to it first, in a way that convinces me to respond. In other
words, folks, if y'all remain uninterested, don't worry, I won't
keep putting more of this on your servers.

My thanks to Kurt Busiek and Charlton Wilbur for saying nice things
about the posts. Some years ago I mentioned here my recurring
thought that "my posts are commentware; the price is interesting
replies". Obviously there's a problem with that position if nobody
has anything interesting to say *in* reply, though I took the trouble
of putting several pieces of flamebait into this thread, just in case.
But anyway, part of the reason I kvetched was that I couldn't even
claim "the lurkers support me in e-mail"; nobody had even *e-mailed*
me! So yeah, I was fishing for compliments; but I was also fishing
for insults, or really *any* response, and I'm grateful it was
compliments I got.

That said, it finally dawns on me that I *have* now been offered
something to reply to, so here goes...

[difficulties re <Little, Big>]

Post by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Post by Kurt Busiek
And I haven't read any other Crowley.

You should read ENGINE SUMMER. It's not much like his later work, but
I like it, and I think you would, too.

Seems to me his first three books (including <Engine Summer>) are
sort of immersive. There's a fair amount of exposition, but not as
much as usual, even in <Engine Summer> whose setup leaves a huge
opening for it. And of course the settings are exotic.

The settings of his three recent books, leaving aside <Endless Things>,
his more or less mainstream novels, are familiar, two from history,
one as pretty much present-day. There is, if anything, *less*
exposition - these books are *more* immersive - but it takes less
puzzling to read them.

That said, seems to me there's another way to divide his novels.
<Beasts> and _Ægypt_ and <Four Freedoms> all have ensemble casts in
pastoral settings whose stories proceed at a more or less leisurely
pace to a more or less indeterminate ending. <Engine Summer> and
<The Translator> focus on single protagonists, skimp on pastoral,
feel faster, and come to these hugely emotional endings. <Lord
Byron's Novel> is more like these, though ostentatiously without
the single protagonist. One of the ways <Little, Big> is unique*
among Crowley's works is that it ramps up the ensemble-cast story's
significance toward a similarly huge ending (though one that works
very differently).

I have the impression from other threads I've seen the two of you in
that you know each other pretty well. I'm not going to speculate on
either of your tastes. But I think there are important ways that
<The Translator>, in particular, and to a lesser extent <Lord Byron's
Novel>, among the later works, are like <Engine Summer>, despite the
considerable difference in setting.

Joe Bernstein

* Just for completeness' sake, <The Deep> and for that matter <Great
Work of Time> don't fit this schematic. "In Blue" flatly contradicts
it. It isn't a Key to All Crowley's Writing, but I think it does work
for the works it works for ...

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Joe Bernstein
[difficulties re <Little, Big>]

Post by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Post by Kurt Busiek
And I haven't read any other Crowley.

You should read ENGINE SUMMER. It's not much like his later work, but
I like it, and I think you would, too.

That said, seems to me there's another way to divide his novels.
<Beasts> and _Ægypt_ and <Four Freedoms> all have ensemble casts in
pastoral settings whose stories proceed at a more or less leisurely
pace to a more or less indeterminate ending. <Engine Summer> and
<The Translator> focus on single protagonists, skimp on pastoral,
feel faster, and come to these hugely emotional endings. <Lord
Byron's Novel> is more like these, though ostentatiously without
the single protagonist. One of the ways <Little, Big> is unique*
among Crowley's works is that it ramps up the ensemble-cast story's
significance toward a similarly huge ending (though one that works
very differently).

That sounds like an interesting set of divisions. I like pastoral, as
it happens, and I like the idea of FOUR FREEDOMS, so maybe I'll try
that one, too. Or LORD BYRON'S NOVEL, which looks pretty intriguing,
too.

Post by Joe Bernstein
I have the impression from other threads I've seen the two of you in
that you know each other pretty well. I'm not going to speculate on
either of your tastes. But I think there are important ways that
<The Translator>, in particular, and to a lesser extent <Lord Byron's
Novel>, among the later works, are like <Engine Summer>, despite the
considerable difference in setting.

Lawrence and I grew up a town apart (and some years apart) without
meeting, but it does give us a fair set of shared reference frames. And
we "met" while I was working for his literary agent, and have been
friends for, geez, 25 years now.

Lawrence was also the editor who bought my first prose story, and I
think I'm the editor who bought his first comics story, though I might
well be wrong about that.

Anyway, I think there are a lot of places where our tastes diverge
wildly, but we have a reasonable sense of where they overlap. So if he
recommends something specifically to me, odds are pretty good I'm going
to find something in it to make me glad I read it.

kdb

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

Post by Kurt Busiek
Lawrence and I grew up a town apart (and some years apart) without
meeting, but it does give us a fair set of shared reference frames. And
we "met" while I was working for his literary agent, and have been
friends for, geez, 25 years now.

I thought we met when you were at Marvel, in the marketing department.

Post by Kurt Busiek
Lawrence was also the editor who bought my first prose story, and I
think I'm the editor who bought his first comics story, though I might
well be wrong about that.

You're not wrong.

Post by Kurt Busiek
Anyway, I think there are a lot of places where our tastes diverge
wildly, but we have a reasonable sense of where they overlap. So if he
recommends something specifically to me, odds are pretty good I'm going
to find something in it to make me glad I read it.

Though an occasional miss is certainly possible.

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Post by Kurt Busiek
Lawrence and I grew up a town apart (and some years apart) without
meeting, but it does give us a fair set of shared reference frames. And
we "met" while I was working for his literary agent, and have been
friends for, geez, 25 years now.

I thought we met when you were at Marvel, in the marketing department.

I think we had some brief contact when I was at SMLA; I'm pretty sure I
lined up the first batch of OPEN SPACE writers while I was at SMLA and
then moved over to Marvel to edit the project. The contracts then took
what felt like forever to get done.

Post by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Post by Kurt Busiek
Anyway, I think there are a lot of places where our tastes diverge
wildly, but we have a reasonable sense of where they overlap. So if he
recommends something specifically to me, odds are pretty good I'm going
to find something in it to make me glad I read it.

Though an occasional miss is certainly possible.

Yep. You did'nt like THE 6TH GUN as much as you should have, for
instance, thus proving that there is omething wrong with you. But the
odds are still pretty good.

kdb

[Lawrence Watt-Evans]

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Post by Kurt Busiek
Lawrence and I grew up a town apart (and some years apart) without
meeting, but it does give us a fair set of shared reference frames. And
we "met" while I was working for his literary agent, and have been
friends for, geez, 25 years now.

I thought we met when you were at Marvel, in the marketing department.

I think we had some brief contact when I was at SMLA; I'm pretty sure I
lined up the first batch of OPEN SPACE writers while I was at SMLA and
then moved over to Marvel to edit the project. The contracts then took
what felt like forever to get done.

Oh -- yeah, that does sound right.

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Post by Kurt Busiek
Anyway, I think there are a lot of places where our tastes diverge
wildly, but we have a reasonable sense of where they overlap. So if he
recommends something specifically to me, odds are pretty good I'm going
to find something in it to make me glad I read it.

Though an occasional miss is certainly possible.

Yep. You didn't like THE 6TH GUN as much as you should have, for
instance, thus proving that there is something wrong with you. But the
odds are still pretty good.

I like the idea of The 6th Gun. I like the art. I like the
characters. The plot doesn't really work for me.

