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06-19-09: : 'Son of Retro Pulp Tales' edited by Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale : Ellison Not Only Lives, He Writes!
I'm skeptical, even if I am a Fortean, particularly when it comes to the rare appearance of new fiction by Harlan Ellison. To my mind, you’re more likely to see a jackalope than you are a new story by Ellison, so whenever I see his name on the cover the first thing I do is to flip to the colophon page to see how man decades old the Ellison story is. And it always disturbs my obsessive sense of order to see a colophon page with a long row of "2009's" that indicate "Original to this Anthology," interrupted by some ©1974 lump.
My sense of order was shockingly not disturbed by the colophon page of 'Son of Retro Pulp Tales' (Subterranean Press ; August 2009 ; $40.00), edited by Joe R. Lansdale (hissownself) and his son, Keith Lansdale. It so happens that the Ellison story within, "The Toad Prince, Or Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure Domes," is yet another chance for Ellison to see how far he can push the envelope and just where in fact he is trying to push it. Lansdale hissownself resurrects some characters from one of my favorites of his 'Dead in the West,' in "The Crawling Sky," a Lovecraftian sideswipe, I guess at one of my favorite old cheesy movies, The Crawling Eye. David J. Schow makes an appearance with "A Gunfight" in the tradition of the late, great Donald E. Westlake, while Christopher Golden fires "Quiet Bullets." Every pulp collection needs the right proportion of hot lead!
Timothy Truman, who did the outstanding cover, looks into "Pretty Green Eyes" and hews close the hard-boiled. William F Nolan, who wrote enough pulps back in the day to pack a fake coffin, hires "The Perfect Nanny," a task that is perilous in so many ways for a man. Mike Resnick takes Lucifer Jones to "The Forgotten Kingdom" and brings back the memories on two counts; both of his work and the work his work evokes. Cherie Priest does her research and offers an actual psychic sleuth to open "The Catastrophe Box," while James Grady revisits his own home "Border Town." And if all you need is a great title Matt Venne has "The Brown Bomber and the Nazi Werewolves of the S. S." while Stephen Mertz offers "The Lizard Men of Blood River" — both of them fine ripping adventure supernatural horror that is to say, PULP — yarns.
Now the deal here is this. For those who like the full range of pulps, which is rather more extensive that you might be given to believe, this whole book is not just a farrago of lies, but as well a great example of the rather startling breadth of the pulps. Some stories are pretty much hyper-gritty realism, in that they involve no monster, SF, or supernatural, but, if you want those, we got 'em here too. The real deal is this. The Pulp, or as Lansdale anthologizes the Retro-Pulp, proves to be a pretty damn amazing, versatile and literate form. There's a lot of pure pleasure reading here, which is harder to pull off than you might suspect, and it so happens, a fair amount of highly crafty literature. It might be lurid, it might be as uncommon as a jackalope or a new Harlan Ellison story, but whatever it is, it’s well worth reading. And that cover! I love it! I think every book should have a giant spider-squid tentacle monster on it.
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06-18-09: Amy Stewart Discovers 'Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities' : Deadly Bouquet
It pays to be first. Whether you’re Russell Mulcahy making Razorback ("arguably, the best movie ever made about a giant killing pig," went the review) or Rachel Maddow, arguably the first lesbian liberal (or should it be liberal lesbian) news hour host, being the first of your kid is always an advantage. Amy Stewart long ago staked her ground as the go-to gal for entertaining books centered vaguely around gardening and plants. In hindsight, always 20/20, 'Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities' (Algonquin ; May 21, 2009 ; $18.95) seems as inevitable as kudzu — though considerably less destructive.
And kudzu is destructive, one of the seven deadly sins of the plant kingdom as classified by Stewart. The other six categories she offers are: Deadly, Offensive, Intoxicating, Illegal, Painful, and Offensive. Categories? Just what sort of book is this? Well, if you liked 'The Thackery T. Lambshead Guide to Eccentric and Discredited Diseases,' then this book is for you. It's an A (for Aconite, Deadly) to Y (for Yew Tree, also Deadly) opt he bad actors in the plant kingdom. It's issued in a small-sized hardcover, sans DJ, chock a block with death, pain, convulsions, poison, engravings, illustrations, and relations. And it's all true.
'Wicked Plants' is beautifully designed an entertainingly written. Stewart keeps each entry short, but knowsd how to pick the details that are entertaining. You'll get a list of Arrow poisons, in case you ever have to MacGyver in the jungle. Meet slobber weed and avoid the Suicide Tree. In case you’re into such matter, you'll find a nice list of all the drug-bearing plants that have ever helped inspire bloody wars around the planet. And you'll find the greatest killer of mankind labeled "Deadly," even if it loses Stewart the Southern vote. We love our tobacco! No matter how many people it kills, we aren't going to launch a war on that stuff.
