|
|
11-22-03: MIT Press Features Genre Fiction, Chemtrails911.com Leaves Trails of Its Own |
|||||||
"Chemtrails 911.com cause it's an emergency..." Any fan or researcher involved in the world of Forteana would have a hard time missing the wonderful world of Chemtrails. Chemtrails is the name that a group of environmental/conspiracy/fortean researchers use to describe the aircraft contrails that seem to mutate into huge cloud formations that turn the sky into a fluffy chessboard. The general thrust of the Chemtrails gang, quite well represented in the Intro link to the home page for Chemtrails911.com:
|
|||||||
11-20/21-03: Underneath the Cowl, Wetting the Pseuds with More Asher Action |
|||
Neal Asher's Violent Streak Continues... As November rolled around, I knew I had something to look forward to -- another Neal Asher novel. I knew that he'd had it finished for a while, and I was quite looking forwad to it. Here's the cover, another wonderful piece by Steve Rawlings. This time around it will be a well-deserved sturdy hardcover, matching Tor US decisions. But what my readers want to know is will it be another Runcible Universe tale; and the fact is that it won't be. Now Asher is currently working on a a couple of sequels to both 'The Line of Polity' and 'The Skinner'. But 'Cowl' ain't one of them. Here's the full blurb from Asher's own website, which means that he wrote it and that as extensive as it is, it won't even cover the first five pages. Asher promised me a "Whole new universe this one, but it's just as violent." It will clearly fulfill the monster quota.
I'll have to ask him if the name of that monster is deliberate or what... 11-21-03... And here's what he said:
And this is yet another reason we love Neal Asher. I for one am looking forward to my encounter with the torbeast. By the time Tor US gets round to publishing 'Cowl', they will as well. As long as they put a good monster on the cover -- or better yet,just use the Rawlings illos from the UK editions.
|
|||
11-19-03: Andrew Klavan Says A Word |
|||
Bring Dynamite and A Crane
Andrew
Klavan has written a number of thrillers, two of which
have been made into high-profile movies; 'Don't
Say A Word' and 'True Crime'. You've got to have something
pretty good going when your books are turned into Michael
Douglas and Clint Eastwood movies, even if the movies
themselves are not so felicitous. His latest novel
is 'Dynamite Road'. Set in San Francisco,
it's
about
a detective agency that finds itself dealing with what
Klavan calls a "VBM -- Very Bad Man." Death,
destruction, and femmes fatale follow. From the little
subtitle,
it looks as if Klavan is starting a series about the
two protagonists, Weiss & Bishop.
|
|||
11-18-03: Victor Thorn Draws Blood & PS Publishing Sends in Motherlode |
||||
PS Publishing DeliversI recently took
the plunge. I should have done this a year ago, but I was as usual,
a victim of inertia. I finally got in touch with
Peter Crowther and signed up for the whole deal subscription to
the PS Publishing line. There can be little doubt that this is probably
the most important stand-alone publisher since Arkham House, though
there are, yes, a few out there that could give Crowther a run for
his money. Still for breadth, width, depth, quantity, quality and
importantly, variety Crowther has really stretched far beyond what
I saw him doing at first with this venture.
|
||||
Dead On
Ramsey Campbell is a regular visitor to the Agony Column and indeed now to PS Publishing. He collects stories from 35 years ago and a bunch from the last couple of years with an introduction by Poppy Z. Brite. The penultimate tale in this book is 'No Story In It', a wonderful tale of heartfelt despair and hysterical humor, though these jokes are of the "slit your wrists and laugh till you die" genre. Some of the stories first appeared on the internet, in The Spook and at Gothic.net. Campbell is one of the best and most prolific short story writers on the planet. If you've never read his work, this actually might be a fine place to start. |
||||
Four Novellas From Elizabeth Hand
I've only read one novel by Elizabeth Hand, the very odd 'Black Light'. Lucius Shepard writes an introduction for four novellas. All of them have appeared elsewhere, but for those of us who passed them by in their former incarnations, this is a good chance to pick them up in one place. 'Cleopatra Brimstone' appeared in Al Sarrantonio's 'Redshift', 'Pavane for a Prince of the Air' first appeared in the Sub Press anthology 'Embrace the Mutation', 'The Least Trumps' first appeared in Conjunctions, and 'Chip Crockett's Christmas Carol' becomes the reason to buy this as it was published only at scifi.com as a serial. It's nice to see that PS Publishing is expanding the format of their books, but still in the forefront of supporting the novella as a published format. |
The PS Anthology Duet
