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Wednesday reviews round-up for 1st September
Posted by Paul Raven on September 1st, 2010 at 13:34
I know I promised to stop going on about how fast the time flies by, but September? How the hell did September get here so fast? Someone’s been overclocking the simulation that houses my consciousness, I’m sure of it…
Setting my temporal angst aside for now, it’s another one-review week. Science writer and anthologist Henry Gee tackles a trio of books, among which is Timeswitch by John Gribbin:
Timeswitch is a return to the genre. It’s good old-fashioned, straight-down-the-line, Hard SF in the tradition of Arthur C. Clarke or Gregory Benford. It concerns scientists and science, time travel and time paradoxes, and the hardcore physics is front and centre. The schtick is this – British boffinry in the twentieth century is involved in a secret time-travel experiment in which one of their number goes back in time in an effort the derail the Industrial Revolution. The idea is to slow or prevent greenhouse warming. It soon becomes clear that we’re not talking about any twentieth century we know – this is an alternate Universe in which Harold won the Battle of Hastings, the British Empire rules, and science is far in advance of ours.
Alternative History is a respectable subgenre in SF, and one of which I am rather fond. One of my favourites is The Alteration by Kingsley Amis, an adventure that takes place in 1976 in an England in which the Reformation never happened. As you might expect, Amis scores in literary allusion where Gribbin rules in solid physics – and although you can see the endings of both books a mile off, the plotting is excellent. Particularly so in Gribbin’s book, where it’s tighter than a Liverpudlian Z-lister on daytime TV. The plotting has to be tight – loose ends in time-travel heists are liable to come back and bite you like a bull-terrier named Möbius.
Not bad, eh? And while we’ve got your attention (I know, I’m so sneaky!), here’s a video trailer for Gary Fry’s new novel, The House Of Canted Steps:
Creepy stuff… and not just because it mentions estate agents. ;)
The House Of Canted Steps will be released – alongside a bunch of other PS titles – at FantasyCon later this month, and there’ll be a PDF sampler available to our newsletter subscribers featuring teaser snippets from all seven of ‘em… so get yourself signed up, yeah?.
(Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!)
Wednesday reviews, plus World Fantasy Award nominations
Posted by Paul Raven on August 25th, 2010 at 15:07
Things have been quiet on the reviews front these last few weeks; all that’s in the ol’ digital postbag is a review of Paul Di Filippo’s Roadside Bodhisattva at The Future Fire, which suggests it might be better seen as a YA title with fabulist undertones:
Roadside Bodhisattva has a simple direct narrative style of storytelling; it is an easy read, probably comfortable for a sixteen year-old readership, as suggested by the narrative voice. [...] It is a little slow in places and the plot is convenient in others, but as you’d expect from a fable it points to depth whilst focussing on daily life, apparent simplicity and surface appearances.
Part of the fun of reading (and writing) reviews, for me at least, is to see how different readers read the same text… but let’s skip a debate on the Barthesian death-of-the-author for now – that’s convention-bar discussion fodder, without a doubt! – in favour of looking at the nominations list for this year’s World Fantasy Awards, which features a very gratifying number of PS titles and creators:
Best Novella:
- Andy Duncan for The Night Cache
- Paul Witcover for “Everland”, in Everland and Other Stories
Best Short Story:
- Paul Park for “The Persistence of Memory; Or This Space for Sale”, in Postscripts 20/21: Edison’s Frankenstein
Best Collection:
- Paul Witcover for Everland and Other Stories
- Gene Wolfe for The Very Best Of Gene Wolfe
Special Award, Non-Professional:
- John Berlyne for Powers: Secret Histories
Special Award, Professional:
- Pete and Nicky Crowther
I think I can safely say on Pete and Nicky’s behalf that they’re very chuffed to be nominated; a more formal quote would have to wait for the good Mister Crowther to desist from turning cartwheels up and down the seafront of Hornsea!
But as always, congratulations to all the nominees, regardless of affiliation – the genre scene is still thriving, it seems, and we’re proud to be a part of it. :)
More Cemetery Dance titles at PS, and free samples in the next newsletter…
Posted by Peter Crowther on August 24th, 2010 at 15:06
Hi all;
Two things, both important. (You can tell they’re important cos Paul doesn’t usually let me within a country mile of the website!) [Indeed - I'm quite capable of breaking it without Pete's help... - PGR]
First off, following the success of our first three Cemetery Dance titles, Mike has just put up a new batch… all of them crackers.
There’s titles from Kealan Patrick Burke, Simon Clark, James Newman, F. Paul Wilson, Ronald Kelly, Tom Piccirilli and, from Hans-Ake Lilja, The World Of Stephen King. For over a decade now, Lilja has been one of the leading voices on the internet when it comes to covering and reporting on Steve’s books and movies. His website, Lilja’s Library, is the die-hard fan’s source for information about new King projects and breaking news, but Lilja has also featured his own in-depth reviews and interviews with the most important people in King’s world, including the Big Guy himself.
As before, we have a limited supply of each and I’m not sure how easy it’ll be to get extras… so check them out now without delay.
#
Secondly, it’s coming up to FantasyCon time again (Hurrah!), and PS will be there in force this year with Mike popping in on the Saturday to strong-arm ditherers into buying books. Which is a fine idea, seeing as how we’ll be launching the following titles… with all authors (except for Nick Gevers) present, alongside many of the contributors to Catastrophia, Cinema Futura and The Company He Keeps — and we’ll be tying them to a signing table with a drink… just for you.
- Catastrophia edited by Allen Ashley
- The Seven Days Of Cain by Ramsey Campbell
- The Company He Keeps edited by Crowther & Gevers
- The House Of Canted Steps by Gary Fry [order page pending!]
- Tales From The Fragrant Harbour by Garry Kilworth
- Cinema Futura edited by Mark Morris
- End Times by Rio Youers
And get this! Anyone fancying finding out in advance whether they’re going to like the new titles needs only to look out for the next PS email newsletter (due next week, so that slavedriver Paul tells me), which will be carrying samples from all seven books.
What’s that? You don’t get the newsletter? You are so missing out, Chauncy…
So sign up pronto — aside from the samples, it’s, like, totally free (and we never spam you or sell your addresses or anything nasty like that)! Plus you get entered into a prize draw every newsletter… to win books, simply by receiving an email once a month or so. Hey, what’s not to like?
Gee whiz… some people!
Pete
Wednesday reviews roundup for 11th August
Posted by Paul Raven on August 11th, 2010 at 13:33
Yup, it’s Wednesday again – time to root through the digital post-bag and check out the PS Publishing reviews from the week just gone.
First up is a review from Richard Palmer of Solar Bridge, who enjoyed Paul Di Filippo’s Roadside Bodhisattva despite what he felt to be a predictable ending. Its strengths lie in Di Filippo’s portrayal of the central character:
His misfiring mouth aside, the author does well to demonstrate Kid A’s underlying thought processes. Kid A is a young man, barely more than a child, though he’s trying to make his way in the world of adults. Sometimes he is successful – often because Sid treats him as another adult. However, his immaturity shows in his attempts to woo Sue (slightly older than he is). He is unsure how to relate to her, though he is attracted to her. Also, his reactions to what he considers being shut out of parts of her life he’d like to be involved in are really the mark of a child. Suggesting – and this is quite important to the outcome of the novel – that while he is starting to grow, he has a lot to do yet.
Next up, Bob Blough of Tangent Online heaps the plaudits on Lavie Tidhar’s Cloud Permutations:
“Cloud Permutations” is a wonderful novella from new writer Lavie Tidhar. If you have been following the online SF/F magazines lately you will have often seen his name. He truly is a “writer to watch,” but his writing is as powerful and lovingly handled as any old master. All he needs is a larger readership, and I hope this novella helps secure that for him.
