"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 Nebula Award for Best Novelette of 1975,San Diego Lightfoot Sue, at Science Fiction Writers of America; retrieved June 4, 2018 and was a finalist for the 1976 Hugo Award for Best Novelette.1976 Hugo Awards, at TheHugoAwards.org; retrieved June 4, 2018 Publishers Weekly called it "smooth".Publishers Weekly volume 210; 1976
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"),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 and as evidence that Reamy was, if not gay himself, then "remarkably familiar with the gay idiom of the time".Queer Universes: Sexualities in Science Fiction, by Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger, and Joan Gordon; published 2010 by Liverpool University Press
References
External links "San Diego Lightfoot Sue", at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database