{"id":107,"date":"2008-12-19T16:32:07","date_gmt":"2008-12-19T22:32:07","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-04-19T09:50:45","modified_gmt":"2011-04-19T14:50:45","slug":"wilde_stories_2008_the_best_of_the_year_","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wilde_stories_2008_the_best_of_the_year_\/","title":{"rendered":"Wilde Stories 2008: The Best of the Year&#8217;s Gay Speculative Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"Find this book in a library near you.\" href=\"http:\/\/www.worldcat.org\/oclc\/263493012\"><em>Wilde Stories 2008: The Best of the Year&#8217;s Gay Speculative Fiction.<\/em> Edited by Steve Berman. Maple Shade, NJ: Lethe Press, 2008. 239 p. Hardcover. ISBN: 9781590210772. $15.00<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 0pt none; float: left; padding-right: 10px; padding-bottom: 0px;\" src=\"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/12\/WildeStories2008.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Cover of the book, Wilde stories 2008 : the best of the year's gay speculative fiction.\" width=\"162\" height=\"256\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-318\" \/><em>Wilde Stories 2008<\/em> is the first in an annual anthology series reprinting gay-themed fantasy, horror, and science fiction stories published the previous year. Steve Berman&#8217;s introduction makes his reasons for this series clear: &#8220;As the &#8216;interstitial&#8217; and &#8216;slipstream&#8217; literary movements gain momentum, more and more authors are interweaving their traditional gay themes\u2014coming out, homophobia, and self-as-other\u2014with a bit of the strange and weird.&#8221; Gay culture, according to Berman, as seen in glossy magazines and graphics-heavy websites, is one that only claims to welcome differences. Despite the value of the alien\/monster as a metaphor for outsiders, &#8220;any guy who shows a deep-seated interest in dragons or rocketships is a social reject, a nerd,&#8221; someone who finds himself lingering in a different kind of closet.<\/p>\n<p>Hal Duncan&#8217;s witty &#8220;The Island of the Pirate Gods&#8221; and Joshua Lewis&#8217; &#8220;Ever So Much More Than Twenty,&#8221; a touching fantasy about time and love, are among the collection&#8217;s best. In &#8220;Lycaon,&#8221; Peter Dub\u00e9 has something new to say about werewolves, desire, and memory. &#8220;The Emerald Mountain,&#8221; by Victor J. Banis and &#8220;An Apiary of White Bees,&#8221; by Lee Thomas are also not to be missed. On the strength of these five I look forward to <em>Wilde Stories 2009.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The remaining entries include conventional ghost stories, and some less predictable tales involving time travel and magic mushrooms, extraterrestrial sex-tourists, more werewolves, and a pair of kinky thieves. Finally, a short excerpt from a novel presents a coming-of-age story with magical realist elements. Recommended for general collections with an interest in gay or imaginative literature.<\/p>\n<p>Reviewed by Joyce Meggett<br \/>\nDivision Chief for Humanities<br \/>\nChicago Public Library<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Wilde Stories 2008: The Best of the Year&#8217;s Gay Speculative Fiction. Edited by Steve Berman. Maple Shade, NJ: Lethe Press, 2008. 239 p. Hardcover. ISBN: 9781590210772. $15.00 Wilde Stories 2008 is the first in an annual anthology series reprinting gay-themed fantasy, horror, and science fiction stories published the previous year. Steve Berman&#8217;s introduction makes his [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1167,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,18],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1167"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/107\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}