A Reverie for Mister Ray explained

A Reverie for Mister Ray: Reflections on Life, Death, and Speculative Fiction is a collection of nonfiction work by American writer Michael Bishop published in 2005 by PS Publishing. It includes essays and reviews from 1975 to 2004, originally published in a wide variety of newspapers, magazines, literary journals, and fanzines. Most of the pieces concern the speculative fiction genre. The book was edited by Michael H. Hutchins.

Contents

Upfront

• A Reverie for Mister Mike: An Introduction by Jeff VanderMeer
• Alien Graffiti: Author’s Apologia by Michael Bishop
• On the Road: Editor’s Preface by Michael H. Hutchins

Drawing from the Wells

• A Reverie for Mister Ray [1981]
• A Classic Affair [1990]
• "An Art Is Something You Have to Learn”: RIP Clifton Fadiman [1999]
• Little, Big, Witless, Wise: Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift [2004]
• Flannery and Me [2001]
• More Than a Masterpiece? More Than Human by Theodore Sturgeon [1989]
• A Classic’s Endearing Quirks: The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin [1977]

State of the Art

• Evangels of Hope [1978]
• Believers and Heretics: An Episcopal Bull [1980]
• The Knack and How to Get It, See? [1978]
• The Contributors to Plenum Four [1975]
• Light Years and Dark: Science Fiction Since 1960 [1984]
• Children Who Survive: An Autobiographical Meditation on Horror Fiction [1989]
• 104 Really Cool Works of Twentieth-Century Fiction in English [2000]

On Reviewing

• Oh, to Be a Blurber! [1980]
• On Reviewing and Being Reviewed [1977]
• Critics’ Night at the Sci-Fi Bistro [1979]

Pitching Pennies Against the Starboard Bulkhead

• The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe [1976]
• Timescape by Gregory Benford [1980]
• Wild Seed by Octavia Butler [1981]
• Myths of the Near Future by J. G. Ballard [1984]
• Two by John Crowley: Little, Big [1983] and [1994]
• Speaker for the Dead by Orson Scott Card [1987]
• The Toynbee Convector by Ray Bradbury [1988]
• Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy [1993/94/96]
• Nightfishing in Great Sky River by David Lunde [2000]
• The Wooden Sea by Jonathan Carroll [2001]
• He Do the Time Police in Different Voices by David Langford [2004]
• The Untethered Spacewalk by NASA [1984]

Going Deeper

• In Pursuit of Ubik: A Novel by Philip K. Dick [1979]
• Gene Wolfe as Hero: The Shadow of the Torturer [1980]
• Only in America: On Wings of Song by Thomas M. Disch [1981]
• James Morrow and Towing Jehovah [1994]
• James Morrow’s Antidote X: Speculative Satire and The Eternal Footman [2000]
• The Education of Brian W. Aldiss: The Twinkling of an Eye, or, My Life as an Englishman [1999]
• “Sitting in the Sun in the Waist-High Grass”: “The Last Day in July” by Gardner Dozois [2001]
• In Praise of Hollyhocks: “The Aliens Who Knew, I Mean, Everything” by George Alec Effinger [2004]

Fellow Travelers

• A Speculation of SF Writers: Gardner Dozois / Suzette Haden Elgin / Steven Utley / Ian Watson [1980]
• All That Glitters is Not Golding . . . Or Bishop Either [1984/85]
• James Tiptree, Jr. is Raccoona Sheldon is Alice B. Sheldon is Alli is… [1985/92]
• Saluting Pamela Sargent [1987]
• The Once and Future Andy Duncan [2000]
• Voice and Virtue: Celebrating Jack McDevitt [2003]

Rolling the Bones

• Ink and Inspiration Among the Soft Sciences [1981]
• Lucy in the Mud With Footprints: Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind by Donald C. Johanson and Maitland A. Edey [1981]
• The Boy in the Bush: Lightning Bird by Lyall Watson [1982]
• Mysteries of the Rift Valley: One Life by Richard E. Leakey and Disclosing the Past by Mary Leakey [1984]
• The Fate of the Primate: The Deluge and the Ark: A Journey Into Primate Worlds by Dale Peterson [1989]
• Prospectus for a Novel of Human Prehistory, or The Origins of No Enemy But Time [1982]

Edge Running

• Primates in Love: The Female of the Species by Lionel Shriver [1987]
• Geniuses in One Another’s Pockets: Neighboring Lives by Thomas M. Disch and Charles Naylor [1981]
• Two by J. G. Ballard: Empire of the Sun and The Day of Creation [1984/1988]
• Two by Philip K. Dick: In Milton Lumky Territory and The Man Whose Teeth Were All Exactly Alike [1985]
• A Jeremiad, Three Reviews and a Postscript: Death is a Lonely Business by Ray Bradbury / Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut / Contact by Carl Sagan [1985]
• Inconvenient Invitations: Mister Touch by Malcolm Bosse / Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd [1991]
• Watching the Elephant Vanish: The Elephant Vanishes by Haruki Murakami [1994]
• A Near-Future Southern, An Off-Trail Western: Land O’ Goshen by Charles McNair and Redeye by Clyde Edgerton [1995]
• A Larger Sky: The Norton Book of Ghost Stories edited by Brad Leithauser / Seaward by Brad Leithauser [1995]
• An American Wordsmith in Atlantis: Atlantis: Three Tales by Samuel R. Delany [1996]
• Touring the Republic of Pain: Ingenious Pain by Andrew Miller [1998]
• Encounter of a Wee Kind [1978]

Open Heart

• Military Brat: A Memoir [1997]
• First Novel, Seventh Novel: A Funeral for the Eyes of Fire [1988]
• My Private Civil War: Preface to Confederacy of the Dead [1993]
• Three Tributes: Paul Di Filippo / David Hartwell / Howard Waldrop [2001-2003]
• Cleansing the Eye of the Heart: A Dream of the Tattered Man by Randolph Loney [2001]
• Ghost of a Chance: My Father’s Ghost by Suzy McKee Charnas [2003]
• Nine Prescriptions for My Funeral [1997]
• Writing Science Fiction As If It Mattered (including “Tiny Bells” by Bruce Holland Rogers) [2002]

External links

• Michael Bishop's official homepage
• Infinity Plus review of A Reverie for Mister Ray
• Publisher’s page
• The Alien Online article and interview