"Buffalo Gals, Won't You Come Out Tonight" is a

science fiction Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel unive ...

novelette by American writer

Ursula K. Le Guin Ursula Kroeber Le Guin (; October 21, 1929 – January 22, 2018) was an American author best known for her works of speculative fiction, including science fiction works set in her Hainish universe, and the '' Earthsea'' fantasy series. She was ...

, originally published in the November 1987 issue of '' The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction'' and collected in '' Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences''. The title is borrowed from the song "

Buffalo Gals "Buffalo Gals" is a traditional American song, written and published as "Lubly Fan" in 1844 by the blackface minstrel John Hodges, who performed as "Cool White". The song was widely popular throughout the United States, where minstrels often alt ...

" where the first line of the chorus is "Buffalo gals, won't you come out tonight?" It won the

Hugo Award for Best Novelette The Hugo Award for Best Novelette is one of the Hugo Awards given each year for science fiction or fantasy stories published or translated into English during the previous calendar year. The novelette award is available for works of fiction of ...

and the

World Fantasy Award for Best Novella In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the worl ...

in 1988, and was nominated for the

Nebula Award The Nebula Awards annually recognize the best works of science fiction or fantasy published in the United States. The awards are organized and awarded by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), a nonprofit association of profe ...

and the Theodore Sturgeon Award.Locus Index to SF Awards
It was re-published in 1994 by Pomegranate Artbooks with illustrations provided by Susan Seddon Boulet.

Plot summary

A lost child tumbles into the confusing world of Southwestern U.S. desert folklore and lives for a while with the

trickster In mythology and the study of folklore and religion, a trickster is a character in a story (god, goddess, spirit, human or anthropomorphisation) who exhibits a great degree of intellect or secret knowledge and uses it to play tricks or otherwi ...

Coyote.

References

External links

* Hugo Award for Best Novelette winning works Science fiction short stories Short stories by Ursula K. Le Guin World Fantasy Award for Best Novella winners Works originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction 1987 short stories {{1980s-sf-story-stub