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Author: John ONeill

Total Pulp Victory: A Report from Windy City Pulp & Paper 2019

Total Pulp Victory: A Report from Windy City Pulp & Paper 2019

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Windy CIty Pulp and Paper 2018 paperback treasures-small

A few of the $1 paperbacks I brought home from Windy City

I returned from the 2019 Windy City Pulp and Paperback Show a few hours ago, weary and happy. It was another fabulous convention, and once again it proved to be the undisputed best show in Chicagoland for those who love vintage books and magazines.

This was the 19th annual convention. It was founded in 2001 by Doug Ellis, and I’ve been attending ever since Howard Andrew Jones and John C. Hocking made the long trip to the 7th Windy City way back in 2007. This year I spent most of the show with friends, including BG bloggers Bob Byrne, Rich Horton, and Steven Silver, as well as local booksellers Arin Komins and Rich Warren, who had a booth and a few spare chairs and were kind enough to let us hang out. There was lots of great food and terrific conversation, and we toasted absent friends, including Howard Andrew Jones, Jason M. Waltz, Barbara Barrett, and especially bookseller and all-around great soul Dave Willoughby, who passed away last year. Dave personified the friendly and welcoming nature of Windy City better than anyone else, I think, and he was profoundly missed.

I made numerous great purchases at the show, including an assortment of Arkham House hardcovers from Doug, some marvelous books from the Glenn Lord estate (purchased from his widow, Lou Ann), a couple of recent Dark Adventure Radio Theater releases from Greg Ketter, a box of vintage SF digests in great condition — and some really wonderful treasures at the auction, including a copy of the 1990 Donald Grant illustrated edition of Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness, several stacks of pulps, and an absolutely magnificent set of 1927 Weird Tales, bound in two volumes.

But as usual, most of what I took home with me was paperbacks. Lots of paperbacks. I found a few that I was willing to pay a premium for, including some Clark Ashton Smith collections and horror anthologies, but the vast majority of them — well over 200 in total — were less than $1 each, including all those I spread out on my kitchen floor to photograph when I got home (see above).

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Future Treasures: All My Colors by David Quantick

Future Treasures: All My Colors by David Quantick

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All My Colors-smallDavid Quantick is the author of Sparks and The Mule. His latest, All My Colors, is a dark comedy about a man who remembers a book that may not exist, with dire consequences.

Booklist compares it to one of my favorite 80s fantasies, saying “the slowly unfolding literary menace will appeal to fans of Jonathan Carroll’s The Land of Laughs (1980),” and Kirkus Reviews calls it “wonderfully bizarre… a twisty and fitfully funny episode of The Twilight Zone, it’s a blast. A caustic, unexpected comic horror story in which the villain, as always, thinks he’s the hero.” Here’s the description.

It is March 1979 in DeKalb Illinois. Todd Milstead is a wannabe writer, a serial adulterer, and a jerk, only tolerated by his friends because he throws the best parties with the best booze. During one particular party, Todd is showing off his perfect recall, quoting poetry and literature word for word plucked from his eidetic memory. When he begins quoting from a book no one else seems to know, a novel called All My Colors, Todd is incredulous. He can quote it from cover to cover and yet it doesn’t seem to exist.

With a looming divorce and mounting financial worries, Todd finally tries to write a novel, with the vague idea of making money from his talent. The only problem is he can’t write. But the book — All My Colors — is there in his head. Todd makes a decision: he will “write” this book that nobody but him can remember. After all, if nobody’s heard of it, how can he get into trouble?

As the dire consequences of his actions come home to both Todd and his long-suffering friends, it becomes clear that there is a high — and painful — price to pay for his crime.

All My Colors will be published by Titan Books on April 16, 2019. It is 289 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $8.99 in digital formats.

See all of our recent coverage of the best upcoming fantasy here.