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Lawrence Watt-Evans

Post by Kurt Busiek
Anyway, I think there are a lot of places where our tastes diverge
wildly, but we have a reasonable sense of where they overlap. So if he
recommends something specifically to me, odds are pretty good I'm going
to find something in it to make me glad I read it.

Though an occasional miss is certainly possible.

Yep. You didn't like THE 6TH GUN as much as you should have, for
instance, thus proving that there is something wrong with you. But the
odds are still pretty good.

I like the idea of The 6th Gun. I like the art. I like the
characters. The plot doesn't really work for me.

Like I said…

kdb

[Titus G]

Joe Bernstein wrote:

snip

Post by Joe Bernstein
Some years ago I mentioned here my recurring
thought that "my posts are commentware; the price is interesting
replies". Obviously there's a problem with that position if nobody
has anything interesting to say *in* reply,

Further to the topic of the greatest American fantasy writer, I recently
completed _Little, Big_ which was a brilliant read for me but I know nothing
of Crowley and little of Fantasy in general so I fit into that category. I
suspect there are others who do as well. I was interested enough to read
your posts and have kept a copy in case I decide to read more from him but
before I do I will be reading LB again. Thank you.

[Charlton Wilbur]

JB> My thanks to Kurt Busiek and Charlton Wilbur for saying nice
JB> things about the posts. Some years ago I mentioned here my
JB> recurring thought that "my posts are commentware; the price is
JB> interesting replies". Obviously there's a problem with that
JB> position if nobody has anything interesting to say *in* reply,

Well, the primary obstacle for me is that lately I've been reading
Usenet in dribs and drabs; what you offered is a lengthy essay that
needs to be digested. And I'd probably want to reread at least parts of
Crowley's oeuvre before responding.

So it's of value, but I have nothing useful to say in response right
now.

Charlton

[Robert Carnegie]

Post by Charlton Wilbur
Well, the primary obstacle for me is that lately I've been reading
Usenet in dribs and drabs; what you offered is a lengthy essay that
needs to be digested. And I'd probably want to reread at least parts of
Crowley's oeuvre before responding.
So it's of value, but I have nothing useful to say in response right
now.

Yeah. It's way too magisterial for me to respond, also. It'd be like
arguing with an encyclopedia that isn't Wikipedia. But I'm glad it's here.

[David DeLaney]

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
Ah well. I'd hoped someone else would've posted to this thread
before this post, but life goes on. Updates and corrections follow.

This is my last post to this thread unless someone else actually
posts to it first, in a way that convinces me to respond. In other
words, folks, if y'all remain uninterested, don't worry, I won't
keep putting more of this on your servers. And I do apologise for
what apparently was a massive waste of server space, but I'll still
complete what I said I'd do.

Don't confuse "not interesting reading" with 'nobody actually responded'. And
text takes up MINUSCULE amounts of space on today's servers. Everything I've
ever downloaded from Project Gutenberg, plus a selection of .rtf and .pdf
files, still takes up only JUST under one Gb on my disc ... and about half
of that I can trace directly to the few .pdf files. Feel free any time!

Post by Joe Bernstein
And "John M. Crowley" - which should help put paid to the apparently
eternal confusion between him and the scholar John William Crowley -

You'd think so. But an M is just an upside-down W, after all.

Dave

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 06 Jan 2013 23:50:01 -0500, David DeLaney
<***@gatekeeper.vic.com> wrote in
<news:***@gatekeeper.vic.com> in
rec.arts.sf.written:

[...]

MINUSCULE [...]

You, sir, are clearly a subversive: you can spell
'minuscule'!

Brian

[David DeLaney]

[...]

MINUSCULE [...]

You, sir, are clearly a subversive: you can spell 'minuscule'!

Even more subversively, I _wrote_ it in _majuscule_.

Dave, will dissent cognitively for food

[Charlton Wilbur]

JB> This is my last post to this thread unless someone else actually
JB> posts to it first, in a way that convinces me to respond.

I can't claim that I'll convince you to respond, and I have nothing
really concrete to add to the thread, but I'm glad you posted such an
exhaustive essay.

Charlton

[Joe Bernstein]

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
??? [?, length ?, <Intermountain Express> ed ? 1979, genre ?]
The Texas "finding aid" lists, again in the last, little-annotated,
box, two copies of the August 24, 1979 issue of <Intermountain
Express>. [...] As with <National Peep>, these copies'
presence in this box could (but need not) mean Crowley had something
in that issue, but in this case there's no obvious reason to assume
that, if so, the work in question was fiction.

It wasn't.

And to add to the non-fiction catalogue, besides the book of his
reviews + such that I've managed to avoid mentioning throughout this
thread til now (pauses to check Wikipedia: <In Other Words>,
Subterranean, 2007, presumably not in print since he wasn't listed as
an author in their catalogue when I checked the two novelettes ...)

The February 2013 issue of <Harper's> which I've been reading to while
away the *long* intervals between moments when Google allows me to use
the computer has, as its last long article, a review of a book about
H.P. Blavatsky. By John Crowley, and yes, that one. ("John Crowley
is the author of a dozen novels and some volumes of short fiction. He
is a three-time winner of the World Fantasy Award and the recipient of
an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters."
Such blurbs in recent years have more often mentioned novels that
became <New York Times> Notable Books, i.e. non-spec-fic novels, but
I guess Blavatsky calls for different credentials.) The review is
more Crowley's take on Blavatsky than on the book (whose author, Gary
Lachman, he identifies as a former member of Blondie, the rock group).
Quite unsurprisingly, he compares Blavatsky to the Gnostics; he gives
both <Isis Unveiled> and <The Secret Doctrine> short discussions,
which I suppose can serve as my obSF. Including illustrations, the
review is the equivalent of five full pages of the magazine, and runs
actual pages 80-86.

Joe Bernstein

[Robert Carnegie]

The February 2013 issue of <Harper's> has [...] a review of a book about
H.P. Blavatsky. By John Crowley, and yes, that one.

*shrug* Helena Blavatsky and /Aleister/ Crowley are coupled in my
"Freaky Victorians" brainfile! (Did I overlook that they're related?)

[Rich Horton]

On Tue, 1 Jan 2013 23:46:26 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
[1] Two relatively recent works strike me as near the edges of the
length categories: I list <The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines>
as a novelette, but it may be a novella; and I list "Glow Little
Glowworm" as a short story, but it may be a novelette.

For what it's worth, I count "The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines"
at 18700 words (giving it more significant digits than my counting
method deserves!) -- at any rate, most likely a novella. And a
particularly magnficent one!

Sorry for the late response -- I don't check rasfw as often as I
should these days. (Plus I was out of town for 8 days ...) I'll be
digesting the rest of your posts -- Crowley is a favorite of mine --
in the near future.

[Rich Horton]

On Tue, 1 Jan 2013 23:46:26 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
"Her Bounty to the Dead", aka "Where Spirits Gat Them Home", short
story, <Shadows> ed Grant 1978, Gothic
In which a New England drive, by a priest and his aunt, ends badly;
in which faith and unbelief face each other. I never remember this
story properly, and so never think I understand it at all. It's
another <Antiquities> story.

Worth noting (as I perhaps too often do) that both variants of this
title are quotations from Wallace Stevens's very famous poem "Sunday
Morning".

