rolling fantasy, science fiction, speculative fiction &c. thread

Kate Atkinson's Life After Life
begins w heroine Ursula's pulling her father's old faithful Service pistol on up-and-coming Hitler--oops darkness, start again. Not like Groundhog Day, but she does gradually accrue and respond to fleeting bits of memory: push maid down the stairs, so this time she can't come back from London Armistice Day celebrations w Great '18 Flu? Start again. Early and final sections are pretty lively-to-deadly, but the middle's a slog, as her lives get longer and she becomes "a witness," as she puts it, wry and rueful and plucky and endearing, but just while passing along received historical material. (Wouldn't be so bad w out Cap'n Obvious pushback in paren, incl. smarty-pants older sister, who seems like an audience-surrogate, an especially contemporary touch)(ditto gratuitous spelling out of every goddam thing, incl. point of brusque British witticisms).
Kind of the opposite of prev. mentioned The Yiddish Policemen's Union, which was speculative (w the sometimes poetic turn of elegant blunt instruments) approach to a worn template, while this builds up mundane marbling of a promising premise.
Might well make a pretty decent movie though, given more faith in the audience's intelligence than this author shows, and a ltd. budget. And you could certainly do worse with a book, if stuck in an airport and/or reading self to sleep.
Next: finally back to the genre, with John Scalzi's prev. mentioned, promisingly xpost reviewed Lock In.

Just breaking: Steely Dan R.A. Lafferty fans. http://www.yetanotherlaffertyblog.com/2014/09/dan-ktistec.html?m=1

Haha that's so awesome. Best news since robert Palmer turned out to be a Jack Vance fanatic.

Hadn't known about that, just looked it up.

Stevie Nicks needs to be hugely into Avram Davidson

No way

I know, but it would make me feel complete.

Time for a new screenname

http://www.avclub.com/features/box-of-paperbacks-book-club/

what was that place that was epublishing orphaned sci-fi novels as some sort of subscription bookclub? do they still exist?

http://singularity.co/index.php/about/save-the-scifi

Here are some useful sites to figure out when stories where originally published and what anthologies they appeared in. I was looking for Aldiss's "Poor Little Warrior!"

https://www.sfsite.com/fsf/bibliography/fsfanthstorieswho01.htm
and especially
http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?56882

Yeah I use ISFDB all the time. Fantastic Fiction is a good database apart from tracing short stories but it compensates with the displays of cover art on the author pages.

Awards page useful too.

I actually never knew about the awards feature.

Just reserved library copy of Man in his time: the best science fiction stories of Brian W. Aldiss

Was leafing through Chip Delany's The Motion of Light in Water and saw him mention his neighbor "science fiction writer Randall Garrett." This was a name I hadn't seen in three decades and does not appear in any anthology or any history of sf I have access to. If I remembered it all it would have seem to me just a misremembering of Randall Jarrell. Then I saw that Silverberg had something to do with him, wondered if Malzberg had championed him at which point I came across this: http://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2011/11/ffb-neglected-visions-edited-by-barry-n.html?m=1
Which linked to this http://efanzines.com/EK/eI29/ which is tl;dr but with all those famous names surely there is something of interest.

Apparently he also wrote a lot of parodies of other sf writers under the rubric "Parodies Tossed" - get it?

Second link is to something called "Who Killed Science Fiction?"

http://www.avclub.com/features/box-of-paperbacks-book-club/

― Thus We Frustrate Kid Charlemagne (James Redd and the Blecchs), Sunday, 19 October 2014 19:11 (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so is this guy still a witless piece of crap or

More Than Human is one of the few books in the Box Of Paperbacks I’d read before. I liked it quite a bit the first time, and I’ve been saving it until some point relatively late in the project—and we are getting toward closing time—when I wanted a sure winner. (In retrospect, maybe I should have sandwiched it between some of the Lensman books to come.) If anything, I think I appreciated it more this time, both for its compassion for freaks and misfits, and its ability to see, in their mutations, a way to the future.

