A Reverie for Mister Ray

infobox Book |
name = A Reverie for Mister Ray
title_orig =
translator =


author = Michael Bishop
Michael H. Hutchins (editor)
cover_artist = Jamie Bishop
country = United States
language = English
series =
genre = Nonfiction
publisher = PS Publishing
release_date = May 2005
media_type = Print (Slipcased, Signed & Numbered Hardback)
pages = 612
isbn = ISBN 1-902880-88-9
preceded_by =
followed_by =

infobox Book |
name = A Reverie for Mister Ray
author = Michael Bishop
Michael H. Hutchins (editor)
publisher = PS Publishing
release_date = May 2005
media_type = Print (Signed & Numbered Hardback)
pages = 612
isbn = ISBN 1-902880-87-0
preceded_by =
followed_by =

"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.

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 Michael H. Hutchins

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 "Antiquities" [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 Randolph Loney [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

* [http://www.michaelbishop-writer.com/ Michael Bishop's official homepage]
* [http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/reverie.htm Infinity Plus review of "A Reverie for Mister Ray"]
* [http://www.pspublishing.co.uk/cat/arfmr.asp Publisher’s page]
* [http://www.thealienonline.net/ao_030.asp?tid=1&scid=1&iid=2873 The Alien Online article and interview]