Seven for the apocalypse

443 Pages·1999·0.96 MB·English

by  Kit Reed

title: Seven for the Apocalypse
author: Reed, Kit.
publisher: Wesleyan University Press
isbn10 | asin: 0819563811
print isbn13: 9780819563811
ebook isbn13: 9780585369891
language: English
subject American fiction.
publication date: 1999
lcc: PS3568.E367S46 1999eb
ddc: 813/.54
subject: American fiction.
Page i
Seven for the Apocalypse
Page ii
Also by Kit Reed
NOVELS
J. Eden
Little Sisters of the Apocalypse
Catholic Girls
Fort Privilege
Magic Time
The Ballad of T. Rantula
Captain Grownup
Tiger Rag
Cry of the Daughter
Armed Camps
The Better Part
At War As Children
Mother Isn't Dead She's Only Sleeping
COLLECTIONS
Seven for the Apocalypse
Weird Women, Wired Women
The Revenge of the Senior Citizens** Plus
Other Stories and The Attack of the Giant Baby
The Killer Mice
Mr. Da V and Other Stories
AS KIT CRAIG
Some Safe Place
Closer
Strait
Twice Burned
Gone

Page iii
Seven for the Apocalypse
Kit Reed
Page iv
WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY PRESS
Published by University Press of New England
Hanover, NH 03755
This collection © 1999 by Kit Reed
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
5 4 3 2 1
data appear at the end of the book
CIP
Acknowledgments:
"Voyager" was first published in The Yale Review.
"In the Palace of the Dictator" was first published in A is for Brian, a
birthday festschrift for Brian Aldiss.
"River" appeared in Asimov's SF.
"Slumber" was first published in The Tampa Review.
Little Sisters of the Apocalypse was first published by Fiction
Collective Two in 1994.
"Rajmahal," "The Singing Marine" and "On the Penal Colony"
appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
Page v
Contents
Introduction ix
Voyager 1
Rajmahal 15
River 28
Slumber 38
In the Palace of the Dictator 49
On the Penal Colony 61
Little Sisters of the Apocalypse 73
The Singing Marine 204
Page vii
KATY THEN AND NOW
Page ix
Introduction
Where does fiction begin? Critics' theories range from abstruse to
diagrammatic, from the semiotic to the psychological, but for this
practitioner, the answer seems simple. I think fiction begins with the
writer and in lives that touch the writer's, and the interesting thing
here is that some of these lives are remembered and some imagined
but it all becomes so real in the process that for me, at least, there's no
telling the difference between them.
Little Sisters of the Apocalypse began in two places. It began in
Norwich, England, on the grass outside one of the ziggurats at the
University of East Anglia. My daughter Katy said, "I saw the greatest
thing on the side of a bus. . What if it was
LITTLE SISTERS OF ST. THERESA LITTLE
? You can have the title, but I get to write the
SISTERS OF THE APOCALYPSE
movie."
"Cool," I said. She thought: crusading nuns on a bus. I saw Mad Max
with nuns, and the rest followed. At this writing my friend my
daughter who is also my colleague has had one script produced and is
finishing another. It could still happen. That's where Little Sisters of
the Apocalypse started.
No. It started on a rainy afternoon in a Spanish stucco house that
should have been a beach paradise. It would have been, too, if we
hadn't been there about my mother, who was still getting around St.
Petersburg, Florida even though her synapses were disconnecting in
an inexorable progression. Minute parts of her brain were atrophying.
When this kind of thing happens the person is