[...]
I really enjoyed this novella, but it is in reviewing it that I have come to appreciate it even more. Lavie Tidhar is a writer who will dazzle us for many years, I hope. Read “Cloud Permutations” then go find his short stories. You won’t be disappointed.
And thirdly, James Lovegrove reviews a handful of sf titles by non-English authors at the Financial Times, one of which is the delightfully loopy Escher’s Loops by Zoran Zivkovic:
The stories themselves twist and turn around one another, shot through with an absurdist, deadpan humour (the delicate, unobtrusive translation deserves an honourable mention here). Characters, identified only by their occupations, recur and events seen from one viewpoint are often shown in a fresh light, from another viewpoint, later on. In an interview with the highbrow SF magazine Interzone, conducted in 2002, Zivkovic describes this storytelling structure as “larger than the mere sum of its parts – an amalgam, not a conglomerate”. The aim, he says, is “to force the reader to return to the beginning and re-evaluate everything from a new perspective”.
What emerges most strongly from Zivkovic’s work is the sense of western SF being absorbed, reconfigured, and served back up in an unusual and exciting new form. [...] Escher’s Loops has a truly outward-looking, international feel.
Voila!
(Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!)
Summertime means special offers…
Posted by Peter Crowther on August 9th, 2010 at 12:30
Hi gang!
Well, summer finally happened and, as I type this latest missive to pee-essers everywhere, the sidewalks and pavements outside PS Towers are ringing to the sound of a million excited youngsters heading seawards armed with buckets, spades and balls of varying sizes and dragging behind them a motley and bedraggled band of weary parents. Ah, what fun!
We’ve been having fun here, too. Mike has pretty much spent the past few weeks incarcerated in our storage unit making some sense of it all. And I have to say he’s done a damn fine job.
At the same time, Mike and Paul — under Paul’s leadership ["leadership" is a rather strong word in this context, to be honest - PGR.] — have been making good progress on the brand-new website, to be unveiled later this year. There were a few glitches on the initial changeover and, for a day or two, customers were unable to order books. (I had to be heavily sedated at the time, while someone had to remove Paul’s belt and shoelaces and stay with him lest he try to take the easy way out.) But all’s well now… touch wood!
Down to business.
Tomorrow Revisited nears completion
I’m delighted to say that the long and complex lead-up to our sending the first PS ArtBook to print — namely Alastair Crompton’s Tomorrow Revisited, the sumptuous and lavishly illustrated biography on Frank Hampson, creator of Dan Dare — is almost done. This book is absolutely gorgeous and the uber-limited edition is well on the way to selling out… so don’t delay in ordering if you fancy it.
- Tomorrow Revisited – bookshop edition (£26.99 until publication)
- Tomorrow Revisited – deluxe leatherbound traycased edition (£265.50 until publication)
To make things extra attractive (and to acknowledge that this project has moved forward a little slower than any of us would have liked), we’re going to give each person who orders the book up to the end of September special vouchers against other PS titles — one £5 voucher for everyone who orders the standard edition and three £5 vouchers for everyone who orders the deluxe edition (and yes, this includes everyone who has ordered already). Pretty good value when you bear in mind that the two editions are already discounted by some 10%… but do remember that the offer expires on 1 October. And please note that only one voucher may be used against any single item. Those who have already ordered this title need do nothing: we’ll be writing to you in due course with your voucher details.
Of course, that’s not the only offer we’re running… as the eagle-eyed amongst you will already have noticed from the website. Take a look…
Summer Sizzlers: special offers a-go-go
You can snare five standard edition novels and/or collections (of our choosing) for £69 including free postage, or you can choose five books from our list of 15 titles for £75, also inclusive of P&P.
Meanwhile, novella-wise, we’re offering a set of five unsigned books (picked by us) for £30 including free postage or, once again, you can choose your own five novellas from our list of 15 alternatives for £35 inclusive of P&P.
Our TRAY, TRAY GENEROUS offers were such a hit we’ve decided to slip (yes, sorry about that) into a still higher gear and extend that fabulous deal to include pre-2010 slipcased editions… so now you have 20 titles to make your selection from. These are the three current slip/traycased offers:
- FABTASTIC FOUR – £100 (£115 inc P&P)
- MAGNIFICENT SEVEN – £170 (£195 inc P&P)
- TOP TEN - £240 (£275 inc P&P)
(The titles were Mike’s idea, by the way – thank God we steered him clear of The 300!)
Please note: These three offers apply only to the following titles, all of which are signed hardcover novels or collections in either a slipcase (SC) or a traycase (TC).
- Black Heart (TC) – Patrick O’Leary
- Creatures of the Pool (TC) - Ramsey Campbell
- Timeswitch (TC) - John Gribbin
- Template (SC) - Matthew Hughes
- Banquet for the Damned (SC) – Adam Nevill
- Omega (SC) – Christopher Evans
- Random Walk (SC) - Lawrence Block
- The Painting and the City (SC) – Robert Freeman Wexler
- The Pilo Family Circus (SC) – Will Elliott
- Cage of Night (SC) – Ed Gorman
- The Grin of the Dark (SC) – Ramsey Campbell
- Crack’d Pot Trail (TC) – Steven Erikson
- Grazing The Long Acre (TC) – Gwyneth Jones
- Impossible Stories II (TC) - Zoran Zivkovic
- Passing For Human (TC) - Michael Bishop / Steven Utley (eds.)
- Just Behind You (TC) – Ramsey Campbell
- Where or When (SC) – Steven Utley
- Everland & Other Stories (SC) – Paul Witcover
- The Overnight (SC) – Ramsey Campbell
- Past Magic (SC) – Ian R. Macleod
The minimum book-value of the Fabtastic Four will be £185; the minimum for the Magnificent Seven will be £335; and for the Top Ten it’ll be £485. Just so’s you know. And of course, these deals are on a strict “first come, first served” basis — and when the stocks are gone, they’re gone.
Four new titles as a special offer bundle
You may have noticed that new novellas from Jay Lake (The Baby Killers), Lavie Tidhar (Cloud Permutations), and Matt Hughes (Quartet & Triptych), along with the new Showcase collection from Rjurik Davidson (The Library of Forgotten Books) have hit the stands the past few days. Well, being the softies that we are, we’re doing a special deal for anyone who springs for all four — just £45 post paid anywhere for the unsigned editions, and £90 post paid anywhere for the signed ones. The offer will last until the end of the month so don’t delay.
And finally, but by no means last, Mike has added another section to the site, called IMPERFExIONS. This relates to a few copies of various titles that in some way are not perfect – as in scuffed or slightly torn dust-jackets, dinked slipcases or traycases, incomplete sets, missing signature sheets or signature sheets bound in upside down and so on. You get the picture. The cost of these books is a fraction of the published price, and the slight imperfexion will not affect the reading of the book in any way. And watch out next week, because Mike will be adding a new folder for ARCs (advance reading copies) at super-low prices.
New titles in the PS pipeline
Meanwhile, just in case you’ve been thinking we’re slowing down, new projects signed up include, for our poetry imprint Stanza Press:
- The Charmed Pot, edited by Howard Watson, plus
- A Woman On Mars by Helen Patrice, and
- collections from Charles De Lint and Brian Lumley, and
- a collaborative book from Garry Kilworth and the late and hugely-missed Rob Holdstock.
For PS, we’ve bought:
- Showcase volumes from Kelly Barnhill (Untitled) and Darren Speegle (A Haunting In Germany and Other Stories);
- Richard Parks’s new novel, To Break The Demon Gate;
- The Metanatural Adventures of Dr. Black (collection) and The Architect (novella) from Brendan Connell;
- two more Starship novellas from Eric Brown;
- an as-yet untitled collection from Paul Kane.
