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Uncanny as a Ventriloquist’s Doll: Nothing is Everything by Simon Strantzas

Uncanny as a Ventriloquist’s Doll: Nothing is Everything by Simon Strantzas

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Nothing is Everything Simon Strantzas hc-small Nothing is Everything Simon Strantzas hc-back-small

Art by Aron Wiesenfeld

In 2014 I wasn’t familiar with the work of Simon Strantzas, but I bought his collection Burnt Black Suns mostly on the reputation of its lead story “On Ice,” a grim novella of arctic horror. By 2018, however, Simon is the one with the reputation, and it’s growing steadily with every story.

His new collection Nothing is Everything, on sale in hardcover and trade paperback from Michael Kelly’s Undertow Press next month, has already drawn a lot of attention. Kij Johnson says “Simon Strantzas is Shirley Jackson-grade eerie,” and Camilla Grudova, author of The Doll’s Alphabet, says:

Simon Strantzas captures the creepiness of small town Ontario; there is something of Seth, of Alice Munro in his work, wonderfully tangled with the likes of Aickman and Jackson. Uncanny as a ventriloquist’s doll, but with a real, beating heart.

Undertow is simultaneously releasing hardcover and trade paperback editions with different covers. Both are very fine, but the hardcover, with art by Aron Wiesenfeld (above), is particularly arresting. The trade paperback (below) features art by Tran Nguyen. Both were designed by Vince Haig.

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Birthday Reviews: Irene Radford’s “Little Red in the ‘Hood”

Birthday Reviews: Irene Radford’s “Little Red in the ‘Hood”

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Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City
Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City

Irene Radford was born on September 17, 1950. She has published works under a variety of pseudonyms, including Phyllis Ames, C.F. Bentley, P.R. Frost, Phyllis Irene Radford, and Julia Verne St. John.

Radford has published numerous series, many of them through DAW Books, including the Dragon Nimbus, Stargods, Tess Noncoiré, and Merlin’s Descendants. She is one of the founders of Book View Café, a cooperative publisher. She has also collaborated with Bob Brown and as an editor with Deborah J. Ross, Laura Ann Gilman, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, and Brenda Clough.

“Little Red in the ‘Hood” appeared in the anthology Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and John Helfers in 2004. M.H. Bonham reprinted the story in 2011 in WolfSongs: Volume 2. When Radford and Deborah J. Ross edited the anthology Beyond Grimm in 2012, they selected the story to be reprinted again.

Radford’s “Little Red in the ‘Hood” is much more substantial than Linda D. Addison’s vignette of practically the same name, reviewed on September 8. In Radford’s story, Little Red is the nickname for a woman who is “volunteering” to help deliver food for Mobile Meals, a service to provide food for shut-ins, although her volunteer work is ordered by the courts after she was caught shop-lifting. The assignment she pulls has her taking food to a notorious lecher who has often been banned from food delivery due to his treatment of the women bringing his food. Although the coordinator offers to postpone the delivery until they can send an escort with Little Red, she refuses.

There are hints early on that Little Red is more than she seems, as she accepts the task of bringing food to Jason Hanstable, who has the reputation of a wolf. With Radford focusing on the lengthening of Red’s fingernails as much as her decision to only wear red, it seems clear that she is a different kind of wolf than Jason, but a wolf all the same. Despite telegraphing Red’s transformation, Radford includes a twist which only becomes clear when she introduces it, allowing the non-reveal that Red is a wolf to take second place and still subvert the reader’s expectations.

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Future Treasures: Strange Ink by Gary Kemble

Future Treasures: Strange Ink by Gary Kemble

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Strange Ink Gary Kemble-small

No surprise that as we slip into Fall, publisher schedules start to fill up with more horror volumes. What is surprising is the number of intriguing debuts I’m seeing, like Gary Kemble’s Strange Ink, arriving in trade paperback from Titan next month. Publishers Weekly thought very highly of the book; here’s a snippet from their review.

