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    Wilde Stories 2010: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction
    Wilde Stories 2010: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction
    Wilde Stories 2010: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction
    Ebook267 pages3 hours

    Wilde Stories 2010: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction

    By Steve Berman

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    About this ebook

    A newcomer to San Francisco falls in love too fast despite the warnings of a cadre of ghosts haunting his uncle; a businessman comes to regret his ennui when faced with the machinations of an outsider artist; on a train traveling through a dangerous Russian winter, a passenger encounters a wolf on two legs; a mining colony where love has become dangerous but no less passionate; a young man, mourning those loss of his ballet career, may yet get his chance to fly.

    These are some of the stories included in this anthology, stories chosen from magazines, anthologies, literary journals, and single author collections to represent the best gay male speculative fiction of the year. A finalist for the 23rd Lambda Literary Award for best LGBT Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror!

    ''... all the stories are superior choices. And, in and of itself, Richard Bowes s is-it-fantasy-or-is-it-mainstream novelette, 'I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said,' is worth the price of admission; and the same is true of Elizabeth Hand's re-envisioned fairy tale, 'The Far Shore.' Wilde Stories 2010 is a worthwhile volume for anyone who enjoys literary speculative fiction.''--Cynthia Ward for Fantasy Magazine

    ''Resisting pressure to select only LGBT authors' work, Berman compiles a state-of-the-art anthology of sf and fantasy with LGBT protagonists that scores few political points but pretty consistently entertains.''--Booklist

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherLethe Press
    Release dateJun 6, 2010
    ISBN9781452447865
    Wilde Stories 2010: The Year's Best Gay Speculative Fiction
    Author

    Steve Berman

    Author of over a hundred short stories, editor of numerous queer and weird anthologies, and small press publisher living in western Massachusetts.

    Read more from Steve Berman

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      Book preview

      Wilde Stories 2010 - Steve Berman

      Wilde

      Stories

      2010

      The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction

      Edited by Steve Berman

      Published by Lethe Press At Smashwords

      Copyright © 2010 by Steve Berman.

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, except for brief citation or review, without the written permission of Lethe Press. For information write: Lethe Press, 118 Heritage Avenue, Maple Shade, NJ 08052.

      www.lethepressbooks.com lethepress@aol.com

      Book Design by Toby Johnson

      Cover Image by Aina Buforn Garcia

      Published by Lethe Press, 118 Heritage Avenue, Maple Shade, NJ 08052.

      1-59021- 301-7/ 978-1-59021-301-8 (paperback)

      1-59021-300-9 / 978-1-59021-300-1 (library binding)

      Barbaric Splendor © 2009 by Simon Sheppard, appearing in Time Well Bent (ed. Connie Wilkins, (Lethe Press) / Death in Amsterdam © 2009 by Jameson Currier, appearing in The Haunted Heart and Other Tales (Lethe Press) / The Far Shore © 2009 by Elizabeth Hand, appearing in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Oct/Nov 2009 / I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said © 2009 by Richard Bowes, appearing in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dec 2009 / Like They Always Been Free © 2009 by Georgina Li, appearing in Federations (ed. by John Joseph Adams) / Lots © 2009 by Marc Andreottola, appearing in Ganymede 5 / "Ne Que Von Desir" © 2009 by Tanith Lee writing as Judas Garbah, appearing in Icarus 3. / Some of Them Fell © 2009 by Joel Lane, appearing in Black Static 13 / The Sphinx Next Door © 2009 by Tom Cardamone, appearing in Pumpkin Teeth (Lethe Press) / Strappado © 2009 by Laird Barron, appearing in Poe (ed. by Ellen Datlow) / Tio Gilbert and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts © by Ben Francisco, appearing in Realms of Fantasy, Oct 2009 / Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine © 2009 by Rhys Hughes, appearing in Mister Gum.