Just finished John Scalzi's aforementioned Lock In. It's tight, lotta fun, especially after xpost Atkinson's sometimes plodding Life After Light Another xpost science fiction police procedural, imaginative enough that the template gets a little recharge or three (whodunnit is not much of a surprise---except in some of the sometimes devilish details, and that's the way to do p.p.) Shippey's review, reposted below, mentions Asimov, but seems like most relevant are Laws of Robotics (fucked with here, of course). Otherwise, it's more like the sardonic sense of power trips, relationships of ownsership, etc., found more in some of Asimov's peers, like Damon Knight (esp. the xpost four-novella edition of his Rule Golden); also Kuttner, Pohl, you know the scene.
Also, despite the penultimate caveat here, it really doesn't get too technical (more like the 50s b-movie response to: "Explain it in our own language, Doc.")

Lock In

By John Scalzi
TOR, 336 pages, $24.99
review by Tom Shippey, WSJ
Comparing the latest novel by John Scalzi with Isaac Asimov's famous "The Caves of Steel" from 60 years ago makes you realize how much modern sci-fi authors have had to raise their game. Both books have detectives trying to solve a murder shaped by human/robot interaction. But ideas of robots have changed beyond recognition, and scenarios now have to be much more complex.

Mr. Scalzi's imagined future is shaped by "the Great Flu," the pandemic often prophesied for our networked world. In some cases, the flu turns into something like meningitis. The next stage is complete paralysis, the sufferers forever "locked in" their own minds.

Technology can help. Once the first lady suffers "lock-in," research money pours into developing neural implants, which the "Hadens" (as they're called, after the first lady) can use to control robot avatars, or "threeps" (derived from "C-3PO"). These give them life in a second body. The same neural implants can be used to merge with "Integrators," Hadens with no physical disabilities but the capacity to receive—for substantial payment—the presence of alien minds. In a phrase, they're human threeps. The capacity for corruption is obvious —think cross-gendering, to start with—and so is the potential for confusion. What is an FBI agent to think when he, or rather his threep, comes on a crime scene where an Integrator appears to have committed a murder? He sits in the blood saying, "I didn't do it," and maybe he didn't. But who, then, was using his body?

In the background are politics and money. Some Hadens see themselves as a new species, while those with only one body claim noisily that Hadens have unfair advantages. The Senate is about to pass a bill removing the Hadens' subsidies. Neural implants draw parasites like computers draw hackers. Mr. Scalzi keeps upping the complexity from one level of grisly opportunism to the next. Every time he does, you feel you should have been able to predict that, but he is always a jump-and-a-half ahead.

Sci-fi has always been, we should remember, a high-information genre that demands and repays reader interaction. If you can't handle words like "polyproprioreception," let alone the concept behind it—well, stick to mainstream. Though that will leave you at the mercy of the future.

― dow, Tuesday, September 9, 2014 4:53 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Might be interesting to compare with Oliver Sacks' descriptions of his patients in Awakenings.

― dow, Tuesday, September 9, 2014 4:55 PM (1 month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

uh oh coworker trying to sell me on Scalzi's Old Man's War

Ha, thomp, I actually didn't read any of that stuff he wrote, just came across it and it seemed like an interesting project so I posted link here for further research, topic for further research as Ver Dean would say. tffr

david hairs mageblood series has lots of cool magic and nonsense in it

Really enjoyed the three Aldiss stories I read recently by cherry-picking in various anthologies - "A Kind of Artistry," "Man in his Time," and "Who Can Replace A Man?" He's got a lot going on- big audacious ideas, stylish careful writing with attention paid to register, troubled domestic situations that are well handled and don't seem like tacked on subplots, a dry sense of humor. Looking forward to collected stories.

lamp imma check that out. after a couple books with no cool magic or nonsense in them at all i am about ready for exactly that.

i'm reading _through the valley of the nest of spiders_, i don't usually like YA fiction but this is pretty good

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paCqiY1jwqc

China Mieville on Marxism, Halloween and the way octopuses use tools. He also says mentions William Morris in a funny voice.

