(with apologies to Two-Gun Bob)
Ross E. Lockhart
We were five rounds into the fight, and I was bleeding heavy from a cut above my right eye by the time Iron Mike McGurk and his manager started up their usual shenanigans. Not that the ref noticed. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not sayin’ the ref was crooked or blind or feeble, after all, his arithmetical skills can attest to his mental facilities as he managed to count to six for me in round three and seven for McGurk in round four. What I’m saying is that that jerk McGurk and his sneaky Swede manager are two of the nastiest so-and-sos I’ve ever had the dishonorable honor of crossing gloves with. No underhanded trick is too down or dirty for those shifty sharks.
You would think, being that it was Christmas Eve and all, that those two goons would be able to curtail their tomfoolery in the interest of peace on earth and goodwill towards men. No such luck. We’d traded a couple of body blows since the bell rang, I’d just managed to sink my left to the wrist in McGurk’s midriff, and was attempting to redirect my fist into his bulbous tomato nose when he coughed something into my face. My eyes started stinging, the house lights started wiggling, and I smelled something in the vicinity of grain alcohol, nutmeg, and toasted chestnuts.
My first thought was how much I’d rather be back home aboard the Roberta Erwin, standing ‘round the little Christmas tree we’d set up on the forecastle, singin’ “Good King Wenceslas” with the Old Man, Jon Torkilsen, Gypsy Pete and my bulldog Sailor Steve. I’d just started singing along when McGurk’s right collided with my jaw, rocketing my head back at an unnatural angle, knocking me to the canvas.
I lay there for a few moments, watching visions of sugarplums dance withershins around my head. I shook my head violently, attempting to dispel the singing gingerbread men. Next to me, the ref counted: one, two, three. I forced myself up, slowly to my knees, then to my feet. The ring swayed back and forth like the deck of the Roberta Erwin on a stormy night. Good thing I have my sea legs. I brought up my guard and looked over at McGurk and the Swede. They were both guffawing, their mouths contorted into wide, wicked grins. I blinked my eyes, then scanned the crowd, which had become a writhing sea of changing color.
I looked over at the ref, who had shrunk down to two feet tall and was yelling at me in a high-pitched squak, then turned my attention back to McGurk, who rushed at me, throwing his right at my countenance with maximum force. Somehow I managed to duck left, his blow screaming past my ear like a great freight train, then landed my right solidly into his chest. I followed this up by slamming my left into his kidneys, a blow which he reciprocated with a left to my right ear. I aimed my right at his big red nose, which had become bigger and redder and was starting to resemble a balloon, but missed as he ducked my fist, landing a left in my belly as the bell rang.
We staggered back to our respective corners, and I sat on my little wood bench as the Old Man mopped the blood and sweat from my face and Sailor Steve stood with his front paws on the corner canvas, wagging his stub of a tail.
“We’ve got to throw in the towel,” I said to the Old Man as I rubbed Steve’s head with my glove. “That such-and-such son of a so-and-so spit something in my eyes. I think I’ve been drugged.”
“Nonsense, Monaghan,” barked the Old Man. “You’re just punch drunk. You can’t quit now. No Second Mate of mine would ever throw a fight.”
I glanced over my shoulder at him. His twisted black beard had quadrupled in magnitude, and dragged the canvas as he paced. “I’d be First Mate if you’d just go ahead and promote me” says I. “It’s been six months since Truitt jumped off the side of the boat, hunting for mermaids. He ain’t coming back.” I waved my own hand in front of my face, noticing the pretty colors, the eddies and swirls, it left behind. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been drugged,” I replied.
The Old Man pulled a red-and-white candy cane from the pocket where he usually kept his pipe and pensively sucked on the end. He leaned forward, looking deep into my eyes. “Poppycock,” he shouted. “I’ll promote you when I’m good and gull-durn ready to. Besides, you can’t quit, I’ve wagered the boat on you winning tonight.”
Sailor Steve growled at this. “Nuts to you, you weather-beaten old galoot,” I shouted at the Old Man. I thought I told you never to do that again.”
“Ah, no,” he replied, waggling the pointed tip of his candy cane at me. “Technically you told me never to bet the boat against you again.”
He had me there. I looked out across the ring, the other corner seemed to be miles away, but in the distance I thought I saw the Swede pouring concrete into McGurk’s gloves. “Oh, nuts,” says I. Then the bell rang.
I came out swinging, noting as I advanced towards McGurk that the ref had not only resumed his usual size, but had become a particularly fetching shade of green. This distracted me for just long enough for McGurk to knock a glancing left against my right shoulder, but by the time I turned to face him, McGurk had gone and disappeared. In his place, wearing bright red trunks and a long white beard, stood none other than the jolly old elf himself, Saint Nick. I cocked my head to one side, confused by this unforeseen circumnavigation. I tried to think of something to say, but all that came out was “Sainty Claus?”
