By Mike Resnick
ROCHESTER??? YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING!
Who’d ever have believed it?
An anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories about Rochester. Not New York. Not Paris. Not Hollywood. Not Rome. Not some lunar or Martian colony … but Rochester! Any rational person would have said it couldn’t be done.
You want to know something even stranger?
It’s damned good.
It’s just another example of a fact that is eventually known by just about every science fiction editor in the business: The more you handcuff science fiction writers, the more you restrict them and box them in and give them topics that you are sure will stifle creativity, the more totally unexpected ways they find to overcome those obstacles.
A couple of decades ago I was editing a series of alternate anthologies for Tor Books—Alternate Presidents, Alternate Tyrants, Alternate This, Alternate That, you know the routine … and then came the day they asked for Alternate Kennedys. I didn’t want to do it. I argued the subject matter was too restrictive. It would be almost as impossible to come up with a well-done, interesting anthology filled with twenty or more stories of Alternate Kennedys as it would to produce a fascinating, well-done anthology of, well, Rochester Rewritten stories.
And the result? (You saw this coming, right?) Four stories from the anthology made the Hugo ballot, more than from any anthology before or since. Which simply demonstrates a truism: The more you restrict what imaginative writers can do, the more they find incredibly creative ways around those restrictions—and of course that is precisely what has happened here.
And in retrospect, why should it be any more difficult to write evocative stories about Rochester than, say, an evocative story about a cornfield in Iowa where, if you build a baseball field, Shoeless Joe Jackson just might show up to play there? But until the stories manage to get themselves written, it seems a pretty daunting task, and I take my hat off to this talented group of Rochester writers who created and accepted the challenge.
There’s every likelihood that when people from other areas read this, we may find that Rochester Rewritten has started a trend.
You think not? Check out the field next door (mysteries), and what anthologies do you find? L. A. Noir, Manhattan Noir, Chicago Noir, New Orleans Noir, Paris Noir, Moscow Noir, Copenhagen Noir, Baltimore Noir, San Francisco Noir, even Wall Street Noir. So why not Sioux Falls Rewritten, Butte Rewritten, perhaps even State Street Rewritten? When they see how well Rochester Rewritten turned out (and they discover that it’s not even the first, that 2034: Writing Rochester’s Futures preceded it), you don’t even have to be a science fiction writer or an occultist to see what’s coming next.
I must confess to not knowing most of Rochester Rewritten’s contributors, whom I assume are either current or former Rochester or near-Rochester residents. But I know their writing now, and I’m properly impressed.
I do know a few of them, and can vouch for them. I bought Nick DiChario’s second story, and saw it make the Hugo and World Fantasy ballot while Nick himself was making the Campbell ballot. I bought a number of stories from him over the years, as have dozens of other editors and anthologists, and he and I actually collaborated on enough stories to eventually sell them as a collection (Magic Feathers: The Mike and Nick Show) about fifteen years ago. (I also plan to kidnap his mother—the best cook in the world—and chain her in my kitchen for the greater part of eternity, but that’s another story—and probably a non-fiction one.)
I’ve never met Morgan Grant Buchanan, but I’ve been corresponding with him for a few years, have been following his writing career with interest, and can vouch for his talent.
I don’t believe I’ve met Gary A. Mitchell in the flesh, but I’ve run into him a few times in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, where his stories never fail to impress and delight.
I met Ruhan Zhao at a science fiction convention in the Rochester area perhaps five years ago, and we became good friends and correspondents. (In fact, I’d have to say that he had even more to do with my recently selling a trio of my novels to China than I did.)
One day Ruhan showed me a story that his eleven-year-old son, Muxing, had written, and I immediately knew that, young as he was, he was only a couple of years away from being published … and I can state with pride that I bought the story for Galaxy’s Edge magazine that made him the youngest professional science fiction writer in history.
The others I know either casually or not at all … but I know this: They’re very good and wildly imaginative writers. In the coming pages you’ll read some fascinating and evocative science fiction and fantasy stories about Rochester’s waterfalls, Rochester’s tranquility, Rochester’s werewolves, Rochester’s interstate highway, Rochester’s cemetery, Rochester’s appearance (to a lizard, yet), Rochester’s robots, the monsters of Rochester’s Midtown Plaza, Rochester’s ghostly huntsmen, Rochester’s landmarks, the grim land beyond Rochester’s walls, and many other stories about the current, future, and alternate Rochester.
And you know what? None of them seems forced. Not a one. These were written by people who know their subject, who care about their subject, and who are anxious to share that knowledge and emotion with the reader. Despite the restrictions imposed by the subject matter, this is a startlingly good and imaginative anthology.
And, to repeat, it’s also a surprising anthology, in that a lifetime science fiction writer/editor (me) had no idea that anyone or any group could come up with so many fascinating stories about this pleasant little town in upstate New York that I’ve been privileged to visit a couple of times.
Kind of makes me want to visit it again. Next time I need an influx of skill and inspiration, I just may do so. It certainly worked for the writers in this book.
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