The Dog Said Bow-Wow
Read The Dog Said Bow-Wow Online
Authors: Michael Swanwick
PRAISE FOR
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
“Every reader with a dollop of humanity will admire Michael Swanwick’s rowdy good humor. His towering creativity seems so effortless that it is easily overlooked – so effortless, and so immense. You won’t want to put this book down.”
- GENE WOLFE
“By turns funny, clever, mysterious, and possessing hidden depths, the stories in Swanwick’s latest collection demonstrate he’s at the top of his game. Delightful, thoughtful work, sure to please his readers.”
- JEFF VANDERMEER
“For most writers, it’s a good day when a story is witty, or has great ideas or characters. Michael Swanwick consistently wins on all three.”
- VERNOR VINGE
“Michael Swanwick is one of my all-time favorite short story writers. Sometimes he makes me laugh, sometimes he makes me shudder, sometimes he makes me weep. He always makes me think. And that’s just when I am talking to him.”
- JANE YOLEN
“In
The Dog Said Bow-Wow,
a valuable author has taken the disreputable duckling of category fiction and nurtured it into a swan of elegant speculation, as the wick of disciplined fancy draws the reader’s inflamed imagination ever downward through the waxen feast. Swan and wick: an essential conjunction yielding wonder, warmth, wit, and many a synergistic epiphany.”
- JAMES MORROW
“Michael Swanwick’s stories start soft, sneak close, and punch hard. And nobody else – nobody! – in science fiction has his range.”
- NANCY KRESS
“Michael Swanwick’s
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
is an extraordinarily strong collection. His fierce imagination, subtle humor, and genius for implication are evident in each of these stories. From outer space to the land of faerie to all those strange and familiar places in between, he’s gathered wonder and brought it back alive.”
- JEFFREY FORD
“Toto, I don’t think we’re on Pern anymore.”
-
Locus
“Swanwick’s wildly imaginative and beautifully written short stories have been, for several years, one of the primary joys of the field.”
-
Washington Post Book World
“One of contemporary sf’s greatest short-story writers.”
-
Interzone
“Swanwick’s work illustrates the power and potential of contemporary science fiction.”
-
Publishers Weekly
“(Swanwick) is an amazingly assured writer, seemingly incapable of writing a sentence that isn’t interesting in itself, in addition to the way it moves the story forward.”
-
The New York Review of Science Fiction
“Michael Swanwick is darkly magnificent.
Tales of Old Earth
is just one brilliant ride after another, a midnight express with a master at the throttle. Sit back and enjoy.”
- JACK MCDEVITT
“A classic in his own right”
-
Analog
“What makes Swanwick special is his ability to wring fresh, unexpected consequences from standard sf notions.”
-
Kirkus
“Swanwick has emerged as one of the country’s most respected authors.”
-
Philadelphia Inquirer
“Michael Swanwick is one of the most intellectually astute sf writers of his generation.”
-
Washington Post Book World
“Since the publication of his first stories back in 1980, Swanwick has developed a reputation for radically deconstructing the hoariest of old clichés in science fiction and turning them into something bright, shiny, and new.”
-
Locus
“Swanwick’s prose takes no prisoners.”
-
Time Out
“Swanwick is our Prospero.”
- TERRY BISSON
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
Copyright 2007 by Michael Swanwick
This is a work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.
Cover design by Ann Monn
Interior design & composition by John D. Berry
The typeface is Kingfisher, designed by Jeremy Tankard
Tachyon Publications
1459 18th Street #139
San Francisco,
CA
94107
(415) 285-5615
www.tachyonpublications.com
Series editor: Jacob Weisman
ISBN
10: 1-892391-52-x
ISBN
13: 978-1-892391-52-0
Printed in the United States of America
by Worzalla
First Edition: 2007
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Introduction © 2007 by Terry Bisson. | “The Bordello in Faerie” © 2006 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Postscripts
#8, October 2006. | “Dirty Little War” © 2002 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
In the Shadow of the Wall
, edited by Byron R. Tetrick (Nashville: Cumberland House). | “The Dog Said Bow-Wow” © 2001 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, October/November 2001. | “An Episode of Stardust” © 2006 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, January 2006.| “Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play,” © 2005 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, July 2005. | “A Great Day for Brontosaurs” © 2002 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, May 2002. | “‘Hello,’ Said the Stick” © 2002 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, March 2002. | “The Last Geek” © 2004 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Crossroads: Tales of the Southern Literary Fantastic
, edited by F. Brett Cox and Andy Duncan (New York: Tor Books). | “Legions in Time” © 2003 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, April 2003. “The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport” © 2002 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, October/November 2002. | “The Skysailor’s Tale” © 2007 by Michael Swanwick. First appearance in print. | “Slow Life” © 2002 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, December 2002. | “A Small Room in Koboldtown” © 2007 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, April 2007. | “Tin Marsh” © 2006 by Michael Swanwick. First appeared in
Asimov’s Science Fiction
, August 2006.| “Triceratops Summer” © 2006 by Michael Swanwick. First published by
Amazon Shorts
, August 2006. | “Urdumheim” © 2007 by Michael Swanwick. Forthcoming in
The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
, October/November 2007.
