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the sleep of reason

by Michael Swanwick

with illustrations by
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes

 
 
  illustration
 

Presenting a series of very short stories by Michael Swanwick based on Los Caprichos, a series of etchings by Francisco Goya. This is Mr. Goya's first collaboration with Mr. Swanwick, and we hope it will not be his last.

the stories

1. The Sleep of Reason
Produces Nightmares

2. Elena's Heart

3. The Sentinel

4. Death and Elena

5. The Child-Buyer

6. Prick the Donkey

7. The Children of Utopia

8. Live! Nude! Witches!

9. Spontaneous Human Combustion

10. The Godmothers

11. The All-Devouring

12. Concerning Elena and
a Certain Mouse

13. Silly Old Clown

14. The Education of Young Prick

15. The Nightmare Court

16. The Forge of Witches

17. Dirt

18. The Sorrows of Young Grace

19. The Clyster of San Bernardino

20. True Love

21. The Beer of Eternity

22. Witches and Nightmares

23. Spanking

24. Elena on the Street

25. Prick in Love

26. Grace in the Bordello

27. Trolls

28. The Homunculus

29. Death in Venice

30. Grace and Elena

31. A Sad Story

32. Slander

33. Wicked Grace

34. A Sad Story Continued

35. Witches' Orgies

36. The Miser

37. A Sad Story Concluded

38. The Nightmares in Concert

39. Elena By Herself

40. The Picadors' Club

41. Grace Violated

42. Paint Your Goat

43. Elena's Day of Rest

44. Prick Among the Demons

45. A Close Shave

46. Grace at the Gallows

47. The Donkey Method

48. The Morning After

49. The Rookie

50. Nightmares and Witches

51. Capitalism for Dummies

52. Prick the Warrior

53. Poor Little Girls

54. Elena's Little Secret

55. The Stone of Folly

56. The Empress Herself

57. Grooming Your Nightmares

58. Prick the Physician

59. Grace and Nightmares

60. Haute Couture

61. Elena's Playful Side

62. Worshipping the Scarecrow

63. Your Family in a Nutshell

64. The Parrot with a Golden Beak

65. Grace in the Madhouse

66. Commedia dell'Arte

67. Dein Kampf

68. The Great Wheel of the World

69. Elena the Libertarian

70. How the Witches Love to Pluck!

71. Tall Tales

72. Prick and Posterity

73. The Lions of the Law

74. Grace's Final Irony

75. Veterans of Heroic Wars

76. The End of the Witches

77. The Apotheosis of Elena

78. The Dark Night of the Soul

79. The Nightmares Awaken

80. Afterword: The Age of Goya, the Age of Swanwick

 

 

the artist and the illustrator

Michael Swanwick is the Hugo-bedizened science-fiction writer who single-handedly has reclaimed the short-short story from the dustbin of history, with Puck Aleshire's Abecedary, Writing in My Sleep, Picasso Deconstructed, and, of course, the Periodic Table of Science Fiction,, now playing on SciFiction. Cigar-box Faust and Other Miniatures, a collection of much (though far from all) of his short-short output is forthcoming from Tachyon Publications in winter of 2002.

Francisco Goya, hardly a new light on the artistic horizon, is well known at age 255 for his paintings, and for his fantastical and satiric etchings, of which Los Caprichos, the sequence of eighty etchings featured here, may be the most famous. /p>

We are indebted to Rob Lancefield, Registrar of the Davison Art Center at Wesleyan University, and to the DAC itself, for giving us permission to use their digital images of Goya's Los Caprichos made from the museum's collection of etchings from the first edition. We encourage you to visit the DAC website, which displays substantial online gallery of their extensive collection of prints, photographs, and other works of art on paper.

Want the back-story for The Sleep of Reason? Michael Swanwick tells all, or some anyway, in an interview with Nick Gevers in Sci-Fi Weekly. Check it out.

 

 

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