Then there’s more novellas:
- The Moment of Panic from Steve Duffy;
- Dogs With Their Eyes Shut from Paul Meloy;
- Ghosts Doing The Orange Dance by Paul Park;
- The Pit of Despair by Simon R. Green.
And some collections:
- Ursula Pflug’s Harvesting The Moon;
- Kit Reed’s What Wolves Know;
- Christopher Fowler’s The Horrors;
- Paul Di Filippo’s Wikiworld And Other Imaginary Latitudes;
- a bumper collection of Carol Emshwiller’s war and non-war stories (as yet untitled); and
- Haunted Histories edited by Brian J. Showers
And there will be even more novellas from Catherynne M. Valente (The Ice Puzzle) and Matt Hughes (The Yellow Cabochon), plus Joe R. Lansdale’s fantastic story extravaganza, Trapped In The Saturday Matinee: Lansdale Reloaded… and while we’re on the subject of Joe, don’t forget his special winter novelette Christmas With The Dead, which will be sent out free to all subscribers to our twice-yearly anthology series. Here’s the cover from PS fave ‘Gore-some’ Glenn Chadbourne:
We’ve got even more stuff to tell you, but that should clear the decks for the summer. Are we having fun? Well, what do you think!
Newsletter giveaway winners
Two out of three ain’t bad: of the trio of emails we sent out last month, we got replies from Jack Baldwin of Garden City, Michigan, and Kevin Johnson of Saint Paul, Minnesota, both of whom should by now (transAtlantic postal services permitting) have received three rare PS ARCs each.
And how did they qualify for these wonderful free gifts? Why, they just signed up to receive our newsletters, of course… and you can do the same, if you’ve not already. Paul will draw this month’s three winners – who will each get three ARCs, provided they respond to the emails – on Thursday 19th August, so get yourself and your friends signed up by then for your chance to win!
More next time. Look after each other… and happy reading!
Pete
Lavie Tidhar explains the genesis of Cloud Permutations
Posted by Paul Raven on August 6th, 2010 at 17:01
The SF Signal gang have turned the guest-blog microphone over to everyone’s favourite globetrotting genre fictioneer, Lavie Tidhar, so he took the opportunity to explain the genesis of his new PS novella, Cloud Permutations, which was inspired in part by the time he spent on the South Pacific island of Vanua Lava:
At night, sometimes, I would go out for kava. Kava is a drink made from the roots of a plant native to the islands of Vanuatu. The roots are chopped up and mixed with water and produce a dark, dank brown drink that produces relaxation. It makes your sight and hearing sensitive, so the nakamals – the kava-bars – are dark and quiet places, illuminated by a single candle or hurricane lamp, and the stars.
#
What if the people I lived with and drank with and laughed with and had fights with were to go into space?
Well worth a read. I’m not ashamed to admit being hugely envious of Lavie’s rootless lifestyle; I’ve done a bit of travelling myself, but the man never seems to stay still. How he finds the time to write is beyond me (though if I’m honest, he’s probably just much less lazy and easily distracted than I am), but if you want more insight to his creative process, another guest post at Jeff VanderMeer’s blog may (or, indeed, may not) prove illuminating…
Wednesday reviews round-up for 4th August
Posted by Paul Raven on August 4th, 2010 at 14:47
Three things make a post, as Ye Olde Lore of Webloggery would have it… and three reviews is exactly what we have in the electronic PS postbag this week. So, without further ado…
The first pair of reviews are for The Library Of Forgotten Books, our eighth PS Showcase collection, featuring stories by Rjurik Davidson… who appears to be making quite an impression. Here’s Liviu Suciu at Fantasy Book Critic:
I have not heard of Rjurik Davidson before but the title and cover of the book attracted my attention and when I checked its contents, the second part of the collection consisting of tales of Caeli-Amur jumped at me.
[Then there's some short examinations of each story in turn, followed by...]
Overall The Library of Forgotten Books (A++) is the best collection I have read in a long time – and that in a year in which I have previously read five very impressive collections [...] No story that missed for me and three awesome ones I plan to reread for a long time to come. I really want more from the author and any Caeli-Amur story is a must for me, while a novel set in that superb universe would be a big time asap.
And here’s another plaudit from the presumably pseudonymous Seregil of Rhiminee at RisingShadow.net:
All these stories are amazingly powerful and they contain different kind of themes, so there’s something for everybody. I loved the atmosphere of these stories – Davidson transports the reader to another world with his words. These original, thoughtful and atmospheric stories are great entertainment to readers who want quality and substance in their fantasy stories.
I enjoyed Rjurik Davidson’s stories very much. It’s a shame that this collection has only a bit over 150 pages, because when I reached the end I hoped they’d be more pages to read. [...] It’ll be interesting to see what Davidson writes next, because these stories show that he has lots of imagination. I hope he writes more stories about Caeli-Amur.
Lots of love for the Caeli-Amur material, eh?
And to close up for this week, Scott A Cupp steps up to the mic at sci-fi uber-blog SF Signal and waxes lyrical about Quartet & Triptych, the latest Archonate joint from Matthew Hughes:
Matt Hughes has certainly taken on his role as Vance’s successor and made the best of it. His stories of the Archonate, particularly those featuring Henghis Hapthorn have been wonderful tales of cultures and planets far from our own. The mind of a schemer like Henghis is always interesting to watch as plans are made, altered, scrapped, and re-made to achieve the results he desires.
[Brief plot summary here, followed by...]
I had a lot of fun with this book. I love stories of the Archonate and the writing of Matt Hughes. There are two editions of this novella – a regular one and a signed one. Go for the signed one. He’s the real deal and you will be looking for signed books at some point. Get it now while it is less expensive.
You heard the man – make with the clicky and buy some Matthew Hughes! Colleactable and highly readable… what more could you ask from a book, hmm?
(Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!)
Wednesday reviews round-up for 28th July 2010
Posted by Paul Raven on July 28th, 2010 at 14:52
What-ho, chaps and chappesses! Just been out for gallop over the old intenets, and managed to bag a brace of reviews; care to take a gander, eh?
First of all, here’s another foreign language review; this time, it’s for that fine fellow and knight-of-the-household Sir Robert Freeman Wexler and his novel The Painting & The City, here enjoyed in the French by Monsieur Philippe Sendek of Etat-Critique.com, and translated courtesy the aetheric machineries of The Google Intertube Company:
A worthy descendant of a Burroughs or Edgar Allan Poe, the author opens the sliding doors of a world where dream and reality merge. His writing combines metaphorical profusion quasi-baroque and surgical intrusion into the world of an artist.It is not easy to enter his universe because the player is neither assured nor pampered but if he persists in his reading, the author makes him a hundred times what he brought to attention. It is a novel that resembles a steep path along a stream. It is argued in awe of the slope but the fresh air purifies your lungs.
This novel is powerful and evocative. You sense it continues on a tightrope because he dares not make a ridiculous scenes and success. Writing is also often graze chasms just waiting to swallow you up.
Robert Freeman Wexler cleanses your eyes and makes you more alive than you did before opening his novel. Add Anne-Sylvie Homassel, the translator performs a remarkable job.
