Search Results for: Michael Shea

The Novels of Michael Shea: The Extra

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We’re continuing our look at the career of Michael Shea, who died last week, leaving behind a legacy of underappreciated novels. We started with his Sword & Sorcery classic Nifft the Lean (1983) and his dark fantasy In Yana, the Touch of Undying (1985). Now we turn to something more recent, the first of a pair of novels that Locus Online called “dark, satirical novels about the movie industry.” The Extra arrived unexpectedly in hardcover in 2010, and when I…

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The Novels of Michael Shea: In Yana, The Touch of Undying

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Around Christmas in 1985, I walked into The House of Speculative Fiction in Ottawa, Ontario, and after browsing the shelves for a while, selected a volume. The man behind the counter that Saturday was Rodger Turner, who years later would head up the Hugo and World Fantasy Award-nominated SF Site. But back then, Rodger was a humble bookseller — and a very good one. I asked Rodger what he thought of my selection. He shrugged. “It won’t change your life,”…

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Michael Shea, July 3, 1946 – February 16, 2014

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For all of the many obituaries I’ve written, I’ve been fortunate enough to have to write only two for Black Gate contributors: prolific short story writer Larry Tritten, and Euan Harvey, taken from us too young. So it is with a heavy heart that I report the death of Michael Shea, BG contributor and one of the most acclaimed sword & sorcery and horror writers of the last four decades. In the early 70s, Michael picked up a battered copy of Jack…

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “Tsathoggua” by Michael Shea

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Michael Shea, one of the most acclaimed sword & sorcery and horror writers working today, brings us a chilling novelette of Lovecraftian horror. Maureen had fallen asleep in her barcalounger, snug in quilts with the clicker at hand and Muffin curled on her lap. It was Muffin’s gentle movements in her lap that awakened her. She had a vague sensation of small, light forms dispersing across her thighs… Her wakening was hazy and slow, for she’d had one of her…

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Vintage Treasures: The Color Out Of Time by Michael Shea

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I had a hard time deciding whether a book from 1984 qualified as vintage or not. Then I realized that back in 1984, Ronald Reagan was still in his first term as president. A little checking also showed that the Nr. 1 song in September 1984 was “Missing You” by John Waite and the top film was Ghostbusters. The final proof that 1984 can be considered vintage is that I was 23 years old back then. So, yeah, I figure…

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Vintage Treasures: Nifft the Lean by Michael Shea

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Michael Shea is one of the most fascinating characters in the genre. Consider this biographical tidbit from his Wikipedia entry: At a hotel in Juneau, Alaska, Shea chanced on a battered book from the lobby shelves, The Eyes of the Overworld by Jack Vance (1966). Four years later, after a brief first marriage and one year hitch-hiking through France and Spain, he wrote a novel in homage to Vance, who graciously declined to share the advance… It was Shea’s first…

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New Treasures: Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume Five edited by Robert Shearman and Michael Kelly

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We’re almost at the end of our 2018 coverage of the annual crop of Year’s Best anthologies, and today’s title has traditionally been one of the highlights — Undertow Publication’s Year’s Best Weird Fiction. The series is edited by Undertow publisher Michael Kelly, side-by-side with a different guest editor every year. Past editors have included Laird Barron, Kathe Koja, Simon Strantzas, and Helen Marshall. This year it’s Robert Shearman, author of the celebrated collections Remember Why You Fear Me (2012)…

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Track Down Michael Kelly’s Year’s Best Weird Fiction While You Can

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Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volumes One – Five, edited by Michael Kelly and Divers Hands (Undertow Publications, 2014-2018 ) Two weeks ago I caught this brief note on Michael Kelly’s Facebook page. It was 5 years ago that I published the fifth, and final, volume of the Year’s Best Weird Fiction. My proudest publishing endeavour. These are all out of print, now. Could that be true? Were all five of these fabulous volumes no longer available? Alas, it appears to…

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Weird Fiction at its Best From a Modern Scheherazade: We All Hear Stories in the Dark by Robert Shearman

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We All Hear Stories in the Dark by Robert Shearman PS Publishing (Three volume set, 586/628/585 pages, £90.00, April 2020) How can a reviewer comment meaningfully on a three-volume collection featuring 101 stories? (That’s right, you read correctly). Simply impossible. Yet this huge, unusual  opus is worth a mention, and a recommendation. First, because the writer is one of the very best fantasists around, the author of excellent, critically acclaimed collections such as Remember Why You Fear Me and They Do the Same Things Different…

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Future Treasures: Year’s Best Weird Fiction, Volume 3, edited by Simon Strantzas and Michael Kelly

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Michael Kelly’s Year’s Best Weird Fiction has fast become one of my favorite Year’s Best series. Kelly is the editor of the acclaimed anthology series Shadows and Tall Trees, and every year he invites a guest editor to help select the finest strange and weird fiction from the last 12 months. Laird Barron and Kathe Koja ably assisted with the first two volumes, and this year Simon Strantzas (Burnt Black Suns, Shadows Edge) bent his considerable editorial talents to the…

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