Paul Di Filippo – Famed Author, Agile Mind, Fascinating Guy
“Paul Di Filippo has certainly done his homework: the settings as well as the language emulate the times and, in Dickinson’s and Whitman’s cases, their poetic language, which asserts itself into their conversational dialogue and thoughts at most unusual but appropriate moments. Dickinson’s “Universe Entire” is disrupted by a naked Whitman bathing in her rain barrel and singing his “body electric.” But will Dickinson’s “White Election” remain intact?”-Amazon.com review of “The Steampunk Trilogy”
“Science fiction at its best should be crazy and dangerous, not sane and safe.” -Paul Di Filippo
There’s always an urge to start out by giving you an author’s credentials. And sure, his list of published books, stories, and essays, is incredibly epic, including nominations for science fictions highest honors – a Hugo, two Nebulas, two World Fantasy Awards. I mean, seriously, it’s not just incredibly epic, it’s ridiculously epic; check it out over here.
But those aren’t the only reasons why Paul Di Filippo is likely to be part of your favorite encounters at World’s Fair. When we were looking at authors, we kept hearing about what a sweet fellow Paul is, and how, despite being one of the best-known short story creators and essayists alive in science fiction today, he’s terribly down-to-earth. From everything we heard about him, we thought, “Here’s someone we’d love to run into at the bar!” And his work is so great! It’s eccentric, spanning a wide swooping swipe at several genres. He’s an avid experimenter, an open-minded creator who truly fits the spirit of The Steampunk World’s Fair!
His website says, “Paul Di Filippo is the author of hundreds of short stories, some of which have been collected in these widely-praised collections: The Steampunk Trilogy, Ribofunk, Fractal Paisleys, Lost Pages, Little Doors, Strange Trades, Babylon Sisters, and his multiple-award-nominated novella, A Year in the Linear City. Another earlier collection, Destroy All Brains, was published by Pirate Writings, but is quite rare because of the extremely short print run (if you see one, buy it!).
The popularity of Di Filippo’s short stories sometimes distracts from the impact of his mindbending, utterly unclassifiable novels: Ciphers, Joe’s Liver, Fuzzy Dice, A Mouthful of Tongues, and Spondulix. Paul’s offbeat sensibility, soulful characterizations, exquisite-yet-compact prose, and laugh-out-loud dialogue give his work a charmingly unique voice that is both compelling and addictive.”
Okay, that’s actually a better description than we were going to write. Curse you, Paul, and your exquisite-yet-compact prose! We’ll just leave this here, and say, “This is a splendid fellow. You ought to look up his work, read it, and buy the man a beer!” (possibly at our Craft Beer Tasting…)
(You can find some of his work online at this website!)