New Treasures: Necropolis PD by Nathan Sumsion

New Treasures: Necropolis PD by Nathan Sumsion

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Necropolis PD-smallBack in October, I managed to trap Parvus Press co-founder Colin Coyle in a bar long enough to get the scoop on his upcoming releases. There were plenty of interesting titles in the mix, but the one that really grabbed my attention was the debut fantasy novel by Nathan Sumsion, co-creator of the Terra Immortalis role playing game. Here’s what Colin shared then.

Necropolis PD is one of my favorite urban fantasies in a long time. It’s a cousin to both Butcher’s Dresden Files and Gaiman’s Neverwhere and I honestly feel that it brings a new flavor to a genre that has been heavily tread in recent years.

Necropolis PD is the tale of Jacob Green, trapped in the Meridian, a city of the dead, and pressed into service to solve a series of bizarre murders. Andy Whitaker at SFCrowsnest says Meridian “is a strange and compelling place. Don’t be fooled by the dark humour and strange environment… [Sumsion] might just have struck gold.” Here’s the description.

How do you solve a murder in the city of the dead?

Jacob Green was just an average college student. But three months ago, he ran through the wrong door and found himself trapped in the city of Meridian – a literal necropolis, concealed from the modern world, made up of forgotten places and populated entirely by the dead.

As the only living, breathing resident, Jake has struggled to scrape out an existence while waiting for the Necropolis Police Department to decide his fate, and it’s not looking good. But when an unusual string of crimes hits the city, Jake’s overseer and tormentor, NPD Detective Marsh offers him a deal: Jake’s life in exchange for helping them solve the worst series of crimes in the necropolis’ history.

Someone, or some thing is killing the dead, and if Jake can’t figure out who’s responsible, he could be next.

Necropolis PD is a hidden world fantasy that combines mystery, horror, magic, and more than a little humor. This book is perfect for the living and recently-departed alike.

Necropolis PD is the latest in the flourishing sub-genre of undead detective fiction. If you like it as much as I do, here’s a few more recent examples.

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Ancient Astronauts, the Thing in the Pond, and the Cobweb Queen: The Weirdbook Annual #2: Cthulhu

Ancient Astronauts, the Thing in the Pond, and the Cobweb Queen: The Weirdbook Annual #2: Cthulhu

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Weirdbook Annual 2 Cthulhu-smallWeirdbook‘s editor Doug Draa explains the rationale behind the magazine’s new line of Annuals in his editorial this issue.

We here at Weirdbook decided to do a yearly themed fifth issue. An annual if you will.

Last year’s theme was “Witches” and it turned out to be one of our most popular issues to date. After much soul searching it was decided that this year’s theme would be the ever popular “Cthulhu Mythos”… even after more than 9 decades, Mr. Lovecraft’s literary universe still continues to fire the imaginations of both writers and readers alike. It’s not an overstatement to say that Mr. Lovecraft’s fans and those of his Mythos are truly legion and beyond numbering.

I think that you, the reader will find this a highly enjoyable issue full of eldritch, unspeakable, and nameless horrors. I decided that this issue should contain stories by the finest of Weirdbook‘s regular contributors. This list includes such luminaries as Lucy A. Snyder, Ann K. Schwader, Leanna Falconer, Cynthia Ward, Darrell Schweitzer, Adrian Cole, and John R. Fultz to name just a few. I’m also very proud to have a brand new story from Mr. Robert M. Price which marks his very first appearance in this incarnation of Weirdbook! I can honestly call this Weirdbook‘s very first All Star Issue!

That’s an impressive list of contributors, and it includes at least two names well known to our readers: John R. Fultz, who published four stories in Black Gate, and Darrell Schweitzer, who appeared in BG 3 and BG 15.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents for the Weirdbook Annual #2: Cthulhu.

