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Vintage Treasures: Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D. Simak / Cosmic Manhunt by L. Sprague de Camp

Vintage Treasures: Ring Around the Sun by Clifford D. Simak / Cosmic Manhunt by L. Sprague de Camp

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Ring-Around-the-Sun-Clifford-D-Simak-smallClifford D. Simak was one of the first science fiction writers I ever read and, in discovering him, in a very real way I also discovered science fiction.

Simak would probably be marketed as a Young Adult writer today (if any of his work was still in print.) One of his first novels, Ring Around the Sun, also became one of the first Ace Doubles, and it was a significant success.

The New York Herald Tribune called it “Easily the best science-fiction novel so far in 1953,” and in the highly-regarded survey Trillion Year Spree, Brian Aldiss and David Wingrove labeled it his best book, alongside Simak’s better-known classic City.

More recently, Ring Around the Sun featured prominently in Stephen King’s 2001 bestseller Hearts in Atlantis. When eleven-year-old Bobby Garfield gets an adult library card for his birthday, it’s one of the first books he checks out. The mysterious dimensional traveler Ted Brautigan, on the run from the minions of the Crimson King and renting the upstairs apartment, approves of Bobby’s choice.

“I have read this one,” he said. “I had a lot of time to read previous to coming here.”

“Yeah?” Bobby kindled. “Is it good?”

“One of his best…In this book,” he said, “Mr. Simak postulates the idea that there are a number of worlds like ours. Not other planets but other Earths, parallel Earths, in a kind of ring around the sun. A fascinating idea.”

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Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

Amos Tutuola, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

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The Palm-Wine Drinkard and My Life in the Bush of GhostsAmos Tutuola was born in Nigeria in 1920 to a Christian family. With six years of formal schooling, he served as a coppersmith with the Lagos-based arm of the Royal Air Force in World War Two, then worked at a number of of odd jobs. As he tells it, a government magazine he happened to read, with “very lovely portraits of the gods,” advertised books based on Yoruba legends. Tutuola remembered being praised as a storyteller in school and decided there was no reason he shouldn’t turn his hand to writing similar books. So he did. He completed his first book, The Palm-Wine Drinkard, in only a few days.

It was a wild whirl of tales and motifs, inspired by West African oral storytelling traditions and The Arabian Nights. It was a kind of extended fable filled with magic and adventure, mixing myth and folktale in a seemingly endless procession of wonder. It was written in English, but a highly distinctive English — an informal, direct English, English as it suited Tutuola to write it.

Tutuoa didn’t do anything at first with the story, until he bought another magazine and saw an ad from the Lutheran World Press soliciting manuscripts. He sent them his work and got back a letter saying that the publisher only handled religious works, but that they were impressed with his story and would try to place it at another firm. After a year, Tutuola received a letter from British publishers Faber and Faber, asking about his novel. They published the book in 1952; it was well-reviewed, with especially glowing praise from Dylan Thomas, was translated into French, and generally established Tutuola as a powerful writer. He followed the first book with the equally fantastical My Life in the Bush of Ghosts in 1954, and went on to a long writing career before his death in 1997.

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Future Treasures: Lexicon by Max Barry

Future Treasures: Lexicon by Max Barry

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Lexicon Max Barry-smallAt first I thought Max Barry’s latest novel was just another high-tech thriller. But a closer look revealed that Lexicon is a lot more than that: a glimpse at a secret war between rival factions of poets, where the weapons are words; the most feared agents have names like Bronte, Eliot, and Lowell; whole towns have been annihilated; and the most dangerous thing you can do is fall in love.

Lexicon was released in hardcover last June and Time called it “Unquestionably the year’s smartest thriller” and listed it as one of the Top 10 Fiction Books of 2013. Over at Tor.com, Niall Alexander called it “Simply gripping from the get-go… Lexicon twists and turns like a lost language, creating tension and expectations… awesome,” and at Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow said it was “Gripping… a pitch-perfect thriller, a jetpack of a plot that rocketed me from page one to page 400 in a single afternoon.”