Jeff Vandermeer, with all the stories and writers (maybe more) encountered while co-editing The Weird, still swirling around and through him (hadn't heard of several; guess I better read his anth)
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2014/10/uncanny-fiction-beautiful-and-bizarre/381794/2/

Reminds me, I got this worlds/ages-roving trove a while back; haven't tried to read it straight through, cos so mesmerizing each time I pick it up:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51vSAeHjiCL.jpg

From Publishers Weekly
Originally conceived of by its Argentinian editors in 1937, and now published in English for the first time, this unusual and provocative volume is an omnibus collection. In addition to stories by Ballard, Poe, Saki, Max Beerbohm, Ray Bradbury, May Sinclair, de Maupassant and Julio Cortazar, there are shorter pieces, anecdotes, folkloric fragments, dreamlike moments. Most of the 79 selections are only a paragraph or two long, giving us brief passage into magical visions of the world culled from the work of an international array of authors of the past three centuries, including less well-known authors such as Santiago Dabove, Edwin Morgan and Niu Chiao. The keynote tale may well be Borges's own "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" in which an imaginary world, conjured up by manufactured documentation, ends up eroding our reality: reality is malleable, and imagination necessarily subverts and alters it.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Business information you can use.

http://www.argentinaindependent.com/top-story/silvina-ocampo-writing-the-feminine-into-the-fantastic/

Isn't there some sequels to the Borges/Ocampo/Casares collection? I think there were others that only had two of those authors editing.
That's a great cover too, never saw that one.

about 3/4s of the way through Two-Handed Engine and my enthusiasm for Kuttner/Moore has cooled a bit, although not altogether. Some recurring motifs: alcoholism (so much drinking in these stories! Like, everyone all the time), monstrous children beyond the control/understanding of their parents, Lovecraftian/vague indescribable horrors, loads of references to classical mythologies (greek/roman, pagan, fairies/gnomes/goblins etc.) The "science" end of things is more often than not complete window-dressing, often self-consciously silly in application. They seemed prone to using genre trappings as a cover for exploring these sort of tortured psychological profiles of confused parents, doomed lovers, or amoral idiots. Loads of very Twilight Zone-y darkly ironic twists. Surprised more of their stuff wasn't used besides just "We Have What You Need". A lot of the stories feel very much like an attempt to create "modern" fables. As such there isn't a lot of engagement with contemporary issues or ideas, apart from the occasional reference to Hitler or psychoanalysis, which is something I usually find more engaging about scifi in general.

Thanx James, will check that in a sec.
Robert, this was an expansion of the original edition; there may be others, but I haven't seen them.
Οὖτις, This A lot of the stories feel very much like an attempt to create "modern" fables. seems to contradict this: As such there isn't a lot of engagement with contemporary issues or ideas, apart from the occasional reference to Hitler or psychoanalysis, What does the "modern" attempt consist of?
which is something I usually find more engaging about scifi in general. What do you find more engaging?

Good one, James! Still need to read her and Bioy Casares.

(Looks at my terrifyingly huge shopping list) ah, it was Extraordinary Tales edited by Borges/Casares.

A lot of the stories feel very much like an attempt to create "modern" fables. seems to contradict this: As such there isn't a lot of engagement with contemporary issues or ideas, apart from the occasional reference to Hitler or psychoanalysis, What does the "modern" attempt consist of?

mostly placing things like fairies and monsters in the context of drunk adults lol (I am not entirely kidding). The settings are modern insofar as they involve the juxtaposition of things from classical antiquity/fairytales/myths against regular adults with jobs and cars and families. But there's little of the "what if [insert trend in modern society] was carried to some extreme conclusion", there's very little that explicitly connects the stories to a time and period any more specific than "some time in the 20th century".

which is something I usually find more engaging about scifi in general. What do you find more engaging?