In Kemble’s taut, suspenseful debut set in Brisbane, Australia, local and international concerns combine with the supernatural. Small-time journalist Harry Hendrick wakes up after a stag party with a hangover and a new tattoo he has no memory of getting. When he starts having intense nightmares, he quickly realizes his new tattoo is far from ordinary. More inexplicable tattoos begin appearing, bringing more nightmares, which Harry suspects may actually be someone else’s disturbing memories. Those memories have strong political implications, and Harry must solve the mystery they present before a depraved villain becomes prime minister. The novel’s gritty realism viscerally and effectively conveys the discomfort of new ink, the oppressive heat of the Queensland summer, and the horrors of war and murder… This is a strong debut by a promising new voice.

Strange Ink will be published by Titan Books on October 9, 2018. It is 391 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital edition. The cover art is by Studio London.

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

One Story Is Worth 1000 Ideas; Or, How Dhulyn and Parno Could Come Through A Portal Near You

One Story Is Worth 1000 Ideas; Or, How Dhulyn and Parno Could Come Through A Portal Near You

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Portals BGThose crazies over at Zombies Need Brains have launched another Kickstarter to fund their next set of anthologies. As many of you already know, ZNB has published 2 or 3 anthologies a year for the past several years, using Kickstarters as a way to encourage readers to pre-order the books – and, not incidentally, to receive some pretty nifty special bonus gifts. This year’s project includes Temporally Deactivated, Alternate Peace, and Portals, to which I’ve been asked to  contribute a story. There’s the artwork over on the right. Check out the descriptions and incentives here.

I’m particularly happy about this opportunity, because I’ve had an idea for a story that would fit the theme of portals for quite some time. I just haven’t had a compelling reason (like a deadline) to write it.

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Birthday Reviews: Steve Rasnic Tem’s “Cubs”

Birthday Reviews: Steve Rasnic Tem’s “Cubs”

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Cover by Chris Nurse
Cover by Chris Nurse

Steve Rasnic Tem was born Steve Rasnic on September 14, 1950. He often collaborated with his wife, Melanie, and the two took on the joint surname Tem. Melanie Tem died in 2015.

The Tems jointly won the World Fantasy Award in 2001 for the novella The Man on the Ceiling, which also earned them a Bram Stoker Award and an International Horror Guild Award. They won a second joint Stoker Award for “Imagination Box” and Tem won solo Stokers for In These Final Days of Sales and Blood Kin. His Short Story “Leaks” won the 1988 British Fantasy Award. Tem also won an International Horror Guild Award for his collection City Fishing in 2001.

“Cubs” made its original appearance in the anthology Hideous Progeny, edited by Brian Willis in 2000. The stories in the book were all based on the Frankenstein story. Tem included the story in his 2013 collection Twember.

Prior to the beginning of “Cubs” Billy suffered a mortal accident, yet his parents were able to bring him back using an undiscussed technique that requires him to wear an energy pack that needs to retain a charge. One of the side effects of Billy’s mechanical resurrection is that occasionally he sees normal things break apart, which isn’t necessarily happening. His semi-undead state also means that he is treated differently by people, including his mother, although she tries to hide the fact from him.

Because these kids are seen as outcasts, there are group outings of scouts specifically for them, but Billy clearly understands that even among the scouts, there is a pecking order and he isn’t at the top. Nevertheless, there is a camaraderie among them based on their status as outcasts. Of course, someone had to be at the bottom of the pecking order and it was the boy they referred to as “the dead kid” because the process wasn’t completely successful with him and he didn’t appear even as lifelike as the rest of the boys.

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Birthday Reviews: Tom Holt’s “Touched by a Salesman”

Birthday Reviews: Tom Holt’s “Touched by a Salesman”

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Cover by Julek Heller
Cover by Julek Heller

Tom Holt was born on September 13, 1961.

Holt received a nomination for the William L. Crawford IAFA Fantasy Award in 1991 for his humorous novel Expecting Someone Taller. His more recent, more series work under the name K.J. Parker has earned him additional award nominations for the Kitschies and the World Fantasy Awards. He has won back-to-back World Fantasy Awards for his novellas “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong” in 2012 and “Let Maps to Others” in 2013. It wasn’t until after Holt won his second World Fantasy Award that he revealed his pseudonym in April 2015, seventeen years after he began using it with his novel Colours in the Steel in 1998.

