Lewis Shiner and I first met in 1988 or thereabouts, at a Science Fiction Research Association Convention in Corpus Christi, Texas. We both ended up in one of those peripatetic, amoebic dinner groups that are so much a part of the carnival aspect of most academic conferences, and sat across from each other at several meals, eating good food and making pleasant conversation.

At the time, I’d never read a word of his, and was a bit embarrassed by the fact, so I kept my mouth shut more than is my wont. After the conference, I read his stories “Jeff Beck” and “Love in Vain.” And liked them a lot. So when we met again, at another SFRA, two years later, in Long Beach, California, the conversation got a whole lot livelier. We left that conference as friends, and though we’ve not seen each other since, friends we’ve remained: a true contemporary friendship, conducted in recent years almost entirely by e-mail, but sharing the same bits and pieces of our lives and giving the same support to each other that friends generally do.

I became acquainted with Lew’s first novel, Frontera (1984), the closest thing to a “hard” science fiction story he’s ever written, at that conference and bought a copy of the second, Deserted Cities of the Heart (1988) , there. It’s hard to describe: think sort of a Mayan fantasy with more-or-less explicit references to the Popol Vuh and Joseph Campbell’s Hero With A Thousand Faces. It’s beautifully written, with characters whose lives and choices a reader really winds up caring about. I read it on the train ride back to Chicago and Carbondale (Dave, my husband, was then in the Theatre Department at S.I.U. and working on his law degree), so engrossed that I devoured it overnight, and then in the morning began it again, slowly and methodically savoring every bit of it. When I got home, there was an autographed copy of his third novel, Slam (1990) waiting. Dave and I read that one aloud to each other and learned some of our first “lawyer” jokes there. Slam was followed by Glimpses (1993), and more recently Say Goodbye (1999), very different novels but alike in that they show Lew’s encyclopedic knowledge of music, and some of the frustrated musician’s desire that is one of the things we have in common.

There’s a new collection of short stories, Love in Vain, out last fall from Subterranean Press, to add to his earlier collections Nine Hard Questions about the Nature of the Universe and The Edges of Things. He’s edited a collection of pacifist stories (When the Music’s Over) and had a secret life as a writer of detective fiction. (He claims to be personally responsible for the demise of two mystery magazines, but I cannot believe this, even of him.) He has written comic books, including the “Fortunato” story line in the Wild Cards series (I have them in my office if anyone is interested.) He is, in short, prolific, eclectic, difficult to categorize, and very, very good, despite the fact that he agonizes sometimes over not spending enough time on his writing. There’s a new novel in the works, and he hopes to have a draft completed within the year.

With a fair wind and a following sea, he’ll be reading here next year, and folks can judge for themselves. I think we’re in for a treat. The story below, a recent one, seems to me almost unbearably sad. But you read it and decide.