Swan/Wolfe/Dragon

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Marianne Porter has announced another Dragonstairs Press chapbook. It goes on sale tomorrow, Thursday, August 6 at noon EDT.

Swan/Wolfe is my meditation on the place Gene Wolfe in modern science fiction and fantasy.  It came about because I was interviewed on James Wynn's and Craig Brewer's ReReading Wolfe podcast. (Normally, they do a chapter-by-chapter close reading of Gene's The Book of the New Sun quatrology, but from time to time they interview people who knew Gene and/or have interesting things to say about his work.)

I was chatting about the experience on social media afterward, when author and collector Lawrence Person suggested that a transcript would make an excellent Dragonstairs chapbook. Having done transcripts on occasion (including a book-length interview published as Being Gardner Dozois), I was not crazy about the thought of doing all that work. But Craig Brewer heroically volunteered to type out a transcript. Marianne and I consulted and told him to leave out the parts of the interview that didn't deal with Gene (I was given a lot of freedom to talk about myself), and the result is a nice, tightly-focused look at my feelings toward and admiration of Wolfe.)  I edited the results lightly to amplify and clarify my thoughts.

Out of all this, Marianne created another lovingly-crafted chapbook.  Hand-stitched, 6”x9”, and 10 pages long. Numbered and signed by the interviewee (me), and produced in an edition of 100, of which 76 will be available for purchase.

You can buy a copy on www.dragonstairs.com. But not before tomorrow noon.

And if you're just curious about what I said, you can listen to the podcast here.


Above: Looks nice, dunnit? Cover by Philadelphia artist Susan McAninley.