Short Stories

“The Shining Trapezohedron,” by Robert M. Price
“A Noble Endeavor,” by Lucy A. Snyder
“Ancient Astronauts,” by Cynthia Ward
“The Thing in the Pond,” by John R. Fultz

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Future Treasures: A Time of Blood, Book 2 of Of Blood and Bone, by John Gwynne

Future Treasures: A Time of Blood, Book 2 of Of Blood and Bone, by John Gwynne

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A Time of Dread-small A Time of Blood-small

John Gwynne won the David Gemmell Morningstar for Malice, the opening novel in his 4-book series The Faithful and the Fallen. That series has enthusiastic fans all over the world, and when word spread that Gwynne was preparing a sequel series, Of Blood and Bone, it generated plenty of interest. In his review of the first volume of that new series at The Fantasy Hive, A Time of Dread (2018), Charlie Hopkins wrote:

Wrath was an awe-inspiring, frenetic finale to one of the all-time great fantasy series – The Faithful and the Fallen – and I’d just finished reading it when I heard John Gwynne’s new project would also be set in the Banished Lands, but a few generations into the future… If you’ve not read the first series, don’t hesitate to start here with this one and then go back later to read the “prequel.’ A Time of Dread is going to be on every ‘Best of’ list, and you’d be daft not to move it to the top of your ‘must read’ pile.

A Time of Dread was well received when it first appeared. Here’s part of the Publishers Weekly review:

Nice guys finish alive, and not always last, in this gritty but not grimdark fantasy of battling supernatural forces, set in a fantasy world where humans battle the demonic Kadoshim with the assistance of the Ben-Elim, a winged race of warriors from the ethereal Otherworld. Bleda, a human warrior-prince whose siblings are killed by a Ben-Elim they attacked, is taken hostage and raised by the Ben-Elim. When the supposedly defeated Kadoshim suddenly spring out of hiding with their own human allies and human-demon children, Bleda teams up with Riv, a fellow denizen of the Ben-Elim citadel, to take them on. Riv finds that the angels she knows often fight and scheme among themselves, their conflict instigated by the issue of “improper” human–Ben-Elim relationships. Separately, Sig, a bear-riding giant familiar from Gwynne’s The Faithful and the Fallen series, embarks on a solo quest to eradicate the Kadoshim… [Gwynne] avoids much of the cynicism that reduces epic struggles to mere realpolitik.

A Time of Blood, Book 2 of Of Blood and Bone, arrives next week from Macmillan (UK) and Orbit (US). It is 474 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $11.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Paul Young. Read a lengthy excerpt from A Time of Dread here.

New Treasures: The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

New Treasures: The Luminous Dead by Caitlin Starling

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The Luminous Dead-small The Luminous Dead-back-small

There’s nothing like a good sci-fi horror tale. A lot of my favorite SF is horror, in fact — Alien, Dan Simmons’ Carrion Comfort, Stephen King’s The Stand, Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness.

The tale of an ill-fated mining expedition on an alien planet, Caitlin Starling’s debut novel The Luminous Dead looks like one of the most promising SF horror tales of the year. Liz Bourke at Tor.com says it’s “a gripping debut from a talented voice,” and Black Gate author Martha Wells calls it “A tense psychological thriller and a gripping survival story… a dark ride that’s worth every step.” Here’s Martin Cahill, from his review at The Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog.

Outfitted in a state of the art suit monitors and feeds her — and shields her presence from the mysterious, monstrous Tunnelers that dwell within the plane — Gyre’s life depends on the reliability of the tech and the skill of her team of handlers, who are ostensibly steering her toward the safest paths from the surface… Except there is no team, there’s just Em. Brilliant, cold, and tactical, Em has no qualms with using drugs on Gyre without her consent, manipulating her, and keeping her in the dark (both literally and metaphorically) as she works toward her own ends.

Together, Gyre and Em delve into one of the most dangerous cave systems on the planet, for a purpose that Gyre doesn’t know and Em won’t reveal. And though she’s certainly isolated on her journey, Gyre may not be alone in the dark.

That’s just a hint of the horrors lurking within The Luminous Dead, the fantastic horror sci-fi debut from Caitlin Starling. It’s a novel as claustrophobic as the premise suggests… As danger closes in on all sides, we’re never quite sure who love, who to hate, or who to trust.