Now I’m not the shiniest hammer in the box, but if I knows anything, it’s that you don’t pummel Sainty Claus on the night before Christmas. He’s a hardworking man, what with having to fly all over the world and slide down all those chimneys and leave all those presents for the good little boys and girls. But there was something about this Sainty Claus, something I couldn’t quite put my finger on, that just wasn’t right. I started to say something to him along those lines when suddenly he preemptively answered my impending question with a piledriver right to my jaw. He followed this with a crushing left to my abdomen, knocking the wind out of me, and a cheap right elbow to the back of my head. I reeled back, hoping the ref had seen this, but by the time I managed to focus on him, I understood that he couldn’t have, as he had been transmogrified into a Christmas tree, tinsel, colored balls, and all. Sainty Claus growled, chasing after me like a man possessed, swinging the massive gloves crowning his mighty-thewed arms as he came.
I stepped back, shooting a glance at Sailor Steve and the Old Man as I backpedaled. Sailor Steve had covered his eyes with his front paws, afraid to witness my dooming fate. The Old Man waved his betting ticket in the air, mouthing “punch the so-and-so” over and over. I cocked my right arm, then brought it up, swinging it on a direct collision course with Sainty Claus’s head.
But the wily old elf ducked at the last minute, and my glove sailed through empty air. I attempted to recover, but only succeeded in smashing his left fist repeatedly with my right jaw, then dropped to my back on the canvas.
I opened my eyes and stared up at the lights. The Christmas tree bent over me, already counting: four, five, six. Over the roaring crowd I heard Sailor Steve whimpering ringside. I pushed myself up, slow, shaky, but somehow made it to my feet. Sainty Claus stood there, bouncing on the balls of his feet, his blood-flecked lips curling to reveal row after row of shark-like teeth. Behind him, an orange orang-utan, dressed like an elf, cavorted in the corner, pulling on the ringside ropes. I shook my head, blinked my eyes, and the bell rang.
Back in my corner, I complained to the Old Man as he mopped blood and sweat from my brow, “I can’t do it, I don’t know how those dirty rats pulled it off, but I can’t fight Sainty Claus. We’ve got to throw in the towel.”
“Nuts to you, you quitter,” said the Old Man. “I didn’t train you to be the fightingist squid on the seven seas in order to lose my boat to this bunch of so-and-sos.”
“But it’s Sainty Claus.”
“Nuts to your Sainty Claus, you goon. What did that such-and-such ever do for you? I’ll tell you what, nothing. Now get back in there and fight, Monaghan, or once he’s done knocking you around I’m going give you a thrashing you won’t soon forget.”
I rubbed the top of Sailor Steve’s head with my glove for luck, and then the bell rang. I headed back into the ring, thinking of what the Old Man had said. Sainty Claus advanced, swinging his fists wildly at my head. I was tired and my muscles ached, but the lights weren’t swimming around quite as violently as they had been. I thought of Christmases passed, of my childhood, realizing how often Sainty Claus had managed to miss my old neighborhood. We was tough kids, sure, but nothing too bad. Heck, he never even bothered to bring us so much as a lump of coal. Inside my gloves, my fists began to itch. I’d show that so-and-so.
Sainty Claus’s left fist flew through the air towards the side of my head, but I ducked, then managed to slam my right solidly into his chest. I followed this with a left jab to the kidneys and a right hook to his jaw. He backed up, and for the first time that night, I saw fear in his eyes. I thought of a presentless tree, an empty stocking, a barren cupboard. I advanced.
I jabbed my right into his belly, shouting as I did so. “Merry Christmas,” I yelled, following with a left to his chest. “To all,” I shouted. “And to all,” says I, connecting with his shoulder. “A good,” smashing my left into his kidneys. I hauled back my right arm, then brought it forward with the force of a shotgun, connecting squarely with the tip of his white-bearded chin. “Night!” Sainty Clause flew back, arms flailing in the air, then impacted against the canvas with a thud. The Christmas tree ref leaned over him.
“One,” shouted the ref, his tinsel glimmering as he did so. “Two, three, four.” The crowd began to chant with him. “Five, six, seven.” My knees began to feel weak. I glanced down at Sainty Claus, but he wasn’t Sainty Claus no more, just Iron Mike McGurk, lying there in the middle of the ring with his eyes closed. “Eight, nine, ten.” The Christmas tree lifted my gloved right hand into the air with a strong, star-tipped limb. “The Winner,” it announced.