The Little Cat Laughed to See Such Sport
Girls and Boys, Come Out to Play
Terry Bisson’s introduction didn’t arrive in time, so we are substituting this transcript of a conversation with
TV
talk host Charlie Ross:
CHARLIE ROSS:
Tonight’s guest, Michael Swanwick, is a leading example of that most curious modern or perhaps postmodern creature, the science fiction writer, a species uniquely equipped to explore and hopefully illuminate the shimmering interface where literature and science intersect, giving birth to the elusive paradigms that populate our cultural psyche, so to speak. Welcome to the show, Michael.
MICHAEL SWANWICK:
Thank you. I am very…
CR:
I can’t think of anyone who has brought such diligence and intelligence to speculative fiction as yourself. You came to Philadelphia in 1976, armed, as legend has it, with nothing more than seventy-six bucks, a determination to be a writer, and the conviction that
SF
was the field of literature most worthy of your efforts. Do you still have that conviction today?
MS:
Yes. In fact…
CR:
And indeed, it shows in your work. But nothing worthwhile comes easy. It was only in the early 1980s, after years of false starts and rejection slips, that you sold your first two stories — and then saw both of them nominated for awards and picked up for Year’s Best anthologies. Can you share with us the thrill of accomplishment that you must have felt when that happened?
MS:
It was cool. In fact…
CR:
And it was only the beginning. Your first novel,
In the Drift
, found a home in the renowned Ace Specials series, along with early works by Kim Stanley Robinson, Lucius Shepard, and William Gibson. Even though you were all relative fledglings, as it were, just trying your wings, did you have the feeling, even then, that you had taken on the collective task of redefining and reshaping modern
SF
from the inside out, as it were?
MS:
Not exactly. As a matter of fact…
CR:
And indeed, you have, both collectively and individually. There are in fact few writers in modern
SF
as versatile as yourself. You have written magical realism, steampunk, space opera, hard
SF
, cyberpunk, fantasy high and low; you even dramatized the periodic table in your spare time. Did I leave anything out?
MS:
Let me think. In fact…
CR:
And winning, in the process, every major honor in the field, including the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy, the Sturgeon, and the Locus awards. Is there anything else that you feel the
need
to accomplish?
MS:
Well, sure. In fact…
CR:
I suppose it’s that
need
that keeps you pushing the envelope, so to speak. So here you are, after more than a third of a century in the field, still remaking and reshaping modern
SF
through your work. Do you think the desire to break new ground, explore new paradigms, open new controversies, is essential to keeping the creative juices flowing, so to speak?
MS:
Why, yes. As a matter of fact…
CR:
Me, too, Michael. And no less a personage than Gardner Dozois would agree. He once wrote: “There are perhaps seven or eight writers who are vital to the evolution of the genre. Swanwick is one of those seven or eight…” Are you in touch with the other six or seven?
MS:
I have ’em on speed dial. In fact…
CR:
Put the phone away, please. And now we have this book of short stories, with such an intriguing title:
The Dog Said Bow-Wow
. Are we to understand, then, that this collection contains the Hugo-winning story about that curious pair, Darger and Surplus?
MS:
Yes. As a matter of fact…
CR:
Your readers will be pleased! There’s a Candide-like faux-simplicity to these Darger and Surplus tales, even though they are written in a slightly formal language, quite beautifully I might add. Was that in fact, your intention: to entertain the reader, while taking him and/or her on a tour of a rather astonishing if slightly dystopian future, in which our world has been altered almost but not quite beyond recognition?
MS:
I guess you could say that. In fact…
CR:
Then you have succeeded wonderfully. Indeed, the reader expects no less of you. This is a delightful collection, both deep and shimmery at the same time. Fun, but high fun. Which leads me to a final question: which do you regard as the more important in
SF
, Beauty or Truth?