A fair number of readers will want this book just because it is so damn well done. Briony Morrow-Cribs makes sure that each plant gets a finely etched copper engraving. They’re gorgeous. Jonathon Rosen provides the illustrations of things like mushrooms growing out of hands and poison sumac (not the singer, or was that Poison Ivy?) 'Wicked Pants' is inexpensive, small, and probably a damn handy tome for those of us who would poison one another, most assuredly, of course only in the pages of our latest mystery or medical thriller. It's the kind of book that should end up on a lot of shelves — the first of its kind.
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06-17-09: Charles De Lint and Charles Vess Venture Down 'Medicine Road' : Two of a Perfect Pair
Or world is a prickly and delicate place, where so many things can happen; books can happen and their reality can draw us out further, open our worldview. Charles DeLint is a master of the sort of book that can start in our everyday and slip quickly into a day with light like no other. And while his words alone can do this, the history of the fantasy genre is one of great illustrated narratives. For DeLint, the perfect partner is Charles Vess.
Back in the before-time (which I define to be anything earlier than now), Charles Vess and Charles DeLint collaborated on 'Medicine Road' for Subterranean Press, a lovely slipstream tale of two women who are bluegrass musicians. They find themselves upon the Medicine Road and engaged in a journey through the mystical southwest. Let me just say one word that should seal the deal:
Jackalope.
Any book that features a jackalope is a book you need to have. Any book that features a jackalope that is written by Charles DeLint and illustrated by Charles Vess is a book that is destined to make its way to your shelf. And to ensure that this happens, in spite of the limited nature of Subterranean's printing (Bookfinder shows just one copy), the good folks at Tachyon Publications have a solution; enter 'Medicine Road' (Tachyon Publications ; July 2009 ; $14.95), in the affordable, portable, eminently readable trade paperback edition.
The Tachyon edition offers you everything but the limitation. The text is of course all, there, but so are all the gorgeous illustrations by Vess, integrated into the narrative to ensure that really classic fairy-tale feel. At 192 pages, this is a quick read, but it's also the sort of book that you can re-read, enjoying the gentle humor, the gentle terror and the surreal ambience of DeLint and Vess. There's a low-key vibe that permeates the collaboration of these two, and to my mind it is enhanced by the trade paperback format. This feels like the sort of volume you might find were you to stay in a borrowed houseboat on the Sacramento River delta, kind of worn, the pages a bit stained but no less powerful. You might read it and give it to a friend, with the sort of ease that might not be possible in the hardcover format. It might magically slip from one hand to another, the story spreading in a manner one would expect from a fairy tale. You might already have it and not know it.
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06-16-09: Mario Guslandi Reviews 'Madder Mysteries' By Reggie Oliver : Ex Occidente Press New Work from Romania
Mario Guslandi has a very certain sensibility, which I quite enjoy. This time around, he's managed to find not just an author and a book worth our valuable time, but a new publisher with a very interesting list, Ex Occidente. You'd expect from the sort of obscure ghost stories they publish that they'd be in England, say, or perhaps Canada; just because they seem to be intent on giving the venerable Ash Tree a run for their money. You'd not expect to find them in Bucharest, Romania.
First, let me send you directly to Mario's excellent review of 'Madder Mysteries.' I'm having a hard time keeping my twitching fingers from buying it before I finish writing this commentary as opposed to afterwards. But in the process of so doing, I started poking around the website for the publisher, Ex Occidente Press, and fond a lot of new books that started demanding my money.
Ex Occidente is intent on bringing readers English-language books from both contemporary authors and neglected European authors that have not found (widespread, or any) publication in English. They seem to trend towards atmospheric ghost stories in the style of M. R. James, but that's really a gross generalization and a quick glimpse at the website will give a great sense of just how varied their selection is. On one hand, you have new work from Joel Lane 'The Terrible Changes' and the first new work from Steve Duffy 'The Moment of Panic' since his wonderful collaboration with Ian Rodwell, 'The Five Quarters'. That alone makes these guys worth of your valuable time.
In addition to a wealth of contemporary authors, they also offer a nice selection of fascinating finds from the before-time. How can I resist a title like 'The Horrifying Presence and Other Tales' by Jean Ray, "a prolific Belgian author...who succeeded in creating the same ambience of suffocating anguish..." Sign me up for suffocating anguish, this is, after all, the friggin' Agony Column!
Now there's a good-news, bad-news component here, in that though the books are a nice easy, $45, including postage and handling to the US and Europe, they have a print run of some 300 copies. That means that once we get out of this damnable depression, they'll be costing about ten times their cover price for the few left sale. I agree with Mario on this one. Time to get out the Pay Pal account, and may the spirits have mercy on your balance.
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06-15-09: A Review of 'The Manual of Detection' : Dreams of the City
Sometimes, I take my time and do the quality job, just like I used to when I worked at the blood factory. I suppose that the blood factory itself might be a perfect setting for some portion of 'The Manual of Detection,' especially in the times when I worked swing or swing and graveyard shift. Berry's debut is a particularly unique offering, and depending on how you look at it, either a gritty novel of the surreal or a surreal novel of gritty detection. Expect dames, bad guys and twists not just of plot but reality. Berry has the skills and inclination to plunge readers into the dreams of a noir novel. I've written about this book before, but it's just one of those that deserve more than one mention and an in-depth review.
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