Later that night, once we’d made it back aboard the Roberta Erwin I sat around our little Christmas tree with the Old Man and the rest of the crew, holding an ice pack against my head with one hand, scratching Sailor Steve with the other. I still felt a little dopey, in spite of all the celebratory beer the Old Man had poured down my throat after the bout, so I mostly sat on the sidelines as the boys sang “Here We Go A-Wassailing” and knocked back swigs from bottles. Sailor Steve wagged his stub of a tail more-or-less in time to the music. Around midnight, the Old Man wandered up to me and Steve, and clasped me on the shoulder.
“You did good in the ring tonight,” he said.
“Aw, shucks,” I replied. “I just did what I always do.”
“Yep,” said the Old Man. We both stared off at the stars over the water.
“Promise me,” I ventured after a few moments, “that you won’t bet the boat ever again.”
“Nuts to that,” said the Old Man. He handed me a box, grinning. “Merry Christmas, you so-and-so. This is from me and the whole crew.”
Inside was a brand-new watch cap and pea coat for me and a thick leather collar for Sailor Steve, complete with an engraved brass tag which read “Sailor Steve. If found, return to Tom Monaghan, First Mate of the S.S. Roberta Erwin.”
“You crafty old galoot,” I shouted, grabbing the Old Man in a massive bear hug and lifting him off the deck to the shouts and cheers of the crew. Gypsy Pete began leading the boys in a round of “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.” Sailor Steve jubilantly howled along.
When I set the Old Man back down on the deck and let go, he, still grinning, wiped a bit of moisture from the corner of his eye. “Gull-durned salt air,” he says. “Now come on, son,” continued the Old Man, regaining his composure. “We got ourselves a boat to run.”
"The Pugilist's Holiday" © 2009 Ross E. Lockhart
Cover Photograph: George Grantham Bain Collection
—Honoré de Balzac, “La Grande Bretêche,” as included in Great Tales of Terror and the Supernatural, edited by Phyllis Cerf Wagner and Phillip Wise.
Maddie: "I was good, I put up with the haircut, I even let them put silly little bows on my ears. Now can I have my pumpkin pie?"
And of course, I'd rather be reading. Especially considering the books that have wandered onto our shelves over the last week or so:
Duke Elric: Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné, Vol. 4 - Michael Moorcock
Elric in the Dream Realms: Chronicles of the Last Emperor of Melniboné, Vol. 5 - Michael Moorcock (Does this one finish the series? Or will there be more?)
Boneshaker - Cherie Priest (I'm bringing this one with me to read while we're in San Diego.)
VALIS and Later Novels - Philip K. Dick (Birthday present from Jennifer.)
The Autopsy and Other Stories - Michael Shea (Birthday present for myself, with a bit of help from my parents.)
And not last Sunday but the Sunday before, we dropped by Book Passage in Corte Madera for Patrick McDonnell's appearance. Here's Patrick signing a few things for Jennifer:
But since I'm not sure what books we brought with us, and what we purchased there, I'm going to leave those off the list for now.
We'll be on the road for the next several days, so communication may be more erratic than usual. Please stand by.
And one parting thought, spotted pasted to the side of Rivertown Feed Store on Friday afternoon:
To Write Like a Woman - Joanna Russ (Indiana)
Women of Wonder: The Contemporary Years - Edited by Pamela Sargent (Hardcort Brace)
The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens - Edited by Peter Haining (Watts)
I've been looking for The Complete Ghost Stories of Charles Dickens since working on John Langan's House of Windows, so I was delighted to stumble onto it.
Then, on our way home, we wandered into the library sale at the Petaluma Library. Where I snapped up the following:
The Classic Philip Jose Farmer 1964-1973 (Crown SF Classics)
Metropolitan - Walter Jon Williams (HarperPrism)
Tales of Old Earth - Michael Swanwick (Frog, Ltd/Tachyon)
The Fantasy Hall of Fame - Edited by Robert Silverburg (HarperPrism)
Philip K. Dick In His Own Words - Gregg Rickman, Forward by Roger Zelazny (Fragments West/The Valentine Press)
And I checked out Diana Wynne Jones's Unexpected Magic: Collected Stories (Greenwillow).
So I've been reading bits and pieces: "Nad and Dan adn Quaffy" in the Jones collection (I'd seen it referenced in the comments on Jo Walton's "What is it with coffee?" at Tor.com, and had to read it; I may need to re-read it, as I'm not completely sure I "got" it), and "On the Fascination of Horror Stories, Including Lovecraft's" and "A Boy and His Dog: The Final Solution" in Russ (the latter of which is a classic bit of SF criticism, a bit hysterical perhaps, but with plenty of valid points, yet had me watching nostalgically L. Q. Jones's adaptation of Harlan Ellison's most mean-spirited apocalypse this morning, the opposite intent, I'm sure, of Russ's thesis.).