I'm referring to authors extrapolating from some uniquely contemporary situation or new scientific idea into the future. The Martian Chronicles isn't really about Mars, it's about Bradbury's reservations about contemporary culture and politics. PKD writing about drugs and religious visions and figures in a way that is very late 60s/early 70s. Bester and Sturgeon writing obsessively about psychoanalysis is a very 50s thing. Cyberpunk guys reflecting the dawning 80s obsession with computers and information systems. There isn't really any of this in Kuttner/Moore, the details of their stories are deliberately vague and generalized in an attempt to occupy that archetypal space that belongs to fables and myths. Specific dates or locations or cultural references are pretty much entirely absent from their stories. There isn't anything wrong with this - these are well-written, engaging stories - they just take a tack that's a little different then what I usually like to get from sf.

enough (specific dates or locations are rarely mentioned,

hmm sorry for that text tag at the end there

here's an example - one of these stories is about a couple renting a room to a strange roommate. turns out the roommate is keeping fairies in a birdcage in his room and the fairies bring him good luck. the couple disturbs the fairies, roommate moves out but leaves the birdcage behind, and then some more slovenly, "less lucky" fairies move into it. the end. All of the tension in the story centers around this couple trying to a) find out what's in the birdcage and then b) not being able to accept that fairies are real. There's pretty much no details given about the couple, where they live, what they do, etc. beyond the fact that they like to go to a local bar to drink.

Ha ha, great descriptions, thanks!

Re the Borges collection, see also this: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/B0074YVYJ6.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg, which has lots of good stuff

Jeff VanderMeer passes along a response to the article I posted earlier today:
http://weirdfictionreview.com/2014/10/weird-france-and-belgium-a-best-of/

Found the Calvino contents list online:

Contents:

I. The Visionary Fantastic of the Nineteenth Century
The Story of the Demoniac Pacheco by Jan Potocki
Autumn Sorcery by Joseph von Eichendorff
The Sandman by E. T. A. Hoffmann
Wandering Willie's Tale by Sir Walter Scott
The Elixir of Life by Honoré de Balzac
The Eye with No Lid by Philarète Chasles
The Enchanted Hand by Gérard de Nerval
Young Goodman Brown by Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Nose by Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol
The Beautiful Vampire by Théophile Gautier
The Venus of Ille by Prosper Mérimée
The Ghost and the Bonesetter by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
II. The Everyday Fantastic of the Nineteenth Century
The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
The Shadow by Hans Christian Anderson
The Signal-Man by Charles Dickens
The Dream by Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev
A Shameless Rascal by Nicolai Semyonovich Leskov
The Very Image by Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam
Night: A Nightmare by Guy de Maupassant
A Lasting Love by Vernon Lee
Chickamauga by Ambrose Bierce
The Holes in the Mask by Jean Lorrain
The Bottle Imp by Robert Louis Stevenson
The Friends of the Friends by Henry James
The Bridge-Builders by Rudyard Kipling
The Country of the Blind by H. G. Wells

Cool, I love Weird Fiction Review.

Shakey, your descriptions and analysis of Kuttner/Moore are grebt, although I don't agree with your conclusion that this is necessarily a bad thing.

Oh I dont think it's bad. It's some kind of middle ground between horror and fantasy and sf

Yeah, that's often my favorite place, like the old term "slipstream"--dunno if K&M were ever referred to that way, but they're often down with/at the crossroads, like it's their natural habitat.

All those calvino stories look like they'll be available at project Gutenberg - they look like they are all out of copyright.

I've got that Calvino anthology.

Another similar thing is Alberto Manguel's two Black Water anthologies.

