A Reverie for Mister Ray

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A Reverie for Mister Ray

Author	Michael Bishop Michael H. Hutchins (editor)
Cover artist	Jamie Bishop
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre	Nonfiction
Publisher	PS Publishing
Publication date	May 2005
Media type	Print (Slipcased, Signed & Numbered Hardback)
Pages	612
ISBN	1-902880-88-9
OCLC	63762403

A Reverie for Mister Ray: Reflections on Life, Death, and Speculative Fiction is a collection of nonfiction work by American writer Michael Bishop published in 2005 by PS Publishing. It includes essays and reviews from 1975 to 2004, originally published in a wide variety of newspapers, magazines, literary journals, and fanzines. Most of the pieces concern the speculative fiction genre. The book was edited by .

Contents[]

Upfront[]

• A Reverie for Mister Mike: An Introduction by Jeff VanderMeer
• Alien Graffiti: Author’s Apologia by Michael Bishop
• On the Road: Editor’s Preface by

Drawing from the Wells[]

• A Reverie for Mister Ray [1981]
• A Classic Affair [1990]
• "An Art Is Something You Have to Learn”: RIP Clifton Fadiman [1999]
• Little, Big, Witless, Wise: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift [2004]
• Flannery and Me [2001]
• More Than a Masterpiece? More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon [1989]
• A Classic’s Endearing Quirks: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin [1977]

State of the Art[]

• Evangels of Hope [1978]
• Believers and Heretics: An Episcopal Bull [1980]
• The Knack and How to Get It, See? [1978]
• The Contributors to Plenum Four [1975]
• Light Years and Dark: Science Fiction Since 1960 [1984]
• Children Who Survive: An Autobiographical Meditation on Horror Fiction [1989]
• 104 Really Cool Works of Twentieth-Century Fiction in English [2000]

On Reviewing[]

• Oh, to Be a Blurber! [1980]
• On Reviewing and Being Reviewed [1977]
• Critics’ Night at the Sci-Fi Bistro [1979]

Pitching Pennies Against the Starboard Bulkhead[]

• The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe [1976]
• Timescape by Gregory Benford [1980]
• Wild Seed by Octavia Butler [1981]
• Myths of the Near Future by J. G. Ballard [1984]
• Two by John Crowley: Little, Big [1983] and [1994]
• Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card [1987]
• The Toynbee Convector by Ray Bradbury [1988]
• Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy [1993/94/96]
• Nightfishing in Great Sky River by David Lunde [2000]
• The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll [2001]
• He Do the Time Police in Different Voices by David Langford [2004]
• The Untethered Spacewalk by NASA [1984]

Going Deeper[]

• In Pursuit of Ubik: A Novel by Philip K. Dick [1979]
• Gene Wolfe as Hero: The Shadow of the Torturer [1980]
• Only in America: On Wings of Song by Thomas M. Disch [1981]
• James Morrow and Towing Jehovah [1994]
• James Morrow’s Antidote X: Speculative Satire and The Eternal Footman [2000]
• The Education of Brian W. Aldiss: The Twinkling of an Eye, or, My Life as an Englishman [1999]
• “Sitting in the Sun in the Waist-High Grass”: “The Last Day in July” by Gardner Dozois [2001]
• In Praise of Hollyhocks: “The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything” by George Alec Effinger [2004]

Fellow Travelers[]

• A Speculation of SF Writers: Gardner Dozois / Suzette Haden Elgin / Steven Utley / Ian Watson [1980]
• All That Glitters is Not Golding . . . Or Bishop Either [1984/85]
• James Tiptree, Jr. is Raccoona Sheldon is Alice B. Sheldon is Alli is… [1985/92]
• Saluting Pamela Sargent [1987]
• The Once and Future Andy Duncan [2000]
• Voice and Virtue: Celebrating Jack McDevitt [2003]

Rolling the Bones[]

• Ink and Inspiration Among the Soft Sciences [1981]
• Lucy in the Mud With Footprints: Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey [1981]
• The Boy in the Bush: Lightning Bird by Lyall Watson [1982]
• Mysteries of the Rift Valley: One Life by Richard E. Leakey and Disclosing the Past by Mary Leakey [1984]
• The Fate of the Primate: The Deluge and the Ark: A Journey Into Primate Worlds by Dale Peterson [1989]
• Prospectus for a Novel of Human Prehistory, or The Origins of No Enemy But Time [1982]

Edge Running[]

• Primates in Love: The Female of the Species by Lionel Shriver [1987]
• Geniuses in One Another’s Pockets: Neighboring Lives by Thomas M. Disch and Charles Naylor [1981]
• Two by J. G. Ballard: Empire of the Sun and The Day of Creation [1984/1988]
• Two by Philip K. Dick: In Milton Lumky Territory and The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike [1985]
• A Jeremiad, Three Reviews and a Postscript: Death is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury / Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut / Contact by Carl Sagan [1985]
• Inconvenient Invitations: Mister Touch by Malcolm Bosse / Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd [1991]
• Watching the Elephant Vanish: The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami [1994]
• A Near-Future Southern, An Off-Trail Western: Land O’ Goshen by Charles McNair and Redeye by Clyde Edgerton [1995]
• A Larger Sky: The Norton Book of Ghost Stories edited by Brad Leithauser / Seaward by Brad Leithauser [1995]
• An American Wordsmith in Atlantis: Atlantis: Three Tales by Samuel R. Delany [1996]
• Touring the Republic of Pain: Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller [1998]
• Encounter of a Wee Kind [1978]

Open Heart[]

• Military Brat: A Memoir [1997]
• First Novel, Seventh Novel: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire [1988]
• My Private Civil War: Preface to Confederacy of the Dead [1993]
• Three Tributes: Paul Di Filippo / David Hartwell / Howard Waldrop [2001-2003]
• Cleansing the Eye of the Heart: A Dream of the Tattered Man by [2001]
• Ghost of a Chance: My Father’s Ghost by Suzy McKee Charnas [2003]
• Nine Prescriptions for My Funeral [1997]
• Writing Science Fiction As If It Mattered (including “Tiny Bells” by Bruce Holland Rogers) [2002]

External links[]

• Michael Bishop's official homepage
• Infinity Plus review of A Reverie for Mister Ray
• Publisher’s page
• The Alien Online article and interview