Coney Island Wonder Stories

For CONEY ISLAND WONDER STORIES editors Robert J. Howe and John Ordover have assembled an impressive line up of writers. In addition Howe contributes a nostalgic introduction that captures a bit of the childhood excitement and tawdry allure evoked by the name Coney Island. Various difficulties kept this little anthology from seeing print for almost twelve years - nothing like the record shattering decades' long delay of Harlan Ellison's Dangerous Visions Three, but enough of a time gap to produce a wonder effect of its own. 1993 names like Rusch, Resnick, Watts-Evans remain sizable draws still. Others like Kij Johnson came into their own over the intervening years. Some of the stories have found other publication since 1993 but the effect of opening the book and reading them now is a little like that of opening a time capsule For me the stories with the most impact were, "Just Don't Block The View, "a tale of early `90's New York violence by hard-boiled crime writer Michael Jahn here sporting a speculative fiction edge and Maureen McHugh's story of gender games in a Virtual Reality gallery, "A Coney Island Of The Mind." Virtual Reality seems now to be a concept more firmly rooted in the late 20th century than in any potential future we have seen unfold. Likewise J.R. Dunn's "The Custodian," set deep in the 21st century, posits a deserted Brooklyn devastated in vicious 1990's urban rage and a Coney Island preserved by the stubbornness of a single old woman. In fact it's gentrification that will finally obliterate that wonderland on a sand bar.