by John Crowley
What kind of car do you drive? (I ask this of everyone.)
My first car, acquired when I was thirty-six or so (I only learned to drive at that age), was an old American Motors Ambassador, a boat but a beaut. Next was a VW Dasher. A few others of indifferent lineage. Now a New England Hilltown Liberal Subaru.
The fairies in Little, Big forget the past but remember the future. Were you remembering that Ted Chiang was someday going to be developing that idea for Hollywood?
It’s inappropriate for an interviewer to ask wittier questions than the subject can come up with answers for. Ted Chiang is much smarter than I am. His original story “Story of Your Life” is a marvel of syntactical invention which the movie based on it, Arrival, wonderful as it is, can’t match.
Bibliography
Books
KA: Dar Oakley in the Ruin of Ymr (Saga, 2017). Novel.
The Chemical Wedding, by Christian Rosencreutz (Small Beer Press, 2016). Novel by Johann Valentin Andreae, in a new version by Crowley.
Four Freedoms (William Morrow, 2009). Novel.
In Other Words (Subterranean Press, 2006). Essays and criticism.
The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines (Subterranean Press, 2005). Novella.
Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land (Morrow, 2005). Novel.
Novelties & Souvenirs: Collected Short Fiction (Morrow, 2004).
The Translator (Morrow, 2002). Novel.
The Ægypt Cycle:
Ægypt (Bantam Books/Spectra, 1987). Novel. Reissued as The Solitudes (Overlook Press, 2008).
Love & Sleep (Bantam, 1994). Novel.
Dæmonomania (Bantam, 2000). Novel.
Endless Things (Small Beer Press, 2007). Novel.
Antiquities (Incunabula, 1992). Stories.
Great Work of Time (Bantam/Spectra, 1990). Novella. World Fantasy Award, Best Novella, 1990.
Novelty (Doubleday/Foundation, 1989). Four stories: “Why the Nightingale Sings at Night,” “In Blue,” “Great Work of Time,” “Novelty.”
Little, Big (Bantam Books, 1981). Novel. World Fantasy Award, Best Novel, 1982.
Engine Summer (Doubleday, 1978). Science fiction novel. Nominated for the American Book Award. Reissued in Otherwise: Three Novels, Harper Perennial 1994.
Beasts (Doubleday, 1976). Science fiction novel. Reissued in Otherwise: Three Novels, Harper Perennial 1994.
The Deep (Doubleday, 1975). Science fiction novel. Reissued in Otherwise: Three Novels, Harper Perennial 1994.
Most of the books above have appeared in translation in multiple languages.
Stories
(an incomplete list)
“The Million Monkeys of M. Borel,” Conjunctions 67, Fall 2017.
“Spring Break,” in New Haven Noir, ed. Amy Bloom (Akashic Books, 2017).
“Glow, Little Glowworm,” Conjunctions 59, 2012.
Conversation Hearts chapbook edition (Subterranean Press, 2008).
“Little Yeses, Little Nos,” Yale Review, April 2005.
“The Girlhood of Shakespeare’s Heroines,” Conjunctions 39, Fall 2002
An Earthly Mother Sits and Sings chapbook (Dream Haven Books, 2000).
“Gone,” in Fantasy & Science Fiction, September 1996.
“Exogamy,” in Omni Best Science Fiction Three, ed. Ellen Datlow (Omni Books, 1993).
“In Blue,” in The Year’s Best Science Fiction Eighth Annual Collection, ed. Gardner Dozois, 1991
“Missolonghi 1824,” in Poe’s Children, ed. Peter Straub (Doubleday, 2008 [orig. in Asimov’s, 1990]).
“Snow,” in Omni, 1985
“Novelty,” in American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from the 1940s to Now, ed. Peter Straub (Library of America, 2009 [orig. 1983]).
“The Green Child,” in Elsewhere, ed. Terry Windling, 1981.
“The Reason for the Visit,” in Interfaces, ed. Ursula K. Le Guin and Virginia Kidd, 1980.
“Antiquities,” in Whispers, ed. Stuart David Schiff, 1979.
“Where Spirits Gat Them Home,” in Shadows, ed. Charles L. Grant, 1978.
“Novelty,” in Interzone, Summer 1977.
“The Single Excursion of Caspar Last,” in Gallery, September 1974.
“Somewhere to Elsewhere,” in The Little Magazine, Spring 1974.