And, as Jeremy recently noted, Eclipse Three has been named one of the ten best SF books of the year on Amazon.com. And yet, it has no reviews! So here's your challenge: Be the first one to review Eclipse Three at Amazon and you win a prize. Any takers?
(And don't you just love that Richard Powers cover?)
Short answer: CHAOS!
Last Thursday, the decree came down from the top. We were moving. That weekend. Wheels had been in motion for weeks, leases signed, notices given. We knew we would be moving, but the announcement was still a bit of surprise, coming immediately after Jason recovered from World Fantasy (the flu, I believe, but an entirely Jason-centric mutation). Books would be moved over the course of the weekend; office pack-up, I assumed, would start on Monday. I left that evening after reserving a 24' truck for the occasion, and feeling like I was leaving the move in more capable hands.
Monday, sure enough, Jason's garage was empty. Maddie sniffed around at the Styrofoam scraps scattered around the emptiness as we wandered back to the office, where she settled in to her bed under my desk and I booted up my laptop. While we settled in for the day, Hannah the Intern arrived. We chatted for a few minutes, then I checked my e-mail. A quickly-typed message from Jeremy, subject line: MOVING AND SHIT. "Warehouse is a disaster," it read. "I need you and Hannah to head over."
I considered bashing my head against the keyboard. Instead, I said, "Looks like we're headed over to the new digs, Hannah."
I loaded Maddie into the car, then drove across town, talking music, city life, science fiction, and academia with Hannah, wondering just what we'd gotten ourselves into.
Needless to say, the place was a mess. One garage and two storage units worth of carton after carton of science fiction, fantasy, and horror hardcovers, trade paperbacks, and mass markets, loaded onto a truck, then unloaded in nearly random order. Our mission: Sort the books onto pallets, like titles together. My back ached to think about it. A few hours of tossing around twenty-to-thirty-pound boxes of books, and all the weird similarities of genre fiction titles titles become painfully obvious. We navigated our way through piles of PRADOR MOON FLIGHTS, climbed stacks of PRECIOUS DRAGON NEVER SLEEPS, and eventually we'd made a dent. We called it a day. I loaded Maddie back into the car, gave Hannah a ride to where she'd left her bicycle, then drove home, sore, dirty, and exhausted.
Maddie wasn't terribly happy working in the warehouse on Monday. She complained about the cold concrete floors and noise all the way home, so she stayed home today.
( More behind the cut. )
Warrior Wolf Women of the Wasteland – Carlton Mellick III (Eraserhead Press) *
War Slut – Carlton Mellick III (Eraserhead Press) *
Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows – A. Goldfarb (Spunk Goblin Books/Eraserhead Press) *
Ass Goblins of Auschwitz – Cameron Pierce (Eraserhead Press) *
Piecemeal June – Jordan Krall (Eraserhead Press) *
Fistful of Feet – Jordan Krall (Eraserhead Press) *
Last Dragon – J. M. McDermott (Wizards of the Coast Discoveries) *
Ossuary: Poetry by Joselle Vanderhooft, art by Erzevet YellowBoy (Sam’s Dot Publishing) *
Planet Stories Pocket Catalog 2009
Birth of the Firebringer – Meredith Ann Pierce (Firebird Fantasy)
Tamsin – Peter S. Beagle (Firebird Fantasy)
Asimov’s Science Fiction – June 2007
Analog – October 2007
The Other – Thomas Tyron (Millipede Press/Centipede Press)
Living Shadows: Stories: New and Preowned – John Shirley (Prime) X2
Generation Dead – Daniel Waters (Disney/Hyperion)
The Sword of Rhiannon – Leigh Brackett (Planet Stories/Paizo)
Best American Fantasy – Ann and Jeff VanderMeer (Prime)
The Word of God – Thomas M. Disch (Tachyon)
The Wall of America – Thomas M. Disch (Tachyon)
Robots Have no Tails – Henry Kuttner (Planet Stories/Paizo) X2
The Classic Car Killer – Richard A. Lupoff (Offspring Press)
Escapement – Jay Lake (Tor)
Flesh and Fire: Book One of The Vineart War – Laura Anne Gilman (Pocket Books)
The Vineart War (corkscrew) – Laura Anne Gilman
Mage-Guard of Hamor – L. E. Modesitt Jr. (Tor)
Cenotaxis – Sean Williams (Monkeybrain Books)
Writing the Other – Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward (Aqueduct Press)
The Lord of the Sands of Time – Issui Ogawa (Haikasoru)
British Summertime – Paul Cornell (Monkeybrain Books)
The Grin of the Dark – Ramsey Campbell (Tor)
Faery Moon: A Tess Noncoiré Adventure – P. R. Frost (DAW)
Jailbait Zombie – Mario Acevedo (Eos)
In the Forest of Forgetting – Theodora Goss (Prime) X2
Escape from Hell! – Hal Duncan (Monkeybrain Books)
Innocents Aboard – Gene Wolfe (Orb)
Generation Loss – Elizabeth Hand (Small Beer Press)
The Stoneholding – James G. Anderson & Mark Sebank (Baen)
The Burning City (chapbook excerpt) – Alaya Dawn Johnson (Agate Bolden)
Tender Morsels (audiobook) – Margo Lanagan (Brilliance Audio)
The Fabulist – Winter 2009: Vol. 1, No. 1
Sword of My Mouth, Issue 1 of 6 – Jim Munroe, Shannon Gerard (IDW)
Centipede Press 2010-2011 Catalog
Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time Calendar 2009: A Tribute to Robert Jordan
* Titles marked with an asterisk were either purchased by me or given to me by their authors. NSB donated half a dozen different titles, but I didn't bring any of those home with me for obvious reasons.