Sterling piece of valedictory writing, wot? And here’s another, as Mister Stephen Theaker (of the eponymous Theaker’s Quarterly) browses the shelves of Mister Rjurik Davidson‘s Library of Forgotten Books:
If the book has a theme, I think it’s doomed or impossible love. The first three stories concern lovers who are prisoners of their situations, the fourth a widow in love with the public image of her dead partner, the fifth an assassin in love with her target, and the sixth a librarian intrigued by the writers whose books she buries in the stacks. In but one of the stories is escape from the trap truly possible, and even then it’s thanks only to the protagonist’s newly discovered thaumaturgical powers. But though Rjurik Davidson’s world can be bleak, it’s full of beauty and imagination and ideas, where even the grossest distortions of the human body are described with careful eloquence – and in trapping its characters, or forcing them apart, it reminds us of our own freedom.
Spiffing stuff – utterly top-drawer, wouldn’t you say? Of course you would! So progress with all haste to our aetheric shop and purchase one of these fine tomes for yourself. Tally-ho!
(Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!)
… and the Webstore rides again!
Posted by Paul Raven on July 23rd, 2010 at 20:59
But aren’t you all glad it got sorted out after my grovelling apology, eh?
Yes, the PS Publishing webstore is back in action! It turns out that twenty four hours of utter panic on my part could have been avoided by one person somewhere in London doing their job properly… which is something any British taxpayer probably understands at a very emotional basic level.
(For the techies in the audience: it turns out the new server hadn’t had CGI scripting – a basic default option – activated on it, which explains quite thoroughly why the CGI scripts weren’t running. And yes, I’ll be considering a change of webhost in the very near future.)
So, please, ladies and gents – shop at will. Nay, shop with impugnity!
(Though if you spot any hiccups or oddities with the store, don’t hesitate to let us know.)
PS webstore temporarily out of action; please order by email or through Amazon
Posted by Paul Raven on July 23rd, 2010 at 18:39
Hi folks – just a quick note from the broom cupboard PS Publishing Datacenter. I’m afraid that due to unforseen circumstances the PS webstore is currently broken, and we can’t take any orders for books through that channel at the moment. Team PS are doing everything we can to get it up on its feet again, but we currently have no idea how soon the fix will be in.
So, in the interim, please accept my sincere apologies, and remember that you can buy our books through our storefront on Amazon UK. Furthermore, if you’re interested in any special offers we’ve mentioned here at the Newsroom, feel free to email us and enquire about how to arrange an order – use the address “enquiriesATpspublishingDOTcoDOTuk”, and we’ll get back to you just as soon as we possibly can.
***
For those of you curious about how one comes to break a webstore, I should hold my hand up and raise the ugly leaden banner of mea culpa. I’m currently in the process of building an all-new singin’-and-dancin’ combined website and store for PS, and one of the steps I needed to take in order to progress was to move the hosting of the sites onto servers under my own control. This was put into action yesterday, and I thought – naive fool that I am – all had gone smoothly. Indeed, there’s no reason that I (nor anyone else I know who has worked with the software in question) can think of that explains why the store shouldn’t be working perfectly well, and a whole day of fiddling and double-checking has granted no revelation as yet .
But the evidence is overwhelming – in that, where there should be a working webstore, there is a not-working one*. So we’re at the “support tickets to the hosting company” phase of proceedings… and that’s a sentence that has probably just produced a physical flinch reaction in any among you who’ve worked on the web for a living. Will they come up with a solution? Will they even reply before you’ve sent your twentieth email and seriously considered mailing them your own severed little fingers in a jiffy bag as an indication of the fact that you’d reeeeeeaaaaally appreciate some of the attention implied by the “24/7 support” their promotional material promises? Stay tuned for the resolutions (or continuations) of these and yet more exciting dilemmas in the rollercoaster world of web development!
Sarcasm aside, this is very frustrating for me: to have accidentally banjaxed the old webstore while enacting a minor step toward the building of a new and much improved one is an irony I’d appreciate far better at the distance of a lightyear or two. So please accept my sincere apologies, and my solemn promise that this is a temporarily troublesome obstacle in the road toward far, far better things. The new store is gonna be awesome, and with any luck the old one will be back in business before too long.
I’ll update you all here on the Newsroom as soon as I have any idea when the webstore will be working again. In the meantime, feel free to browse the Amazon UK storefront, or get in touch using the email address above.
Thanks for listening.
- PGR (shamefaced PS webgeek)
[ * Actually, even the webstore isn't there at the moment, as I've set the subdomain it lives on to redirect to this post. But you get the point I was trying to make, I hope. ]
Wednesday reviews roundup for 21st July
Posted by Paul Raven on July 21st, 2010 at 14:38
A healthy batch of reviews arrived in my inbox from the lovely folk at Locus Magazine. The latest issue includes two mentions for Seven Cities Of Gold by David Moles, one from Rich Horton:
I’ll end by mentioning a chapbook. David Moles’s Seven Cities of Gold is a powerful novella set in an alternate history dominated by Japan and Islam. A Japanese doctor is sent on a quasi-humanitarian mission to the dark interior of North America in search of a defector and the ‘‘Seven Cities of Gold’’… which in some sense are real in this alternate world. My description says nothing useful – the story needs to be read, to experience Dr. Nakada’s own dissolution, and the devastated heart of this America.
And the other from Gardner Dozois:
Every year there are also a number of novellas published as individual chapbooks, usually by small presses. Last year there were several significant novellas published that way [...] and the best one I’ve seen so far this year is Seven Cities of Gold by David Moles. This is a masterfully done work of alternate history, which succeeds in creating a world that seems lived-in and all-too-real, down to the smallest details. It’s a Heart of Darkness journey undertaken by a haunted and conflicted woman, down a river that runs right through the middle of a vividly described warzone, with physical details that feel real and yet surreal at the same time, and scenes so grotesquely horrible that they almost rise through it to a hallucinatory beauty. Seven Cities of Gold is one of the best novellas of the year so far, but be warned – there is stuff here that is almost painful to read, and this is definitely not for the squeamish or faint of heart. ‘‘Optimistic SF’’ it’s not.
One of the best novellas of the year, eh? Coming from Dozois, that’s high praise indeed – bravo, Mister Moles!
Elsewhere in the same issue, Paul Witcover seeks the buddha nature of Paul Di Filippo in Roadside Bodhisattva:
The first thing to note about Paul Di Filippo’s Roadside Bodhisattva is what it isn’t: science fiction. Readers expecting the wild flights of speculative fancy and exuberantly inventive prose that this prolific author is deservedly known for will not find them here. Instead, Di Filippo has produced what at first seems a gently satirical coming-of-age novel, solidly naturalistic, beautifully observed, set in the present day, about a 16-year-old runaway, Kid A, equally in thrall to ‘‘the two best books ever written,’’ Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums and Gibran’s The Prophet, who seeks adventures (and sex) on the road and finds a lot more than he bargained for.
[...]
Di Filippo’s title alludes not only to the strain of Beat Buddhism popularized by Kerouac in The Dharma Bums and other road novels but to the famous Zen koan, ‘‘If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!’’ A bodhisattva is an enlightened being who purposefully holds back from nirvana to help his or her fellow beings achieve enlightenment themselves; the sacrifice unselfishly embraced by the bodhisattva for the benefit of others cannot help but resonate in the Western mind with the sacrifice – and betrayal – of Jesus Christ. Di Filippo is well aware of these layers of meaning, and weaves them provocatively into the plot of the novel.
And last but not least, we have what is surely our first review written in Italian, at least during my tenure here at PS Towers. The Splattergramma blog reviews R B Russell’s Literary Remains, and if Google’s translation services are accurate, they say:
When others around you insist on seeing the world differently, you can still talk with them, but when you realize that you can not even rely on your senses, the world becomes a terrifying place beyond measure.
This is the philosophy underlying the stories collected in Literary Remains RB Russell, real pockets of uncertainty where the distressing memories of the past prove false or misinterpreted, and even this does not provide safety or certainty of any kind.
