BEING MICHAEL SWANWICK by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro

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“You have here the rare luxury of inhabiting the uncanny world of Michael Swanwick. Try not to fall off.”

     — Gregory Frost, author of Shadowbridge and Rhymer

This is a very strange moment for me. I have the (yes, uncanny) duty of reporting that Being Michael Swanwick, a book-length interview conducted by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, is now available for pre-order.

A little background: Almost a quarter-century ago I began interviewing Gardner Dozois about his short fiction. Every story he'd ever written, including why and how he'd written it, in chronological order. The result was published by Michael Walsh's Old Earth Books as Being Gardner Dozois. Credit where credit is due, the title was Michael Walsh's, not mine--I had no idea what to call it. Many years passed.

Then Alvaro got in touch with me and suggested performing a similar series of interview covering my short fiction to date, much as I had with Gardner. 

I was, let's be honest here, flattered. 

The project took over a year. And when it ended, I had a mad spasm of Imposter Syndrome. All I could think of was what Gardner said at the end of our project:

You realize that you have just pulled off one of those completely useless but impressive accomplishments, like making a replica of the Titanic out of marzipan, or building the Eiffel Tower life-sized out of old used Q-tips.

I can't claim that I said anything nearly so witty. But Alvaro Zinos-Amaro was a sharp and insightful (and patient!) interviewer and analyst of my fiction. He's a man, as they say, who can see further through a brick wall than most.

So if you've ever wondered anything at all about my science fiction and fantasy stories, here's your chance. I told Alvaro everything I knew.  Being Michael Swanwick is being issued in trade paperback this November, 2023, by Fairwood Press for $19.99. But apparently if you pre-order it, it's on sale for $16.99. 

With an introduction by Gregory Frost and an afterword by Marianne Porter, publisher of Dragonstairs Press.

You can  pre-order Being Michael Swannwick from Fairwood Press here.

You can buy Being Gardner Dozois from Old Earth Books here.

 And you can buy Alvaro's Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg here.

Alas, Being Alvaro Zinos-Amaro won't be available for another twenty years. But it will be worth waiting for.

And here's what the publisher had to say . . .

In 2001, Michael Swanwick published the book-length interview Being Gardner Dozois. Now Swanwick himself becomes the subject of inquiry. During a year of conversations, Alvaro Zinos-Amaro (Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg) set about discussing with Swanwick his remarkable career, with a particular focus on his extraordinary short fiction. 

The resulting collection of transcribed interviews is a tribute to the similarly-named book that inspired it, a discussion of writing craft, an anecdotal genre history, and a chronological survey of the work of a modern master.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alvaro Zinos-Amaro is a Hugo- and Locus-award finalist who has published over fifty stories and one hundred essays, reviews, and interviews in professional markets. These include Analog, Lightspeed, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Galaxy's Edge, Nature, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Locus, Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Clarkesworld, The Year's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, Cyber World, Nox Pareidolia, Multiverses: An Anthology of Alternate Realities, and many others. Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg was published in 2016 to critical acclaim. Being Michael Swanwick is Alvaro's second book of interviews. His debut novel, Equimedian, is forthcoming in 2024.

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