I confess.
I have crushed on James Patrick Kelly (from afar) for years.
My first experience of James Patrick Kelly’s amazing writing came when I narrated the wry and fantastical story of his called CANDY ART for the Best of Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine many years ago. I loved, loved, loved that story. I still do. I still want to make a short film based on it. Ah, my to-do list!
Anyway, back to the man himself and today’s story.
For BREAKAWAY, BACKDOWN, Kelly writes from the point of view of Cleo, a nobody girl who failed in space and is now having a one-way conversation with a cobbler. In a word? Terrific. In two words: engaging, hilarious. But heck, here are a few more: voice-driven, inventive, a little sad. He talks about his story here, and the “narrative trick” he plays on us. Or with us, rather.
In Cleo’s world, space is complicated, and so is she:
“Everything is loose up there, okay? It makes you come unstuck. The first thing that happens is you get spacesick. For a week your insides are so scrambled that you’re trying to digest lunch with your cerebellum and write memos with your large intestine. Meanwhile your face puffs up so that you can’t find yourself in the mirror anymore and your sinuses fill with cotton candy and you’re fighting a daily hair mutiny…Then when you’re totally miserable and empty and disoriented, your brain sorts things out again and you realize it’s all magic. Some astrofairy has enchanted you. Your body is as light as a whisper, free as air.”
From a performance aspect, the story was a challenge and oh, so theatrically exciting, as I find all of his work. He is also a wonderful narrator himself, so the bar is always set high.
While listening to the story below, you become the owl cobbler on the other side of the counter, repairing a pair of spike heels for a stranger as she unravels before you. But listen for yourself, then take a moment to read Lightspeed’s Author Spotlight to learn more about the origins of this imaginative story. And thanks, Jim, for your stupendous gifts of wit and imagination.
James Patrick Kelly has written novels, short stories, essays, reviews, poetry, plays, and planetarium shows. His short novel Burn won the Nebula Award in 2007. He has won the Hugo Award twice: in 1996, for his novelette “Think Like A Dinosaur,” and in 2000, for his novelette, “Ten to the Sixteenth to One.” His fiction has been translated into eighteen languages. He writes a column for Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine and is on the faculty of the Stonecoast Creative Writing MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine.
James Patrick Kelly
Gabrielle de Cuir is a stage actress, director, playwright, and audiobook narrator and producer with dozens of Audie Awards up on the wall. Her first film, THE DELIVERY, was an Official Selection of the Los Angeles International Children’s Film Festival and winner of the Fantasy Award at DRAGONCON Film Festival. With Stefan Rudnicki, she is the co-founder of Skyboat Media.