Personally, I hope those “real pockets of uncertainty” are what the reviewer actually meant to describe; what a wonderful turn of phrase!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Terry Bisson’s Billy’s Book, as illustrated by the Mad Professor
Posted by Paul Raven on July 20th, 2010 at 10:37
Awesome things can happen when oddball science fiction writers get together. Terry Bisson and Rudy Rucker have been friends for years, and when Rucker read Bisson’s Billy’s Book, he decided it was ripe for illustration… so, enter Billy’s Picture Book, a free ebook version of the Bisson collection rounded out with the madcap technicolour surrealism of Rucker’s paintings. Lots of fun for young readers… as well as the young at heart.
Physical copies of our original limited edition binding of Billy’s Book are still available, by the way – click here to order one.
Rio Youers’ End Times artwork
Posted by Paul Raven on July 15th, 2010 at 13:58
Just in case you were wondering why we (and many other publishers) keep going back to Vinnie Chong for cover artwork, take a look at the finished piece that’ll be adorning our limited edition of Rio Youers’ debut novel, End Times, due for release later this year:
Click through to Vinnie’s site to see the full piece, front and back, sans typography. Gorgeous work as ever, Mister Chong. :)
Wednesday reviews roundup for 14th July
Posted by Paul Raven on July 14th, 2010 at 11:40
Granted, it’s not much of a “roundup” when there’s only one review contained within it… but we’re all about quality rather than quantity round these parts, so we’ll not complain. Especially not when the lone review in question is another plaudit for R B Russell‘s short story collection, Literary Remains, courtesy of Brian Showers from Rue Morgue Magazine. Take it away, Brian:
What Russell does—and he does it well—is exploit a unique brand of dread. As with his 2009 debut collection, Putting the Pieces in Place, each story in Literary Remains explores unreliable perception: the subversion of the senses and the convolution of subjective experience. The effect might be termed “subjective horror”, an exploration of what happens when we can no longer trust ourselves.
[...]
“Una Furtiva Lagrima” features a woman troubled by the ghosts of children she may or may not have murdered. The haunted woman asserts, “We’re all prisoners of our own mind. We all see the world differently, individually. What you see here, right now, is not necessarily what I see.” If she is right, the possibilities for horror are endless—and, like Literary Remains, terrifying.
Thanks no doubt in part to the absolute torrent of good reviews it’s received, Literary Remains has been selling strongly… and you’d be advised to snare a copy now, while there are still any of them left. So click here and place an order right away – don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates.
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Scott Edelman reading from What Will Come After at Readercon
Posted by Paul Raven on July 12th, 2010 at 12:33
If there’s one convention on the yearly calendar that makes me wish I lived in the US, it’s Readercon. Much as I like the pot-luck lunacy of more general conventions, the idea of a weekend devoted purely to geeking out over books in the company of other book-geeks is my idea of paradise.
Readercon took place this weekend just gone in Burlington, Massachusetts, and there were a handful of PS people there: Robert Freeman Wexler, Beth Bernobich and Paul Di Filippo, for instance. And also Scott Edelman, who got someone to video him reading the story “Tell Me Like You Done Before” from his collection of zombie tales, What Will Come After:
Scott (canny devil that he is) skipped a few pages in the middle… so if you want to know the whole story, I guess you’ll just have to buy yourself a copy! But given you get another eight critically-aclaimed stories into the bargain, presented in a luxurious and handsome limited edition binding, we like to think that’s a pretty good deal. :)
Robert Wexler interviewed at BookSpot Central
Posted by Paul Raven on July 9th, 2010 at 15:11
PS Publishing’s very own Robert Freeman Wexler is interviewed over at BookSpot Central, spilling the beans on the writing of his acclaimed novel The Painting & The City; go take a look. Here’s a snippet:
Brendan Connell: I was impressed by the tone of the book. Many passages have a very lyric quality, while others have a succinct, almost journalistic feel to them. None of this is jarring in the least, but it does give the book a sense of almost competing voices, or voices drifting one into the next. I am curious how you achieved this or if it is something that just came about organically.
Robert Freeman Wexler: Thanks, I’m glad you like that. The tonal shifts come out organically, as focused free-writing, sometimes in the process of writing whatever passage I’m working on, sometimes in going back over it, sometimes in my head while I’m doing something else. Using the metaphor of driving a stick-shift: I’m going along through normal terrain, seeing what’s along the way, and then I switch into my reality-bending gear, which is out of phase with our normal reality and must be used sparingly. Too much of it would create a rift in the reader’s consciousness, allowing their subconscious to leak out into conscious space. Using just the correct amount allows me to give the reader a subconscious jolt from time to time, which increases their appreciation for the narrative.
Copies of The Painting & The City are still available, by the way… click here to snag yourself one of ‘em. :)
Wednesday reviews roundup for 7th July
Posted by Paul Raven on July 7th, 2010 at 13:14
We’ve a fulsome threesome (oo-er, missus) of reviews in the ol’ digital mailbag this week. Let’s start off with this heartfelt commendation for our special collector’s edition of Ray Bradbury‘s Machineries of Joy, courtesy of Tia Bowman at The Dragon Page:
I’ve enjoyed Bradbury since I first clutched a used copy of The Illustrated Man at age 13, but I think I just fell in love with his prose all over again.
Machineries has been around since 1964, but you’d never guess it if you didn’t know. The writing is timeless and so clever you may be, as I was, inclined to read the stories more than once.
[...]
In The Machineries of Joy, Bradbury offers up twenty-one smartly worded tales that slip in through your eyes to stimulate your mind, then reach down to tug at your heart. Most definitely one of the most entertaining books I’ve read in a while, and a delightful reading experience!
Buy, Borrow, or Pass? If you’re a fan of short stories, science fiction, mystery, or just plain great writing: Buy!
Next, here’s another recommendation (albeit more from a collector’s perspective) for R B Russell‘s Literary Remains at Hyraxia, The Book Collecting Portal:
Russell’s writing belongs to a more specific canon. That’s not to downplay horror, rather wierd fiction is a somewhat separate entity taking more from the Victorian era than contemporary speculative fiction. I’m no expert here, but I would suggest that Russell’s writing is more of a progression of weird fiction, bringing the clock forward but still portraying an historical context wherein the fictional living and the fictional dead occupy a space much departed from the reader, connected only by somewhat distant and transposed memories. This separation in time couples the natural to the supernatural and abstracts the reader giving a cohesive authenticity much lacking from most contemporary horror.
All in all, it’s a good book, occupying a stylistic niche that is modern enough to not be just another homage to Poe and Lovecraft, but mature enough to not be mainstream horror.
And last but not least, the Baryon Review has a short mention for our landscape illustrated binding of Stephen King’s “One For The Road”:
This is one of the more unusual books in the varied career of Stephen King. This is a picture book of one of King’s short stories about the town of Jerusalem’s Lot and a stormy night in Maine.
Booth and Herb Tooklander are about to close down Tookey’s Bar, when Gerarld Lumley stumbles in after walking six miles in a blizzard to get help for his stalled car and his wife and daughter he left there.
Lumley was lost and took the road to Jerusalem’s Lot and got stuck in a snowdrift. He convinces the two men to go help him rescue his family, even though they know it is probably useless.
The story fills in their journey and the things they find when they arrive at the stalled car. It is typical King and makes for an interesting book. It’s a good story and an unusual book to add to your collection.
That’s all for this week!
