Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology

Rating:
Summary: A raw workshop and its tasty results.
Review: One of the best anthologies of fiction I know, for it comes with a program and it shows how it all came together. The "Sycamore Hill" workshop sounds like a more or less annual affair, in which the brightest new lights of science fiction are summoned to a central location (a la The Fellowship of the Ring) and each writes a story for the amusement of the others. Everyone grades everyone else's tale and then the re-writes begin. Here is a healthy sampler of some of the more interesting stories written in 1994, among them are tales by authors who have since grown big enough to hold their own conferences all by themselves if they thought to--Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, et cetera.

The comments by the other participants are included, so it's an anthology which comes closer to the "raw" side of the menu than the "cooked." Ouch! Some of these "comments" must have stung, but everyone bears with it gracefully.

The funniest part is an appendix, "The Turkey Hill Lexicon," a must for leaders of writing workshops in which these practiced writers give witty names to common writing solecisms. I'll never forget "As you know, Bob," which you hear on every soap opera, shorthand for exposition put into dialogue form among characters who already know the information for the supposed benefit of the reader. Way to go, Sycamore Hill.

Rating:
Summary: A raw workshop and its tasty results.
Review: One of the best anthologies of fiction I know, for it comes with a program and it shows how it all came together. The "Sycamore Hill" workshop sounds like a more or less annual affair, in which the brightest new lights of science fiction are summoned to a central location (a la The Fellowship of the Ring) and each writes a story for the amusement of the others. Everyone grades everyone else's tale and then the re-writes begin. Here is a healthy sampler of some of the more interesting stories written in 1994, among them are tales by authors who have since grown big enough to hold their own conferences all by themselves if they thought to--Karen Joy Fowler, Jonathan Lethem, et cetera.

The comments by the other participants are included, so it's an anthology which comes closer to the "raw" side of the menu than the "cooked." Ouch! Some of these "comments" must have stung, but everyone bears with it gracefully.

The funniest part is an appendix, "The Turkey Hill Lexicon," a must for leaders of writing workshops in which these practiced writers give witty names to common writing solecisms. I'll never forget "As you know, Bob," which you hear on every soap opera, shorthand for exposition put into dialogue form among characters who already know the information for the supposed benefit of the reader. Way to go, Sycamore Hill.