[Joe Bernstein]

Post by Rich Horton
On Tue, 1 Jan 2013 23:46:26 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
"Her Bounty to the Dead", aka "Where Spirits Gat Them Home", short
story, <Shadows> ed Grant 1978, Gothic
In which a New England drive, by a priest and his aunt, ends badly;
in which faith and unbelief face each other. I never remember this
story properly, and so never think I understand it at all. It's
another <Antiquities> story.

Worth noting (as I perhaps too often do) that both variants of this
title are quotations from Wallace Stevens's very famous poem "Sunday
Morning".

Thank you, for five reasons:

1) I've inserted that note into Wikipedia's Wallace Stevens article
(sv "Cultural References"). I put your name into the "title" of the
change (the part that you see by looking at the history of the page).

2) I hadn't known it myself.

3) It led me to read "Sunday Morning", I'm pretty certain for the
first time, which awed me.
If it were up to me, as many important works would get their titles
from this poem as have from Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress".
(Which is, for those as haven't read it, pretty much nonstop titles.)

4) I'm sure this isn't the first time Stevens has been suggested to me
- people so rarely recommend poets to me that I remember each poet, if
not each recommender - but it's anyway the first time to get me to do
anything about it.
(Which in this case will be to download whatever I can find that's
in the public domain. I'm pretty sure I already have a book, but
rather more sure that assuming I do, it's in storage far away.)

5) Oh, and - the reason I didn't snip the quote of myself - it more
or less confirms my reading of the story, which may help me in future
remember it properly and thus stop doubting my ability to make sense
of it.

So thanks!

I still look forward to the rest of your comments on those 3 posts.

Joe Bernstein

[Kurt Busiek]

Joe --

You might be interersted in this: John Crowley writing about Joan
Aiken's great "Wolves Chronicles."

http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/john_crowley_joan_aiken_wolves_fiction.php

kdb

[Kip Williams]

Post by Kurt Busiek
Joe --
You might be interersted in this: John Crowley writing about Joan
Aiken's great "Wolves Chronicles."
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/john_crowley_joan_aiken_wolves_fiction.php

Well, heck, that makes me want to go back to the series and read them
all. I read the second, first, and third books with pleasure, then read
one more and lost the momentum, but I have an omnibus of the first three
that I had planned to get my daughter interested in. Only since the
first has a female protagonist, she might balk at it, so maybe I should
try the second one first.


Kip W
rasfw

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Kurt Busiek
Joe --
You might be interersted in this: John Crowley writing about Joan
Aiken's great "Wolves Chronicles."
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/john_crowley_joan_aiken_wolves_fiction.php

Well, heck, that makes me want to go back to the series and read them all.

Me too. I lost track of the series at some point, too. The idea that it
had a resolution (and a celebratorily goofy final novel) makes me even
more eager to read it all through in order.

I read the second, first, and third books with pleasure, then read one
more and lost the momentum, but I have an omnibus of the first three
that I had planned to get my daughter interested in. Only since the
first has a female protagonist, she might balk at it, so maybe I should
try the second one first.

I started with the second one, and it hooked me just fine.

kdb

[Kip Williams]

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Kurt Busiek
You might be interersted in this: John Crowley writing about Joan
Aiken's great "Wolves Chronicles."
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/john_crowley_joan_aiken_wolves_fiction.php

Well, heck, that makes me want to go back to the series and read them all.

Me too. I lost track of the series at some point, too. The idea that it
had a resolution (and a celebratorily goofy final novel) makes me even
more eager to read it all through in order.

I read the second, first, and third books with pleasure, then read
one more and lost the momentum, but I have an omnibus of the first
three that I had planned to get my daughter interested in. Only since
the first has a female protagonist, she might balk at it, so maybe I
should try the second one first.

I started with the second one, and it hooked me just fine.

Ich auch, and it had those great engraving-like illustrations by Robin
Jaques (sp?) which had as much to do with hooking me in as the text --
at least at first. Sadly, the omnibus doesn't have those.

I'm thinking I'd have a better chance of hooking Sarah with the second
book. (And I'll explain the variant history to her as well. I read the
whole thing not knowing it was alternate, which caused a little
confusion to me at the time, somewhere around sixth grade.)

The one that knocked me off the series was _The Cuckoo Tree_, I believe.
I was irked by the supernatural overtones, and it all seemed too facile
or something. It's been a while, and the brain cells that remembered the
details went out for some smokes and never came back.


Kip W
rasfw

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Kip Williams

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Kip Williams
I read the second, first, and third books with pleasure, then read
one more and lost the momentum, but I have an omnibus of the first
three that I had planned to get my daughter interested in. Only since
the first has a female protagonist, she might balk at it, so maybe I
should try the second one first.

I started with the second one, and it hooked me just fine.

Ich auch, and it had those great engraving-like illustrations by Robin
Jaques (sp?) which had as much to do with hooking me in as the text --
at least at first. Sadly, the omnibus doesn't have those.

Robin Jacques.

robin jacques

I absolutely loved his stuff, wherever I could find it, and spent hours
trying to duplicate that linework.

Post by Kip Williams
The one that knocked me off the series was _The Cuckoo Tree_, I
believe. I was irked by the supernatural overtones, and it all seemed
too facile or something. It's been a while, and the brain cells that
remembered the details went out for some smokes and never came back.

I don't remember which was the last one I read. I'm pretty sure I own a
copy of IS UNDERGROUND that I've never read.

kdb

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Kip Williams

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Kip Williams
I read the second, first, and third books with pleasure, then read
one more and lost the momentum, but I have an omnibus of the first
three that I had planned to get my daughter interested in. Only since
the first has a female protagonist, she might balk at it, so maybe I
should try the second one first.

I started with the second one, and it hooked me just fine.

Ich auch, and it had those great engraving-like illustrations by Robin
Jaques (sp?) which had as much to do with hooking me in as the text --
at least at first. Sadly, the omnibus doesn't have those.

Robin Jacques.
robin jacques

Sorry, that second "robin jacques" was supposed to be a link:

http://www.google.com/search?q=robin+jacques&hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&tbo=u&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=univ&ei=5qYFUdmjOl

kdb

[Kip Williams]

Post by Kurt Busiek
http://www.google.com/search?q=robin+jacques&hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&tbo=u&site=imghp&tbm=isch&source=univ&ei=5qYFUdmjOl

Man, what a great illustrator. A master of pen and ink, like (for
instance) Virgil Finlay or Kelly Freas, or a host of other SF magazine
illustrators. (Ned Brooks has a fascinating diptych drawn by a young Don
Martin that I used to drool over whenever I went to his house. I think
is dates to before MAD — it's like his earliest drawings, but even more
stylized, like lopsided ballet on paper.)


Kip W
rasfw

[Brian M. Scott]

On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 08:33:49 -0500, Kip Williams

Post by Kip Williams

Post by Kurt Busiek
Joe --
You might be interersted in this: John Crowley writing
about Joan Aiken's great "Wolves Chronicles."
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/john_crowley_joan_aiken_wolves_fiction.php

Well, heck, that makes me want to go back to the series
and read them all. I read the second, first, and third
books with pleasure, then read one more and lost the
momentum, but I have an omnibus of the first three that I
had planned to get my daughter interested in.

The only ones that I own are _The Whispering Mountain_ and
_The Stolen Lake_, and I don't really remember either; I
should probably try to find time to reread them. While
several of the other titles in the series are very familiar,
I don't think that I've actually read any of them. (I do
have an ARC of _Castle Barebane_, though. And the
collection _The Far Forests_.)