But first: The suit! Kitted up on Sunday for the World Fantasy Awards banquet.
( More to see behind the cut! )
While I'm (loosely) on the subject of pseudonyms, the brand new Graham Joyce novel, How to Make Friends with Demons, showed up at the Night Shade warehouse on Monday. This novel was originally published in the UK as the faux-memoir, Memoirs of a Master Forger, by "William Heaney" (the novel's protagonist). It was a real pleasure to be able to work on the Night Shade US edition, and it's even better to (finally) get this one out into the wild and into readers' hands. It's a great book, intelligent, literary, topical, and fantastic, and I highly recommend it to all of you.
Amazingly enough, we even managed to get all the HTMFWD preorders shipped out yesterday afternoon (thanks to Hannah the Intern!). Ah, it's great being caught up on shipping. Here's a quick glance at my copy of the book, hanging out before I bothered to shelve it last night.
Looks great, eh? If I do say so myself (and I will), it's even better (and less blurry) in person. All the elements came together. Eugene Wang's jacket design, spine stamp, and title logo work hand-in-hand with Mike Dringenberg's artwork. And I'm really happy with how the layout comes across; why the margins are wide enough that I doubt even Jeff VanderMeer could find something to kvetch about this time around (then again, why jinx myself?). Why even the boards of the book itself, cased in red with matching header caps, look awesome. Major shout-out to Michael Lee, NSB's Production Guy, for pulling this one together.
But enough about the book-as-physical-object. I know what you're saying: "Why should I read this book? And what's up with that title; is this a self help book?" Consider this: Charles de Lint says, "Anyone who isn't reading Graham Joyce is doing themselves a huge disservice"; The Guardian calls it "an ultimately uplifting feat of storytelling which grips the reader to the very last page"; SFRevu says that How to Make Friends with Demons "stands as a model example of the craft, a master class in novel construction and character development."
Better yet, consider these comments in praise of "An Ordinary Soldier of the Queen," the O. Henry Award-winning excerpt (originally published in The Paris Review) from the novel:
"The thing I admire most about this tale is the pace, the rhythm, the economy of incident and the accuracy of the words. Each sentence adds something to the world being described. It looks simple and easy, and is in fact controlled and crafted." - A. S. Byatt, author of Possession.
"There is so much to admire, and so much to love... that I'm daunted by the task of doing justice to this beautifully shaped, immaculately pitched, and scarily convincing - as nightmares are convincing... story." - Tim O'Brien, author of The Things They Carried
Still not convinced? My very good friend, Maddiezilla, High Demon of the Seventh Realm, says: "Buy this book, or I'll swallow your soul!"
House of Windows, by John Langan. Jacket illustration by Santiago Caruso, jacket design by Michael Gin.
I've been a fan of John Langan's fiction for quite a while. His contributions to John Joseph Adams' Night Shade anthologies, Wastelands ("Episode Seven: Last Stand Against the Pack in the Kingdom of the Purple Flowers"), The Living Dead ("How the Day Runs Down"), and By Blood We Live ("The Wide, Carnivorous Sky") represent some of the most finely-crafted stories in the genre. His collection Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters is an easy recommendation. So it was a joy to be able to work on his debut novel, House of Windows.
House of Windows is a contemporary ghost story with roots that reach back to Poe, Lovecraft, James (both of 'em), and Dickens, and it's a helluva read. But don't take my word for it, read the jacket copy:
When a young writer finds himself cornered by a beautiful widow in the waning hours of a late-night cocktail party, he seeks at first to escape, to return to his wife and infant son. But the tale she weaves, of her missing husband, a renowned English professor, and her lost stepson, a soldier killed on a battlefield on the other side of the world, and of phantasmal visions, a family curse, and a house... the Belvedere House, a striking mansion whose features suggest a face hidden just out of view, draws him in, capturing him.
