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Monday, September 1, 2008

PS Publishing News/Update

New PS Publishing Releases:

Template” by Matthew Hughes. Conn Labro is one of the top-ranked duelists in all the Ten Thousand Worlds. He's also an indentured-for-life player in Ovam Horder's sporting house on Thrais, a planet whose vast gaming industry draws players from all over The Spray, even from as far away as Old Earth.

Mystery surrounds Conn: he was sold to Horder's Gaming Emporium as an anonymous infant, a circumstance that guaranteed he would never escape debt slavery. Now the mystery has caught up with him: he finds an old man with whom he plays a weekly game of strategy dead of torture. And an orbiting space ship fires an energy weapon at the roof-top dueling ground where Conn is scheduled to meet an offworld opponent.

The old man, though apparently poor, has left him not only enough wealth to buy himself out of indenture but an encrypted “bearer deed” to an unnamed property somewhere down The Spray. Together with Jenore Mordene, an Old Earth showgirl stranded on Thrais when her traveling show broke up, Conn embarks on a quest to discover who he is, and who is trying to kill him.

His quest will lead him into the grip of a sinister cult dedicated to depraved lust, and a final, deadly confrontation on a lost world where the only law is the point of a duelist's blade…

Matthew Hughes's Template is many things—including a template others should follow to produce outstanding writing. Hughes has been the best-kept secret in SF for far too long: he's a towering talent, and Template is his best work to date. Bravo!” —
Robert J. Sawyer, Hugo Award-winning author of Hominids
Official Matthew Hughes Website
Order “Template
HERE (Hardcover) + HERE (Slipcased Hardcover)
Read Reviews via
SFRevu
Read An Excerpt
HERE

The Pilo Family Circus” by Will Elliott. Somewhere just above the searing flames of hell, The Pilo Family Circus is playing at a town near you. This darkest of carnivals has preyed on the souls of its audience for centuries and young Jamie has unfortunately just come to the attention of the star turns—the baddest, most psychotic clown troupe you could never hope to meet.

What's more, they want him to join up . . . and these are not the kind of folks who take no for an answer…

The Pilo Family Circus” dances along the tightrope that hangs between grotesque nightmare and the blackest kind of comedy you can imagine. It is a novel of perilous pratfalls, freakshow fates and sideshow surrealism.

It is also an exploration of what any one of us might do were we to don the white face-paint, were our inhibitions to be stripped away and a full menu of anarchic delights laid out before us for sampling.

Will Elliot's debut novel won the inaugural ABC Fiction Award and went on to be awarded two of Australia's most coveted genre accolades—the Ditmar and the Golden Aurealis. It was also short-listed for the 2007 International Horror Guild Award for Best Novel.
Official Will Elliott Website
Order “The Pilo Family Circus
HERE (Hardcover) + HERE (Slipcased Hardcover)
Read Reviews via
Blogcritics + HorrorScope

The Economy of Light” by Jack Dann. The Economy of Light is Jack Dann's magnificent new novella: a journey into and beyond the heart of darkness...

Stephen is a retired Nazi hunter, divorced yet living happily enough on his ranch on the fringe of the Amazon jungle. But when Brazilian police unearth the alleged remains of the detested Auschwitz camp doctor, Josef Mengele, Stephen's life is immediately and traumatically transformed.

At the grave site, he falls suddenly ill, and the diagnosis is terminal cancer; a hideous skin disease adds to his woes; and the Indian couple working at the ranch soon hint that Stephen's unresolved relationship with Mengele is the moral and spiritual core of a syndrome only superficially physical.

For Stephen as a boy was a prisoner at Auschwitz, a subject of Mengele's horrifying medical experiments; his twin brother and his mother died there at Mengele's hands; survivor's guilt and mortal hatred remain unassuaged after the Doctor's peaceful death in exile. Something must be done.

And so Stephen, accompanied by his strangely quiet and also afflicted Indian ranch foreman, Genaro, sets out to consult a rumored miracle-working Doctor in a remote jungle region of Brazil.