Black Water: The Anthology of Fantastic Literature ed. Alberto Manguel (Picador 0-330-28141-0, 1983 [Feb ’84], £4.95, 967pp, tp) Anthology of 72 stories and excerpts, from “literary” fantasists (including Bradbury and Le Guin as well as Poe, Kafka, Calvino, etc.) A 1983 book — not seen till 1984.
xvi · Foreword · Alberto Manguel · fw
1 · House Taken Over · Julio Cortázar · ss End of the Game and Other Stories, Random House, 1967
7 · How Love Came to Professor Guildea [“The Man Who Was Beloved”] · Robert S. Hichens · na Pearson’s Magazine Oct, 1897
49 · Climax for a Ghost Story · I. A. Ireland · vi, 1919
50 · The Mysteries of the Joy Rio · Tennessee Williams · ss, 1954
62 · Pomegranate Seed · Edith Wharton · nv The Saturday Evening Post Apr 25 ’31
92 · Venetian Masks · Adolfo Bioy Casares; trans. by Alberto Manguel · ss *
110 · The Wish House · Rudyard Kipling · ss Maclean’s Oct 15 ’24
127 · The Playground · Ray Bradbury · ss Esquire Oct ’53
141 · Importance · Manuel Mujica Lainez · ss, 1978
144 · Enoch Soames · Max Beerbohm · nv The Century May ’16
171 · A Visitor from Down Under · L. P. Hartley · ss The Ghost-Book, ed. Cynthia Asquith, London: Hutchinson, 1926
188 · Laura · Saki · ss Beasts and Super-Beasts, John Lane, 1914
193 · An Injustice Revealed · Anon. · ss
198 · A Little Place Off the Edgware Road · Graham Greene · ss Nineteen Stories, Heinemann, 1947
204 · From “A School Story” · M. R. James · ex More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, Arnold, 1911
206 · The Signalman · Charles Dickens · ss All the Year Round Christmas, 1866
219 · The Tall Woman · Pedro Antonio de Alarcón · nv
235 · A Scent of Mimosa · Francis King · ss The Times Anthology of Ghost Stories, Anon., London: Cape, 1975
249 · Death and the Gardener [from Le Grand Ecart] · Jean Cocteau · ex, 1923
250 · Lord Mountdrago [“Doctor and Patient”] · W. Somerset Maugham · nv The International Feb ’39
273 · The Sick Gentleman’s Last Visit · Giovanni Papini · ss The Blind Pilot, 1907
279 · Insomnia [1956] · Virgilio Pinera · vi
280 · The Storm [“Frritt-Flacc”] · Jules Verne · ss; Le Figaro Illustre December 1884.
287 · A Dream (from The Arabian Nights Entertainments) · Anon. · vi
289 · The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar · Edgar Allan Poe · ss American Whig Review Dec, 1845
299 · Split Second · Daphne du Maurier · nv The Apple Tree, London: Gollancz, 1952
345 · August 25, 1983 · Jorge Luís Borges · ss, 1982
351 · How Wang-Fo Was Saved · Marguerite Yourcenar · ss; in Nouvelles Orientales, 1963.
361 · From “Peter and Rosa” · Isak Dinesen · ex Winter’s Tales, Putnam, 1942
363 · Tattoo · Junichiro Tanizaki · ss, 1910
371 · John Duffy’s Brother · Flann O’Brien · ss Story Jul/Aug ’41
377 · Lady into Fox · David Garnett · na New York: Knopf, 1923
430 · Father’s Last Escape · Bruno Schulz · ss Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass, 1937
435 · A Man by the Name of Ziegler · Hermann Hesse · ss, 1954
440 · The Argentine Ant [1952] · Italo Calvino; trans. by Archibald Colquhoun · nv Adam, One Afternoon, Colliro, 1957