...And finally, PS has two important anthologies out. Stephen Jones offers up the second of his collections of classic horror in 'By Moonlight Only'. This is Jones' re-creation of the 'Not at Night' series, edited by Christine Campbell Thomson for British Publisher Selwyn & Blount in the 1920's and 1930's. Marc Laidlaw and David Case offer tales original to the anthology, while the reprints include Harlan Ellison's 'In the Fourth Year of the War' and Joe R. Lansdale's 'Tight Little Stitches in a Dead Man's Back'. Cover art is by the dependably great Edward Miller, while the four B&W line-drawing interior illustrations are by Randy Broecker. Also on parade are the manifold authors of 'Infinity Plus Two', edited by Keith Brooke and the ubiquitous Nick Gevers. Gevers is now an editor at PS Publishing, and probably drives an Aston Martin with an ejection seat given how busy he must be. John Clute was pegged for the introduction -- a special delight -- and the contributors include the also ubiquitous Charles Stross, Stephen Baxter, Lucius Shepard, Adam Roberts, Brian Stableford, Eric Brown, Paul McAuley, Terry Bisson, Lisa Goldstein, Ian McDonald, Vonda McIntyre, Paul Park, and Micahel Moorcock. I hope I didn't leave anybody out. We're still waiting for Gary Greenw0ood's novella and everybody is waiting with bated breath for Steve Erikson's second fantasy-mystery-adventure 'The Healthy Dead' with Bachelain and Korbal Broach. But it's hard to complain with a cornucopia like this! |
|||
Drawing Blood With Victor Thorn
You can now draw blood with your very own copy of 'The Bukowski Hangover Project'. I got mine from Ziesing, but you can also get them via Babel Magazine. What you have here is just one step on the other side of the line that divides dangerous genre fiction from dangerous literary fiction. From poetry that is apparently by sociopaths you don't want to meet in real life to fiction that is by sociopaths you might already know in real life, BHP offers some rather disturbing stuff. I'll be looking to Poison Candy/Sisyphus Press for more extremities, including those left over from roadway accidents. From your grill -- to ours. |
11-17-03: Sunday Window Shopping at Bookshop Santa Cruz, Making Pictures for CD |
|||
Stop Me Before I Buy AgainIt seems like there should be no reason for me to ever enter a bookstore. What I don't relentlessly hunt down, I hear about from booksellers who help me hunt down books, from the others on the staff of The Agony Column, from my fellow volunteers on the Fine Print Staff, from readers or from friends. But there's still plenty of room for me to learn, so I take the time to browse our local booksellers. I also quite love strolling about our little downtown area, with its rich surplus of bookstores. Sunday morning, with the house full of sleeping people, I took the opportunity to get a pound of coffee beans and a quick turn through the just-open Bookshop Santa Cruz. There I found, almost side-by-side, two ideal candidates for reading by myself and (one hopes) my readers.
Yes, I admit it, somewhere in the back of my lizard brain I was thinking "MMMMM... RADIOACTIVE....... MUTANTS.....". But I was wary as well. I know that the legendary site of actual horror is all too appealing as a setting for literary novels that I tend to find "put-downable". So when I picked up the book to page through it, I pretty much expected to find dull love scenes and meaningful dialogue. Instead, what I found was a mishmash of colliding typefaces, prose poetry and high weirdness on a scale I've not seen since 'House of Leaves', though not quite on that scale either. 'Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57' bills itself as a "Kabuki novel" in which the results of our nuclear [noo-klee-ur] weaponry are confronted. Written in a hybrid of samurai and the author's Native American tribe, Anishinaabe, traditions, 'Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57' looks to be a rather surreal and literary reading experience. Readers should hoof it down to their local independent emporium and take gander to see if it will draw their fancy as it drew mine. This is the kind of unclassifiable -- yet fairly findable (once you know what to look for)-- weirdness that makes the world of reading so much fun. |
|||
Naked Ghosts
Now, I'd seen 'Pharos' a couple of times but this time I managed to make myself pick it and damn if it didn't look like more than a bit of fun as well. I had to get myself past the naked girl on a rock cover, but once I did I discovered that author Alice Thompson was joint winner (with Graham Swift) of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for fiction. For her second novel, Pandora's Box, she was shortlisted for the Stakis Scottish Writer of the Year. Obviously, I'm interested in Scottish writers. And here's a very short novel of the supernatural that claims to be rather different from the usual supernatural novel -- whatever that may be. I love the blurb that says the blurber "read it in one sitting". Well of course they read it in one sitting. At 160 pages, it's not even as long as some of the PS Publishing Novella series, which we here at The Agony Column love so much. And the presentation surely isn't as nice, but we'll give a pass because we get literary, Scotland, short and supernatural in the same package. If I can make myself shed the cash, you may be seeing a review of this shortly. |
Digging What You Read
|
||
Making Faces
Author Ian McDowell, whose scathing, scatological desconstruction of Arthurian legends Mordred's Curse and Merlin's Gift should be first on everybody's list of heroic fantasy sent me this illustration for his story in the latest CD. I had to share it with the readers and I'm sure everyone can see why. |