At an exclusive school somewhere outside of Arlington, Virginia, students aren’t taught history, geography, or mathematics — at least not in the usual ways. Instead, they are taught to persuade. Here the art of coercion has been raised to a science. Students learn that every person can be classified by an extremely specific personality type, his mind segmented and ultimately controlled by the skillful and sometimes magical application of words. The very best will become part of a secretive organization of “poets” — elite manipulators of language who can wield words as weapons and bend others to their will.

Whip-smart orphan Emily Ruff is running a three-card Monte game on the streets of San Francisco when she attracts the attention of the organization’s recruiters. She is flown across the country for the school’s rigorous and mysterious entrance exams. Once admitted, she learns the fundamentals of persuasion by Bronte, Eliot, and Lowell — master teachers who have adopted the names of famous poets to conceal their true identities. Emily becomes the school’s most talented prodigy until she makes a catastrophic mistake: She falls in love.

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Fiction Review: Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal

Fiction Review: Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal

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Francesca Forrest's Pen Pal
Francesca Forrest’s Pen Pal

This past month, I’ve not been playing much in the way of interactive fiction and my webcomics have fallen behind schedule–in part because I’ve been reading some great prose books. One of the most recent is the novel Pen Pal by Francesca Forrest, a self-published novel that began its life on livejournal and grew up into a full-fledged, completely remarkable fantasy. For those who have been looking for something different than fantasyland fare, this is definitely a novel you should check out.

As the story opens, young Em, a girl from the floating community of Mermaid’s Hands just off the Gulf Coast of the United States, is reaching for the larger world. She loves her community and trusts in the Seafather, the god worshipped by her small village of intertwined boats on the mudflats, but she wants to see more of the world. With the help of a friend, she tosses a message in a bottle into the sea, willing the Seafather to take it somewhere interesting, to someone who will write her back.

Whether through fate or the intervention of two very different gods, the letter ends up in the hands of Kaya, a political prisoner in the country of W–, near Indonesia, whose prison is a faux-temple suspended over Ruby Lake, a lava lake in the center of a volcano. Kaya is from the mountains, making her a minority in her own small country, and her people’s traditional religion, worship of the Lady of Ruby Lake, has been forbidden. Through writing to Em, she begins to examine how she became a political prisoner–she who had once embraced the lowland culture, attended college in America, and sought to advance in life. But her plan to hold a festival for the Lady, just as a cultural celebration, nothing to offend the government, crashes around her ears and sends her hanging perilously above the lava, in solitary confinement, but for letters from her mother and Em and a strangely intelligent crow companion.

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The Novels of Michael Shea: The Mines of Behemoth

The Novels of Michael Shea: The Mines of Behemoth

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The Mines of Behemoth-smallThe last two Michael Shea novels we discussed, The Extra and Attack on Sunrise, took his career in an intriguing and very different direction. But I still admit a greater fascination with his Nifft the Lean novels, Nifft the Lean (1982), The Mines of Behemoth (1997), and The A’rak (2000). Baen Books published the last two in attractive paperback editions, with covers by Gary Ruddell, and I’ve always thought they were some of the most eye-catching sword-and-sorcery on the market.

We lost Michael last month, but very fortunately for us, he left a fine body of work behind to remember him by, including The Color Out Of Time (1984), In Yana, the Touch of Undying (1985); and his highly acclaimed collections Polyphemus (1987), The Autopsy and Other Tales (2008), and Copping Squid and Other Mythos Tales (2010).

Nifft the Lean, and his companion-at-arms, Barnar Hammer-Hand, were often lucky. Enroute to working Costard’s sap mine — very dangerous, and sometimes nauseating work far below ground — they were shipwrecked. But this proved fortuitous, when they met Bunt, who had been seeking just such as they. If they would work the sap mine, but also bring back twenty gills of fluid, he would make them exceedingly wealthy. So it was settled. They would suck the sap from the servants of the monstrous insectile queen — and they would bring back some of the ichor that she alone exuded — and they would be rich. It seemed relatively easy. They wouldn’t have to go to hell at all, for instance.

