Who are the Pallahaxi Players? What is Readers Theatre?

Who are the Pallahaxi Players? What is Readers Theatre?

“Reader's theatre or Reader's theater is a style of theater in which the actors do not memorize their lines. Actors use only vocal expression to help the audience understand the story … This style of performance of literature was initially lauded because it emphasized hearing a written text as a new way to understand literature.” Wikipedia

The Pallahaxi Players is a group of fans and authors who like to perform (scripts in hand) short plays for the audiences of VCon—Vancouver’s premier science fiction, fantasy, and gaming convention. We are following in the tradition of Lonely Cry Theatre, founded by Michael G. Coney, who with fellow writers and hangers on entertained VCon audiences for years. Our name is an homage to the world found in his novels Hello, Summer, Goodbye (alternately published as Rax and Pallahaxi Tide) and I Remember Pallahaxi.

Recipient of the British Science Fiction Association Award, one Nebula, and five Aurora Awards, Michael G. Coney was a well loved man and an influential writer in the 1970s British Invasion, writing a variety of works that often lulled the reader into thinking she was reading fantasy only to discover it was finely wrought science fiction. Humour, character, place, and plot all played a large part in Mike’s works. He is greatly missed by those who knew him.

This year at VCon, as part of our celebration of the British Invasion, the Pallahaxi Players will be performing Mike’s first Lonely Cry offering, “Sex and Perversion in Gnomedom.”

VCON 42/Canvention 38: Science Fiction, Fantasy and Games: 5-7 October 2018. Hosted by WCSFA - West Coast Science Fiction Association and VCON.

Visit our Facebook page!

Mike Coney, External References:

“I think that [writing] has taught me always to be completely honest with the reader and never allow myself to take the easy way out for the sake of glib plot device.”

Casey June Wolf’s first contact with Mike Coney’s books (“though I’d known Mike and his Lonely Cry Readers Theatre for some years”): “Pallahaxi Mike,” Den Page of Casey June Wolf, Friday, September 16, 2005.

“Michael Coney: Science-fiction writer whose readability hid inner depths” by Christopher Priest. The Guardian, Thu 1 Dec 2005 09.31 GMT.

Michael's Spyglass: an Interview with Mike Coney by C. June Wolf. Strange Horizons, Issue: 6 february 2006.

Review of “Hello Summer, Goodbye and I Remember Pallahaxi by Michael G. Coney” by Colin Harvey. Strange Horizons, Issue: 28 July 2008.

Excerpt from Pallahaxi Tide by Michael G. Coney, read by Casey June Wolf. FintanSparky, 22 Oct 2011.

Michael G. Coney Wikipedia page.

Summary Bibliography: Michael G. Coney, The Internet Speculative Fiction Database.

Image: "Alien Amor" by Laura_Molina (Laura Molina/National Museum of Mexican Art) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

"Delta Marsh" Free Online (read or listen)

Michael DeLuca, publisher of Reckoning, "An annual journal of creative writing on environmental justice", has been one by one releasing online the stories from Reckoning's second annual issue. My story, "Delta Marsh," became available this month. You can read it online (in a very clear and easy format) or you can listen to or download (!) the podcast--read by yours truly.

Enjoy "Delta Marsh" and all the other offerings of writing and art that DeLuca has pulled together for you.

Cheers!

Casey

Two Stories Upcoming in "The Food of My People"

I am very happy to note that two of my stories, one new and the other a reprint, have been accepted for the anthology, The Food of My People, edited by Ursula Pflug and Candas Jane Dorsey.

The two are very different stories.

"The One That Gets Away", set on the west coast of Vancouver Island, tells the story of a man obsessed with fishing for dogfish from a pier.

"Eating Our Young", which was first published in the small press anthology, The Speed of Dark, looks at the plight of two young children who are regularly eaten by their family and left to recover.

I suppose they sound equally grim, in a way, but the one is an exploration, an awakening, and the other is a painful close-up of unwitting cruelty and its effects.

One of the requirements of the book is a recipe to go with each story. Both of these were a challenge for me, considering I don't actually eat sharks or children. But in the end I was able to find recipes that made sense with the stories, and now I am eagerly awaiting the publication of the book, so that I can discover all the other stories presented in the book.

"Delta Marsh" published in Reckoning 2

I'm happy to report that my story "Delta Marsh" is included in this year's Reckoning magazine (Reckoning 2). The story burbled up one day many years ago when I made a visit to the marsh and the research station there. I left it for ages and then came across it again, rewrote it, and discovered Michael J. deLuca's wonderful magazine. It felt like a great fit for the story and how lovely that the editor agreed. 

I've also recorded a podcast of the story (at the Vancouver Public Library's wonderful and free Inspiration Lab)--Michael will likely post it when my story is made available on the website. The way this works is, over the next few months the stories listed in the table of contents below will be put up on the website. So if you want to have a read of the stories very very gradually, you can get them this way. (Though they won't be a lovely epub download like the full anthology). "Delta Marsh" will probably come out at the end of March. I'll keep you posted.

Here's a little idea of what you will find in the journal, and links to where you can buy it ($7 US). Michael is also going to be releasing the stories one at a time online, though I'm not sure exactly where. Check here to see what's up.

Reckoning 2

A locus for the conflict between the world as it has become 
and the world as we wanted it to be. 

Ebook release: December 21, 2017. e-ISBN: 9780998925226
Ebook available now!
Weightless Books
Amazon
Barnes & Noble

Print release: June 21, 2018.
248 pages, 67,000 words.

Contents

Art

Cover: Rebirth – Archan Nair
Disintigreetings – Pepe Rojo
Once It Was a Tree – Oneslutriot

Poetry

Earthspun – Krista Hoeppner Leahy
The Bull Who Bars the Gate to Heaven – Zella Christensen
I’m the Villain, Ok? – Mary Alexandra Agner
A Hundred Years From Now – Mohammad Shafiqul Islam
Development – F.J. Bergmann
Will We Be Good and Kind At The End – Kelly Madden

Fiction

A Wispy Chastening – D.A. Xaolin Spires
Rumpelstiltskin – Jane Elliott
To the Place of Skulls – Innocent Ilo
Girl Singing with Farm – Kathrin Köhler
The Complaint of All Living Things – Joanne Rixon
Fourth-Dimensional Tessellations of the American College Graduate – Marie Vibbert
Delta Marsh – Casey June Wolf
The Shale Giants – Marissa Lingen
An Oasis of Amends – Floris M. Kleijne
The Alice Grey – Santiago Belluco
Lanny Boykin Rises Up Singing – Jess Barber
Night of No Return – Grace Seybold

Nonfiction

Editor’s Note: On Having a Kid in the Climate Apocalypse – Michael J. DeLuca
A Ghost Can Only Take – Justin Howe
From Paris, With Rage – George F.
‘You are from the U.S.’ – Yukyan Lam
A Kinder And More Caring Future? – Brian Francis Slattery