“Touched by a Salesman” appeared in Mike Ashley’s anthology The Mammoth Book of Awesome Comic Fantasy in 2001. As with many of Holt’s humorous stories, it takes its title from pop culture, in this case the television show Touched by an Angel, and twists it to the purposes of the story. “Touched by a Salesman” has not been reprinted.

Paul was having the sort of day nobody should have. Car problems, a girlfriend breaking up with him, and sudden unemployment. As he walked home, having missed the bus, of course, he sees a meteorite fall into a nearby construction site and decides to see if he can retrieve it, bumping into another meteorite seeker in the dark. It is at this point that his luck begins to change. It isn’t another meteorite seeker he has bumped into, but rather 6340097/227/3, whom Paul first takes to be an angel.

It isn’t an angel, but rather an extraterrestrial salesman who knows just enough to figure out that he is on Earth sometime in the twentieth or twenty-first century, although his knowledge of Earth culture and technology is completely lacking. Paul befriends him and learns a little about the alien’s job while at the same time amazing the alien with human’s complete lack of technology, but the ability to create a mug with a handle. It is easy for Paul to convince himself after 6340097/227/3 that he’ll wake up from a dream to find his car is fine, his girlfriend wants him back, and he still has a job, none of which occur, although the alien does provide him with a thank you for their time together.

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Explore the Outer Rim with Space Pioneers, edited by Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio

Explore the Outer Rim with Space Pioneers, edited by Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio

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Space Pioneers full cover-small

Back in June I wrote a brief piece about Hank Davis’s upcoming Baen anthology Space Pioneers, a collection of new and classic SF tales of space exploration. Hank recently sent me an update on the book, and it keeps looking better and better. In June Baen listed it as 304 pages, but the PDF copy Hank sent me is a whopping 512 pages, packed with fiction by Clifford D. Simak, Poul Anderson, Fredric Brown, Larry Niven, Murray Leinster, Edmond Hamilton, Manly Wade Wellman, Robert A. Heinlein, Theodore Sturgeon, Jerry Pournelle, Tony Daniel, and many more.

For a mass market paperback priced at $7.99, this is a real treasure trove. Here’s Hank:

I’m presently proofing the pages for Space Pioneers, coming from Baen around Turkey Day. Figuring you would like to see those pages, I’m passing them on to you, with the warning that this is the virtually unproofed version, so please keep that in mind.

Some of the typos I’ve seen so far, such as “Frederik Brown,” “Lester del Ray,” and other reasons-to-slit-editorial-wrists will be fixed, but I’m sure I’ll miss something until it is in cold, dry, unforgiving print for all the world to see…

And also attached is the nearly final version of the paperback’s wraparound cover. Aside from the back cover and spine now being visible, it differs from the one I sent you a few months back in having Robert A. Heinlein’s name on the front, replacing Jerry Pournelle, who will now be on the back cover. If it isn’t too late (and I won’t know that until the survivors return from DragonCon), I’m going to add Clifford D. Simak to the names on the back cover.

Hank’s co-editor for the project is Christopher Ruocchio, whose first anthology for Baen was Star Destroyers, (co-edited with Tony Daniel), and whose debut novel Empire of Silence has been getting lots of acclaim.

Here’s a peek at the updated table of contents for Space Pioneers.

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Future Treasures: In the Night Woods by Dale Bailey

Future Treasures: In the Night Woods by Dale Bailey

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In the Night Wood Dale Bailey-smallI’ve been writing about short fiction at Black Gate for over a decade, and over those years the name Dale Bailey keeps popping up.

He’s had a successful series of tales inspired by 50s monster movies (“I Married a Monster from Outer Space,” “Teenagers from Outer Space,” “I Was a Teenage Werewolf,” and “Invasion of the Saucer-Men”) in Asimov’s, Nightmare and Clarkesworld, and his fiction has appeared in many Year’s Best volumes. His novels include The Fallen (2002), House of Bones (2003), and The Subterranean Season (2015).