What follows is a deeply psychological ghost story of memory and malediction, loss and remorse. This unnerving tour de force, exploring the literary haunted house, from Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, and H. P. Lovecraft to today, incorporates family trauma, abstract art, literary criticism, the occult Dickens, and the war in Afghanistan. From John Langan (Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters) comes House of Windows, a chilling novel in the tradition of Peter Straub, Joe Hill, and Laird Barron.
House of Windows is shipping November 1. We will have the book in hand for World Fantasy, NSB will be shipping preorders once we get back from San Jose, and the book will be available at the usual online merchants and at better bookstores near you.
The Windup Girl is the brand-new dystopian thriller from Paolo Bacigalupi. If you don't know Paolo's work, you should. Paolo's fiction deals unflinchingly with environmental and sustainability issues that many authors are afraid to touch. The science is cutting-edge, the settings grim and evocative, the prose resonant. At the same time, Paolo's writing is character driven, lush, and captivating, with an impassioned emotional core.
But don't take my word for it. I'll be the first to admit I'm biased. Read a couple of Paolo's short stories. Read an interview or two. And check out this jacket copy and awesome cover image:
Anderson Lake is a company man, AgriGen's Calorie Man in Thailand. Under cover as a factory manager, Anderson combs Bangkok's street markets in search of foodstuffs thought to be extinct, hoping to reap the bounty of history's lost calories. There, he encounters Emiko...
Emiko is the Windup Girl, a strange and beautiful creature. One of the New People, Emiko is not human; she is an engineered being, creche-grown and programmed to satisfy the decadent whims of a Kyoto businessman, but now abandoned to the streets of Bangkok. Regarded as soulless beings by some, devils by others, New People are slaves, soldiers, and toys of the rich in a chilling near future in which calorie companies rule the world, the oil age has passed, and the side effects of bio-engineered plagues run rampant across the globe.
What Happens when calories become currency? What happens when bio-terrorism becomes a tool for corporate profits, when said bio-terrorism's genetic drift forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution? In The Windup Girl, award-winning author Paolo Bacigalupi returns to the world of "The Calorie Man" (Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award winner, Hugo Award nominee, 2006) and "Yellow Card Man" (Hugo Award nominee, 2007) in order to address these poignant questions.
Now go track down a copy of The Windup Girl for yourself. We've got 'em in stock at Night Shade Books, so you can order directly from us, or you can get it through the usual suspects like Amazon.com (and while you're ordering The Windup Girl, don't forget to pick up Paolo's collection, Pump Six and Other Stories), Borderlands ,Borders, Barnes and Noble, Copperfield's, and your better local independent booksellers. And if they don't have it in stock, demand they order it through Diamond Books, Ingram, or directly from NSB). And don't forget to recommend it to your friends.
The Red Tree by Caitlin R. KiernanMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
With THE RED TREE, a haunting, even ghostly, tale of loss, memory, and melancholy, Caitlín R. Kiernan carves fresh paths through an overgrown literary landscape evocative of Shirley Jackson and Angela Carter. There is a great deal of beauty here, as local legends and subjective personal history intermix and reflect one upon the other, often to chilling effect. Unfortunately, however, designer Spring Hoteling's (yes, that's a real person's name) decision to lay the book out in a riotous variety of fonts creates an unnecessary distraction, particularly since the core conceit of Kiernan's novel is that the documents written by its doomed narrator (including Kiernan's short story "Pony," here attributed to the narrator), along with the found manuscript that drives the engine of the plot forward, all were composed on the same typewriter. On some level, I can understand Hoteling's choices (but did she have to choose such an ugly and unreadable distressed typewriter font?); one could argue that presenting each of the novel's diverse voices with its own unique look provides a degree of clarity to less-experienced readers (I disagree, as the narrator's voice and comment is ever present, and the fact that her commentary on the found manuscript is presented in-line with the reproduced section of said ms. can be quite jarring to any reader). Perhaps it's just that every layout artist aspires to create his or her own HOUSE OF LEAVES, and this was Ms. Hoteling's opportunity to indulge that fancy. In any case, in spite of its typographer's broad and clumsy strokes, THE RED TREE is lush, strange, erotic, and disturbing, and is an easy recommendation for not just those who are already fans of Kiernan's work, but to newcomers as well.
View all my reviews >>
And I'm just beat. Once I'm home, I plan to spend the entirety of Wednesday recovering.
