Luis Ortiz (1) (1949–)

If the writers who contributed to Why New Yorkers Smoke are to be believed there's only one thing New Yorkers are, were, or ever will be afraid of: 9/11. Seven of the eleven stories included in this collection make mention of 9/11, with six of them using it as a major plot point.

As a life-long New Yorker - one of the few actually born and raised in Manhattan- I can tell you New Yorkers have way more to be afraid of than planes crashing into skyscrapers. Like mutant rats taking over the show more subway system and charging riders twice the current MTA going rate for a ride. Or a fleet of rogue taxi cabs going all "Christine" and hunting down pedestrians like a pack of hungry dogs. Or that chain pharmacies will come to constitute more than half of the City's retail outlets.

Yes, 9/11 was a horror Stephen King couldn't have even cooked up, but in answering the question "what is there to fear in New York City," I wish the writers and editor of Why New Yorkers Smoke hadn't gone for the most obvious answer.

The strongest stories in the collection are those that don't deal with 9/11 at all. The title story by Lawrence Greenberg is a slow burning and atmospheric piece of sci-fi that totally creeped me out. Don Webb's "Sparrow" examines the sparkly lure of the city that never sleeps, and how quickly the shine can dull and destroy. Scott Edelman's "A Stranger Lying Alone" was the only 9/11 related story with any real emotional weight, told form the point of view of a man who loves the City so much he would rather die in the wreckage and become a part of history than continue to live in a world where this sort of tragedy can happen.

The rest of the collection is uneven. The opening story, Barry N. Malzberg's "Why We Talk to Ourselves" is too esoteric to truly hook the reader. Paul Di Filippo's "Candles in a Chianti Bottle..." is overwritten and ends without any satisfying resolution. And Carol Emschwiller's "Bountiful City" though well written, is anti-climactic.

I wanted Why New Yorkers Smoke to upset my reality. I wanted it to take all the tiny fears city-dwellers walk around with all day long and blow them out of proportion. I wanted to see the mundane made extraordinary. And though a handful of the contributors managed to pull it off, most of the stories left me cold. show less

An anthology of short stories inspired by the theme "What is there to fear in New York City?" Several of them have science fiction or fantasy elements, and, unsurprisingly, many touch directly or indirectly on the memory of 9/11.

I really wanted to like this book. The theme sounded great. But while a few of the stories have an interesting central metaphor or idea, they never really do much with them, and none of them left me feeling satisfied, emotionally or otherwise. The SF elements were show more generally weak and unoriginal, too, and ultimately the whole thing feels like an exercise in style over substance.

It's possible that I might have been a little bit more affected by some of it if I had more of a personal connection to NYC, but I really don't think that's the deciding factor in forming my opinion. show less

Nice illustrated biography of the underappreciated artist and illustrator [a:Lee Brown Coye|2917002|Lee Brown Coye|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. Other retrospectives have better artwork presentation but this is the most comprehensive actual biography by far. The text is awkward at times but the information and chronology is all there and Ortiz does manage to present the man behind the artwork. It also presents a good overview of show more his non-weird artwork which is often neglected by others. Lots of color plates as well as photographs.

The one negative, and it is only a slight one, is the layout. The text and artwork don't follow chronologically very well so you will find yourself paging back and forth to match up illustrations with the text. Bibliography, footnotes, and index are all handy. Gobs and gobs of illustrations, almost too many. It could have used more full-page graphics.

The book is printed on a heavy high gloss magazine type stock which I'm not sure I'm a big fan of. It gives it a bit of an amateur look. It has the sort of shiny slick cover I always associate with textbooks from my grammar school days.

I have always felt that Coye was much better than his contemporaries at capturing the truly uncanny in his book and pulp illustrations, much more so than the more heralded [a:Virgil Finlay|348643|Virgil Finlay|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1360990626p2/348643.jpg] or [a:Hannes Bok|205038|Hannes Bok|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1250179378p2/205038.jpg]. His illustrations had just the right touch of weird along with a gallows sort of humor to them. show less

WHY NEW YORKERS SMOKE is an anthology of stories prompted by the question, "What is there to fear in New York City?" The stories generally hit on the subjects you'd expect (9/11, the immigrant experience) with the angles you'd expect (ghosts, crazy monologue). In all, it a handful of self-consciously literary attempts to handle fantasy elements that rarely pans out.

One great exception is Paul Di Filipo's "Candle in a Chianti Bottle...", a historical fantasy of the Beatnik era that rushes show more ahead with charm and imagination. One must wonder how it ended up, so far out of place, in this collection. show less