      Table of Contents

      Title Page

      Copyright Page

      Table of Contents

      start

      Introduction by Steve Berman

      Strappado by Laird Barron

      Tío Gilberto and the Twenty-Seven Ghosts by Ben Francisco

      Lots by Marc Andreottola

      I Needs Must Part, the Policeman Said by Richard Bowes

      Ne Que Von Desir by Tanith Lee writing as Judas Garbah

      Barbaric Splendor by Simon Sheppard

      Like They Always Been Free by Georgina Li

      Some of Them Fell by Joel Lane

      Where the Sun Doesn’t Shine by Rhys Hughes

      Death In Amsterdam by Jameson Currier

      The Sphinx Next Door by Tom Cardamone

      The Far Shore by Elizabeth Hand

      The Contributors

      Introduction

      Welcome to the third release of the series devoted to the best gay speculative fiction published in the last year, tales of men haunted sometimes by ghosts and sometimes by handsome wolves on two legs—by outsider artists or strange neighbors.

      In 2009, the market for queer fiction remained robust. Several of the stories featured in this book were released in prominent spec-fic periodicals. The growth of small presses has fostered a fresh crop of themed anthologies and single-author collections. Yet, all was not fair; last year, the gender and orientations of authors became contentious issues in both queer-themed and speculative fiction (which encompasses such genres as fantasy, horror, and science fiction).

      According to their website, the Lambda Literary Foundation’s mission is to celebrate and nurture LGBT literature through various programs. LLF also sponsors annual awards in such categories as debut fiction, mysteries, romances, and, yes, an award focusing on queer spec fic. Last year, for the first time the LLF specified that the gender orientation/identity of the author was a criterion for determining whether or not a book was eligible for an award. This measure became divisive; was the announcement a means to highlight, perhaps even shelter, the literary efforts of queer folk, or was it an act of exclusivity that bordered on prejudice? Also within the spec-fic community, debate raged about anthologies whose tables of contents omitted female authors and markets perceived to be unfriendly to female authors.

      Why am I mentioning these two issues in a book whose focus is solely on stories with gay male protagonists? Take a moment and look back at the table of contents. A quarter of the authors in Wilde Stories 2010 are women. I neither know nor care what their orientations might be. I imagine that not every male author in this book wants or even cares about labels. The story’s identity matters to me, not the writer’s.

      Swordspoint happens to be my favorite (gay) novel. I consumed the book, digesting every scene, every conversation, every description of the world of Riverside where a man could openly adore another man, where duels were fought not over maidens but the hearts of rakes and young dukes. I yearned to live in such a world—or emulate the experience in my own writing. Swordspoint picked the lock on the closet door behind which I hid. The author, Ellen Kushner, not only happens to be a woman, but when the book was released in 1987 she did not identify as queer (yes, one could argue that Ellen’s contemporary identity is permissible, but that’s not the point). I’m troubled that a quarter of a century later, this marvelous book would not be eligible for a Lambda Award.

      Moreover, how many gay men, now in their late thirties and even into their fifties, thinking back to the book that first introduced them to a character with whom they could associate their own coming-out struggles, would mention a novel written by a woman? I’d wager the number who respond with The Charioteer or The Persian Boy by Mary Renault, The Last Herald-Mage series by Mercedes Lackey or Lost Souls by Poppy Z. Brite, is larger than those mentioning William K. Eakins’s Key West 2720 A.D., Scott Edelman’s The Gift, or Jay B. Laws’s Steam. Sadly, too many of the early gay spec-fic titles written by men were only published by small presses and have now vanished like their authors—where is Jeffrey N. McMahan now? No one knows. (Though I do recommend to readers Rob Latham’s essay, World Well Lost: Male Homosexuality in Postwar Science Fiction, in Gunn’s fine The Golden Age of Gay Fiction).

      I state all this not as a criticism of the LLF but rather to let you, my reader, know where I stand as the editor of this series. These stories are enchanting and scary and thrilling…and, as far I am concerned, the only reason you should look at authors’ names is to find more of their work. Let no prejudice stand in way of a good tale. Of course, I do not know your gender or identity, only that you enjoy stories about gay men who have happened across something fantastical, strange, weird or otherworldly, and you happen to enjoy accompanying them along the way. So turn the page and let’s commence with this year’s travels.

      Steve Berman

      Within moments he’d shaken hands with all and sundry and been inducted by the club of international debauchers as a member in good standing.

