Category: cont1970-1990

The Autopsy: Best Weird Stories of Michael Shea by S.T. Joshi

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The Autopsy: Best Weird Stories of Michael Shea by S.T. Joshi
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From as early as the 1970s, Michael Shea (1946–2014) distinguished himself as one of the most compelling writers of weird fiction of his generation. Now that his classic story “The Autopsy” has been adapted for television for Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, the time is right for a full-scale assessment of Shea’s work as a writer of tales of terror and the supernatural.

“The Autopsy” is one of several tales that mingles gruesomeness and science fiction. Others include “Polyphemus,” where the members of a spaceship encounter the titanic eye of some unthinkably vast and hostile entity. “The Angel of Death” exhibits the battle of two alien entities as they successively inhabit hapless human beings in their quest for supremacy.

Shea’s sensitivity to the downtrodden is exhibited in such tales as “The Horror on the #33,” “Water of Life,” and “Tollbooth,” populated by homeless people, prostitutes, drug dealers, and other disdained members of society. Shea’s affinity for California is shown in “Fill it with Regular,” “Upscale,” and other tales that bring his native state to life. As a bonus, two unpublished stories are included: “Feeding Spiders,” evoking the work of a writer who adopted California as his home—Ray Bradbury; and “Ghost,” where a vengeful ghost stalks the tough streets of South Boston.

Michael Shea was the author of dozens of novels and tales of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. This volume shows why his vibrant work deserves to live in the hearts and minds of weird fiction devotees.

The Color Out Of Time by Michael Shea

The Color Out Of Time by Michael Shea
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Set in a beautiful New England vacation spot, a lake surrounded by wooded farmlands, the narrator and his professorial colleague discover eerie and sinister features about this area. The lake shimmers with a disturbing, unnatural color; tourists disappear; an evil presence sickens or twists the thoughts of the park rangers and vacationers alike. Seeking to discover the nature of this horror and prevent further deaths, the narrator and his friend suspect that the lake hosts an alien monstrosity. Together with a long-time resident and sister of one of the area’s past victims, they muster all their strengths and skills to combat a terrifying opponent. Shea’s literary skills and insight into character and group behavior are as skillful as his ability to create fantastic and nightmarish scenarios.

An homage to H.P. Lovecraft’s story “The Colour Out of Space”, Shea’s haunting, fast-paced novel continues that narrative. A new Introduction by the author is included.

“Michael Shea may not be the only writer hybridizing science fiction and horror, but he is certainly among the best.”
– Publishers Weekly

“Michael Shea puts his people in the damnedest nightmares.”
– Stuart Gordon, writer/director of Re-Animator

“Michael Shea has long been one of the most vital writers of horror, fantasy, and science fiction. The imaginative scope of his work is exceeded only by the gripping and evocative vibrancy of his prose.”
– S. T. Joshi, award-winning author of H.P. Lovecraft: A Life

“Michael Shea has graced the field of the fantastic for more than thirty years… His prose is as rich and inventive as his considerable imagination…”
– Ramsey Campbell, multiple World Fantasy Award-winning author.

The Books of Blood, Volume 1

Clive Barker's Books of Blood: Volume One (Movie Tie-In)
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THE INSPIRATION FOR THE HULU ORIGINAL FILM Rediscover the true meaning of fear in this collection of horror stories from Clive Barker, New York Times bestselling author and creator of the Hellraiser series. Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red. In this tour de force collection of brilliantly disturbing tales, Clive Barker combines the extraordinary with the ordinary, bringing to life our darkest nightmares with stories that both seduce and devour.…

The Stand

The Stand (Movie Tie-in Edition)
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When a man escapes from a biological testing facility, he sets in motion a deadly domino effect, spreading a mutated strain of the flu that will wipe out 99 percent of humanity within a few weeks.

The survivors who remain are scared, bewildered, and in need of a leader. Two emerge–Mother Abagail, the benevolent 108-year-old woman who urges them to build a peaceful community in Boulder, Colorado; and Randall Flagg, the nefarious “Dark Man,” who delights in chaos and violence.

As the dark man and the peaceful woman gather power, the survivors will have to choose between them–and ultimately decide the fate of all humanity.

The Bourne Identity: A Novel (Jason Bourne serie)

The Bourne Identity
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE His memory is a blank. His bullet-ridden body was fished from the Mediterranean Sea. His face has been altered by plastic surgery. A frame of microfilm has been surgically implanted in his hip.

