Black Gate

I first discovered Valancourt Books at their wondrous booth in the Dealer’s Room of the 2014 World Fantasy Convention in Washington DC (I wrote about that revelatory find here.) So as soon as I entered the Dealer’s Room at this year’s WFC in Baltimore I searched them out, and was delighted to find them with a well-stocked booth again this year. I stocked up on several of their recent releases, including a new collection from Steve Rasnic Tem, Michael McDowell’s creepy novel Cold Moon Over Babylon, a pair of novels by Mervyn Wall, and the latest volumes of The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories. But I think my most interesting acquisition was The Fungus, a reprint of a gonzo 1985 horror novel by “Harry Adam Knight” (the pseudonym of British writers John Brosnan and Leroy Kettle). Ramsey Campbell called it “A spectacularly gruesome nasty, written with inventiveness, grisly wit, and considerably more intelligence than almost any of its competitors,” and Publishers Weekly raved about it, saying:

What would happen if, through a genetic experiment gone awry, fungi–mushrooms, toadstools, molds and yeasts — were to go out of control and grow with unprecedented vigor and speed and tenacity, and in places formerly inimicable (sic) to them? Knight has pulled out the stops to produce an imaginative and fast-paced sci-fi horror tale set in the British Isles. The protagonist is Barry Wilson, a semi-successful author of spy novels and a former mycologist. Barry’s wife Jane, from whom he is separated, is the scientist whose experiment has lead (sic) to the disaster, and the British government has called upon Barry to help find Jane and her lab notes. Crossing London in an armored tank, Barry and two other volunteers observe all sorts of grotesqueries: people and animals covered with multicolored fungi, some still alive, some now quite insane; farms and buildings and forests draped in spongy shrouds; mushrooms tall as skyscrapers…. A first-rate and vivid thriller.

That’s some great press, but I think what really sold me was the marvelous cover by M.S. Corley. The Fungus was published by Valancourt Books on October 2, 2018. It is 191 pages, priced at $15.99 in trade paperback and $6.99 for the digital version. See all of our coverage of the excellent Valancourt Books here, and check out their website here.

I need to read more Connie Willis. She’s one of the most acclaimed modern SF writers, and what I’ve read of her so far has been fabulous.

I don’t even have the excuse that her books are all too long — she’s made it a habit to regularly publish short, digestible novels over the years, like the alien western Uncharted Territory (1994), Remake (1994), a tale of future Hollywood, and D.A. (2006), an SF conspiracy thriller. In fact, I’d read all three of those if they weren’t all long out of print and impossible to find.

Maybe that’s what was going through the mind of the editors at Del Rey when they decided to publish Terra Incognita, an affordable trade paperback collecting all three short novels. The reviews have been terrific, especially for a reprint collection: Kirkus Reviews said “A master of fantasy playfully combines science fiction with other genres in three antic novellas… Clever, funny, thought-provoking, and sweet, these stories are classic Willis,” and Shelf Awareness said:

Willis’s lively, funny forays into futuristic territory shine as brightly today as when originally released… In all three stories, the protagonists find their narrow concepts of life challenged and expanded by possibilities created through technology. As a collection, these smart, accessible shorts make for an entertaining initiation or reintroduction into the world of one of sci-fi’s greatest treasures.

Here’s all the details.

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