470 · The Lady on the Grey · John Collier · ss New Yorker Jun 16 ’51
478 · The Queen of Spades [1834] · Alexander Sergeievitch Pushkin; trans. by Rosemary Edmonds · nv
503 · Of a Promise Kept · Lafcadio Hearn · ss A Japanese Miscellany, Little, Brown, 1901
507 · The Wizard Postponed [from The Book of Examples of Count Lucanor, adapt. 1935] · Juan Manuel, Jorge Luís Borges, adapt.; trans. by Norman Thomas di Giovanni · ss A Universal History of Infamy, Allen Lane, 1973
511 · The Monkey’s Paw · W. W. Jacobs · ss Harper’s Monthly Sep ’02
522 · The Bottle Imp · Robert Louis Stevenson · nv New York Herald Feb 8-Mar 1, 1891
550 · The Rocking-Horse Winner · D. H. Lawrence · ss The Ghost-Book, ed. Cynthia Asquith, London: Hutchinson, 1926
565 · Certain Distant Suns · Joanne Greenburg · ss High Crimes and Misdemeanors, Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979
582 · The Third Bank of the River · João Guimarães Rosa · ss, 1967
588 · Home · Hilaire Belloc · ss
596 · The Door in the Wall · H. G. Wells · ss The Daily Chronicle Jul 14 ’06
612 · The Friends · Silvina Ocampo · ss, 1982
619 · Et in Sempiternum Pereant · Charles Williams · ss The London Mercury Dec ’35
629 · The Captives of Longjumeau · Léon Bloy · ss, 1967
634 · The Visit to the Museum · Vladimir Nabokov · ss, 1958
644 · “Autumn Mountain” · Ryunosuke Akutagawa · ss
652 · The Sight · Brian Moore · ss Irish Ghost Stories, ed. Joseph Hone, Hamish Hamilton, 1977
670 · Clorinda · André Pieyre de Mandiargues · ss, 1979
675 · The Pagan Rabbi · Cynthia Ozick · nv The Hudson Review, 1966
704 · The Fisherman and His Soul · Oscar Wilde · nv The House of Pomegranates, 1891
735 · The Bureau d’Echange de Maux · Lord Dunsany · ss The Smart Set Jan ’15
740 · The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas · Ursula K. Le Guin · ss New Dimensions 3, ed. Robert Silverberg, Nelson Doubleday, 1973
748 · In the Penal Colony · Franz Kafka · nv; Kurt Wolff Verlag, May ’19.
774 · A Dog in Durer’s Etching “The Knight, Death and The Devil” · Marco Denevi · ss, 1968
782 · The Large Ant · Howard Fast · ss Fantastic Universe Feb ’60
792 · The Lemmings · Alex Comfort · ss
800 · The Grey Ones · J. B. Priestley · ss Lilliput Apr-May ’53
816 · The Feather Pillow · Horacio Quiroga · ss, 1907
820 · Seaton’s Aunt · Walter de la Mare · nv The London Mercury Apr ’22
849 · The Friends of the Friends [“The Way It Came”] · Henry James · nv Chap Book May, 1896
874 · The Travelling Companion · Hans Christian Andersen · ss, 1835
891 · The Curfew Tolls · Stephen Vincent Benét · ss The Saturday Evening Post Oct 5 ’35
907 · The State of Grace · Marcel Aymé · ss Across Paris and Other Stories, Paris, 1947; F&SF Dec ’59
919 · The Story of a Panic · E. M. Forster · nv Independent Review Mar ’04
940 · An Invitation to the Hunt · George Hitchcock · ss San Francisco Review Mar ’60
950 · From the “American Notebooks” · Nathaniel Hawthorne · ex, 1868
952 · The Dream · O. Henry · ss Cosmopolitan Sep ’10; completed by Cosmopolitan editor.
956 · The Authors · Misc. · bg