Stories have also appeared in the following anthologies, among others:
The Locus Awards (2004)
Masterpieces: Best Science Fiction of the Century (2001)
Future on Ice (1998)
Black Swan, White Raven (1997)
American Gothic Tales (1996)
Modern Classics of Fantasy (1996)
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror (1994)
The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction: The 50th Anniversary Anthology (1994)
The Norton Book of Science Fiction (1993)
Nebula Awards 25 (1991)
The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror Fourth Annual Collection (1991)
The Science Fiction Century (1988)
Terry Carr’s Best Science Fiction of the Year 15 (1986)
Essays (Partial List)
Bimonthly essays for “The Easy Chair,” Harper’s, 2015–2016.
“Joan Aiken,” Boston Review, December 2015.
“Angels and Demons,” Lapham’s Quarterly, Spring 2012.
“Unpacking” (review of Ben Katchor’s The Cardboard Valise), Boston Review, November 2011.
“The Next Future,” Lapham’s Quarterly, Fall 2011.
“My Life in the Theater, 1910–1960” (memoir), Yale Review, January 2011.
“New Ghosts and How to Know Them,” Tin House 47, Spring 2011.
Introduction to David Stacton, The Judges of the Secret Court: A Novel about John Wilkes Booth (New York Review Books, 2011).
“Blossom and Fade,” Lapham’s Quarterly, Summer 2010.
“Nicholson Baker,” Boston Review, December 2009.
“In the Midst of Death,” Lapham’s Quarterly, Fall 2009.
“Uproars: Leslie Epstein’s Magic,” Boston Review, November 2008.
Introduction to Richard Hughes, In Hazard (New York Review Books, 2008).
“Rosamond Purcell,” Boston Review, June 2007.
“Little Criminals: Three Rediscovered Novels by Richard Hughes,” Boston Review, December 2005.
“The Happy Land” (review of Walt Kelly’s Pogo, vols. 1–11), Boston Review of Books, October 2004.
“A Modern Instance: Magic, Imagination, and Power,” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts 12, no. 2, 2001.
Review of Ben Katchor’s The Jew of New York, Yale Review, July 1999
“The Gothic of Thomas M. Disch,” Yale Review, April 1995.
“The Labyrinth of the World and the Paradise of the Heart,” New York Review of Science Fiction, November 1989.
About the Author
John Crowley was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine, the son of an Army Air Corps doctor, and eventually one of five children. Raised Catholic, he currently has no religious faith, though he’s lately begun meditating regularly with no particular expectations.
He grew up in Vermont and then for a couple of years in coal-mining eastern Kentucky, thence to Indiana, where his father was the doctor of the student infirmary at Notre Dame, which John avoided attending.
After graduating from Indiana University he emigrated to New York City, where he worked at several occupations (photographer, publicist, proofreader of the Manhattan telephone book, television writer, hack). He began publishing novels in 1975 (The Deep). He received his exit visa from New York City in 1977 and moved to western Massachusetts, where he still lives with his wife of 35 years, and where his twin daughters were raised.
He is a recipient of the American Academy and Institute of Letters Award for Literature and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. His novels include Little, Big; the Ægypt Cycle of magical history (The Solitudes, Love & Sleep, Dæmonomania, Endless Things); The Translator (winner of the Premio Flai
ano Superprize, Italy); and Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land. His most recent novel is Four Freedoms, about building a giant (imagined) warplane in the 1940s; a new one, about Crows and death, will appear in Fall 2017. He teaches fiction writing and screenwriting at Yale University and will for another academic year.
Also available from PM Press
Sensation
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ISBN: 978-1-60486-354-3
Damnificados
JJ AMAWORO WILSON
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Fire on the Mountain
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Introduction by Mumia Abu-Jamal
ISBN: 978-1-60486-087-0
Clandestine Occupations: An Imaginary History
DIANA BLOCK
ISBN: 978-1-62963-121-9
Gypsy
CARTER SCHOLZ
ISBN: 978-1-62963-118-9
The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow
CORY DOCTOROW
ISBN: 978-1-60486-404-5
My Life, My Body
MARGE PIERCY
ISBN: 978-1-62963-105-9
The Wild Girls
URSULA K. LE GUIN
ISBN: 978-1-60486-403-8
Report from Planet Midnight
NALO HOPKINSON
ISBN: 978-1-60486-497-7
The Science of Herself
KAREN JOY FOWLER
ISBN: 978-1-60486-825-8
Raising Hell
NORMAN SPINRAD
ISBN: 978-1-60486-810-4
Fire.
ELIZABETH HAND
ISBN: 978-1-62963-234-6
Mammoths of the Great Plains
ELEANOR ARNASON
ISBN: 978-1-60486-075-7
New Taboos
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ISBN: 978-1-60486-761-9
Miracles Ain’t What They Used to Be
JOE R. LANSDALE
ISBN: 978-1-62963-152-3
The Underbelly
GARY PHILLIPS
ISBN: 978-1-60486-206-5
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