His latest is In the Night Woods, forthcoming from John Joseph Adams Books. The Kirkus review is pretty tantalizing:

Bailey’s novel has every aspect of gothic horror: the drafty manor, the shady servants, the tortured protagonists. The writing is dense with allusions and details, the narrative twisting and turning in the same way the Night Wood distorts the senses of anyone who wanders into it. The writing does get a bit convoluted and hard to follow at times, but it’s in keeping with the atmosphere of subtle dread that permeates the novel. The book is surprisingly short, and there’s a lot of buildup to a very quick climax… The succession of reveals in the frantic last 30 or so pages, however, is tense and disturbing, satisfying for any horror fan.

A modern gothic horror done right.

We previously covered Bailey’s 2015 collection The End of the End of Everything.

In the Night Woods arrives from John Joseph Adams/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt on October 9, 2018. It’s 224 pages, priced at $23 in hardcover, and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Andrew Davidson. Read more here.

Here’s the publisher’s description.

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The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories is a Master’s Course in Classic Horror

The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories is a Master’s Course in Classic Horror

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The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories Volume Three-small The Valancourt Book of Horror Stories Volume Three-back-small

I’m a huge fan of Valancourt Books, ever since I stumbled on their eye-popping booth at the 2014 World Fantasy Convention. They’re an independent small press specializing in rare, neglected, and out-of-print Gothic, Romantic and Horror fiction, and two years ago they had a brilliant idea: why not assemble an annual anthology showcasing stories by some of their authors, modern and otherwise? The Editor’s Forward to the first volume gives you the idea:

The idea behind this anthology was, “What if we distilled the best of each part of our catalogue into a single volume? What would a horror anthology spanning two centuries, and featuring only Valancourt authors, look like?”

Pretty darn good, it turns out. These are substantial and attractive volumes, with terrific covers by M. S. Corley. The series has proven very successful, and the third volume arrives next month, with brand new fiction by Steve Rasnic Tem, Eric C. Higgs, and Hugh Fleetwood, and thirteen blood-curdling reprints from R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Helen Mathers, Charles Beaumont, J. B. Priestley, Robert Westall, and many more.

The series is edited by James D. Jenkins and Ryan Cagle. Here’s the details on all three books.

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Birthday Reviews: Pat Cadigan’s “New Life for Old”

Birthday Reviews: Pat Cadigan’s “New Life for Old”

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Cover by Maren
Cover by Maren

Pat Cadigan was born on September 10, 1953.

Cadigan won a Hugo Award for Best Novelette in 2013 for “The Girl-Thing Who Went Out for Sushi,” which has also won a Seiun Award. She previously won a World Fantasy Award in the Non-Professional category for co-editing the fanzine Shayol with Arnie Fenner. She won two Arthur C. Clarke Awards for her novels Synners and Fools. In 1979 her story “Death from Exposure” won the coveted Balrog Award. In 2006 Cadigan received the third (and most recent) Richard Evans Memorial Prize, given to genre authors who were considered insufficiently recognized for their excellence. Cadidgan served as the Toastmaster for MidAmericon II, the 2016 Worldcon in Kansas City.

Disney’s animated film Aladdin was released in 1992 and to take advantage of the popularity of the film, Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg edited the 1992 anthology Aladdin: Master of the Lamp, with stories based on genies, djinni, and the 1001 nights. Pat Cadigan’s story “New Life for Old” made its debut in the anthology. The following year, Cadigan included the story in her collection Dirty Work and in 1996 it was translated into French for Cadigan’s anthology Les garçons sous la pluie.

Cadigan’s djinn appears to 70-year-old Millie as she is polishing a family heirloom, a lamp that dates back to the family’s origins in the Middle East. Millie greets the djinn’s appearance with skepticism, based on her life experience and the drink she took that afternoon, although she doubts it is enough to get her that tipsy. The djinn does, however, make her an offer of one day of youth. If she turns it down, he’ll remove all memory of their meeting. Naturally, she takes him up on the offer and lives out a life of her youth.

Millie and the djinn reconnect after her day and she tells him all about it, reveling in what she was able to do and how she felt. However the experience wasn’t all she had hoped for and she realizes that a better, and more useful experience would have been to live a day as an old woman when she was younger. That way, she would better enjoy what she had rather than just one day that was wistful and nostalgic even as she was enjoying herself. Cadigan’s story is a quick tale that presents not only the good feelings that nostalgia can bring, but also a sense of the regrets and the difference in the view of someone young and someone older.

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