And oh what dangers there are: treacherous drops, vicious riptides flowing through underground pools, an alien fungus that infects everything it touches, and the Tunnelers, ravenous creatures drawn to disturbances in the rock, Gyre’s suit batteries running low, missing supply checkpoints, and more. There is much to fear down in the dark.

The Luminous Dead was published by Harper Voyager on April 2, 2019. It is 414 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $11.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Alejandro Colucci. Read a generous 35-page sample (the complete first three chapters) here.

Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, Volume Thirteen, edited by Jonathan Strahan

Future Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy, Volume Thirteen, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Volume 13-smallThe 2019 Hugo Awards Finalists were announced this week and, as usual, I immediately wanted to track down the short fiction nominees I missed last year (which turns out to be most of ’em, but I won’t let this digress into a cranky rant about the precious little short fiction I get to read these days.) Many of the nominees are online of course, but scattered across numerous sites. So it made me laugh when I saw this tongue-in-cheek post from editor Jonathan Strahan on Facebook this morning:

Hugo Awards nominees? Shortlists? If only there were somewhere you could read a whole bunch of the nominees all in one place, right now. Hmmm.

He’s referring, of course, to his upcoming book The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Volume Thirteen, arriving from Solaris in two weeks. It contains 30 stories, including a whopping seven Hugo nominees. I know this because Piet Nel conveniently did the counting for me in the comments:

I’d go for a book that had at least four of the Nebula finalists, seven up for the Hugo, and six on the final Sturgeon ballot. If only I knew of such a book…

While I don’t mean to imply that a pure nominee count is the best measure of success for a Year’s Best anthology, you still have to give it up for Strahan. The man has excellent taste, and no mistake.

While it’s great to have a single volume packed with so much Hugo nominee goodness, the arrival of Volume Thirteen is still bittersweet. It is the final book in the series, which has been one of the most rewarding of the Year’s Best in the modern era. This is a book that I have looked forward to each and every year, and it will be much missed.

But when God closes a door, He opens a window, as they say (and what the heck does that even mean?) In any event, without missing a beat Jonathan announced a brand new Year’s Best series with Saga Press, the inaugural volume of which ships next year. In the meantime, we have Volume Thirteen of this series to look forward to, with stories by John Crowley, Jeffrey Ford, N K Jemisin, Naomi Kritzer, Ken Liu, Rich Larson, Garth Nix, Kelly Robson, Tade Thompson, Alyssa Wong, Elizabeth Bear, Daryl Gregory, Maria Dahvana Headley, Andy Duncan, and many others. Here’s the complete table of contents.

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Cirsova Announces Leigh Brackett’s The Illustrated Stark

Cirsova Announces Leigh Brackett’s The Illustrated Stark

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Queen of the Martian Catacombs-small The Enchantress of Venus Leigh Brackett-small Black Amazon of Mars Leigh Brackett-small

You know what the world needs today? It needs more Leigh Brackett.

Brackett has had her 21st Century champions, including Eric Mona at Paizo Publishing, who reprinted five Brackett novels as part of his superb Planet Stories line, and Stephen Haffner of Haffner Press, who’s produced four gorgeous archival quality hardcovers collecting her short fiction. But it’s been over a decade since those books appeared, an eternity in publishing terms, and virtually all of them are now out of print. So I was delighted to hear that Cirsova Publishing, the masterminds behind Cirsova magazine, are reprinting some of Brackett’s most famous work in new illustrated editions. Here’s an excerpt from the press release.

Cirsova Publishing has teamed up with StarTwo to create an all-new, fully illustrated 70th Anniversary Edition of Leigh Brackett’s original Eric John Stark Trilogy. Cirsova Publishing aims to bring the action, adventure and romance of Leigh Brackett to a new generation of readers.