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse. And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Table of contents: The New And Perfect Man (Postscripts #24/25)
Posted by Paul Raven on July 6th, 2010 at 14:25
The header says it all, ladies and gents: Postscripts #24/25, titled The New And Perfect Man, will contain nigh on 150,000 words of top-drawer short fiction from a wide range of genres and authors. But don’t just take my word for it – here’s the final rundown, as pilfered from a misforwarded email carefully passed on to me from the editorial department at PS Towers…
- “The New And Perfect Man” — Carol Emshwiller
- “Frightened Angels” — Jeremy Adam Smith
- “To See Infinity Bare” — Rudy Rucker & Paul Di Filippo
- “Electric Breakfast” — Paul Meloy
- “A Crack In The Ceiling Of the World” — Michael Kelly
- “The Dog Parade” — Lawrence Person
- “The Last Heretic” — Darrell Schweitzer
- “The Story Of Princess Rosebud” — Alan Peter Ryan
- “The Inn Of Distant Sorrows” — Thomas Tessier
- “A Moment At the House” — T.M. Wright
- “Whisper” — Richard Calder
- “The Primate Sanctuary” — Quentin S. Crisp
- “Call Me” — Bob Strother
- “So Loved” — Matthew Hughes
- “Confessions Of A Tyrant’s Double” — Gregory Norminton
- “The Girl On Mount Olympus” — Christopher Fowler
- “Euphoria” — Robert Reed
- “Christ The Painter”– Allen Ashley
- “Your Golden Hands” — Andrew Hook
- “The Ghost Of Lillian Bliss” — Rio Youers
- “Ashes In The Water” — Joel Lane and Mat Joiner
- “Child Of Evil Stars” — Anne-Sylvie Homassel
- “Her Fingers Like Whips, Her Eyes Like Razors” — Jay Lake
- “Dr. Black, Thoughts & Patents” — Brendan Connell
- “The Room Beyond” — Ramsey Campbell
- “Thrownness” — Adam Roberts
- “Imago” — Keith Brooke
- “The Vorkuta Event” — Ken MacLeod
Postscripts #24/25 is due out in early December; all subscribers will also get a free copy of this year’s seasonal chapbook bonus, which will be Joe Lansdale’s “Christmas With The Dead”. We’ll let you know when we’ve got a page up for ordering individual copies.
Cemetery Dance titles now available, and summer sale insanity begins…
Posted by Peter Crowther on July 5th, 2010 at 13:00
Hi folks;
Gee whiz, it’s hot! Did I ask for this heat? If I did, then I need to go wash out my mouth with soapy water. Roll on winter, I say!
Join us for la Danse Macabre: Cemetery Dance Books at PS Publishing
First off, say Hi to the gang over at Cemetery Dance/CD Books. Because of the high cost of mailing something from the US to the UK or mainland Europe (it’s much cheaper the other way around — go figure) we’re making some of CD’s titles available through the PS website. Click here to look at the selection so far.
To start this new arrangement, we’re offering 10 copies of the now sold-out first printing of Stephen King’s new baseball novella, Blockade Billy; plus 10 copies of Glenn Chadbourne’s remarkable and lavishly illustrated collection of King stories, The Secretary Of Dreams — absolutely gorgeous and, again, the sold-out first edition — plus a big 19-story collection from Tim Lebbon entitled Last Exit For The Lost.
I haven’t read all of this yet (just the first half-dozen, all of which are exactly as good as you’d expect) but I have flicked through all the opening lines and I have to repeat (ad nauseum, I know) that Tim is the Guv’nor of the Killer Opening Sentence. For my money, if you can’t be suckered into a Tim Lebbon story with the opening line then… well, you and me are going to have to sit down someplace for a little chat. Great stuff.
But do remember that we have just 10 copies each of Blockade Billy and The Secretary Of Dreams, and 30 copies of Last Exit For The Lost… so it’ll strictly be a case of first come, first served. And be prepared to have your payment refunded if you’re not one of the first ones off the blocks.
Supplementary chapbook for deluxe editions of Horns
Next up, our printers messed up on sixty-two copies of the deluxe edition of Joe Hill’s Horns. Here’s the problem: the deluxe edition should have an extra piece of artwork (after page 395) and then an additional eight pages, beginning page 397, which forms a sample chapter from Joe’s abandoned novel The Surrealist’s Glass. Unfortunately, on these few copies, only the extra artwork is present and not the additional eight pages.
The good news is we reckon we’ve tracked down most (around 90%) of these copies and we’ve been in touch already with some of the customers concerned. But it is worth checking your copy to make sure the text is there (pages 397 through to 404 inclusive)… though please note that this refers only to the traycased edition. The slipcased edition isn’t meant to have that extra artwork or that additional chapter.
Anyway, that was the problem: here’s the solution.
We’ve arranged to print up a little card-covered chapbook comprising colour covers plus the missing chapter. We’ll send this out to those folks who have ended up with a duff copy of the traycased edition and that chapbook can then be housed in the traycase in front of the actual book.
As a nice postscript to this whole sorry affair, the first thing Joe said when we told him about it was, “Hey that sounds really cool — can *I* have a copy?” Oh, okay then!
And while we’re on the subject of reparations, I just posted the first slew of certificates for those customers who bought unsigned copies of Stephen King’s “One For The Road” (as mentioned here). We’ll send others out as they’re requested.
The heat is on: new special offers every Friday
With this heat, of course, it has to mean summer is upon us… and summer being upon us means I need to go berserk with another super-duper sale.
So how about this: every Friday all through the summer, we’re going to be putting up special deals… and the first one is there already. Five regular novellas of our choice for just £30 (post-free to anywhere), or five of your choice for just £35 — yes, just a five-spot extra and you get to pick your own titles.
Are we crazy? Yeah, maybe a little, but Mike Smith just got back from a three-day incarceration in our storage depot and, aside from discovering supplies of some titles we thought had long gone (not many, so check through the site super-fast), he identified an urgent need to cut back on the miles of racking (it currently looks like the warehouse at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark!).
So he’s dreamed up some neat offers to entice you (feel that hand in your change pocket? it’s us!)… and he won’t even tell me what they are. So do remember to check the site every Friday evening as we move sluggishly through this damn heat!
Newsletter giveaway winners
Now, what have I forgotten? Oh yeah — last month’s giveaway winners! Kieran McGee of County Donegal, Mr. Keiichirou Iwama of Tokyo and one Mark Kelly (who you might know as editor and webmaster of Locus Magazine) each scored themselves three rare ARCs from the PS backlist.
This month’s prizes will be just the same: three newsletter subscribers will each receive three Advance Reading Copies from the PS warehouse. So make sure you (and your friends) are all signed up for the newsletter before Friday the 16th of July, when Paul the PS webmonkey will pick the winners!
That’s it for now.
Look after each other… and happy reading.
Pete
Wednesday reviews round-up for 30th June
Posted by Paul Raven on June 30th, 2010 at 10:54
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends – we’re so glad you could attend! Come inside, come inside… and gawp with wonder at this week’s selection of reviews from across the world! Well, from across the internet, anyway, which is nearly the same thing. Onwards!
Daniel Reilly of HorrorWorld is getting tired of zombies, but Scott Edelman‘s What Will Come After was strong enough to stand out from the shambling pack*:
I must confess that, after a few hundred pages of Zombie stories, I was feeling a little burned-out on the genre, and I probably won’t pick up another Zombie book for a good long time, but that’s no reflection on Edelman’s skill as a storyteller. His Zombie stories are both literate and satisfying, eschewing the quick gross-out for atmosphere and characterization. If you’re into Zombies, you could do a LOT worse than What Will Come After.
