Skip to content
Answering Your Questions About Reactor: Right here.
Sign up for our weekly newsletter. Everything in one handy email.
When one looks in the box, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the cat.

Reactor

Welcome back to The Pop Quiz at the End of the Universe, a recurring series here on Tor.com featuring some of our favorite science fiction and fantasy authors, artists, and others!

Today we’re joined by Lucy Corin, author of the short story collection The Entire Predicament (A finalist for the Shirley Jackson Prize) and the novel Everyday Psychokillers: A History for Girls. The collection One Hundred Apocalypses and Other Apocalypses was just released from McSweeney’s Books. She spent last year at the American Academy in Rome as the 2012 John Guare Fellow in Literature. You can catch her at McSweeny’s Apocalypse Variety Show tonight, September 12th, at Housing Works Bookstore Cafe in NYC.

Join us as we cover subjects ranging from shoes to fried chicken, and more!

Please relate one fact about yourself that has never appeared anywhere else in print or on the Internet.

I spent a lot of money on a pair of shoes this year because I imagined a pair of men’s slippers I could wear with a dress and then I saw the Pope’s shoes and thought “Like that!” and then I saw some for sale and I bought them.

If you could be reincarnated as any historical figure, who would you like to be?

Isis.

opens in a new windowOne Hundred Apocalypses Lucy CorinIf you could choose your own personal theme music/song to play every time you enter a room, what would you pick?

Here is a fact: I have a recurring earworm that strikes me when I am anxious and it’s the Mighty Mouse theme ‘here I come to save the day.’ I do not want it to play, not even in my head, but when I am not afflicted I think it’s funny.

Do you have a favorite underrated/unknown/under-read author?

Patricia Eakins. She’s a self-described fabulist. I think her stuff is beautiful, bizarre, and hilarious. I don’t like any books, really, if they fall squarely within any genre—I like books that feel singular to read—and I don’t even think fabulist describes her very well. Musicality of prose. Unabashed snatching of motif. Goofyness. Wisdom.

What’s the most embarrassing guilty pleasure you’ll admit to? (music, movies, pop culture, food, drink, etc…all fair game!)

Chick-fil-a chicken sandwich. Haven’t had one in 10 years, since I moved away from NC, but I still think of it. Those jerks sure can make a chicken sandwich.

Would you rather discover the fountain of youth or proof of life on Mars?

Here is a passage from Wells Tower (It’s from Everything Ravaged Everything Burned—and I discovered while looking for it that it appears to have been CUT from the final version of his collection—I have a xerox from its magazine appearance… I’m concerned and distressed…) BUT here’s the quote:

[Gnut, a Viking] nudged me and joked… “If you had to live on the ship, but you got to have a magic basket full of your favorite food, but only one favorite food, what would it be? I’d have black pudding. Black pudding and plums. So all right, you get two foods.” Or: “If someone put a curse on you and you had to have horns like a goat, and shit little shits like a goat, would you rather have that, or a seven-foot dick that you had to have hanging out of your pants at all times?”

What would your Patronus/familiar be?

A dragon the size of a large dog.

What was your gateway to SF/Fantasy, as a child or young adult?

Z for Zachariah, Robert C O’Brien. Looking that up to make sure I spelled it right, I see it is in production to be a movie. Hmmm. This could be a great movie. But I am expecting it to be destroyed. There were also Isaac Asimov stories always floating around the house. And Night Shift, Stephen King—I really liked the story with the eyes on the fingers. But I was too afraid to get past the first chapter of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe.

About the Author

About Author Mobile

Tor.com

Author

Learn More About Tor.com
Subscribe
Notify of
guest
0 Comments
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments