Lost worlds and ports of call
Centipede Press continues it’s superb series of Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books, with volume 3, Swords in the Mist. There are a half dozen stories in this book, illustrations, and some additional texts at the end, and an introduction by Tim Powers, another of my favorite authors. The wrap-around cover is again beyond amazing.
Two of my friends died this year, both from cancer. This sent me into a funk, and I stopped writing, stopping doing anything related to fiction or this blog. It all seems so trivial compared to those events.
I started working on a novel again last month, and have crossed the 30k mark. I still think about my two friends every day, bitter at the fate that awaits us all, a fate cruel and unyielding.
On April 6, 2018 Centipede Press released the second volume in Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser books, Swords Against Death. The original edition appeared almost 50 years ago now, and I’m not sure when my 14th printing of the Ace paperback was published, but the hardcover volume assembled by Centipede Press is once again a wonder to behold, worth of the cover price.
The ten short stories gathered in this volume continue the adventures of two strange companions, heroes and anti-heroes both, in the fantasy lands of Nehwon, the streets of fabled Lankhmar, and beyond the veil of death.
The projected 8-volume set will be unveiled gradually, but so far the first and second volumes both have wrap-around dust-jackets with lettering on the spine only. This lettering consists of the book title, the author’s name, the publisher’s name, and the volume number. It also contains original artwork within, several of which I wish I had larger copies of hanging on my wall.
A few miscellaneous notes from Leiber appear at the end, and author Steve Rasnic Tem provides the introduction. The stories themselves, include some of Leiber’s best ones, such as the “Bazaar of the Bizarre,” “Theives’ House,” and “The Jewel in the Forest.” Although it’s been a few years since I last read this book, I remembered these three at once as I read through the table of contents. As to the others, if I have forgotten any of them, why that’s a benefit, as reading Leiber for the first time brings just as much wonderment as reading his stories for the 100th time.
Michael Shea (1946-2014) remains one of my top five fantasy writers, along with Jack Vance, Clark Ashton Smith, Fritz Leiber, and James P. Blaylock. I’d include Tim Powers there, and maybe shift Blaylock out of the mix in favor or a more traditional fantasy writer like Lord Dunsany or possibly Charles de Lint, but Powers, Blaylock, and de Lint stand slightly off to the side in terms of traditional fantasy. Powers is more science-fantasy, and de Lint’s urban fantasy doesn’t venture as much into the realm of the weird as the others listed. Blaylock lately has written a fair amount of Steampunk, but his other tales are infused with a subtle fantasy similar to Powers.
Shea, however, with his novels and short stories, is firmly in the fantasy camp, with a dash or horror in some of his short stories. His death came all-too-soon, with several novels still in the pipeline and his genius far from fully recognized.
I first encountered Michael Shea’s writings in 1986 or 1987 when I bought his unofficial sequel to Jack Vance’s Eyes of the Underworld. Although A Quest for Simbilis first appeared in 1974 under the DAW imprint, my first copy was the Grafton paperback edition published in 1985, which I bought in Oslo or Bergen at a book store or bus station; it was a long time ago and I don’t remember the exact details . At some point later in the US I found the DAW first edition from 1974 in a used book store. I think I laughed out loud with glee as this copy is in near pristine shape, and I own both these two editions and have read them both multiple times.
I already was a huge fan of Jack Vance by the time I read Shea’s novel, and the fact that I started looking for any Shea book after reading this one meant that he had that certain unique quality about fantasy writers that I enjoy—imagination and language, or style and panache. I bought every paperback I could find, and also the Arkham House collection, Polyphemus, which I have read multiple times. The titles roll off my tongue: In Yana, the Touch of Undying ; The Color Out of Time ; Nifft the Lean—all DAW books and each one its own treasure in my small library. Then many years with nothing aside from occasional novellas or slim collections published by small press publishers, until Baen Books published two Nifft sequels: The Mines of Behemoth and The A’rak. Whenever I could find his original short stories I bought the magazines, and at some point I lacked only two stories, to my great despair. Along came Centipede Press in 2008 and published a near complete and massive edition of Shea stories, The Autopsy and Others. Alas, the two stories I had been unable to locate were not included in this massive, 500+ page oversized edition.
I reviewed a couple of Shea books for Lawrence Person’s Nova Express, planned on writing more until that magazine silently vanished amid the Great Shift to the Internet in the early 2000s. Tor Books published The Extra, expanded from a short stories that originally appeared in the Arkham House collection. This was the first of a trilogy, but only the sequel appeared prior to Shea’s death, Assault on Sunrise. A third novel may or may exist. I don’t know. Other novels were hinted at in various publications.
