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Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts
Showing posts with label stories. Show all posts

A Birthday Gift to Carol Emshwiller from Kessel & Kelly


John Kessel and James Patrick Kelly's upcoming anthology from Tachyon Publications, Kafkaesque, will include Carol Emshwiller's short story "Report to the Men's Club".

But I have also be given permission to reveal one more element of the book today -- its dedication, which will read:


To Carol Emshwiller
on the occasion of her ninetieth birthday

Interview: Carol Emshwiller on "The Abominable Child's Tale" (2010)

Charles Tan: Hi! Thanks for agreeing to do the interview. What's is it about "fuzzy people" that interests you? What made you decide to finally use Big Foot?

Carol Emshwiller: Fuzzy people? and why big foot? Those questions go together for me. I don't think I have any special feelings for "fuzzy" people, but I do have for big foot and have for a long time. I love the idea of people who have avoided us all this time and who live in the mountains. They're smart and wild at the same time. I want them to be beautiful, too. I liked using teenagers in my story because they're more reckless, they try all sorts of things, and they have an innocence and acceptance of things (OK, so you're a big foot), that I wanted to use in the story.

CONTINUE READING

"No Time Like the Present" by Carol Emshwiller

A lot of new rich people have moved into the best houses in town—those big ones up on the hill that overlook the lake. What with the depression, some of those houses have been on the market for a long time. They’d gotten pretty run down, but the new people all seem to have plenty of money and fixed them up right away. Added docks and decks and tall fences. It was our fathers, mine included, who did all the work for them. I asked my dad what their houses were like and he said, “Just like ours only richer.”

As far as we know, none of those people have jobs. It’s as if all the families are independently wealthy.

Those people look like us only not exactly. They’re taller and skinnier and they’re all blonds. They don’t talk like us either. English does seem to be their native language, but it’s an odd English. Their kids keep saying, “Shoe dad,” and, “Bite the boot.” They shout to each other to, “Evolve!”

CONTINUE READING AT LIGHTSPEED MAGAZINE...