The pilgrimage is arduous and hallucinatory at once; and Stephen must ready body and soul to confront his darkest, most persistent hopes and fears...
Official Jack Dann Website
Order “The Economy of Light
HERE (Hardcover), HERE (Jacketed Hardcover) + HERE (Slipcased Hardcover)

PS Showcase #3: Mad Scientist Meets Cannibal” by Robert T. Jeschonek. “Mad Scientist Meets Cannibal” is the third volume in
PS Publishing’s series of PS Showcase mini-collections of short stories from some of genre fiction's best up-and-coming writers…

Welcome to the world of Mad Scientist Meets Cannibal. Where else can you come face to face with a giant rhinoporcupine? Dream the future in a jazz tune from Hell? Hunt down outlaws who commit the crime of love? Eat a walking, talking human feast? Find passion behind the lab coat of a smoking hot mad scientist?

Only in Mad Scientist Meets Cannibal.

In these pages, Robert T. Jeschonek will take you on a tour of the wildest places and people you've never imagined. You've never met anyone quite like Dr. Hildegarde Medici, the mad scientist worshipped from afar by her twisted assistant, Glugor... or the Genebillies of Best Virginia, rip-snortin' genetic engineers in the moonshiner tradition... or Manny the Ration, an edible man who feeds more than empty stomachs in an alien landscape gone berserk.

If you're looking for something mind-blowing, you've come to the right place. In Mad Scientist Meets Cannibal, gonzo fictioneer Robert T. Jeschonek sets his wild imagination loose in five free-for-alls that set a new standard for storytelling. It's all about a cutting edge mêlée style, an in-your-face storytelling for the 21st century that mashes up genres, tones, expectations, and the most fundamental rules of stories and language. At the core of this engine of big ideas, startling imagery, and unexpected connections, you'll always find a pounding heart of love and longing and wonder, its power amplified by the revolutionary matrix roaring around it.

Take your first step into this breakthrough literary mêlée and experience a convergence of science fiction and fantasy... thrills and theories... tears and laughter... truth and lies... insanity and enlightenment. Ask yourself “What if?” and “Why not?” and “What the hell was that?” Most of all, kiss your preconceptions goodbye…
Official Robert T. Jeschonek Website
Order “Mad Scientist Meets Cannibal
HERE (Hardcover) + HERE (Jacketed Slipcover)
Read Reviews via
The Fix

Forthcoming PS Publishing Releases:

Cage of Night” by Ed Gorman. “Ed Gorman writes with intelligence and grace, about people we can believe in, facing situations we can imagine, reacting in ways that are truthful. He makes it real, and in his hands that reality can soar.” —
Stephen Gallagher, from his Introduction

Twenty-one-year-old Spence returns to his hometown after two years in the Army and falls in love with Cindy Brasher, Homecoming Queen and town goddess to a long line of jealous men.

A string of robberies puts Spence at odds with his obsessive love for Cindy. One by one Spence's rivals are implicated in horrific crimes.

Spence wonders how much Cindy knows and why she wants him, like her past boyfriends, to visit the old well in the woods...
Official Ed Gorman Website
Order “Cage of Night
HERE (Hardcover) + HERE (Slipcased Cover)

Vault of Deeds” by James Barclay. The status quo is being upset so much it feels distinctly queasy. You see, in the land of Goedterre, good always triumphs over evil. Or that's how it should be. But something is wrong.

Across the land, invincible heroes are meeting their dooms at the hands of opponents who have clearly practiced beforehand. It simply will not do. Too many books are closing for good in the Vault of Deeds. Too many scribes are looking for new heroes. The spectre of invasion raises an ugly head on which altogether too much expectancy is plastered.

Naturally, people want to know what's going on and eyes inevitably turn to the school that produces Goedterre's heroes. After all, without heroes, how on earth can you possibly defeat the forces of evil?

Curiously, Principal Kettifer seems delighted with how his academy is running but Grincheux the Scribe is not. Something smells bad. Really bad. Worse than the latest hero eau de toilette, that's how bad. Student heroes are nervous and their scribes are watching the lifeblood flow from their once very lucrative careers. Literally.