Of course, the best laid plans sometimes do go a little astray.

The Mines of Behemoth was published in 1997 by Baen Books. It is 256 pages, with an original price of $5.99 in paperback. It is out of print and there is no digital edition.

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New Treasures: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

New Treasures: Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

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Cruel Beauty Rosamund Hodge-smallRosamund Hodge’s story “Apotheosis” from Black Gate 15, was a brilliant and wholly original tale of three brothers who undertake a dangerous voyage to find a new god for their small village. She’s also been published in Strange Horizons, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, and Lightspeed Magazine.

Cruel Beauty, her first novel, arrived in January, and has already received wide acclaim. I finally acquired a copy last month and it looks gorgeous. I plan to settle in with it this weekend and find out what just what wonders Rosamund has accomplished with her fairy tale source material.

The romance of Beauty and the Beast meets the adventure of Graceling in a dazzling fantasy novel about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.

Betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom, Nyx has always known her fate was to marry him, kill him, and free her people from his tyranny.

But on her seventeenth birthday, when she moves into his castle high on the kingdom’s mountaintop, nothing is as she expected — particularly her charming and beguiling new husband.

Nyx knows she must save her homeland at all costs, yet she can’t resist the pull of her sworn enemy — who’s gotten in her way by stealing her heart.

Cruel Beauty was published by Balzer + Bray on January 28, 2014. It is 352 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition.

See all of our recent New Treasures here.

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Island of Fu Manchu, Part Two

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Island of Fu Manchu, Part Two

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island cassell 1955island comic bookSax Rohmer’s Fu Manchu and the Panama Canal was first serialized in Liberty Magazine from November 16, 1940 to February 1, 1941. It was published in book form as The Island of Fu Manchu by Doubleday in the US and Cassell in the UK in 1941. The book serves as a direct follow-up to Rohmer’s 1939 bestseller, The Drums of Fu Manchu, and is again narrated by Fleet Street journalist, Bart Kerrigan.

The second quarter of the novel begins with Ardatha phoning Kerrigan just before his planned departure for his mission abroad. She shares Fu Manchu’s itinerary with him in the hopes Kerrigan will arrange for the return of Peko, Fu Manchu’s pet marmoset. After hanging up, a confused Kerrigan learns Sir Lionel managed to abduct the animal during his liberation from the clinic in Regent Park. Sir Denis explains both he and Barton understand Peko’s value as a hostage.

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Goth Chick News: For Love or Money? Anne Rice Resurrects the Vampire Lestat

Goth Chick News: For Love or Money? Anne Rice Resurrects the Vampire Lestat

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Anne Rice
Anne Rice

Long before Edward, Angel, or Erik; before vampires owned bars, fell in love with humans, or (heaven forbid) sparkled in sunlight – there was The Vampire Lestat.

Anne Rice single-handedly catapulted vampires into vogue in 1976 with her debut novel Interview with the Vampire. Until then, vampires hadn’t been cool since Bela Lugosi brought Dracula to the Broadway stage in 1927.

Rice’s characters and subsequent novels spawned nothing less than a new vampire sub-culture in the early 80s, giving rise to clubs, music, clothing lines, and more copycat literary off-shoots than can easily be counted.

As a native of New Orleans, Rice made the city itself one of her main players, creating a tourism boom. To this day, and much to the chagrin of the neighbors, Rice devotees continue to flock to First Street in the Garden District to view Rice’s former house, which was the setting for several of her novels. Fans from around the globe follow top-hat-wearing guides around the French Quarter on “vampire tours” and come October, every corner tchotchke shop is sold out of plastic fangs and dental adhesive in preparation for the annual Vampire Ball.

And for many years, I too donned velvet and lace, making an annual pilgrimage to partake in the most interesting masquerade ball you could ever imagine. At that time, Rice herself participated in these events, reigning as the Grande Dame of Darkness over her loving throngs.