Post by Kip Williams
Only since the first has a female protagonist, she might
balk at it, so maybe I should try the second one first.

She's my reflection, only more so: all else being equal,
I've always preferred female protagonists.

Brian

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Brian M. Scott
On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 08:33:49 -0500, Kip Williams

Post by Kip Williams

Post by Kurt Busiek
Joe --
You might be interersted in this: John Crowley writing
about Joan Aiken's great "Wolves Chronicles."
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/john_crowley_joan_aiken_wolves_fiction.php

Well, heck, that makes me want to go back to the series
and read them all. I read the second, first, and third
books with pleasure, then read one more and lost the
momentum, but I have an omnibus of the first three that I
had planned to get my daughter interested in.

The only ones that I own are _The Whispering Mountain_ and
_The Stolen Lake_, and I don't really remember either; I
should probably try to find time to reread them. While
several of the other titles in the series are very familiar,
I don't think that I've actually read any of them.

You should read at least the first three…

Post by Brian M. Scott

Post by Kip Williams
Only since the first has a female protagonist, she might
balk at it, so maybe I should try the second one first.

She's my reflection, only more so: all else being equal,
I've always preferred female protagonists.

Two of the first three have female protagonists!

kdb

[Kip Williams]

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Brian M. Scott
On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 08:33:49 -0500, Kip Williams

Post by Kip Williams

Post by Kurt Busiek
You might be interersted in this: John Crowley writing
about Joan Aiken's great "Wolves Chronicles."
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/john_crowley_joan_aiken_wolves_fiction.php

Well, heck, that makes me want to go back to the series
and read them all. I read the second, first, and third
books with pleasure, then read one more and lost the
momentum, but I have an omnibus of the first three that I
had planned to get my daughter interested in.

The only ones that I own are _The Whispering Mountain_ and
_The Stolen Lake_, and I don't really remember either; I
should probably try to find time to reread them. While
several of the other titles in the series are very familiar,
I don't think that I've actually read any of them.

You should read at least the first three…

Post by Brian M. Scott

Post by Kip Williams
Only since the first has a female protagonist, she might
balk at it, so maybe I should try the second one first.

She's my reflection, only more so: all else being equal,
I've always preferred female protagonists.

Two of the first three have female protagonists!

I mentioned the book(s) to Sarah last night, and she was all for digging
them out. I started to go upstairs to look for the volume (almost every
book from downstairs is presently upstairs in chaos, as we're getting
set to paint and refloor down here) when the computer rang with a
visiphone call from Cathy at her convention, and we paid attention to
that instead.

The second book, with the male protagonist, introduces the most
memorable character of the series, who happens to be female. Years after
my last re-reading, some of her words and phrases have stuck with me:
mint sauce, spiteful cat, Penny-lope...


Kip W
rasfw

[Wayne Throop]

: Kip Williams <***@gmail.com>
: Years after my last re-reading, some of her words and phrases have
: stuck with me: mint sauce, spiteful cat, Penny-lope...

http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=725
"Please stop pronouncing my name like "antelope".
I'm not an ungulate."

[Brian M. Scott]

On Tue, 29 Jan 2013 00:40:52 GMT, Wayne Throop

Post by Wayne Throop
: Years after my last re-reading, some of her words and phrases have
: stuck with me: mint sauce, spiteful cat, Penny-lope...
http://questionablecontent.net/view.php?comic=725
"Please stop pronouncing my name like "antelope".
I'm not an ungulate."

A lovely young lass named Penelope
Befriended a baby antelope.
The frugiverous twosome
Loved apples and grew some,
But their favorite by far was canteloupe.

Brian

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Kip Williams

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Brian M. Scott
On Sun, 27 Jan 2013 08:33:49 -0500, Kip Williams

Post by Kip Williams

Post by Kurt Busiek
You might be interersted in this: John Crowley writing
about Joan Aiken's great "Wolves Chronicles."
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/john_crowley_joan_aiken_wolves_fiction.php

Well, heck, that makes me want to go back to the series
and read them all. I read the second, first, and third
books with pleasure, then read one more and lost the
momentum, but I have an omnibus of the first three that I
had planned to get my daughter interested in.

The only ones that I own are _The Whispering Mountain_ and
_The Stolen Lake_, and I don't really remember either; I
should probably try to find time to reread them. While
several of the other titles in the series are very familiar,
I don't think that I've actually read any of them.

You should read at least the first three…

Post by Brian M. Scott

Post by Kip Williams
Only since the first has a female protagonist, she might
balk at it, so maybe I should try the second one first.

She's my reflection, only more so: all else being equal,
I've always preferred female protagonists.

Two of the first three have female protagonists!

I mentioned the book(s) to Sarah last night, and she was all for
digging them out. I started to go upstairs to look for the volume
(almost every book from downstairs is presently upstairs in chaos, as
we're getting set to paint and refloor down here) when the computer
rang with a visiphone call from Cathy at her convention, and we paid
attention to that instead.
The second book, with the male protagonist, introduces the most
memorable character of the series, who happens to be female. Years
after my last re-reading, some of her words and phrases have stuck with
me: mint sauce, spiteful cat, Penny-lope...

Yep. I like Dido enormously, unlike some.

Dido Twite/A delicate sprite…

kdb

[Joe Bernstein]

Joe -- You might be interersted in this: John Crowley writing about
Joan Aiken's great "Wolves Chronicles."
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/john_crowley_joan_aiken_wolves_fiction.php

Thanks. I was indeed interested. But I'm afraid I'm like the "most
readers" he talks about: somewhere in, I think, the fourth or fifth
book I got really, really tired of it, and I think I stopped reading
in mid-book. I just Did Not Get Dido Twite, At All. It isn't just
that I didn't like her, although I didn't; she didn't make the least
bit of sense to me, resemble any human being I'd met. (Which is why
I didn't like her, not because of a genuine detestation.)

I'll doubtless try again someday, assuming I can find all the books.
In a bookstore recently, it dawned on me that with bookstores
focusing only on the newest titles, and with libraries filling the
gap with the result that many *older* titles go away ... this is
the kind of thing that's increasingly going to be a real problem.
In recent digging to figure out whether I could do readathons of
either Jonathan Carroll or Peter Beagle, I found that Beagle would
require somewhat more travel than Crowley had, and Carroll about
five times as much.

Um, so. Lessee... Wikipedia lists the following, rearranged in
publication order: <The Wolves of Willoughby Chase>, <Black Hearts
in Battersea>, <Nightbirds on Nantucket>, <The Whispering Mountain>,
<The Cuckoo Tree>, then a gap followed by <The Stolen Lake>, <Dido
and Pa>, <Is> (known in the US as <Is Underground>), <Cold Shoulder
Road>, <Limbo Lodge> (known in the US as <Dangerous Games>),
<Midwinter Nightingale>, and <The Witch of Clatteringshaws>. I
suspect I stopped reading in <The Stolen Lake>, but am not sure (it's
been a long time); I didn't know of <The Whispering Mountain> so
didn't read it.