In 2016 Hippocampus Press published a tribute to Shea, And Death Shall Have No Dominion. The cover reprints Michael Whelan’s brilliant painting for the DAW edition of Nifft the Lean. Four short stories are included, only one of them a reprint. A trove of poems fill the middle section, along with tributes from the people lucky enough to have met and known Shea. Although I admired his work and wrote about it in various places, I never met him, never had his sign any of my books. Once, I received an appreciative email from Shea via Person, publisher of Nova Express, regarding one of my reviews, but I never communicated with Shea. I figured maybe one day I’d go to a World Fantasy convention, where I’d meet Shea, and learn than reality isn’t the same as fiction. It’s weird to read all the tributes to the man, the writer, and realize that he’d probably have been better in person.
Why does Michael Shea’s fiction matter? I glanced through the opening pages of Nifft the Lean recently. This is a dangerous act, as one inevitably gets sucked right into the story. Consisting of four loosely connected novellas, episodes in Nifft’s life, these tales are narrated or written down by a third party. In the first story Nifft relates a tale to a companion as they are camped for the night amid the branches of a vast tree. In that sense, it’s a story within a story within a story. The prose is vivid yet spare, with humor infused in the strangest places, such as when Nifft fights a lizard guide to the Taker of Souls and attempt a “kick in the fork,” as Terry Pratchett’s characters in Discworld would say. Nifft’s advice to his companion regarding this technique? Don’t even think about it.
Shea’s fiction often has dwelled in that intersection of fantasy and horror. Although he started out in 1974 with a semi-authorized sequel to a Jack Vance novel, Shea’s fiction already was a shade darker. His Nifft stories owes as much to Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories as it does Vance, as Nifft rarely works alone, although his companions are not always the same. Yet both Leiber and Vance wrote mainly lighthearted tales, though some humor came across as mordant. Not so in Shea’s fiction, where the heroes venture into various pockets and sections of hell. Even his modern stories, such as “The Angel of Death” or “The Extra” (expanded into a novel), or “I, Said the Fly” contain more than a touch of dark weirdness.
I’m not much of a Lovecraft fan. Many years ago I wrote a Cthulhu mythos short story, although it was more a consequence of work and reading “Fat Face” than anything by Lovecraft. Shea had that affect, I think, as his Cthulhu stories blend the atmosphere of horror with modernity. I have yet to ride a bus without thinking about “The Horror on the #33,” but every such tale is equally memorable.
What I do find memorable in almost every story by Michael Shea is the densely rich prose. He shares this ability with Vance and Clark Ashton Smith. While some arcane or invented words fall flat in fiction, these three writers make it look easy. Sadly, most of modern fantasy consists of books with swords or wands on their covers, and deal with wizards or Robin Hood-lookalikes battling evil kings or mages. The magical prose is lacking, the sense of wonder from the writing lacking. These books are churned out by the bucketful, while stories by writers like Shea, Vance, Smith, Leiber exist these mostly in the realm of the small press. In that sense, the golden age is long gone. The good news is that in the bibliography section in this book there are several stories listed that I haven’t yet read. Maybe one day a publisher will collect the rest of those stories in a companion to The Autopsy and Others, and include those two older pieces that were left out. In the meantime, we have books like this to remind us what we had, and what is gone.
When I moved to the States it took me a while to get used to everything being non-metric, as well as dates being reversed. Today – in America – it’s Pi day, since it’s March 14, or 3/14. On May the 4th is Star Wars day. Meanwhile, the rest of the world probably looks upon these date celebrations with bemused eyes, as they write dates with day and then the month. For them, today is 14/3, which is nowhere near pi.
Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin is best known for his gritty Inspector John Rebus novels, set in Edinburgh. The actions in Rankin’s novels take place in real time, such that Rebus eventually retired from the force, with 2007’s Exit Music. Since then Rebus has appeared in four other novels in a civilian capacity, while still helping solve crimes. After Rebus’ retirement, Ranking started another series, featuring Malcolm Fox, an inspector with the Scottish equivalent of Internal Affairs, called Complaints and Conduct. The first novel in the series is The Complaints, published in 2009.
Fox is both different from Rebus and similar. A former alcoholic, Fox is now a teetotaler, unlike the hard-drinking Rebus. They’ve both been married and divorced, but Fox’s marriage didn’t last long enough to produce children. He seems to fail with the opposite sex, unlike Rebus who has regular relationships, though most tend not to last. Working in the Complaints division, Fox initially comes across as a bit of a moralistic person, with a stiff, almost Calvinist personality. Yet when the chips are down and he’s forced into a corner, Fox is not above bending rules, lying, and pushing relentlessly against anyone he encounters, either criminals or superiors in the police force.