Black Water 2: More Tales of the Fantastic ed. Alberto Manguel (Random House/Clarkson & Potter 0-517-57559-0, Jan ’91 [Dec ’90], $14.95, 941pp, tp, cover by George Tooker) Anthology of 65 stories and novel excerpts, primarily by literary and mainstream authors. First American edition (Lester & Orpen Dennys 1990).
xviii · Foreword · Alberto Manguel · fw
1 · The Child Who Believed · Grace Amundson · ss The Saturday Evening Post Dec 16 ’50
17 · It’s a Good Life · Jerome Bixby · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #2, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953
36 · The Door · E. B. White · ss New Yorker, 1939
42 · Mysterious Kôr · Elizabeth Bowen · ss The Demon Lover and Other Stories, J. Cape, 1945
57 · Nights at Serampore · Mircea Eliade · na Two Tales of the Occult, Herder & Herder, 1970
99 · The Dead Fiddler · Isaac Bashevis Singer · nv, 1966
127 · The Phoenix · Sylvia Townsend Warner · ss The Cat’s Cradle Book, Viking, 1940
132 · The Spider · Hanns Heinz Ewers; trans. by Walter F. Kohn · nv The International Dec ’15
155 · Changeling · Dorothy K. Haynes · ss Modern Scottish Short Stories, ed. Fred Urquhart & Giles Gordon, Hamish Hamilton, 1978
164 · The July Ghost · Antonia S. Byatt · ss Firebird #1 ’82
180 · Poor Girl · Elizabeth Taylor · ss The Third Ghost Book, ed. Cynthia Asquith, James Barrie, 1955
200 · Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched · May Sinclair · nv The English Review Oct ’22
222 · The Complete Gentleman · Amos Tutuola · ex The Palm-Wine Drinkard, London: Faber, 1952
231 · The Professor and the Mermaid · Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa; trans. by Archibald Colquhoun · nv Two Stories and a Memory, Pantheon, 1962
255 · The Sausage · Friedrich Dürrenmatt; trans. by Alberto Manguel · vi, 1989
258 · A Woman Seldom Found · William Sansom · ss A Contest of Ladies and Other Stories, London: Hogarth Press, 1956
262 · Mummy to the Rescue · Angus Wilson · ss Such Darling Dodos and Other Stories, Secker & Warburg, 1950
269 · Aghwee the Sky Monster · Kenzaburõ Õe; trans. by John Nathan · nv Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, Grove Press, 1977
298 · Berkeley or Mariana of the Universe · Liliana Heker; trans. by Alberto Manguel · ss, 1986
305 · The Saint · Antonia White · ss Life and Letters Nov ’31
313 · The Ghost of Firozsha Baag · Rohinton Mistry · ss Quarry Spr ’86
328 · The Miracle of Ash Wednesday [1926] · Yevgeny Zamyatin; trans. by Mirra Ginsburg · ss The Dragon, Random House, 1968
336 · Heartburn · Hortense Calisher · ss The American Mercury Jan ’51
347 · The Accident · Ann Bridge · nv The Song in the House, 1936
370 · The Old Woman · Joyce Marshall · ss Canadian Short Stories, ed. Robert Weaver, Oxford, 1960
383 · A Short Trip Home · F. Scott Fitzgerald · nv The Saturday Evening Post Dec 17 ’27
405 · The Brute · Joseph Conrad · ss The Daily Chronicle Dec 5 ’06
426 · Mr. Sleepwalker · Ethel Wilson · ss Mrs. Golightly and Other Stories, Toronto: Macmillan, 1961
444 · A Self-Possessed Woman · Julian Barnes · ss The Times Anthology of Ghost Stories, Anon., London: Cape, 1975
460 · The Woman Who Talked to Horses · Leon Rooke · ss Sing Me No Love Songs, I’ll Say You No Prayers, Ecco Press, 1984
469 · The White Rooster · William Goyen · ss Mademoiselle Apr ’47