Of these, Seattle Public Library owns the following in at least one
format: <The Wolves of Willoughby Chase>, <Black Hearts in
Battersea>, <Nightbirds on Nantucket>, <The Cuckoo Tree>, <The Stolen
Lake>, <Dido and Pa>, <Midwinter Nightingale>, and <The Witch of
Clatteringshaws>. Seattle Public Library does *not* own <The
Whispering Mountain>, <Is> aka <Is Underground>, <Cold Shoulder Road>,
or <Limbo Lodge> aka <Dangerous Games>. Note that the latter three
of these are the entire 1990s segment of the series.

The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me. KCLS also
has <Dangerous Games>, but at a different Bellevue branch that's even
farther for me. <Is> is a bigger problem. <Is Underground>,
according to Worldcat, lives no closer than Bellingham (which is to
Seattle what Seattle is to the rest of the country, i.e. "that city
up next to Canada"). Worldcat thinks all titles include the word
"Is", so won't help me find copies of the British edition, but
anyway King County doesn't claim to have it.

Sometime probably in the 22nd century the US Congress, or its
successor, will be functional enough to deal with the orphan books
issue. In the meantime, especially but not only if Germany and
Disney continue driving copyright law, this sort of thing is just
going to keep getting worse. But it's frustrating to watch the
market, as extended to include libraries, turn printing eras that
didn't used to *be* orphaned into orphan books. In the 1990s, 1970s
children's series weren't inaccessible; heck, *today* 1970s children's
series aren't all that inaccessible. But 1990s ones apparently are.

Joe Bernstein

[Konrad Gaertner]

Post by Joe Bernstein
Worldcat thinks all titles include the word
"Is", so won't help me find copies of the British edition,

Try the advanced search with author:
http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3Ais+au%3Aaiken&qt=advanced

Looks there are copies in Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, Ontario,
Alberta, British Columbia, etc. Have you asked your library about
inter-library loan?

[Joe Bernstein]

Post by Konrad Gaertner

Post by Joe Bernstein
Worldcat thinks all titles include the word
"Is", so won't help me find copies of the British edition,

http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3Ais+au%3Aaiken&qt=advanced

Evidently this is a different search from the advanced search I did,
which was to put "Is" in the title search box and "Aiken" in the
author search box and be presented with everything written by any
Aiken. But I sure can't figure out the difference from the URL.

Post by Konrad Gaertner
Looks there are copies in Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, Ontario,
Alberta, British Columbia, etc. Have you asked your library about
inter-library loan?

As I maybe haven't mentioned enough on this group lately, I'm both
homeless and unemployed, by which I mean not "on unemployment" (the
end of which precipitated the homelessness), but not working. As I
certainly haven't mentioned on this group lately, Seattle has
recentishly instituted a $15 fee for interlibrary loans, after much
soul-searching and hand-wringing. I don't particularly blame them
for the fee, but it does put ILL out of reach for me for most
purposes. (I spent somewhat more than $15 - I think just over $20 -
on the trip to get <The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines> and
<Conversation Hearts> - IIRC, $18 for fares and $2 or so to copy
<Girlhood>. It didn't occur to me to use ILL for the purpose, but
I could've done things slightly cheaper that way: <Girlhood> by
ILL and <Conversation> at the end of a *very* long walk, certainly
requiring me to sleep in an unfamiliar neighbourhood. Not a good
plan.)

I'm profoundly unlikely to use ILL to get sequels to books I
disliked under these circumstances.

To be fair, my dislike was focused on Dido Twite (though the same
fluidity of the background that Crowley praised was another factor
in my unease), and at least two of the volumes SPL lacks star
someone named Is Twite instead, so may interest me more.

Joe Bernstein

[James Silverton]

Post by Konrad Gaertner

Post by Joe Bernstein
Worldcat thinks all titles include the word
"Is", so won't help me find copies of the British edition,

http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3Ais+au%3Aaiken&qt=advanced
Looks there are copies in Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, Ontario,
Alberta, British Columbia, etc. Have you asked your library about
inter-library loan?

Amazon seems to list them tho' my library does not.

[James Silverton]

Post by James Silverton

Post by Konrad Gaertner

Post by Joe Bernstein
Worldcat thinks all titles include the word
"Is", so won't help me find copies of the British edition,

http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=ti%3Ais+au%3Aaiken&qt=advanced
Looks there are copies in Illinois, California, Pennsylvania, Ontario,
Alberta, British Columbia, etc. Have you asked your library about
inter-library loan?

Amazon seems to list them tho' my library does not.

Sorry, yes it does under "juvenile fiction"; the library is the
Montgomery County, MD system.

[Elaine T]

On Mon, 28 Jan 2013 13:56:22 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein

Joe -- You might be interersted in this: John Crowley writing about
Joan Aiken's great "Wolves Chronicles."
http://www.bostonreview.net/BR38.1/john_crowley_joan_aiken_wolves_fiction.php

Thanks. I was indeed interested. But I'm afraid I'm like the "most
readers" he talks about: somewhere in, I think, the fourth or fifth
book I got really, really tired of it, and I think I stopped reading
in mid-book. I just Did Not Get Dido Twite, At All. It isn't just
that I didn't like her, although I didn't; she didn't make the least
bit of sense to me, resemble any human being I'd met. (Which is why
I didn't like her, not because of a genuine detestation.)
Um, so. Lessee... Wikipedia lists the following, rearranged in
publication order: <The Wolves of Willoughby Chase>, <Black Hearts
in Battersea>, <Nightbirds on Nantucket>, <The Whispering Mountain>,
<The Cuckoo Tree>, then a gap followed by <The Stolen Lake>, <Dido
and Pa>, <Is> (known in the US as <Is Underground>), <Cold Shoulder
Road>, <Limbo Lodge> (known in the US as <Dangerous Games>),
<Midwinter Nightingale>, and <The Witch of Clatteringshaws>. I
suspect I stopped reading in <The Stolen Lake>, but am not sure (it's
been a long time); I didn't know of <The Whispering Mountain> so
didn't read it.

internal chronological order would be rather like this:

Wolves

Black Hearts

Nightbirds Dido in Nantucket.

Stolen Lake Dido at sea

Whispering Mountain - which is a side trip, actually, featuring the
son of the sea captain in Stolen Lake. The adventure is set in Wales
and features a lost tribe, the ruler of the tribe's country seeking
his lost countrymen and speaking in strings of synomyms, English
theives speaking cant, a prophecy and a very nasty man. Oh, and
miniature camels and a legendary harp. I liked it. If I'd known it
was part of this series when I picked it up years ago, I probably
would have put it down again as I don't really get the enthusiasm for
Dido.
She's not in this one. And I found Stolen Lake and Nightbirds causing
my WSOD to precipitate out.

Cuckoo Tree - Dido and sea captain is in this & back in England, and
his son makes an appearance at the end. There's an elephant,
smugglers, dialect, cat's cradle and citrus fruit.

And the rest I'm not sure about because I lost interest. I did at one
point read the last couple printed, and wasn't enthused.

[Derek Lyons]

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

D.

[David DeLaney]

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

He says, in another branch of this thread, that the libraries in his area
recently added a $15 fee for such interlibrary loans. Which, to my mind,
rather defeats the purpose of knowing there are other libraries out there,
and what they have, at ALL... but there's a reason we're a stewpot of 50
different legal practices over here.

Dave

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by David DeLaney

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

He says, in another branch of this thread, that the libraries in his area
recently added a $15 fee for such interlibrary loans. Which, to my mind,
rather defeats the purpose of knowing there are other libraries out there,
and what they have, at ALL... but there's a reason we're a stewpot of 50
different legal practices over here.