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The Novels of Michael Shea: Assault on Sunrise

The Novels of Michael Shea: Assault on Sunrise

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Assault on Sunrise-smallWe’re back on the record with the fourth installment of our survey of the books of Michael Shea, who passed away last month. This time, we’re looking at his final novel, Assault on Sunrise, the sequel to The Extra and the second book of The Extra Trilogy — which, sadly, will presumably never be completed. As I mentioned last time, I honestly wasn’t sure it was the same Michael Shea when I first saw the cover of The Extra, as it looked more like an urban thriller than the kind of adventure fantasy Michael was famous for. With this volume, all my doubts were swept away. Only Michael Shea could pull off a giant-insect attack with this kind of panache in 2013.

Less than a hundred years in the future, pollution, economic disaster, and the rapacious greed of the corporate oligarchy has brought America to its knees and created dystopian urban nightmares, of which L.A. may be the worst.

Curtis, Japh, and Jool are film extras, who — with the help of a couple of very gutsy women — survived being anonymous players in a “live-action” film in which getting killed on-screen meant getting killed for real. Surviving the shoot made them rich enough to escape the post-apocalyptic Hell that L.A. has become. But their survival was not what Panoply Studios’ CEO Val Margolian had in mind, especially since it cost his company millions.

Now he’s taking his revenge. After several plainclothes police are found dead in the former extras’ new home, the bucolic, peaceful town of Sunrise, California, the entire town is subjected to Margolian’s invidious plan to punish the entire town… and make a fortune doing it. Margolian has created toxic, murderous wasp-like mechanical creatures to set upon the people of Sunrise, while his film crew captures the carnage in what promises to be the bloodiest “live-action” film yet. With their haven from L.A. besieged by the deadly assault, the former extras — and their fellow townspeople — are faced with a grim task: to defeat the creatures and take back their town and their freedom. Michael Shea’s Assault on Sunrise is a saga of courage and sacrifice in a world gone mad.

Assault on Sunrise was published August 13, 2013 by Tor Book. It is 287 pages, priced at $25.99 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. There is no paperback edition. I bought my copy new on Amazon for $3.98 in early March; discounted copies are still relatively plentiful from several sellers.

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Tough Urban Fantasy Women and Cloak-guys, You’ve Overstayed Your Welcome

Tough Urban Fantasy Women and Cloak-guys, You’ve Overstayed Your Welcome

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The Ghost Bride-smallUrsula Vernon, the Hugo Award-winning creator of Digger, nicely articulates the tedious sameness of much of modern fantasy, and makes an eloquent call for fresh, rich settings to draw her back into the genre, at her blog Bark Like a Fish, Damnit!

I love fantasy. I love it dearly… and god help me, I am so very sick of nearly all of it… I scan the new book section of Barnes & Noble and go “Cloak-guy, Cloak-guy, Steampunk Guy, Cloak-guy, Tiger, Cloak-guy, John Jude Palencar That I Would Buy A Print Of But Not The Book, Tough Urban Fantasy Woman, Cloak-guy.”

None of it excites me. It’s the setting, I think. Has to be. I picked up The Ghost Bride and read it in two fascinated days. When I discovered Sarah Addison Allen’s magical realism books, I devoured every single one, one after another.

I think I am tired of Fantasyland.

You know where it is. It’s the vague European city and countryside that has no sense of place to it… Perhaps it’s just a call for books to take me someplace that I haven’t been already. Many, many times… I am desperately tired of farmboys in search of their lonely destiny, and if you are going to introduce yourself as a ranger, you goddamn well be putting out fires and fretting over declining woodpecker populations in the next paragraph…

But mostly I just scan over the new releases and feel no desire to read any of them.

I hear this complaint frequently, but I rarely hear it laid at the feet of setting as Ursula does here. And rightly so. (And I’ve never heard of Sarah Addison Allen before, but her novels — including Garden Spells and The Girl Who Chased the Moon — look very intriguing indeed.)

Read the complete post here.