Next up, we’ve a couple of reviews of nigh-legendary literary outlander Uncle River‘s collection Counting Tadpoles from the latter half of last year; I’m pretty sure no one told me about them at the time, which is a shame, but if you did (and it’s quite possible) my apologies for passing them over! The first is from Publisher’s Weekly:
If science fiction is the literature of outsiders, no one is better suited to writing it than Uncle River, a hermit who uses the solitude and small towns of the American Southwest as the wellspring for these thoughtful, often optimistic stories of depopulated and low-tech futures. A scientist learning from silence to hear what is happening around and inside him (“Counting Tadpoles”), day laborers and subsistence farmers finding less horror from a giant lizard than from their local police (“The Lizard”), and a Hawaiian mariner dream questing to derelict radio telescopes in New Mexico (“Geronimo’s Buttons”) find hope in turning to “Nature’s rhythms and requirements” and away from the material world. River’s slow-paced perspective will challenge readers to stop and reflect on just what kinds of worlds are worth building.
And the second is from Booklist‘s genre enthusiast Carl Hays:
For a large portion of his life, Uncle River has lived as a hermit in the American Southwest, a milieu that recurs often in his unusual short fiction. As editor Stanley Schmidt observes in the volume’s introduction, River’s self-imposed isolation has undeniably nourished his fertile imagination to yield dreamlike tales that range widely across the speculative fiction universe. “The Dashing About Flying Box People” regards “flying box” human space explorers from the viewpoint of apparently primitive extraterrestrials whose planet they’ve landed on and exposes the humans’ arrogance and xenophobia. The title story follows an environmentalist doing a backwoods tadpole census into the remote cabin of an elderly, government-bashing recluse, who may or may not be a ghost. Other pieces recount a visit from telepathic aliens to rural New Mexico and the rambling adventures of a self-aware military saber. Although many of the stories are more mainstream than speculative fiction, all share River’s penchant for letting his quirky creativity guide each tale to its often surprising denouement, with mostly engaging results.
Next up, it’s more plaudits for R B Russell‘s Literary Remains, this time courtesy of Paul Charles Smith:
Literary Remains is a great collection of short stories that raise a lot of questions about the way in which we perceive the things that we experience and the reliability of those perceptions. The stories are at their most disturbing when the way in which we believe the world should work fails us. At times the work brings to mind the masters, the almost primal sexuality of Aickman, the sublime weirdness of Blackwood, the haunting atmosphere of Machen, and the absurdity of Ligotti, but with his own unique style, Russell’s stories are thought provoking, masterfully crafted, and deeply disturbing. Highly recommended for all fans of horror and weird tales.
Mark of the Walker Of Worlds blog has been digging in the back catallogue, and unearthed the gem that is Eric Brown‘s Starship Summer:
This is another work by Eric Brown that I’ve read this year, and I’ll make no excuse for it. I really enjoy his writing and find it difficult to believe that he isn’t a more popular author when the quality of his output is consistently high. Starship Summer is a short novella, running to only 120 pages, and is from the excellent PS Publishing, a small press publisher that churns out some great stuff from many genre authors. Those familiar with Brown’s work won’t find anything different here, but it’s a great story that is expertly told.
Discerning auto-didact and squirrel-fancier (really!) Larry Nolen comes late to Robert Wexler‘s The Painting & The City, and wishes he’d got there sooner:
There were very few faults I could find with The Painting and the City. Oh, perhaps I could note how I wish just a little bit more could have been said about this or that plot point or character, but that would only serve to underscore just how fascinating the city and the painting mystery truly were for me. Wexler’s novel felt as though it were a briskly-paced story that had been stripped of any extraneous fat, leaving the reader with a story that moves at a falsely languid pace until s/he realizes just how quickly things have developed and how engrossed s/he is with what has transpired. If I had read this book last year, The Painting and the City certainly would have made my year-end Best Novels list. Highly recommended.
And to close up, we’ve got two prestigious reviews of Stephen Palmer‘s Urbis Morpheos. The first is a Publisher’s Weekly joint:
Challenging sometimes to the point of impenetrability, Palmer’s first novel since 2004′s Hallucinating details a far-future battle between natural and manufactured ecosystems. Like his music (with the rock/electronica group Mooch) and art (including the cover art for this volume), Palmer’s writing can only be called psychedelic. The world is richly imagined, unusual, and creative, full of narcoleptic snow, plastic vultures, and living databases called “wrealities,” but dense prose, the choice of giving two main characters virtually the same name, seemingly random point of view shifts, and a wealth of unexplained details occasionally render the story incomprehensible. Only determined readers will make their way to the final page, but those who do will find the ending worth it.
But the reviewer for Library Journal seems to have had an easier (or at least less impenetrable) time of it:
In the far future, warring ecosystems threaten to destroy the manufactured ecosystem of Old Earth, now known as Urbis Morpheos, as the natural world fades into oblivion. Two women, Psolilai and psolilai, who dream of each other, may hold the keys that will save the world. Palmer’s surreal setting and distinctive style create an atmosphere that is at once dreamlike and starkly real. His characters serve as both archetype and individual, populating a world that is allegorical and believable.
VERDICT: The author of Memory Seed and Glass offers a challenging and thoughtful future world that should satisfy readers with a love for far-future sf and New Wave fiction.
And that’s all for this week, ladies and gentlemen. Come by and see us next week for more reviews of books old and new from the shelves of the mighty PS Publishing!
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse. And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
[ * HorrorWorld only keep a single reviews page which is changed each month, so the review in question may no longer be available at that link. ]
The Very Best of Gene Wolfe scoops Locus Award
Posted by Paul Raven on June 29th, 2010 at 13:54
It’s all there in the title, folks: this year’s Locus Magazine Award for Best Collection was given to The Very Best Of Gene Wolfe, our glorious doorstopper of a collection that rounds up the finest work of one of genre fiction’s most popular (and occasionally controversial) fabulists. Bravo, Mr Wolfe!
Copies of our lush limited editions of the book are still available, by the way, so click through and nab yourself a copy:
Many congratulations to the rest of the winners, too. I’m particularly pleased to see Paolo Bacigalupi’s first novel The Windup Girl snatching prizes left, right and center – it’s not a perfect novel, perhaps (though what novel is?), but it’s surely one of last years’s most powerful debuts, and a very timely story. Though I still don’t really understand how anyone who’s actually read it could call it steampunk… airships do not a subgenre make :-/
Wednesday reviews round-up for 23rd June
Posted by Paul Raven on June 23rd, 2010 at 15:46
It’s been a quiet week for reviews, which I fully expect has something to do with The Sport Tournament Which Shall Remain Unnamed.
But there’s a couple still nestled in the far reaches of the electronic postbag, so it’s time to paint up my face, unfurl the PS flag and make a droning insectoid noise with a plastic musical instrument…
Striking from out in the left-field, Paul DiFilippo boots it into the back of the net at Mass Movement with Roadside Bodhisattva:
Kid A is a runaway. His parents are whacked out on Buddhism to the point that they no longer take care of him. Out of frustration he packs a bag and sets out on the road. Accompanied only by his two favorite books he walks alone. That is, until he meets Sid underneath a tree one night. Sid has spent his life on the road and takes Kid A under his wing. Together they travel all the way to glamorous (not!) Deer Park where they set up temporary lives. But when Kid A gets itchy to see more of the world things start to unravel. And boy does it get ugly.
This was a fun book to read though it was more of a downer than I usually enjoy. Kid A is the typical know-it-all sixteen year old who blunders through life heedless of the consequences. Sid is a wise middle aged man with a font of philosophical ideas but imperfect follow through. The other characters are real people and wonderfully developed, especially considering how short the book is. This was a good book and I completely recommend it!