First published in the Summer of 1949, Queen of the Martian Catacombs introduced the world to Eric John Stark, the black mercenary swordsman. Stark’s adventures continued on Venus in 1949’s The Enchantress of Venus, and the swordsman returned to the Red Planet in 1951’s Black Amazon of Mars. While Brackett would revisit the character in 1970s with the Skaith trilogy, the original novellas are significant as one of the last iconic Sword & Planet cycles of the pulp era.

The Cirsova covers are homages to the original Planet Stories pulp covers (see below), though I’m pleased to see that (like the Paizo editions before them), they correctly depict Eric John Stark as black skinned.

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A Pocketful of Lodestones, Book Two of The Time Traveler Professor by Elizabeth Crowens

A Pocketful of Lodestones, Book Two of The Time Traveler Professor by Elizabeth Crowens

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Silent Meridian A Pocketful of Lodestones

Elizabeth Crowens began writing for us two years ago, and she quickly became one of the most popular writers in the Black Gate community. She’s interviewed a host of fascinating subjects — including Martin Page, Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman, Nancy Kilpatrick, Charlaine Harris, Gail Carriger, Jennifer Brozek, and many others — and collected her lengthy interviews in two highly readable volumes of The Poison Apple.

Many BG readers are unaware that Elizabeth is also a talented and successful fiction writer. Her first novel Silent Meridian, which James A. Moore (Seven Forges, Tides of War) called “fun, entertaining and delightfully different… a rollercoaster ride with a side of the sublime,” was published to wide acclaim in 2016. This summer A Pocketful of Lodestones, the second volume in The Time Traveler Professor, arrives from Atomic Alchemist Productions, and expectations are high among Crowens’ many fans.

The Time Traveler Professor is a game-changer of a series. Jonathan Maberry calls it “a delightful genre-twisting romp through time and possibilities,” and A Pocketful of Lodestones significantly ups the ante. This installment is fast-paced and exciting, and jumps into the action immediately. It introduces ghosts, a series of supernatural murders, and a strange and fascinating form of magic. Crowens expertly juggles a complex and engaging plot involving Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the outbreak of World World I, an enigmatic time traveler, and the mysterious red book that tantalized readers in the first volume, The Thief of Tales.

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Is Truth Knowable? Matthew Surridge on Golden State by Ben H. Winters

Is Truth Knowable? Matthew Surridge on Golden State by Ben H. Winters

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Golden State Ben Winters-smallOver at Splice Today, Matthew Surridge reviews a book a novel I overlooked back in January, but I wish I hadn’t: Golden State by Ben Winters. Matthew says it’s “in the vein of Philip K. Dick mixing detective stories and science-fiction dystopias. It’s a story about truth, the pursuit of truth, and whether truth is knowable.” Here’s the part of his review that grabbed me.

I take it on faith that California exists. Various sources I trust tell me it’s a real place, despite its presence in movies, and I believe most of those sources even though I’ve never been to the so-called Golden State. Much of life is like that: one patches together an idea of the world based on a sense of what information can be trusted and what can’t.

Ben H. Winters’ novel Golden State imagines a world in which that’s no longer the case, or at least imagines a strange version of California where the residents believe in the knowability of what is Objectively So. Cameras record everything that happens, everywhere. Citizens keep a record of their daily lives in Day Books, meticulously filing every note and receipt. Some keep a record of their dreams and other nocturnal activities in a Night Book. Fiction as we know it is unheard of. Lying is utterly forbidden by law on pain of exile to the desert beyond the State’s borders. And a force of secret police, Speculators, keep residents in line with a psychic ability to detect falsehood in their vicinity. Or, at least, what they believe is a psychic ability…

Golden State evokes the great science-fictional dystopias of the 20th century… [it] is a meditation on truth wrapped up in a science-fictional detective story.

Ben Winters is also the author of The Last Policeman trilogy, which we covered back in 2013.

Read Matthew’s complete review of Golden State at Splice Today.

Golden State was published by Mulholland Books on January 22, 2019. It is 336 pages, priced at $28 in hardcover and $14.99 in digital formats. See all our recent coverage of the best new fantasy and science fiction here.