"San Diego Lightfoot Sue" is a 1975 fantasy short story by American writer Tom Reamy. It was first published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
Plot summary
In the early 1960s, a naive teenager from Kansas moves to Los Angeles, where he falls in love with a former prostitute.
Reception
"San Diego Lightfoot Sue" won the Nebula Award for Best Novelette of 1975, and was a finalist for the 1976 Hugo Award for Best Novelette. Publishers Weekly called it "smooth".
The story has been cited as an example of the idea that magic can be dangerous to the wielder if incorrectly performed (when the prostitute casts a spell to rejuvenate herself so that the teenager can see what she looked like when she was his age, she is "consumed by green fire"), and as evidence that Reamy was, if not gay himself, then "remarkably familiar with the gay idiom of the time".
References
- San Diego Lightfoot Sue, at Science Fiction Writers of America; retrieved June 4, 2018
- 1976 Hugo Awards, at TheHugoAwards.org; retrieved June 4, 2018
- Publishers Weekly volume 210; 1976
- The Writer's Digest Guide to Science Fiction & Fantasy, edited by Orson Scott Card; chapter 3, 'Magic', by Allan Maurer and Renee Wright; published 2010 by Writer's Digest Books
- Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction, by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon; published 2010 by Liverpool University Press
External links
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