Heady Praise Indeed! (But Keep In Mind It's Not My Book)

 ..

It is rare for anyone to get the glowing review that Rich Horton gave Alvaro Zinos-Amaro in Black Gate for his extended interview with me about every work of short fiction I ever published, Being Michael Swanwick.

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is, as Horton writes, "deeply familiar with Swanwick's work, and his readings and questions are extremely perceptive." To which I can add that he did a great deal of intensive background research and then spent something like two years on the interviews. Earlier, he had a series of conversations with Robert Silverberg, published as Traveler of Worlds and short-listed for the Hugo Award. The man is intellectually acute and linguistically deft. 

So all praise for this Fairwood Press book properly belongs to him. Along with my undying gratitude to him for spending so much of his time on this project. There were times he amazed me with his insight.

You can find Rich Horton's review here. 

And as long as we're speaking  about me . . .

In the review, Rich Horton gave me the kind of shout-out that we all of us who  labor in the vineyards of literature hope one day to receive. To wit:

The book is organized chronologically, in five-year chunks, beginning in 1980, when Swanwick’s first stories, “Ginungagap” and “The Feast of Saint Janis,” appeared. I remember the excitement at the time about the Special Science Fiction Issue of the prestigious literary magazine TriQuarterly, and the surprise that a brand-new writer had a story (“Ginnungagap”) in it, amidst heavyweights like Le Guin, Wolfe, Delany, and Disch. Obviously the judgment of the editors has been vindicated — Swanwick would perhaps blush to read this, but his fiction fully stands with those great writers, and he is also clearly a writer of considerable literary merit, but also a writer who loves SF and Fantasy and inhabits the genre world enthusiastically.

Could this possibly be true? Me up there in the pantheon of my literary heroes? I will admit that such has always been my ambition. But have I gotten there? 

I don't know. All I know is that there is an unfinished story in front of me and another tapping its toes impatiently after that one. These glowing moments of praise are very pleasant and even nourishing for a working writer. But a month later, they will fade to nothing in the rear-view mirror and the only thing that matters then will be the road ahead as empty and unfeatured as a blank sheet of paper.

And speaking of the publisher . . .

Being Michael Swanwick doesn't come out until November 21. But if you pre-order directly from Fairwood Press you can save three dollars. 

You can order it here.

*