San Diego Lightfoot Sue

"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 1975 Nebula Award for Best Novelette,[1] and was a finalist for the 1976 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.[2] Publishers Weekly called it "smooth".[3]

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"),[4] and as evidence that Reamy was, if not gay himself, then "remarkably familiar with the gay idiom of the time".[5]

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References
  1. San Diego Lightfoot Sue, at Science Fiction Writers of America; retrieved June 4, 2018
  2. 1976 Hugo Awards, at TheHugoAwards.org; retrieved June 4, 2018
  3. Publishers Weekly volume 210; 1976
  4. 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
  5. Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction, by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon; published 2010 by Liverpool University Press
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