      Strappado

      Laird Barron

      Kenshi Suzuki and Swayne Harris had a chance reunion at a bathhouse in an Indian tourist town. It had been five or six years since their previous Malta liaison, a cocktail party at the British consulate that segued into a branding-iron-hot affair. They’d spent a long weekend of day cruises to the cyclopean ruins on Gozo, nightclubbing at the elite hotels and casinos, and booze-drenched marathon sex before the dissolution of their respective junkets swept them back to New York and London in a storm of tears and bitter farewells. For Kenshi, the emotional hangover lasted through desolate summer and into a melancholy autumn. And even now, when elegant, thunderously handsome Swayne materialized from the crowd on the balcony like the Ghost of Christmas Past—!

      Kenshi wore a black suit; sleek and polished as a seal or a banker. He swept his single lock of gelled black hair to the left, like a gothic teardrop. His skin was sallow and dewlapped at his neck, and soft at his belly and beneath his Italian leather belt. He’d been a swimmer once, earnestly meant to return to his collegiate form, but hadn’t yet braced for the exhaustion of such an endeavor. He preferred to float in hotel pools whilst dreaming of his supple youth, once so exotic in the suburbs of white bread Connecticut. Everyone but his grandparents (who never fully acclimated to their transplantation to the West) called him Ken. A naturalized U.S. citizen, he spoke meager Japanese, knew next to zero about the history or the culture and had visited Tokyo a grand total of three times. In short, he privately acknowledged his unworthiness to lay claim to his blood heritage and thus lived a life of minor yet persistent regret.

      Swayne wore a cream-colored suit of a cut most popular with the royalty of South American plantations. It’s in style anywhere I go, he explained later as they undressed one another in Kenshi’s suite at the Golden Scale. Swayne’s complexion was dark, like fired clay. His slightly sinister brows and waxed imperial lent him the appearance of a Christian devil.

      In the seam between the electric shock of their reunion and resultant delirium fugue of violent coupling, Kenshi had an instant to doubt the old magic before the question was utterly obliterated. And if he’d forgotten Swayne’s sly, wry demeanor, his faith was restored when the dark man rolled to face the ceiling, dragged on their shared cigarette and said, Of all the bathhouses in all the cities of the world….

      Kenshi cheerfully declared him a bastard and snatched back the cigarette. The room was strewn with their clothes. A vase of lilies lay capsized and water funneled from severed stems over the edge of the table. He caught droplets in his free hand and rubbed them and the semen into the slick flesh of his chest and belly. He breathed heavily.

      How’d you swing this place all to yourself? Swayne said. Big promotion?

      A couple of my colleagues got pulled off the project and didn’t make the trip. You?

      Business, with unexpected pleasure, thank you. The museum sent me to look at a collection—estate sale. Paintings and whatnot. I fly back on Friday, unless I find something extraordinary, which is doubtful. Mostly rubbish, I’m afraid. Swayne rose and stretched. Rich, gold-red light dappled the curtains, banded and bronzed him with tiger stripes.

      The suite’s western exposure gave them a last look at the sun as it faded to black. Below their lofty vantage, slums and crooked dirt streets and the labyrinthine wharfs in the shallow, blood-warm harbor were mercifully obscured by thickening tropical darkness. Farther along the main avenue and atop the ancient terraced hillsides was a huge, baroque seventeenth-century monastery, much photographed for feature films, and farther still, the scattered manors and villas of the lime nabobs, their walled estates demarcated by kliegs and floodlights. Tourism pumped the lifeblood of the settlement. They came for the monastery, of course, and only a few kilometers off was a wildlife preserve. Tour buses ran daily and guides entertained foreigners with local folklore and promises of tigers, a number of which roamed the high grass plains. Kenshi had gone on his first day, hated the ripe, florid smell of the jungle, the heat, and the sullen men with rifles who patrolled the electrified perimeter fence in halftracks. The locals wore knives in their belts, even the urbane guide with the Oxford accent, and it left Kenshi feeling shriveled and helpless, at the mercy of the hatefully smiling multitudes.

      Here, in the dusty, grimy heart of town, some eighty kilometers down the coast from grand old Mumbai, when the oil lamps and electric lamps fizzed alight, link by link in a vast, convoluted chain, it was only bright enough to help the muggers and cutthroats see what they were doing.