In other words, By Blood We Live is finally out! You remember, right? The John Joseph Adams-edited vampire anthology I gave you a sneak preview of back in March, the one featuring a quarter-million words of the best of the last thirty years of vampire short fiction? The one with stories by John Langan, Robert J. Sawyer, Elizabeth Bear, and Lilith Saintcrow (not to mention Neil Gaiman, Anne Rice, Harry Turtledove, Stephen King, Caitlín R. Kiernan, Sergei Lukyanenko, Tanith Lee, Joe Hill, Kevin J. Anderson, L. A. Banks, and Catherynne M. Valente, among others)? The one that includes a definitive vampire fiction bibliography for further reading. The one vampire anthology you absolutely need on your bookshelf.
It's out! And in-stock* at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, and other e-tailers, and very likely on the shelves at a better bookstore near you (and if it isn't, make 'em order you one).
So what are you waiting for? Go get it!
And don't forget to click on the cover above and check out the official website, with free samples, author interviews, and much, much more.
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* However, we are still waiting for stock to show up at the 'Shade.
Anyway, here's a quick run-down of our recent arrivals (available NOW at better bookstores near you):
The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Volume Four: The Maze of the Enchanter
The Shadow Pavilion, by Liz Williams
The Lees of Laughter's End, by Steven Erikson
Mall of Cthulhu, by Seamus Cooper
Bar None, by Tim Lebbon
Prador Moon, by Neal Asher
Precious Dragon, by Liz Williams
The King's Daughters, by Nathalie Mallet
Moon Flights, by Elizabeth Moon
Mass Market Paperbacks!
Implied Spaces, by Walter Jon Williams
Passage at Arms, by Glen Cook
After the Downfall, by Harry Turtledove
Balefires, by David Drake
All our Mass Market Paperbacks to date (spines up):
Ice, Iron and Gold, by S. M. Stirling
Lightbreaker, by Mark Teppo
The Demon and the City, by Liz Williams
Snake Agent, by Liz Williams
Balefires, by David Drake
Passage at Arms, by Glen Cook
Implied Spaces, by Walter Jon Williams
The Princes of the Golden Cage, by Nathalie Mallet
The King's Daughters, by Nathalie Mallet
Moon Flights, by Elizabeth Moon
Precious Dragon, by Liz Williams
Prador Moon, by Neal Asher
After the Downfall, by Harry Turtledove
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Three, edited by Jonathan Strahan
Incandescence, by Greg Egan*
The Swordbearer, by Glen Cook
"So what are you waiting for?" wonders Maddie. "Go buy some books!"
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* Wow, I posted about the hardcover release of Incandescence exactly one year ago. This Trade Paperback edition features all-new cover copy, and we were able to fix a couple of the hardcover's glitches.
Between 2003 and 2007, a strange thing happened; a handful of shared-world, shared-character stories based on my observations and experiences playing in punk rock bands in the early '90s began to transform into something else: a book-length manuscript. This manuscript--I hesitate to say "novel," as it's just a tad shy of a novel's forty thousand word requirement (now obsolete)--evolved into Chick Bassist: A Rock and Roll Fantasy, a literary exploration of sex, race, gender, violence, point of view subjectivity, and rock and roll as a unifying common book mythology. Along the way, characters developed their own agendas, plots veered away from where I'd planned, revisions got revised, and the whole ride became far wilder than I'd ever imagined. In May of 2007, I submitted Chick Bassist as my Master's Thesis in English/Creative Writing at San Francisco State University, describing it as punk rock noir, or Rashomon in a rock-and roll band. Needless to say, it was accepted, and copies of the work were signed, bound, and shelved. Although a handful of excerpts have been published as stand-alone stories, the manuscript as a whole hasn't exactly set the publishing world alight, so Chick Bassist has spent the better part of the last year sitting on a shelf, gathering dust while I worked on other projects.
Until now. Inspired to do so by a pair of authors* I enjoy, starting this Wednesday, I will be serializing Chick Bassist on the Web, uploading a chapter a week to the LiveJournal community
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chickbassist (http://chickbassist.livejournal.com).So come on by, check out Chick Bassist, and add it to your communities list or RSS feed. And if you enjoy what you read, tell a friend or drop a little loose change into the tip jar.
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* Who? Catherynne M. Valente and Tim Pratt, of course.
The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith Volume 4: The Maze of the Enchanter will be shipping right around the end of June, continuing our five-volume Collected Fantasies series. Today, the Bard of Auburn is best known as a writer of weird fiction, one of Weird Tales' most prolific contributors, and a contemporary of H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard. But he was also a poet (one reviewer dubbed Smith "the Keats of the Pacific"), sculptor, and painter, in short, a twentieth-century renaissance man. To learn more about Smith (and see photographs of his art), we encourage you to visit Boyd Pearson's excellent website, The Eldritch Dark. The Maze of the Enchanter includes, in chronological order, all of Smith's stories from "The Mandrakes" (February, 1933) to "The Flower-Women" (May, 1935), extensive story notes by editors Scott Connors and Ron Hilger, and an introduction by the inimitable Gahan Wilson.
