(Special Bonus Entry: My Ten Favorite Stories)

May 8, again

Does posterity care? Do any of you? Well, either way, here they are, in no particular order (I doubt I could rank them): my influences, my most admired, my read-over-and-over (and, in most cases, where I found them).

"The Professor's Teddy Bear" by Ted Sturgeon, from E Pluribus Unicorn. On those rare occasions when I teach fiction, I use the opening lines of this story as an example of a great beginning: "'Sleep,' said the monster. It spoke with its ear, with little lips writhing deep within the folds of flesh, because its mouth was full of blood."

"Thanksgiving" by Joyce Carol Oates, from her collection of the grotesque, Haunted. I read it every year during the holiday, and I love reading it aloud.

"Dori Bangs" by Bruce Sterling, which appeared in Asimov's years ago. It's in one of his collections, too, but I have it in the third annual Year's Best Fantasy and Horror. Quite often Sterling's stories intrigue me, but they seldom move me. This one affects me strongly, though, and no matter how often I read it, it retains its power. It's the best alternate-historical-fantasy I've ever read.

"Friend's Best Man" by Jonathan Carroll. I have it in the first annual Year's Best F & H. It's one of the first fantasy stories I ever read (yeah, I'm a young 'un), one of the stories that helped me decide I wanted to write this stuff.

"Varicose Worms" by Scott Baker, in yet another one of the Year's Best anthologies, I forget which. I like those collections, in case you haven't noticed. I don't like all the stories every year, usually loathe quite a few, but there are invariably true gems, too. "Worms" is weird and brutal and beautiful and fascinating.

"Sleepside Story" by Greg Bear. I've read several of his science fiction novels, but none of them get me like this rare fantasy novella does... I wish he'd write some books set in that world...

"Uncle Dobbin's Parrot Fair" by Charles de Lint, from Dreams Underfoot. Another story from my formative years. Actually, I may like his "Dream Harder, Dream True" from The Ivory and the Horn better, but "Uncle" was the first de Lint story I read, so it's closer to my heart.

"Delia and the Dinner Party" by John Shirley, from the first Borderlands antho. Whoo. This is the most recent addition to my list (which, heretofore, has been an informal mental sort of thing). I haven't read anything else by Shirley, but I will. That story is twisted in profound and fascinating ways, one of the few tales in that collection I found genuinely disturbing.

"Der Untergang Des Abendlandesmenschen" by Howard Waldrop, from The Mammoth Book of Vampires (one of my better yard-sale book finds). It's probably in one of his hard-to-find collections, too. It features two of my favorite characters of all time, Broncho Billy and William S. I just re-read it tonight, which sparked this whole bonus entry (which I note is now longer than the real entry that preceded it...).

"Ubermensch!" by Kim Newman. It fulfills my love for superhero stories of the variety they don't tell in the big mainstream comics (or at least, not in the comics of my earliest experience. Then came Vertigo, of course, and everything changed). I really love his "Andy Warhol's Dracula" and "Coppola's Dracula", too. A lot of his stories are available online, at The Event Horizon.

And that's 10. The more I think, the more I come up with-- Jim Kelly's stuff, John Kessel's, Connie Willis's, Karen Fowler's... but I said 10, and this is probably already tedious.

Happy reading.