      City of romance, Swayne said with eminent sarcasm. He opened the door to the terrace and stood naked at the rail. There were a few tourists on their verandas and at their windows. Laughter and pop music and the stench of the sea carried on the lethargic breeze as it snaked through the room. The hotel occupied the exact center of a semicircle of relatively modernized blocks—the chamber of commerce’s concession to appeasing Westerners’ paranoia of marauding gangs and vicious muggers. Still, three streets over was the Third World, as Kenshi’s colleagues referred to it whilst they swilled whiskey and goggled at turbans and sarongs and at the Buddhists in their orange robes. It was enough to make him ashamed of his continent, to pine for his father’s homeland, until he realized the Japanese were scarcely any more civilized as guests.

      The only hotel with air conditioning and you go out there. You’ll be arrested if you don’t put something on! Kenshi finally dragged himself upright and collected his pants. Let’s go to the discothèque.

      The American place? I’d rather not. Asshole tourists swarm there like bees to honey. I was in the cantina a bit earlier and got stuck near a bunch of Hollywood types whooping it up at the bar. Probably come to scout the area or shoot the monastery. All they could talk about is picking up on ‘European broads.’

      Kenshi laughed. Those are the guys I’m traveling with. Yeah, they’re scouting locations. And they’re all married, too.

      Wankers. Hell with the disco.

      No, there’s another spot—a hole in the wall I heard about from a friend. A local.

      Eh, probably a seedy little bucket of blood. I’m in, then!

      - - -

      Kenshi rang his contact, one Rashid Obi, an assistant to an executive producer at a local firm that cranked out several dozen Bollywood films every year. Rashid gave directions and promised to meet them at the club in forty-five minutes. Or, if they were nervous to travel the streets alone, he could escort them…. Kenshi laughed, somewhat halfheartedly, and assured his acquaintance there was no need for such coddling. He would’ve preferred Rashid’s company, but knew Swayne was belligerently fearless regarding forays into foreign environments. His lover was an adventurer and hard bitten in his own charming fashion. Certainly Swayne would mock him for his timidity and charge ahead regardless. So, Kenshi stifled his misgivings and led the way.

      The discothèque was a quarter mile from the hotel and buried in a misshapen block of stone houses and empty shops. They found it mostly by accident after stumbling around several narrow alleys that reeked of urine and the powerful miasma of curry that seeped from open apartment windows. The entry arch was low and narrow and blackened from soot and antiquity. The name of the club had been painted into the worn plaster, but illegible now from erosion and neglect. Kerosene lamps guttered in inset sconces and shadows gathered in droves. A speaker dangled from a cornice and projected scratchy sitar music. Two Indian men sat on a stone bench. They wore baggy, lemon shirts and disco slacks likely purchased from the black-market outlets in a local bazaar. They shared the stem of the hookah at their sandaled feet. Neither appeared interested in the arrival of the Westerners.

      Oh my God! It’s an opium den! Swayne said and squeezed Kenshi’s buttock. Going native, are we, dear?

      Kenshi blushed and knocked his hand aside. He’d smoked half a joint with a dorm mate in college and that was the extent of his experimentation with recreational drugs. He favored a nice, dry white wine and the occasional import beer, preferably Sapporo.

      The darkness of the alley followed them inside. The interior lay in shadow, except for the bar, which glowed from a strip along its edge like the bioluminescent tentacle of a deep-sea creature, and motes of gold and red and purple passing across the bottles from a rotating glitter ball above the tiny square of dance floor wedged in the corner. The sitar music issued from a beat box and was much louder than it had been outside. Patrons were jammed into the little rickety tables and along the bar. The air was sharp with sweat and exhaled liquor fumes.

      Rashid emerged from the shadows and caught Kenshi’s arm above the elbow in the overly familiar manner of his countrymen. He was shorter than Kenshi and slender to the point of well-heeled emaciation. He stood so close Kenshi breathed deeply of his cologne, the styling gel in his short, tightly coiled hair. He introduced the small man from Delhi to a mildly bemused Swayne. Soon Rashid vigorously shepherded them into an alcove where a group of Europeans crowded together around three circular tables laden with beer bottles and shot glasses and fuming ashtrays heaped with the butts of cigarettes.

      Rashid presented Swayne and Kenshi to the evening’s co-host, one Luis Guzman, an elderly Argentinean who’d lived abroad for nearly three decades in quasi-political exile. Guzman was the public relations guru for a profoundly large international advertising conglomerate, which in turn influenced or owned outright the companies represented by the various guests he’d assembled at the discothèque.