And remember, The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith Volume 4: The Maze of the Enchanter is just one of the many titles eligible for our annual 50% off sale, which runs through June 17. Just add four or more books to your shopping cart, then enter coupon code 50NSB2009 at checkout, and we’ll knock your final price in half! If you've been looking for an excuse to order the entire five-volume Clark Ashton Smith series, now is the time!
At long last, The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 3 has a cover! And with Fred Gambino's beautiful artwork and design by Eugene Wang, what a great cover it is! With all of my favorite short stories from the last year (Seriously, Jonathan Strahan has picked out an amazing collection of stories here. Lots of editors know what stories you'll enjoy reading; Jonathan Strahan, on the other hand knows the stories you NEED TO READ!), including ones by Paolo Bacigalupi, Elizabeth Bear, Ted Chiang, Holly Black, Peter S. Beagle, Michael Swanwick, and Kelly Link (not to mention some guy from Maine that you might have heard of), The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 3 shows why Night Shade Books has, in my totally unbiased* opinion, the must-buy "best of" of the year. Seriously, if you aren't reading Bacigalupi, Bear, Chiang, and Link, you might as well not be reading at all.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 3 is headed to the printer this week, so it will be shipping right around the end of June (and showing up at better bookstores near you in early-to-mid July). But do you know what's even cooler that that cover? The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume 3 is just one of the items included in the annual Night Shade Books 50% off sale! That's less than thirty five cents per story! Just order the book along with three other titles, then put in coupon code 50NSB2009 at checkout, and we'll knock your final price in half! How easy is that?
Not completely convinced? Then read the jacket copy and lineup:
An alien world with an argon atmosphere serves as the stage for the ultimate self-examination; an African-American scientist dissects a Lovecraftian slave race while fascism rears its head on the other side of the world; an elderly Jewish artist attracts a celestial muse; a doomed village of scavengers discovers the scattered pieces of a metal man; a stalwart reporter gambles on an interview with the power to alter the world; a steel monkey defends a young girl from a rival family's assassins; a 19th Century country gentleman's curious daughter meets the enigmatic Dr. Viktor Frankenstein; a rivalry between brothers complicates the interpretation of a message from the stars; two girls discover that the cruel social rituals of adolescence apply differently in fact than fiction...
The depth and breadth of science fiction and fantasy fiction continues to change with every passing year. The 29 stories chosen for this book by award-winning anthologist Jonathan Strahan carefully map this evolution, giving readers a captivating and always-entertaining look at the very best the genre has to offer.
Jonathan Strahan has edited more than twenty anthologies and collections, including The Locus Awards, The New Space Opera, and The Jack Vance Treasury. He has won the Ditmar, William J Atheling Jr. and Peter McNamara Awards for his work as an anthologist and reviewer. Strahan is currently the reviews editor for Locus.
Contents:
Introduction - Jonathan Strahan
Exhalation - Ted Chiang
Shoggoths in Bloom - Elizabeth Bear
Uncle Chaim and Aunt Rifke and the Angel - Peter S. Beagle
Fixing Hanover - Jeff VanderMeer
The Gambler - Paolo Bacigalupi
The Dust Assassin - Ian McDonald
Virgin - Holly Black
Pride and Prometheus - John Kessel
The Thought War - Paul McAuley
Beyond the Sea Gates of the Scholar Pirates of Sarskoe - Garth Nix
The Small Door - Holly Phillips
Turing's Apples - Stephen Baxter
The New York Times at Special Bargain Rates - Stephen King
Five Thrillers - Robert Reed
The Magician's House - Megan McCarron
Goblin Music - Joan Aiken
Machine Maid - Margo Lanagan
The Art of Alchemy - Ted Kosmatka
26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss - Kij Johnson
Marry the Sun - Rachel Swirsky
Crystal Nights - Greg Egan
His Master's Voice - Hannu Rajaniemi
Special Economics - Maureen McHugh
Evidence of Love in a Case of Abandonment - M Rickert
From Babel's Fall'n Glory We Fled... - Michael Swanwick
If Angels Fight - Rick Bowes
The Doom of Love in Small Spaces - Ken Scholes
Pretty Monsters - Kelly Link
Trade Paperback 978-1-59780-149-2
479 Pages $19.95
Still here? Go buy the book, already.
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* Okay, sure. Maybe I'm just a little bit biased. But only a little bit.
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