It's miraculous, though not at all surprising, how a little good press can change one's outlook on one's career.
I'd been in a little email exchange with a writer named Nick Gevers who lives in South Africa. Nick has a pretty esoteric Ph.D.—the use of history in science fiction. He also helps edit an online zine called Infinity Plus, and on the strength of a story of mine he had just read for review in a recent anthology, he had asked if Infinity Plus could reprint one of my older stories.
That was flattering enough, but then Nick sent me the text of his review of the anthology, which will appear soon in the fanzine Nova Express. My favorite line was this:
[H]is meditations on ecological conservation, intercultural dynamics, and the limits of human understanding are powerful and true, making 'Dance [of the Yellow-Breasted Luddites]' one of the best novellas of the year."
(Of course I posted a larger excerpt on my Web site almost immediately.) Reading this, my prospects seemed suddenly brighter than they had a few minutes before, when all I could think about was how many times my memoir had been rejected. The timing was perfect.
So what does it say about me that I cling to good notices like Leo DeCaprio to a chunk of floating ice? I don't really care, because one fellow in Capetown thinks I've written one of the best novellas of the year.