      Kenshi’s feet ached, so he wedged in next to a reedy blonde Netherlander, a weather reporter for some big market, he gathered as sporadic introductions were made. Her hands bled ink from a mosaic of nightclub stamps, the kind that didn’t easily wash off, so like rings in a tree it was possible to estimate she’d been partying hard for several nights. This impression was confirmed when she confided that she’d gone a bit wild during her group’s whirlwind tour of Bangkok, Mumbai, and now this village in the space of days. She laughed at him from the side of her mouth, gaped fishily with her left eye, a Picasso girl, and pressed her bony thigh against him. She’d been drinking boleros, and lots of them, he noted. What goes down must come up, he thought and was sorry for whomever she eventually leeched onto tonight.

      The Viking gentleman looming across from them certainly vied for her attention, what with his lascivious grimaces and bellowing jocularity, but she appeared content to ignore him while trading glances with the small, hirsute Slav to the Viking’s left and occasionally brushing Kenshi’s forearm as they shared an ashtray. He soon discovered Hendrika the weathergirl worked for the Viking, Andersen, chief comptroller and inveterate buffoon. The Slav was actually a native of Minsk named Fedor; Fedor managed distribution for a major vodka label and possessed some mysterious bit of history with Hendrika. Kenshi idly wondered if he’d been her pimp while she toiled through college. A job was a job was a job (until she found the job of her dreams) to a certain subset of European woman, and men too, as he’d been pleased to discover during his many travels. In turn, Hendrika briefly introduced Kenshi to the French contingent of software designers—Francoise, Jean-Michelle and Claude; the German photographer Victor and his assistant Nina, and Raul, a Spanish advertising consultant. They extended lukewarm handshakes and one of them bought him a glass of bourbon, which he didn’t want but politely accepted. Then, everyone resumed roaring, disjointed conversations and ignored him completely.

      Good old Swayne got along swimmingly, of course. He’d discarded his white suit for an orange blazer, black shirt and slacks and Kenshi noted with equal measures of satisfaction and jealousy that all heads swiveled to follow the boisterous Englishman. Within moments he’d shaken hands with all and sundry and been inducted by the club of international debauchers as a member in good standing. That the man didn’t even speak a second language was no impediment—he vaulted such barriers by shamelessly enlisting necessary translations from whoever happened to be within earshot. Kenshi glumly thought his friend would’ve made one hell of an American.

      Presently Swayne returned from his confab with Rashid and Guzman and exclaimed, "We’ve been invited to the exhibition. A Van Iblis!" Swayne seemed genuinely enthused, his meticulously cultivated cynicism blasted to smithereens in an instant. Kenshi barely made him out over the crossfire between Andersen and Hendrika and the other American, Walther. Walther was fat and bellicose, a colonial barbarian dressed for civilized company. His shirt was untucked, his tie an open noose. Kenshi hadn’t caught what the fellow did for a living, however Walther put whiskey after whiskey away with the vigor of a man accustomed to lavish expense accounts. He sneered at Kenshi on the occasions their eyes met.

      Kenshi told Swayne he’d never heard of Van Iblis.

      It’s a pseudonym, Swayne said. "Like Kilroy, Or Alan Smithee. He, or she, is a guerilla. Not welcome in the U.K.; persona non grata in the free world you might say. When Kenshi asked why Van Iblis wasn’t welcome in Britain, Swayne grinned. Because the shit he pulls off violates a few laws here and there. Unauthorized installations, libelous materials, health code violations. Explosions!" Industry insiders suspected Van Iblis was actually comprised of a significant number of member artists and exceedingly wealthy patrons. Such an infrastructure seemed the only logical explanation for the success of these brazen exhibitions and their participants’ elusiveness.

      It developed that Guzman had brought his eclectic coterie to this part of the country after sniffing a rumor of an impending Van Iblis show and as luck would have it, tonight was the night. Guzman’s contacts had provided him with a hand scrawled map to the rendezvous, and a password. A password! It was all extraordinarily titillating.

      Swayne dialed up a slideshow on his cell and handed it over. Kenshi remembered the news stories once he saw the image of the three homeless men who’d volunteered to be crucified on faux satellite dishes. Yes, that had caused a sensation,

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