Even his name is a mystery. Marked for death, he is racing for survival through a bizarre world of murderous conspirators—led by Carlos, the world’s most dangerous assassin. Who is Jason Bourne? The answer may kill him. “

[Robert] Ludlum stuffs more surprises into his novels than any other six-pack of thriller writers combined.”—The New York Times

Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy

Red Storm Rising
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ADVENTURE / THRILLER. The Muslim terrorists who destroyed the Soviet Union’s largest petro-chemical plant thought they were striking a blow for freedom.

What they had done, unknowingly, was fire the first shots in World War III. Desperately short of oil, the Kremlin hawks see only one way of solving their problem: seize supplies in the Persian Gulf.

To do that, they must first neutralize NATO\’9291s forces and eliminate their response?nd so they develop Red Storm, a dazzling master plan of diplomatic subterfuge and intense re-armament.

The battle lines are drawn and Armageddon beckons.

The Great White Space

The Great White Space
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Colin Wilson Frederick Plowright, a well-known scientific photographer, is recruited by Professor Clark Ashton Scarsdale to accompany his research team in search of “The Great White Space,” described in ancient and arcane texts as a portal leading to the extremities of the universe.

Plowright, Scarsdale, and the rest of their crew embark on the Great Northern Expedition, traversing a terrifying and desolate landscape to the Black Mountains, where a passageway hundreds of feet high leads to a lost city miles below the surface of the earth. But the unsettling discoveries they make there are only a precursor of the true horror to follow.

For the doorway of the Great White Space opens both ways, and something unspeakably evil has crossed over-a horrifying abomination that does not intend to let any of them return to the surface alive . . . One of the great British horror writers of the 20th century, Basil Copper (1924-2013) was best known for his macabre short fiction, which earned him the World Horror Convention’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010. The Great White Space (1974) is a tale in the mode of H. P. Lovecraft and is recognized as one of the best Lovecraftian horror novels ever written.

This edition, the first in more than 30 years, includes a new introduction by Stephen Jones.

“The best writer in the genre since H. P. Lovecraft.” – Los Angeles Herald-Examiner

“Outstanding in the genre.” – August Derleth

“In the same class as M.R. James and Algernon Blackwood.” – Michael and Mollie Hardwick

“One of the last great traditionalists of English fiction.” – Colin Wilson

Song of Kali by Dan Simmons

Annales de l'Institut Archéologique Du Luxembourg
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The World Fantasy Award winner by the author of the Hyperion Cantos and Carrion Comfort: An American finds himself encircled by horrors in Calcutta.

Praised by Dean Koontz as “the best novel in the genre I can remember,” Song of Kali follows an American magazine editor who journeys to the brutally bleak, poverty-stricken Indian city in search of a manuscript by a mysterious poet—but instead is drawn into an encounter with the cult of Kali, goddess of death.

A chilling voyage into the squalor and violence of the human condition, this novel is considered by many to be the best work by the author of The Terror, who has been showered with accolades, including the Bram Stoker Award, the International Horror Guild Award, and the Hugo Award.

The Jagged Orbit by John Brunner

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Nebula Award Finalist:Mankind has been reduced to slavery by technology and surveillance, in this near-future novel from the author of Stand on Zanzibar.

In The Jagged Orbit, Brunner, writing at the peak of form that allowed him to create Stand on Zanzibar, takes a long, hard, disturbing, and hilarious look at the near and not-so-distant future. Catastrophic changes due to rampant drug abuse, uncontrolled violence, high-level government corruption, inhumane treatment of the too-readily defined “insane,” and the accompanying collapse of the social order are wreaking havoc on the world we recognize and turning it into a reality we must fear and hope to avoid. Brunner tells a spine-chilling tale of where the world could possibly go that is all too believable and real for our comfort.

“For each generation, there is a writer meant to bend the rules of what we know. Hugo Award winner (Best Novel, Stand on Zanzibar) and British science fiction master John Brunner remains one of the most influential and respected authors of all time, and now many of his classic works are being reintroduced. For readers familiar with his vision, it is a chance to reexamine his thoughtful worlds and words. For new readers, Brunner’s work proves itself the very definition of timeless.

Ubik

Ubik
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Glen Runciter is dead. Or is he? Someone died in the explosion orchestrated by his business rivals, but even as his funeral is scheduled, his mourning employees are receiving bewildering messages from their boss.

And the world around them is warping and regressing in ways which suggest that their own time is running out. If it hasn’t already.