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Mogollon News-Ice
- By Uncle River
- Published 03/15/2003
- Southwest New Mexico , Catron County , Mogollon, New Mexico , Mogollon News
- Unrated
Uncle River
Uncle River's cultural speculative fiction has appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction, Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Amazing Stories, the British Interzone, and Canada's Transversions, among many others. His story, "Love of the True God," published in Talebones #10, qualified for the Preliminary Ballot for a Nebula Award and was a finalist for the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award. As of June, 2002, his "How We Know What Happened" is the cover story of the current Absolute Magnitude #18, and his "My Stolen Sabre" from the Dec. '01 Asimov's is due for reprint in David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer's Year's Best Fantasy #2.
Uncle River is due to appear as a panelist at two SF conventions in Summer, 2002: ReaderCon in the Boston area, July 12-14, and ArmadilloCon in Austin, Aug. 16-18. Trained in Jungian Analysis and holding what he believes to be the world's only earned Ph.D. in Psychology of the Unconscious (Union Institute, 1974), Uncle River has lived as a hermit/writer in the mountain Southwest for the past 20 years.
MOGOLLON NEWS
Set in the real New Mexico ghost town of Mogollon where Uncle River lived for five years, the fictitious "Mogollon News" began as a column in the Silver City Enterprise, at the time New Mexico's oldest continuously published weekly paper, in 1985. The "Mogollon News" ran as a regular feature on Public Radio Station KRWG, Las Cruces, from 1986-90, and has appeared as a column in several regional newspapers. Through the 90s, it was a regular feature in the leading British experimental speculative fiction periodical, BBR. Sufficiently authentic to back-country life that Uncle River's local postmistress wondered why she didn't know the people whose tales appeared in the paper, the complete "Mogollon News" comprises over two hundred stories, like the ones posted here. (Available in book-manuscript format to interested publishers.)
THUNDER MOUNTAIN
Thunder Mountain, (Mother Bird Books, 1213 Durango, Silver City, NM 88061, 189 pp., trade papberback, $11 + $1.50 shipping.) Set in the fictitious Thunder Range of remote Southwestern New Mexico, Thunder Mountain "explores how the land can live and how human spirits can bond with the land" (BBR). Thunder Mountain will show you the difference between an outlaw and a criminal.
"Uncle River transcends mere authorship to become an authentic voice of the abused land." . . . Paul DiFilippo, Asimov's Science Fiction
". . . a new sort of creature, perhaps related to magical realism, which I hope gets positive notice in both of its home worlds - New Mexico regional writing and science fiction...The way the book is structured makes an important read, which is good since the story is pleasant and brings laughter and tears at the right places." . . . Don Webb, The New York Review of Science Fiction
XIZQUILSpeculative fiction, poetry, articles, and art, Uncle River edited XIZQUIL from 1989-98, through 16 issues, winning a Rhysling Award for Year's Best Long Poem from the Science Fiction Poetry Association and placing stories regularly on the Honorable Mention list in Gardner Dozois's annual Year's Best Science Fiction anthologies.
"What better place than the genre of the fantastic to explore new ways of telling stories? XIZQUIL, edited by Uncle River, is firmly pointed in this direction." . . . Michael P. Belfiore, Tangent.
Preview of Uncle River's Novel, Mogollon News
Contact SouthernNewMexico.com if you are interesting in publishing Uncle River's "Mogollon News."
View all articles by Uncle River
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Ice looked like just the sort of business he could do pretty well in: Low capital investment. - Just a saw to cut it into hundred pound chunks. He welded up a set of ice tongs out of scrap.
Next summer he figured he'd put up a sign and sell his ice to the tourists going camping in the forest or fishing at Snow Lake.
It has been a mild winter, but that is still plenty cold enough up here in Mogollon to make ice. So Joe's been going great guns since November (except when he got froze measuring the snow and had to lay off for a few days).
Elvira Sonderfeld doesn't get out a lot any more, but with spring on the air, she went for a walk one afternoon and happened on Joe. Though it was warm and bright in the sun,
Joe's tanks in the shade were already cooling off. He was pouring in the water for another batch.
"Folks didn't have electric refrigerators back then. So this fellow used to drive into town with a wagon hollering, 'Ice! Ice for sale.'"
Joe smiled nostalgically.
Elvira looked around. "What are you doing for sawdust?"
"Sawdust?"
"Yes. Ol' 'Ice' packed his in sawdust. Helped it stay frozen. And kept the blocks from all sticking together."
Joe turned slightly green.
So, folks, next summer when Joe's sign goes up, have a little sympathy if the blocks come in funny sizes. There'll be a lot of crushed ice for sale too. It still won't have taken much capital. But it is going to be some mighty labor-intensive ice for the price.
Read more samples from the Mogollon News
Winter
The Silver Creek Temperance Society
Blasting
The Balloon
Ice
Halley's Comet
The Libyan Invasion
A Case of Religion
Politics
Contact SouthernNewMexico.com if you are interesting in publishing Uncle River's "Mogollon News."