Grincheux, with his gangly student hero in tow, decides to investigate and in a way, he is right and courageous to take that decision. In every other way, but principally the ones involving mortal danger and loss of bowel control, it is a very stupid decision indeed…
Official James Barclay Website
Order “Vault of Deeds
HERE (Hardcover) + HERE (Jacketed Hardcover)

Revolvo” by Steven Erikson. In the fictitious country of Canada the arts scene is ruled by technocrats who thrive in a secret, nepotistic society of granting agencies, bursaries, awards and peer review boards, all designed to permit self-proclaimed artists to survive without an audience.

In Revolvo, self-proclaimed “hack genre writer” Steven Erikson provides a daring expose of creative skullduggery in the wilds of a country suffering an interminable identity crisis. The names of plenty of real people have been changed and all specific details of the setting have been messed with, so if anyone guesses a certain prairie city in the middle Canada, where the author used to live, well, you'd be plain wrong. Besides, it was a long time ago and his memory is not so good…
Steven Erikson @ Wikipedia
Order “Revolvo
HERE (Hardcover) + HERE (Jacketed Hardcover)

Glyphotech” by Mark Samuels. “Glyphotech” is the fourth volume in
PS Publishing’s series of PS Showcase mini-collections of short stories from some of genre fiction's best up-and-coming writers…

In the introduction to this collection Ramsey Campbell states that the two modern masters of urban weirdness are Thomas Ligotti and Mark Samuels. Inside this book you will find weird things indeed, not least the likes of:

~The fungus-riddled mannequin in the lunatic asylum
~The reconstruction company that works with life and death
~The legal nightmare where the sane are guilty
~A horror writing convention taken over by black magic cannibals
~The Punch and Judy show broadcast live after death
~The strange fate of the reincarnation of H.P. Lovecraft
Official Mark Samuels Website
Order “Glyphotech
HERE (Hardcover) + HERE (Jacketed Hardcover)

Song of Time” by Ian R. MacLeod. A man lies half-drowned on a Cornish beach at dawn in the furthest days of this century. The old woman who discovers him, once a famous concert violinist, is close to death herself . . . or a new kind of life she can barely contemplate. Does death still exist at all, or has it finally been obliterated? And who is this strange man she's found? Is he a figure returned from her past, a new messiah, or an empty vessel? Is he God, or the Devil?

Filled with love and music, death and life, mind-stretching ideas and sheer, simple humanity, spanning the world from the suburbs of Birmingham to the streets of a new-Renaissance Paris via the ruins of post-apocalyptic India, “Song of Time” by multiple-award winning author Ian R. MacLeod is a must-read…
Official Ian R. MacLeod Website
Order “Song of Time
HERE (Hardcover) + HERE (Jacketed Hardcover)
Read An Excerpt
HERE

Other upcoming releases include
Darrell Schweitzer’sLiving With the Dead” (Order HERE) and a brand new story from Christopher Golden called “The Hiss of the Escaping Air” that will be released at Fantasycon (September 19-21). Also due in before Christmas are Robert Wexler'sThe Painting and the City” (Hardcover, Slipcased Hardcover), Sebastien Doubinsky's long-awaited The Babylonian Trilogy (Hardcover, Slipcased Hardcover), Gwyneth Jones'sGrazing the Long Acre” collection (Hardcover, Slipcased Hardcover), and Ray Bradbury'sThe Day It Rained Forever” (Hardcover, Slipcased Hardcover, Deluxe Two-Volume Set), “The Machineries of Joy” and PS Publishing’s special three-book slipcased set of “The Hallowe’en Tree”, “The October Country” and “Something Wicked This Way Comes” (Slipcased Set, Deluxe Set).

Finally,
PS Publishing has also acquired new projects from Richard Parks, Gene Wolfe, Lucius Shepard, two books from the late-but-great Avram Davidson, and Allen Ashley's anthology of new fiction, “Catastrophia”.

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