He could not make up his mind what he thought about it, and wished he had some friend who would tell him what to think. Actually it seemed to him wholly unsatisfactory, and yet very lovely, the only really beautiful picture in the world. What he would have liked at that moment would have been to see himself walk in, and slap him on the back, and say (with obvious sincerity): “Absolutely magnificent! I see exactly what you are getting at. Do get on with it, and don’t bother about anything else! We will arrange for a public pension, so that you need not.”

However, there was no public pension. And one thing he could see: it would need some concentration, some work, hard uninterrupted work, to finish the pic­ture, even at its present size. He rolled up his sleeves, and began to concentrate. He tried for several days not to bother about other things. But there came a tremendous crop of interruptions.

J.R.R. Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle

Miles stopped beneath the overhang at the entrance to the tube station. He leaned against the wall, out of the wind, and a short distance from the throngs hurrying home from work. “Nobody knows because nobody knows, Robbie. You know, and I know, and the person who told me knows. And I guess if he—or she—is still alive, the person who told him knows.

“But that’s it—that’s all. In the whole entire world, we’re the only ones.”

His eyes glittered—with excitement, but also tears. He wiped them away, unashamed, and smiled. “I wanted you to know, Robbie. I wanted you to be the next one.”

I rubbed my forehead, in impatience and disbelief, swore loudly, then aligned myself against the wall at his side. I was trying desperately to keep my temper.

“Next one what?” I said at last.

“The next one who knows. That’s how it works—someone shows you, just like I showed you. But then—”

His voice broke, and he went on. “But then the other person, the first person—we never go there again. We never see it again. Ever.”

“You mean it only comes out once a year or something?”

He shook his head sadly. “No. It comes out all the time—I mean, I assume it does, but who knows? I’ve only seen it twice. The first time was when someone showed me. And now, the second time, the last time—with you.”

—Elizabeth Hand, “Hungerford Bridge,” Conjunctions 52, Spring 2009

“I am one of those who like to stay late at the café,” the older waiter said. “With all those who do not want to go to bed. With all those who need a light for the night.”

— Ernest Hemingway, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place

The Tourist is the first Park story I read. I found it online before I went to Clarion, and enjoyed it; though, like most of Park’s work, the story made me sad for the broken world and the sympathetic sad people who live in it. In this story, Park plays with time travel and personal loss; he asks, “What if cosmological time ran backward to our personal sense of it?” and “Will you forgive me, Suzanne?” Narrated in his characteristically soft-spoken, at times melancholy and self-referential, one-off first person.

He often casts this doppelganger voice, though the character differs from story to story&mdashthe various Paul Parks, who aren’t the physical writer, but who are sometimes also writers on their own, sometimes referring to fictional versions of the physical Paul Park’s other stories, sometimes reimagining their alternate universe spouses having conflicts in a once more removed universe. This could be confusing, but in the end I don’t think the myriad Paul Parks should distress anyone: in an interview with The SF Site, Park says: “It’s just that we all share the same name—a vexing coincidence, of course, but ultimately trivial.” And of course the other Paul Parks are Paul Park, but no more significantly than any other character he writes is Paul Park.

There was no story in this collection I disliked, which is a feat; the stories I liked and remember best are: If Lions Could Speak, The Breakthrough, Tachycardia, The Lost Sepulcher of Huascar Capac.

Frost and Fire is a collection of short stories, two of which won the Hugo. It also includes two essays on writing: one contrasting science fiction and fantasy, and another on his creative process while he was writing Eye of Cat, which I haven’t read, but now probably will.

In most of his books, Zelazny translates and bends various brands of mythology to his purposes, and he certainly does that in Frost and Fire, though it’s more subdued. He deals with gods and planets personally; he examines their flaws and triumphs like a watchmaker, and translates his observations through beautifully poetic language. The main stories of this collection, Permafrost and 24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai both examine lovers’ conflicts and bitterness and resolve in tragedy. They’re both in present tense, which I usually hate when it’s used in fiction, but I barely noticed it in either case. Maybe I’m getting used to it, I don’t know. These stories were wonderful, though, which probably helped me bypass my stylistic hangups.

I have, through some horrible, enduring oversight on my part, never read his Amber books, though I read the first one or two. I have the omnibus, but it’s sitting on my shelf (and not the floor, so you know know I’ve had it a while) where it will wait, unread, for a while yet. I’m still reading through webs of mainstream. My strategy: take one writer and jump to his influences, then to that one’s students, to this one’s mentor, and so on. That’s not a bad way to get a lot of books, considering how it’s potentially exponential and all.

He was a poet, a short story and novel writer, and critic; he won several major awards, and was nominated for many others. He wrote the novella The Brave Little Toaster, on which the movie of the same name was based.

I was walking by my bookcase and I’m not sure why this particular book caught my eye, but it did. I have a few hundred books in stacks and piles and domino lines across my room, most of them double-stacked in my tallest bookcase, so for any one book to jump out, and for me to pick it out and look at it is fairly odd, especially since my to-read stack of library and friend-borrowed books is 25 high. I rarely browse anymore.  But I noticed quark/#1, a quarterly of short speculative fiction edited by Samuel R. Delany and Marilyn Hacker, picked it up, saw Disch’s name alongside Le Guin and Lafferty, and, because his name has been floating around lately, read the story.

My first thought was, This is the only story I’ve read by Disch, and it’s set in a cemetery.

Let Us Quickly Hasten to the Gate of Ivory is well-crafted; Disch’s characterization is full-orbed, and his description serves its purpose, though it’s fairly mundane and staid for sf.  I think the sedate feel fits well with the sleepy golf course ambiance of the cemetery, and makes the ensuing struggle to find a way out of the graveyard menacing. But it’s not primarily about death or labyrinthine menace; it’s about family, and love, and the fragile, complicated relationships we weave around ourselves like clothing.

It’s a comforting story, in a way.  His characters love each other in deep, complex ways, the way real people do, and we see hints of full relationships throughout. I didn’t get a sense of a malign universe, just an uncaring, complex one that makes us huddle together, our backs against the dark. We have solace in each other when the universe around us is twists into dark shapes or simply exists beyond our ken, as it does here.

And I’m sad a man who wrote a story like this would kill himself in the end.