More than 50, since I live in the same state (different county) and the
library system here is delighted to share books among their various
branches for no add-on charge. I make use of this feature steadily.

In fact, I need to go to the library today to pick up a Maggie
Stiefvater book that normally resides at another branch.

kdb

[Derek Lyons]

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by David DeLaney

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

He says, in another branch of this thread, that the libraries in his area
recently added a $15 fee for such interlibrary loans. Which, to my mind,
rather defeats the purpose of knowing there are other libraries out there,
and what they have, at ALL... but there's a reason we're a stewpot of 50
different legal practices over here.

More than 50, since I live in the same state (different county) and the
library system here is delighted to share books among their various
branches for no add-on charge. I make use of this feature steadily.

Which is why I brought it up... here in Kitsap, the library is happy
to do so. Heck, if I know I'm going to be in Poulsbo next week, I can
have it held for pickup there rather than over on Sylvan if I wanted
to.

D.

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by David DeLaney

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

He says, in another branch of this thread, that the libraries in his area
recently added a $15 fee for such interlibrary loans. Which, to my mind,
rather defeats the purpose of knowing there are other libraries out there,
and what they have, at ALL... but there's a reason we're a stewpot of 50
different legal practices over here.

More than 50, since I live in the same state (different county) and the
library system here is delighted to share books among their various
branches for no add-on charge. I make use of this feature steadily.

Which is why I brought it up... here in Kitsap, the library is happy
to do so. Heck, if I know I'm going to be in Poulsbo next week, I can
have it held for pickup there rather than over on Sylvan if I wanted
to.

Yeah, I can put a hold on any book in the circulating collection,
county-wide, and have it held at whatever branch I choose. Return it to
any branch I like, as well.

kdb

[Kip Williams]

Post by Kurt Busiek
Yeah, I can put a hold on any book in the circulating collection,
county-wide, and have it held at whatever branch I choose. Return it to
any branch I like, as well.

The Rochester, NY, area -- like the libraries in several towns near
where we lived in Massachusetts before this -- allow books to be
returned at any of the local branches. Holds and interlibrary loans cost
something like fifty cents or a dollar. They sometimes offer ten holds
for some discount price as well. It's a popular deal.


Kip W
rasfw

[Kurt Busiek]

Post by Kip Williams

Post by Kurt Busiek
Yeah, I can put a hold on any book in the circulating collection,
county-wide, and have it held at whatever branch I choose. Return it to
any branch I like, as well.

The Rochester, NY, area -- like the libraries in several towns near
where we lived in Massachusetts before this -- allow books to be
returned at any of the local branches. Holds and interlibrary loans
cost something like fifty cents or a dollar. They sometimes offer ten
holds for some discount price as well. It's a popular deal.

Our county library system doesn't even have late fees. Lotsa nice
services, and we support the library levies that pay for them.

kdb

[Kip Williams]

Post by Kurt Busiek

Post by Kip Williams

Post by Kurt Busiek
Yeah, I can put a hold on any book in the circulating collection,
county-wide, and have it held at whatever branch I choose. Return it to
any branch I like, as well.

The Rochester, NY, area -- like the libraries in several towns near
where we lived in Massachusetts before this -- allow books to be
returned at any of the local branches. Holds and interlibrary loans
cost something like fifty cents or a dollar. They sometimes offer ten
holds for some discount price as well. It's a popular deal.

Our county library system doesn't even have late fees. Lotsa nice
services, and we support the library levies that pay for them.

Our charges overdue fees. The ones on media seem quite steep! We do
support them with taxes. The town, however, is always trying to save in
one way or another, but fortunately the Friends of the Library (I'm on
the board) has two book sales a year that bring in money for speakers,
events, and equipment (including books), and they even get books from
our donation stock that are ready to be processed and put on the
shelves, which saves them some thousands of bucks a year.

And it's a sweet library, too, with a so-far adequate building that's
not too old, overlooking a picturesque section of the Erie Canal. The
town we left has a Carnegie library that's overburdened, even with its
addition. They're gradually working their way up to a new building in a
less convenient location.


Kip W
rasfw

[Joy Beeson]

. . . and the
library system here is delighted to share books among their various
branches for no add-on charge. I make use of this feature steadily.
. . .

When I lived in the Upper Hudson Library Federation, it was easier to
get books from other libraries than from my own. The only catalog was
the union catalog, so the easiest way to find out what my library had
was to go to the shelves and look.

[Derek Lyons]

Post by David DeLaney

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

He says, in another branch of this thread, that the libraries in his area
recently added a $15 fee for such interlibrary loans.

I was talking about an *intra*library loan, not an *inter*library
loan.

D.

[Charlton Wilbur]

DDL> He says, in another branch of this thread, that the libraries
DDL> in his area recently added a $15 fee for such interlibrary
DDL> loans. Which, to my mind, rather defeats the purpose of knowing
DDL> there are other libraries out there, and what they have, at
DDL> ALL...

Well, first: in my area, there's a distinction between inter-branch
loan and inter-library loan, and there are degrees of
inter-librariness.

For instance, the Boston Public Library is one library with many
branches. Getting a book from another branch is a matter of requesting
it and waiting, or of travelling to the other branch to collect it
yourself, and there is no cost.

The BPL is a member of a library consortium covering the local area, and
I think borrowing books from other consortium members is free. So if
there's a book I want in, say, the Salem Public Library, it's a matter
of requesting it and waiting longer, or of travelling to Salem myself to
collect it.

Beyond that, if I need to borrow something from the Chicago Public
Library, it's an interlibrary loan, which is a matter of requesting it,
possibly paying for it (well, someone pays for it, the question is
whether the cost is passed on to the patron), and waiting a much longer
time. What I found in graduate school was that my town public library
had a fund for paying for interlibrary loans that had not been exhausted
for several years running, while the cash-strapped university library
charged for interlibrary loans, and the terms were otherwise
identical -- although the workstudy students in the library seemed to
think it an imposition, and the librarians actually asked what my
research was about and seemed to actually want to hear the answer.

Charlton

[Joe Bernstein]

Post by Charlton Wilbur
Beyond that, if I need to borrow something from the Chicago Public
Library, it's an interlibrary loan, which is a matter of requesting
it, possibly paying for it (well, someone pays for it, the question
is whether the cost is passed on to the patron), and waiting a much
longer time.

Thank you for clarifying what I failed to clarify in starting this
subthread, the differences among different levels of affiliation with
respect to things like borrowing.

That said, I have a quibble with your parenthesis. Yes, someone has
to pay the transport costs involved in interlibrary loans of physical
material (which may be books etc. or may be photocopies, which entail
*more* costs, in labour time). OTOH the ILL may, these days, involve
something that can be sent electronically, with or without DRM. The
guy who sent me "The Squire Completes His Tale" (not, as it happens,
an obSF) actually photographed the pages with his cell phone (it's a
new library and the scanners were taking a long time to get
installed). But many academic libraries, these days, own huge
quantities of electronic stuff, even apart from the electronic stuff
they *license*, and can ship that off ILL by going clickety-click.
Which is getting down to zero transport and trivial labour costs.