The novel opens with Fox having brought a case against a supposed crooked cop. Apparently there are few of these in Edinburgh, as the Complaints division is staffed with only three officers, one quite new. With no current cases, Fox is loaned to a vice division, one specializing in handling crimes against minors. He’s brought into their current case since another cop, Jamie Breck, is suspected of illegal online activity. Problems and conflicts arise when Fox’s sister’s boyfriend is found brutally murdered only days after he broke the arm of his girlfriend, and the investigating officer is none other than the suspect Fox has been tasked with investigating.
The Complaints is a novel dealing with good people doing stupid things, especially Fox. There are times Fox should know better, but instead of sitting back and letting others do their job, he thinks only he can find the answer. This results in his suspension from the force, along with Breck. This step falls into the typical cop theme, and once suspended Fox doesn’t just kick back his heels and relax, but manages to work himself back into the investigation, becomes a suspect, and eventually find redemption. Partnering with Breck, he drags Breck into a series of stupid actions and decisions, although in the end some balance is restored.
Having read all the Rebus novels, even the more recent ones where Fox and Rebus intersect, this was the first stand-along Malcolm Fox novel I read. I found that I enjoyed the lack of Rebus in this book. Although Fox made some stupid decisions, he’s not a stupid person. He didn’t change much over the course of the novel, and he shares the dogged persistence so prevalent in the Rebus novels. Still, Rankin manages to create a compelling character quite different from his regular protagonist. I wonder why he focused on Fox, rather than on continuing the series with Siobhan Clarke, Rebus’ partner and successor in the force, as the main character. Fox only achieved one other stand-alone novel, after which Rankin brought Fox and Rebus together for subsequent appearances.
If you’re a Smiths fan with access to Amazon UK there’s a new graphic novel about the Smiths, covering the time they were famous, due out in March. Apparently this tale required 450 pages. One wonders how many pages it will take to cover their short, brilliant years before Johnny Marr was kicked out of his own band and the group imploded shortly thereafter.
I’m a huge fan of Tim Powers, but not mad enough to spend $300 for this limited edition of the collection short stories of Tim Powers, from Subterranean Press. Limited to only 124 copies, it’s already sold out, anyway. Maybe some day it will filter down to a less limited edition, as it contains at least one new story.
The big news today is that Amazon announced it’s bought the rights to Consider Phlebas, Iain M. Banks’s Culture novel. I’m still surprised (no, not really) that Banks never won a Hugo Award for any of his Culture novels, as they are pure SF through and through. The novel will be turned into a series, and likely if successful will spawn adaptations of other novels. Alas, Feersum Endjinn isn’t a Culture novel, but still one of my favorite Banks books, as well as the non-M mainstream novel, Whit.
I’ve long considered’s British band Slowdive’s 1993 album Souvlaki one of the best sounds of the 1990s, with Dagger, 40 Days, Allison, Machine Gun, and When the Sun Hits five memorable tracks with a unique sound. Yet the British music press can be brutal, raising up bands one moment only to tear them down the next. The arrival of Britpop and grunge in the mid-90s doomed Slowdive, while the press fawned over bands like Blur, Oasis and Nirvana.
In 2017 Oasis is long gone, while the Gallagher brothers attempt daily to top each other in their silly feud. Nirvana is long gone, for more tragic reasons. Grunge and Britpop are relics of the past, while Slowdive is back and stronger than ever with a new studio album, 22 years after their last one, Pygmalion, released in 1995. Between Souvlaki and Pygmalion, Slowdive took an ambient turn, and while Blue Skied An’ Clear is almost a holy experience, the rest don’t measure up (at least in my opinion) to the balanced strength of Souvlaki.
After the hatred from the British music press and fading sales lost Slowdive their record contract with Creation Records, some of the members reformed as Mojave Three. However, while pleasant-sounding, it felt like their music lost of the its soul, a soul formed through a synergy among the five core members of the band. I was surprised to hear around 2014 that these five individuals started to play a few live gigs, and then excited to hear they were back in the studio to record another record. What would it sound like? Would it be along the muted ambient tones of Pygmalion, or classic pedal-driven Souvlaki, or something different altogether?
Released in May of 2017, their self-titled album, Slowdive, contains only eight songs:
The first song I heard was Star Roving, released prior to the album. Far peppier than anything on Pygmalion, it seemed to call back to earlier days, with all five members of the band involved.
For a long time I thought No Longer Making Time was the best song on the album, but the more I listened the more I have decided that Slomo ranks as one of the best songs in many years, from any band. The bass hook, followed by Neil Halstead’s terrific guitar, the mix of vocals, and the overall feel of the song is undeniable. Sugar for the Pill might be second, then No Longer Making Time and Star Roving. For Pygmalion fans the last two songs harken back to that album.
Here is their Pitchfork session:
And their recent live performance on KEXP:
Finally, I’m beyond thrilled that I have tickets to see them live in April in Austin, along with a second generation fan. Sugar for the Pill is one of my 11-year-old son’s favorite songs. And he plays guitar.
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