And then this season’s sleeper star R B Russell chalks up another classy goal with Literary Remains at Speculative Fiction Junkie:
Literary Remains feels in many respects like a work of transition for Mr. Russell. While he maintains his trademark subtlety, the stories in this collection feel on balance less atmospheric and more overtly weird than his earlier work. However he proceeds in the future, I have no doubt that Mr. Russell will continue to be one of the more unique voices in weird literature. Let’s hope he keeps writing at a relatively quick pace.
Rating: 8/10
Great stuff. Join us next week for more goal-by-goal commentaries and live action replays! And now, over to Tom for the weather and travel updates…
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse. And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
Waltzing through the boneyard: Cemetery Dance books at PS Publishing
Posted by Peter Crowther on June 18th, 2010 at 11:38
Hi Folks!
A quick note about a new initiative aimed specifically at our British and European customers, but also for those living in the farrest flung areas… like the Russian Federation, Japan, Australia and so on.
Do you know how much is costs to post a book from the US to somewhere outside the US? Well, the answer is “A lot!” According to Tim Lebbon, someone was quoted $33 for the postage on his new Cemetery Dance collection, Last Exit For The Lost. And that’s not the publisher’s fault, it’s the US postal system that’s to blame.
Anyway, that got us to thinking. Maybe we could help out by providing an ‘outside the US’ shopfront for some of these books, charging just our usual postal rates (£2.49 per book within the UK or £4.99 a book outside the UK, with those charges capped at £6 and £12 respectively for three books or more… no matter how many)?
So we had a chat with the folks at Cemetery Dance and we’re all of us up to give it a try, testing the waters with just three titles to start off with… two of which are already out of print. Namely, Stephen King’s wonderful new baseball novella, Blockade Billy (I read it as soon as copies arrived — we only have ten, mind you, so if you want it then you’ll have to be quick); Stephen’s The Secretary of Dreams big-size slipcased collection of stories, lavishly illustrated by Glenn Chadbourne (once again, just ten copies available); and, last but most certainly not least, the aforementioned Last Exit For The Lost collection from Tim Lebbon (thirty copies, but we can get more).
I’ve also ordered — just for myself (a publisher’s life is hell, ladies and gentlemen… pure hell) — single copies of some other titles, and it could be we might take supplies of those as well.
This is very much an experiment. If it doesn’t work out then fair enough, we’ll just move on. But if it helps non-US readers to get hold of US publishers’ titles and it helps US publishers to service interests outside the US, then it’s good for everyone. So do let us have your thoughts… and let us know of other titles (and even other publishers!) you might be interested in, and we’ll do a little investigating.
Do note, however, that only the first nine orders for Blockade Billy and the first ten for Secretary of Dreams will bag the goods. Once that’s happened then we’ll take down those two titles (though Rich at CD tells us there’s a second printing coming up for Blockade Billy — hey, big surprise there, eh!) and immediately refund any payment made.
[Webgeek note: we know that this is a rather janky method of stock level control, and we're working on a much better solution for the long term... stay tuned, and thanks for your patience! - PGR]
That’s it for now. We’ve bought some new titles but we’ll tell you about those in the next newsletter (only two weeks away — good grief!). However, just space to draw your attention to two new low-stock warnings and two more impending: the traycased edition of Lucius Shepard‘s Viator Plus and the special signed edition of Stephen Jones’s Brighton Shock are now down to fewer than twenty copies apiece.
Meanwhile, PS-fave Ramsey Campbell’s two 2009 titles (Just Behind You, shortlisted for this year’s British Fantasy Award for Best Collection, and the novel Creatures of the Pool) are down to just twenty-three and twenty-five copies respectively.
You’ve been warned, gang.
Look after each other… and happy reading!
Pete
Wednesday reviews roundup for 16th June
Posted by Paul Raven on June 16th, 2010 at 15:31
There’s three reviews in the PS intray this week, covering two different titles. David Moles nets a brace of pieces for his just-released alt-history novella Seven Cities of Gold, the first of which is from Craig W Anderson at Tangent Online:
David Moles’ “Seven Cities of Gold” is an interesting and intriguing alternate-history adventure containing metaphysical and symbolic overtones that, fortunately, don’t get in the way of the story.
And a fascinating story it is of Doctor-Lieutenant Chie Nakada, a physician with the Relief Ministry of the Regency of Japan who is assigned the apparently suicidal mission of locating what the government says is a terrorist nun – Clara Dos Orsos – and when found, assassinating her.
[...]
I wanted more. The feeling persists that there was a great deal more to the story: more character detail, background, locations, politics, history, society and the like. It is ironic that despite all the detail contained in “Seven Cities of Gold” I felt mildly cheated that more interesting stuff wasn’t available, information that would have fleshed out the story. Perhaps this story is the centerpiece of, say, a much larger book yet to be written, a book wherein Moles will provide all those absent goodies. We can hope.
And the second is from no less august a publication than the Financial Times:
Good alternative-history fiction often echoes something in our present-day lives. Seven Cities of Gold centres on the search for a weapon of mass destruction wielded by a zealot with an apocalyptic agenda. The backdrop is a world fissured by longstanding religious conflict, particularly between Christianity and Islam.
South America, however, and not the Middle East, provides the setting, as a Japanese “Doctor-Lieutenant”, Chië Nakada, sets off upriver to find the deranged cult leader Clara Dos Orsos and put an end to her eschatological ambitions. En route, Nakada has many hideous and haunting encounters, the rainforest as festering and claustrophobic as Conrad’s Congo.
Moles has been accruing himself a reputation as an SF up-and-comer to watch, and this novella is a cracker. Measured, complex and unpredictable, it riffs on Heart of Darkness to great effect and delivers a bracing ironic commentary on the purpose and uses of faith.
High praise indeed – congratulations, Mr Moles!
The final leg of our triumvirate comes from Dave at Hellnotes, in the form of high praise for Andy Duncan‘s The Night Cache:
Duncan’s writing is assured and frequently humorous, and his characters are compelling. He makes good use of the mysterious side of geocaching as a metaphor for the ultimate mystery of life – death – and provides plentiful and entertaining examples of the cryptograms Jen must solve. If his climax offers up a supernatural suggestion that it (sadly) never really explores, Duncan nevertheless provides a last half that moves briskly and provides both tension and nicely observed melancholy.
The Night Cache is a fast, wry little tale for readers who are willing to forego the usual tropes of horror fiction in favor of something less easy to define.
How’s about that, then?
Remember to click on the cover art to be taken directly to the catalogue page for the book in question, or just pop over to the PS webstore to have a browse. And don’t forget that we’ve capped our postage rates!
Have you read a PS Publishing book recently? If so, let us know so we can link you back from here!
British Fantasy Awards shortlist 2010: many great titles, some of which are ours
Posted by Paul Raven on June 15th, 2010 at 10:10
The good people of the British Fantasy Society have revealed the shortlists for this year’s British Fantasy Awards, and we’re proud as punch to see some of our publications among the nominees.
You can see the whole list at their blog (and it’s well worth seeing – the BFS always picks an impressively diverse list of titles), but here’s the PS books that made the cut:
Best Novella
- Old Man Scratch by Rio Youers
- The Language of Dying by Sarah Pinborough
- The Witnesses are Gone by Joel Lane
Best Collection
- Just Behind You by Ramsey Campbell
Best Artist
- Vincent Chong, for work including cover for The Witnesses are Gone
And don’t forget that PS Publishing now sponsors the Best Small Press Award, which will see one of the following take home the gong… as well as a £250 cash prize from us!
- NEWCON PRESS (Ian Whates)
- SCREAMING DREAMS (Steve Upham)
- SUBTERRANEAN PRESS (William Schafer)
- TELOS PUBLISHING (David Howe)
- TTA PRESS (Andy Cox)
Best of luck to all the nominees, as always. :)