*Separately*, there's the question of *who* pays whatever costs there
are. Seattle's $15 fee isn't to support the ILL office, it's because
these days, more and more lending libraries charge the borrowing
libraries for ILLs, recouping *their* costs, SPL couldn't keep just
swallowing these fees, and the people who run SPL decided it was
unfair to allocate charges to patrons on the basis of where the
borrowed item happened to come from. Of course, this does mean that
if SPL *can* get it for free, they get some money, possibly exceeding
their item costs (they have to ship stuff *back*, after all) though
probably not usually.

Joe Bernstein

[Joe Bernstein]

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

Um, um, um.

David DeLaney, of all people, appears to have said there are 50 different
library policies in the US. I'm pretty sure this is an under-estimate
by at least a factor of 10, more likely a factor of 100, probably not
a factor of 1000, and certainly not a factor of 1,000,000.

In my experience (so far confined primarily to Wisconsin, Illinois, and
Washington, though I did some comparative library-checking in New York
and Massachusetts a dozen years ago), most public libraries affiliate in
regional groupings precisely to enable the sort of resource-sharing
you describe. I'm not really familiar with the Illinois ones; I lived
in Chicago, which made even suburban libraries usually an unnecessary
trek, let alone rural ones. (The one book I remember going to the
suburbs to read, while I lived there, was <Sorcery and Cecelia>; I
also, though, went to Evanston's public libraries once or twice to
read something. This isn't just because the Chicago Public Library
is awesome, though it isn't bad, but also because Chicago holds an
amazing set of academic and quasi-academic libraries, plus there's
Northwestern right next door; and of course also amazing bookstores -
when I lived in Chicago I more often had money than since.)

The Wisconsin and Washington ones work in roughly similar ways:
most public libraries in each state belong to *some* regional
grouping or other, and the regional groupings negotiate amongst each
other for broader borrowing privileges ("reciprocal borrowing
agreement" seems to be the standard term).

In Wisconsin, Milwaukee County has a single grouping. Since public
transit beyond the county is fairly sketchy, I've rarely gone to
suburban libraries, though I did once hike a very long way for one
of the volumes of John Wright's first trilogy. Madison seems to be
part of the "South Central Library System"; I don't think I did much
with that, given that while I was there I had borrowing privileges
at the main U of Wisconsin libraries there, which even bought some
science fiction.

In Washington, the big cities turned out to be in really big counties,
so things worked out differently. Seattle Public Library is not part
of King County Library System, which doesn't want it. Tacoma Public
Library is not part of Pierce County Library System. And Everett
Public Library is not, and doesn't want to be, part of Sno-Isle
Libraries. Relations differ in each case: Everett has a reciprocal
borrowing agreement with Seattle but not with Sno-Isle, while Sno-
Isle, if I'm reading their website correctly, simply allows nearly
all Washington residents to get cards. Tacoma and Pierce County have
a "pilot" agreement.

And Seattle and King County? Apparently we in Seattle were using
the suburban and exurban libraries primarily to supply extra copies
of hot new books. Seattle actually pays a fee for every book we
borrow from KCLS, but refused to raise the fee. So the last time
they negotiated - this is something like 2007 or 2008 - they agreed
that instead, Seattle residents would lose the ability to place holds.
So we can still go there to borrow hot new books, but if they're gone
when we arrive, tough luck. This has as its unintended consequence
that we also can't borrow, at all, books held in their storage
facilities, because holds are how those books are paged.

Now, on the peninsula, you're in the Timberland Regional Library,
which is the one I dealt with when I went to Shelton for <The Girlhood
of Shakespeare's Heroines>. While there, I explicitly mentioned that
"since I'm from Seattle I can't borrow this", and the librarian I was
talking with seemed to agree. Turns out in reality TRL has a deal
with SPL, and I should've been able to get a TRL card just by showing
my SPL card. Huh. I have no idea what would've happened if I'd
tried, but since Shelton turned up again in the Peter Beagle
itinerary, I may find out sometime.

This sort of agreement, however, comes with at most one-sided physical
transport. I can return KCLS books at SPL branches - that's what I
did with <Conversation Hearts> - though when I have bus fare I
normally just maintain an ongoing relationship with the Bellevue main
branch, and return stuff there. But even if I could place holds in
KCLS's system, I couldn't get them delivered to the neighbourhood
library in Seattle where I'm typing this. I don't know whether SPL
would actually take care of a TRL book's return for me, but I think
it unlikely; certainly, TRL wouldn't ship the book to SPL as part of
an ordinary hold system. Essentially, to borrow outside your grouping,
you have to do inter-library loan or travel; if you get the book ILL,
you return it ILL; if you get the book by travelling, you may or may
not be able to avoid travelling to return it.

To get back to my estimate: Every single system whose web page I
looked at in writing this post took pains to point out some exceptions
in their regional coverage. I've experienced such an exception:
until quite recently Renton wasn't part of KCLS, and if that were
still so, I'd have been unable to borrow <Conversation Hearts> at all,
since Renton and Seattle had no agreement. There are still at least
two organised communities in King County that aren't part of KCLS. So
although there are probably no more than ten or so library "systems"
in the average state, coming to maybe 500 all told in the US, there's
probably some multiple of that once you add in the atomic libraries
that don't belong to a molecule (system).

In my further experience, academic libraries do the same thing.
I got into trouble in my last days in Madison, when I was homeless,
by falling asleep in the main UW library. A bureaucrat there has
since blocked me from paying for a Madison borrowing card. [1] So
when I live in Wisconsin, I borrow books from Madison by getting a
card at UW-Milwaukee and using their systemic access.

Unfortunately, I can't do the same thing with the system the U of
Washington belongs to, so can't borrow books owned by Seattle U.
(I once went to U of Puget Sound, though, while I had a UWash card,
and they let me borrow from them, so it seems to be library-specific.)

There are atoms here too: the Seattle community colleges aren't
part of the local system.

Joe Bernstein

[1] I'm not banned from the library - when a WI resident I can get
day passes. And I could even get a card, if I'd promise not to do
again what I did before. However, I'm accused of having done
several things before, not just the sleeping, and with vague hints
of still more, and this bureaucrat flatly refuses to specify exactly
which of these known and unknown violations I'd be promising not to
repeat, so I've refused to make the promise. This footnote's obSF
would be Kafka, if I'd read the appropriate book.
Every year or two I look for evidence that this woman has retired,
but so far no luck.

[David DeLaney]

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Derek Lyons
You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

Um, um, um.
David DeLaney, of all people, appears to have said there are 50 different
library policies in the US. I'm pretty sure this is an under-estimate
by at least a factor of 10, more likely a factor of 100, probably not
a factor of 1000, and certainly not a factor of 1,000,000.

Oh no, I was referring to state legal systems. I also am aware that there
are going to be VASTLY more than that in library policy compilations, since
they're usually city or county affairs.

The legislatures and councils have a lot of Interesting Byproducts, as per
the old saying.

Post by Joe Bernstein
And Seattle and King County? Apparently we in Seattle were using
the suburban and exurban libraries primarily to supply extra copies
of hot new books. Seattle actually pays a fee for every book we
borrow from KCLS, but refused to raise the fee. So the last time
they negotiated - this is something like 2007 or 2008 - they agreed
that instead, Seattle residents would lose the ability to place holds.
So we can still go there to borrow hot new books, but if they're gone
when we arrive, tough luck. This has as its unintended consequence
that we also can't borrow, at all, books held in their storage
facilities, because holds are how those books are paged.

Huh. Yeah, that's not good.

