Fantastic Metropolis

Book of Hate, Kathleen Yearwood

After the death of her lover, Phillip, a Canadian Native American political activist, ostensibly at the hands of his government, folk artist Kathleen Yearwood produced this CD. The songs are not about rage and loss—they are rage and loss, barely songs at all, more like fragments of a delirium. Ranging in the space of a few bars from striking poetic imagery to factual minutae relating to the case to a grief-stricken incoherence, this is a unique document, the closest contemporay music has come to pure confession. Not the best recording, but that suits the materials. Harrowing.

Bataclan 72, Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico

This live performance has Reed, Cale and Nico in a stripped-down setting, nearly unplugged, alone and together, playing their most haunting material: “Waiting for the Man” / “Berlin” / “Black Angels Death Song” / “Wild Child” / “Heroin” / “Ghost Story” / “The Biggest, Loudest, Hairiest Group Of All” / “Empty Bottles” / “Femme Fatale” / “No One Is There” / “Frozen Warnings” / “Janitor of Lunacy” / “I’ll Be Your Mirror” / “All Tomorrows Parties” / “Pale Blue Eyes” / “Candy Says”. Kind of a nostlagia deal, but wow…

Polyphony, edited by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake

The most interesting and adventurous short fiction market to appear in recent years. Polyphony Three, with wonderful stories by Ford, Dann, et al, gets my vote as the year’s best anthology.

Veniss Underground by Jeff VanderMeer and The Portrait of Mrs. Charbuque by Jeff Ford—I offer them not as an entry, but simply to save time, because I have to turn this list in a few minutes from now. I’m sure most who read this list will have read these two marvelous fantasy novels, the VanderMeer more of a fabulist experience, and the Ford a wonderfully mannered vision of 19th century insanity. Nobody can be said to be conversant with the state of contemporary fantasy if they haven’t read these books.

I have to send this off, but in passing I want to mention two other authors to whom I was introduced last year. Iain Sinclair, whose book Downriver, is an unforgettable novel concerning a film crew traveling along the Thames, filming the life along the river; and Cees Noteboom, the Dutch writer whose curious novellas articulate a classic European literary sensibility that stand in the tradition of Tomas Mann and Josef Svorecky.

Lucius Shepard is a multi-award-winning writer, author of the collections The Jaguar Hunter and The Ends of the Earth. Recent work includes Louisiana Breakdown (Golden Gryphon, 2003) and Floater (PS Publishing, 2003).