Wilde Stories 2016: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction

by Steve Berman (Editor)

Overview

Reality and memory; imagination and oblivion. Somewhere between these signposts can be found the events of Wilde Stories 2016: a future world has forbidden the songs of dancefloor divas but on one night the show returns as a cautionary exhibition; high school outcasts create a fictional scapegoat and then his body is found; and let us not forget that colonial Mars needs Oscar Wilde, but then, who doesn't?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781590216101
Publisher:	Lethe Press
Publication date:	07/25/2016
Series:	Wilde Stories , #2016
Pages:	238
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

Table of Contents

"Imaginary Boys" by Paul Magrs
"Wallflowers" by Jonathan Harper
"Camp" by David Nickle
"The Ticket Taker of Cenote Zací" by Benjamin Parzybok
"The Duchess and the Ghost" by Richard Bowes
"Lockbox" by E. Catherine Tobler
"What Lasts" by Jared W. Cooper
"He Came From a Place of Openness and Truth" by Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam
"The Language of Knives" by Haralambi Markov
"To Die Dancing" by Sam J. Miller
"Edited" by Rich Larson
"Envious Moons" by Richard Scott Larson
"Utrechtenaar" by Paul Evanby
"To the Knife Cold Stars" by A. Merc Rustad
"The Astrakhan, the Homburg, and the Red Red Coal" by Chaz Brenchley

Editorial Reviews

★ 07/11/2016
Melancholy stories weave substance and emotion into thought provoking tales of discovery, perseverance, and sacrifice in Berman’s collection of 15 of the year’s best gay-themed speculative stories. A self-loathing “rent boy” dispels his ghosts with help from a Greenwich Village drag queen in veteran writer Richard Bowes’s “The Duchess and the Ghost.” Love transcends humanity in newcomer Jared W. Cooper’s forlorn “What Lasts.” In Haralambi Markov’s “The Language of Knives,” a stoic craftsman performs a death ritual on his warrior husband’s body. Alien visitors succumb to love in both Paul Magrs’s humorous “Imaginary Boys,” in which a time traveler narrates a teenager’s life, and Bonnie Jo Stufflebeam’s lighthearted “He Came from a Place of Openness and Truth,” in which alien Mickey clones his human boyfriend. Vivid worlds of degradation and deprivation test resolve: in A. Merc Rustad’s wrenching “To the Knife Cold Stars,” survivor Grace trades a cherished memory for a child’s life, and in a horrific totalitarian society, a spiritually weak man attends a hell house–style exhibition that allows subjugated citizens one last chance to dance in “To Die Dancing” by Sam J. Miller. Many troubled characters in these stories face self-hatred, homophobic parents, and defeatism, but they rise above with inspiring determination to love whomever they choose; each story excels as speculative fiction as well. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

"Many troubled characters in these stories face self-hatred, homophobic parents, and defeatism, but they rise above with inspiring determination to love whomever they choose; each story excels as speculative fiction as well." - Publishers Weekly, starred review

From the Publisher