Moon Dogs

Moon Dogs is the 2000 Boskone book by Guest of Honor Michael Swanwick. It is a sampling of his work, with seven stories, one play, six essays, and two speeches. Two of the stories, “Moon Dogs” and “Mickelrede,” are new, and “Moon Dogs” was been nominated for the 2001 Best Short Story Hugo!

Michael Swanwick has given readings of the title story to general acclaim, and the NESFA Press is proud to make it available. “Mickelrede” is one of his posthumous collaborations with Avram Davidson, and gives an intriguing look into the creative process. His other such collaboration, “Vergil Magus: King Without Country,” is another chance for the reader to visit with the mage from The Phoenix and the Mirror.

The range of his fiction work is represented with the short novel Griffin’s Egg, and the award-winning play “The Dead.” Among the essays here are the hard-to-find “The Death of the Magus: Two Myths” and “The Hagiography of Saint Dozois,” and the bizarre tale of “Jane Swanwick and the Search for Identity.” His discussions of the SF field, “A User’s Guide to the Postmoderns” and “In the Tradition …,” are witty and insightful surveys — so much so that the former has even been pirated in countries around the world.

His collaboration with Jack Dann, “Ships” (in its first American publication), and two of his several collaborations with Gardner Dozois, “Ancestral Voices” and “The City of God,” are further demonstrations of the range of his fiction.