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."
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Elvira Sonderfeld hosted the event, as usual. Her cooking undoubtedly drew the crowd. Everyone was on their best behavior too because liquor makes the bears ornery.
Perhaps some history is in order here: Elvira inherited the Mogollon Rooming House in the great flu epidemic of 1918. She was no relation to the previous owners. But when the epidemic struck, the Rooming House got turned into a hospital. Elvira, being an idealistic girl at the time, nursed the sick and dying.
By spring, Mogollon's population was decimated. Only about seventy people died. However, that was enough to scare off several hundred more, including the previous owners of the Mogollon Rooming House. Elvira just stayed on.
Citizens who recovered from the flu remembered Elvira's kindness and saw that her needs were met. When no one had asserted a claim to the Mogollon Rooming House by about 1930, someone got a deed drawn up in Elvira's name.
By then, it actually was a rooming house again. Elvira's cooking was already famous. When the population of Mogollon dropped off to nearly zero in the fifties though, there was no one to stay there with her - except the bears.
The Mogollon Rooming House is opposite the mouth of Dog Canyon, so named because people used to dump dead dogs there. Perhaps that is what attracted the bears.
When all the people left, Elvira got terribly lonely. Eventually, she just invited the bears in for company. So far as anyone can recall, they have been there since 1958.
The Silver Creek Temperance Society was well into dessert when someone noted that old Mortimer Walker was not present. It was soon ascertained that nobody had seen him in some time. So a delegation was formed to see that he was all right. There were twelve volunteers, including five bears. Mort lives on the shady side of the street, so he had to dig a tunnel through the snow to the mailbox sometime in November. However, we have been having something of a mild spell lately. Sure enough, with all the warm weather, the tunnel had collapsed. Everyone became quite concerned when they saw this and began to dig.
It was hard work for a bit, but before long the bears caught on to what was happening and pitched in. After that, everyone else just stood back. In no time flat, the bears were through that heavy, wet snow and in Mort's door. There was one loud crash. And those five bears came hightailing it out of there and back up the street to Elvira's faster than you would believe anything that big could move.
We heard old Mort holler, "Can't a man hibernate in peace!" And the door slammed. So we knew he was all right. But no one could figure out what happened to the bears till somebody mentioned it the next day to one of the people who deliver the mail.
The response was a chuckle. "So that explains that last order. I wondered what he wanted with two pounds of cayenne."
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."