Subterranean Press Featured Title

Editor Benjamin Szumskyj has lovingly assembled Strange Wonder, a gathering of more than seventy rare and unpublished works by the legendary Fritz Leiber, including a lengthy uncollected Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story beginning, two Gray Mouser poems, a number of complete stories, poetry, and a miscellany of fragments and writing exercises, many of them appearing for the first time, more than seventy years after being written. This book is truly a treasure trove for those who love Leiber’s work. Strange Wonders is already deep in production, currently with our designer, and right on schedule for release later this year.

Somehow, we missed this review along the way, but it’s a good one we’re happy to pass along. If asked to point to my favorite book we published last year, I suspect Lewis Shiner’s Collected Stories would be it. This review, from Someone’s Read it Already, is just another example why: “Overall, this is an amazing collection; I would definitely recommend it for fans of his other works, and fans of short fiction such as John Crowley, Jai Claire, and even Charles de Lint, although his tone is not nearly as gentle. There’s something for nearly everyone, and while there are often violent and unpleasant events and even quite a few unlikable characters (or at least hypothetically unlikable ones), overall there’s enough to balance the collection.”

Booklist just posted a glowing review of Peter S. Beagle’s massive career retrospective, Mirror Kingdoms, and focused on those tales which haven’t been collected before: “‘What Tune the Enchantress Plays’ is the irritable dramatic monologue, delivered to a demon, of a woman tricked out of the love of her life and her subsequent
vengeance; it’s utterly convincing, for Beagle catches precisely the voice of just such a not-in-this-world character. ‘Vanishing’ is a ghost story about atonement and, just possibly, redemptive change by a man who let a moment of horror at the Berlin wall in 1963 ruin his life. The autobiographically tinted ‘The Rock in the Park’ and ‘The Rabbi’s Hobby’ are about, respectively, a boy’s run-ins with centaurs (in Central Park, yet) and the ghost of someone who never lived. They’re superb and in superb company.’”

We have a few updates on Robert McCammon’s Mister Slaughter to share, in no particular order:

1. We have ordered the slipcases for the limited edition, but are still a good 4-6 weeks away from being able to ship that version. We’ll post more info (and send it out in our newsletter) as soon as we have it.

2. The first edition copies, only available direct from SubPress at this point, continue to dwindle.

3. Some online retailers have gone through their inventory on the book and are waiting for more copies. Second printings are en route to those who’ve ordered, so shipping status at Amazon, etc. should be back to “Ships in 24 hours” very shortly.

4. Over at Matthew Corbett’s World, the site that Hunter Goatley runs for the series, he’s recently posted a list of characters from the Corbett novels — with descriptions to follow — along with a copy of the actual map that McCammon works from when writing the novels

Finally, here’s another fine review of the book, this time from Sense of Wonder: “Combining the best elements of detective, historical, horror and conspiracy fiction, this is a book and a series that deserves a wide readership.”

We’ve recently received a few returns from our wholesale accounts, and have roughly 25 copies each of two long out-of-print Ray Bradbury titles. Summer Morning, Summer Night contains 27 tales and vignettes of Green Town — 17 of them appearing for the first time in this collection.

The other title, Marionettes, Inc. is a celebration of Bradbury’s robot tales, anchored by the classic novella, “I Sing the Body Electric” and including a few other tales, along with an unpublished story and short teleplay. Each of the stories therein features at its head a fine pen and ink illustration by Mark A. Nelson. We don’t expect to have these around long, so take advantage of this second chance if you’re of a mind.

We’ve made arrangements with PS Publishing to snag a limited number of copies of their huge (140,000 words) Lovecraftian anthology, Black Wings, edited by noted critic S. T. Joshi. With authors such as Michael Marshall Smith, William Browning Spencer, David J. Schow, Norman Partridge, and a ton of others, this is sure to be one of the best horror anthologies of 2010. Get your order in now before our allotment runs out.

We’re fortunate enough to have two new Robert Silverberg titles on our schedule this year. The first, The Palace at Midnight, is volume five of his Collected Short Stories Series, and, at over 150,000 words, the longest of the volumes thus far. This one focuses on the early 1980s, and includes such now classic stories as “The Pope of the Chimps”, “Basilisk”, the Majipoor novella, “Thesme and Ghayrog”, and ultimate giant lobster tale, “Homefaring”.

Our second Silverberg offering is truly special. The Last Song of Orpheus is a 30,000 word novella, his longest work in over a decade, which is one of his most remarkable accomplishments, a resonant recreation of one of the central myths of western civilization.

PS Publishing will soon release a new, standalone fantasy novel by the legendary Gene Wolfe, and we’ve managed to secure a very limited number of copies. With a great dust jacket by Dirk Berger, and an introduction by Tim Powers, The Sorcerer’s House is likely to sell out fairly quickly. Please head over to the product page and have a look.

Update: We sold out of our allotment of the limited edition in one day, but still have ten copies of the deluxe traycased version not yet spoken for.

Here’s a first look at J. K. Potter’s cover for our limited edition of Blackout by Connie Willis, which has just snagged another starred review, this time from Booklist: “On par with Doomsday Book (1992), Blackout depicts the times and the spirit of the British people remarkably vividly, and bits of comic relief leaven any somberness. Characterizations of the historians and the Brits they become close to are multifaceted and believable, and the ending leaves us keenly primed for the sequel, scheduled for November 2010 publication.”

Elizabeth Bear’s long fantasy novella, Bone and Jewel Creatures, also garnered favorable coverage, this time from Publishers Weekly: “Few family feuds feature gem-studded automatons facing off against zombies, but this quirky short fantasy by Hugo-winner Bear (By the Mountain Bound) is the exception.”

As of today, our shippers should have all preordered copies of Son of Retro Pulp Tales en route to customers.

Next up in the shipping queue is Gordon Dahlquist’s The Dark Volume, in which we rejoin Celeste, the Colonel, and the murderous Cardinal Chang. The Dark Volume is a fantasy of the literary stripe, with an abundance of chase scenes, revelations, and twists aplenty.