[many many details snippedeth]

Post by Joe Bernstein
Every year or two I look for evidence that this woman has retired,
but so far no luck.

Dave, eventually she'll take forced retirement, of course

[Mark Zenier]

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

Seattle (SPL) and King County (KCLS) are seperate systems.

Seattle residents have borrowing privileges, but the nearest branch
can be quite a bus ride away. It means a trip to Shoreline/White
Center/Burien/Bellevue.

For a combination of size and accessibility, the new Burien library,
in their new City Hall complex, is a block or two south of the Burien
Transit center. (King County may still have their film/talking books
branch down in South Lake Union, but I don't remember if it had a
public reading room that could hold reserves).

Mark Zenier ***@eskimo.com
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

[Derek Lyons]

Post by Mark Zenier

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

Seattle (SPL) and King County (KCLS) are seperate systems.

I've never lived in a place where the city and county systems weren't
consolidated... so it never occurred to me.

D.

[Brian M. Scott]

On Thu, 31 Jan 2013 01:41:37 GMT, Derek Lyons

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Mark Zenier

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road>
at its Seattle campus; its copy of <The Whispering
Mountain> is being repaired, but I could get a copy at
the main Bellevue branch of the King County Library
System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your
"home" branch? We can over here on the peninsula.

Seattle (SPL) and King County (KCLS) are seperate
systems.

I've never lived in a place where the city and county
systems weren't consolidated... so it never occurred to
me.

My situation for the last 38 years or so has been rather the
opposite.

I live in Cleveland Heights, an inner ring suburb of
Cleveland, in Cuyahoga County. The local library is Heights
Libraries, with four branches in Cleveland Heights and
University Heights. Cleveland Public Library is separate;
it has a Main Library and 30 branch libraries, all in
Cleveland proper. Cuyahoga County Library has 28 branches;
23 suburbs of Cleveland have one each, one has three, two
share a branch, and there's one branch in Chagrin Falls,
which I don't consider a suburb. Shaker Heights, the suburb
immediately to my south, has its own library. East
Cleveland, the suburb immediately to my north, also has its
own. This may well not be an exhaustive list; I didn't do
any further checking.

Brian

[Mark Zenier]

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Mark Zenier

Post by Derek Lyons

Post by Joe Bernstein
The University of Washington has <Cold Shoulder Road> at its Seattle
campus; its copy of <The Whispering Mountain> is being repaired, but
I could get a copy at the main Bellevue branch of the King County
Library System, which is within a really long walk for me.

You can't reserve a copy and have it shipped to your "home" branch?
We can over here on the peninsula.

Seattle (SPL) and King County (KCLS) are seperate systems.

I've never lived in a place where the city and county systems weren't
consolidated... so it never occurred to me.

<gross over-generalization>

A holdover from the flight to the suburbs in the '50s and '60s.
Liberals in it city, Conservatives in the Suburbs. Local control and
all that other stuff (like avoiding dealing with minorities). In other
words the anti-Seattle attitude that occurs throughout the state extends
up to the city limits.

(Being a reverse commuter working on the East Side, a few decades back,
I ran into a lot of people that bragged about "never going to Seattle".
An attitude I found rather strange and limited).

With in city development of Software/Bio-tech/Medicine/Amazon/Starbucks,
gentrification and a lot of minority population moving out to the the
older suburbs, things are a lot more homogeneous than thirty years ago.

</gross over-generalization>

There's also the two tier local government where there's a local council
for both the city and the county. Separate budgets. KCLS had large
growth from bond issues in the late '60s and '70s.

They're both large systems. KCLS is slightly larger but serves about
twice the population. (But it's got a much more popular emphasis).
SPL is much older and almost as big and gets a lot of local support.
(Over half a million population at about $100 a person a year. Who says
libraries are free?). And it benefits(?) from the wannabe big city
compulsion* to build big showplaces like the Downtown library.

As far as circulation goes, both are near the top of the list,
countrywide. KCLS is fourth?/eighth? in the country.

*: (The sort of business/government network that sees local government
as existing solely to issue large bonds for big construction projects).

Mark Zenier ***@eskimo.com
Googleproofaddress(account:mzenier provider:eskimo domain:com)

[Rich Horton]

On Sat, 26 Jan 2013 23:45:16 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein

Post by Rich Horton
On Tue, 1 Jan 2013 23:46:26 -0800 (PST), Joe Bernstein

Post by Joe Bernstein
"Her Bounty to the Dead", aka "Where Spirits Gat Them Home", short
story, <Shadows> ed Grant 1978, Gothic
In which a New England drive, by a priest and his aunt, ends badly;
in which faith and unbelief face each other. I never remember this
story properly, and so never think I understand it at all. It's
another <Antiquities> story.

Worth noting (as I perhaps too often do) that both variants of this
title are quotations from Wallace Stevens's very famous poem "Sunday
Morning".

1) I've inserted that note into Wikipedia's Wallace Stevens article
(sv "Cultural References"). I put your name into the "title" of the
change (the part that you see by looking at the history of the page).
2) I hadn't known it myself.
3) It led me to read "Sunday Morning", I'm pretty certain for the
first time, which awed me.

Well, I'm super glad you discovered "Sunday Morning", which is in
itself an utterly amazing poem -- and there's so much more from
Stevens!

He was rarely as lush later in his life as in his first collection,
HARMONIUM (first edition published when he was in his 40s!) -- so most
of the most approachable Stevens poems are in that (other favorites of
mine include "Le Monocle de Mon Oncle" and "Peter Quince at the
Clavier"), but he was always challenging and wonderful, and I've read
my favorite Stevens poems more often than any other poet (save just
possibly Larkin).

Post by Joe Bernstein
If it were up to me, as many important works would get their titles
from this poem as have from Andrew Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress".
(Which is, for those as haven't read it, pretty much nonstop titles.)

Oh, yes, I've noticed "To His Coy Mistress" and its titles.

Indeed, my sometime "handle" (on Livejournal, for example), Ecbatan,
is taken indirectly from "To His Coy Mistress" -- that is, it's taken
from Archibald MacLeish's wonderful poem "You, Andrew Marvell", which
is in response to, or dialogue with, "To His Coy Mistress".

(It's also the source of one SF title -- that of Michael Bishop's
early novel AND STRANGE AT ECBATAN THE TREES.)

Post by Joe Bernstein
4) I'm sure this isn't the first time Stevens has been suggested to me
- people so rarely recommend poets to me that I remember each poet, if
not each recommender - but it's anyway the first time to get me to do
anything about it.
(Which in this case will be to download whatever I can find that's
in the public domain. I'm pretty sure I already have a book, but
rather more sure that assuming I do, it's in storage far away.)
5) Oh, and - the reason I didn't snip the quote of myself - it more
or less confirms my reading of the story, which may help me in future
remember it properly and thus stop doubting my ability to make sense
of it.
So thanks!
I still look forward to the rest of your comments on those 3 posts.

And I still look forward to finishing them! Sorry -- I've been
terribly busy (traveling for work, lately), and haven't been able to
do them justice.

Speaking of Crowley, he has an article about Madame Blavatsky in the
latest issue of HARPER'S. (In the form, sort of, of a review of a new
biography by, of all people, Blondie drummer Gary Valentine (who now
writes as Gary Lachman. Crowley is rather unimpressed with Lachman's
credulity regarding Blavatsky.)

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