# A Reverie for Mister Ray

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 Antiquities: Seven Stories [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]