484 · The Labrenas · Tommaso Landolfi; trans. by Kathrine Jason · nv Words in Commotion, and Other Stories, Viking, 1986
508 · The Dead Fish [1955] · Boris Vian; trans. by Damon Knight · ss 13 French Science-Fiction Stories, ed. Damon Knight, Bantam, 1965
521 · Major Aranda’s Hand [1955] · Alfonso Reyes; trans. by Mildred Johnson · ss The Eye of the Heart, ed. Barbara Howes, Bobbs-Merrill, 1973
528 · Giving Birth · Margaret Atwood · ss, 1977
543 · The Jewbird · Bernard Malamud · ss The Reporter Apr 11 ’63
553 · The Misanthrope · John D. Beresford · ss Nineteen Impressions, Sidgwick & Jackson, 1918
563 · Bartleby · Herman Melville · nv Putnam’s Monthly, 1853
600 · Private—Keep Out! · Philip MacDonald · ss F&SF Fll ’49
616 · Dreams · Timothy Findley · nv Stones, Penguin Books Canada, 1988
638 · Mr. Dombey, the Zombie · Geoffrey Drayton · vi, 1951
642 · Why I Changed into a Nightingale · Wolfgang Hildesheimer; trans. by Joachim Neugroschel · ss The Art of the Tale, ed. Daniel Halpern, Viking, 1986
648 · The Troll · T. H. White · ss Gone to Ground, 1935
660 · Two Words [1989] · Isabel Allende; trans. by Alberto Manguel · ss Mother Jones Jan-Feb ’91
668 · Ch’ien-niang [from T’aip’ing Kwangchi, ca. 900 a.d.] · Chen Xuanyou; trans. by Wayne Schlepp · vi, 1990
671 · The Visiting Star · Robert Aickman · nv Powers of Darkness, Collins, 1966
696 · Ratanbabu and the Man · Satyajit Ray · ss The Unicorn Expedition, Dutton, 1987
711 · How It Happened · Arthur Conan Doyle · ss The Strand Sep ’13
716 · Same Time, Same Place · Mervyn Peake · ss Science-Fantasy #60 ’63
726 · The Enigma of Arrival · V. S. Naipaul · ss New Yorker Aug 11 ’86
728 · Faithful Peter · Lion Feuchtwanger; trans. by Renatha Oppenheimer · ss Stories from Far and Near, Viking, 1945
736 · The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship · Gabriel García Márquez; trans. by Gregory Rabassa · ss The Leaf Storm and Other Stories, London: Cape, 1972
742 · The House-Hunters · Peter Green · ss Habeas Corpus and Other Stories, World, 1963
762 · The Yellow Wallpaper · Charlotte Perkins Gilman · ss New England Magazine Jan, 1892
780 · Eckhardt at a Window · Eric McCormack · ss Inspecting the Vaults, Penguin Canada, 1987
792 · The Lefthanders · Günter Grass; trans. by Alberto Manguel · ss, 1989
799 · Mr. Arcularis · Conrad Aiken · nv, 1922
819 · The Times My Father Died · Yehuda Amichai; trans. by Yosef Schachter · ss The World Is a Room and Other Stories, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1984
830 · The Haunted House · Luigi Pirandello; trans. by Michele Pettinati · ss Medals, and Other Stories, Dutton, 1939
847 · The Finder · Elizabeth Spencer · ss New Yorker Jan 23 ’71
866 · Desire · James Stephens · ss The Dial Jun ’20
874 · The Miraculous Revenge · George Bernard Shaw · ss Time Mar, 1885; ; as “The Grave of Brimstone Billy”, EQMM Oct ’51
896 · Room of Blood · Brett Balon · ss, 1984
904 · The Shadow · Ben Hecht · ss Liberty Jan 30 ’26
920 · The Nine Billion Names of God · Arthur C. Clarke · ss Star Science Fiction Stories #1, ed. Frederik Pohl, Ballantine, 1953
928 · The Authors · Misc. · bg

Taken from
http://www.locusmag.com/index/b323.htm#A4564

Re the Calvino antho-- I've been looking for a long time for an English language collection of villiers de l'isle adam's stories. If anyone knows of one online anywhere lemme know