Summary
"San Diego Lightfoot Sue" is a 1975 fantasy short story by American writer Tom Reamy. It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
Plot summary edit
In the early 1960s, a naive teenager from Kansas moves to Los Angeles, where he falls in love with a former prostitute.
Reception edit
"San Diego Lightfoot Sue" won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette of 1975,[1] and was a finalist for the 1976 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.[2] Publishers Weekly called it "smooth".[3]
The story has been cited as an example of the idea that magic can be dangerous to the wielder if incorrectly performed (when the prostitute casts a spell to rejuvenate herself so that the teenager can see what she looked like when she was his age, she is "consumed by green fire"),[4] and as evidence that Reamy was, if not gay himself, then "remarkably familiar with the gay idiom of the time".[5]
References edit
- ^ San Diego Lightfoot Sue, at Science Fiction Writers of America; retrieved June 4, 2018
- ^ 1976 Hugo Awards, at TheHugoAwards.org; retrieved June 4, 2018
- ^ Publishers Weekly volume 210; 1976
- ^ The Writer's Digest Guide to Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Orson Scott Card; chapter 3, 'Magic', by Allan Maurer and Renee Wright; published 2010 by Writer's Digest Books
- ^ Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction, by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon; published 2010 by Liverpool University Press
External links edit
- "San Diego Lightfoot Sue", at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database