1. Harlan Ellison does mystery and horror…. might not get around to this one for a while. What I’ve read of Ellison suggests he might be very good at it!
For example, see my review of his collection Approaching Oblivion (1974) (Ellison also came by an wrote a comment).
2. There is plenty of fascinating contemporary SF/fantasy out there… for anyone who adheres to some narrative of the degradation of genre, you just need to look! Gladman’s novella is case in point. I’m a sucker for any Invisible Cities-esque experiment.
3. The PorPor Books blog mostly enjoyed this environmental SF disaster novel. As it cost less than a dollar, I snatched up a copy.
4. I’ve not read any of William Burroughs’ fiction. Seems like a good place to start. I’m in love with the cover.
As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts!
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1. No Doors, No Windows, Harlan Ellison (1975)
(Diane and Leo Dillon’s cover for the 1975 edition)
From the back cover: “Feeling trapped? No exits in your life? Confronted by days and nights of shivering fear? Forget it! If you think you have troubles, wait until you meet the men and women… and things in these 16 heart-squeezing suspense stories by the man the Louisville Courier-Journal & Times says “is currently the leading craftsman in the literature of terror and dread.” Gathered together for the first time in a book guaranteed to make your life sweet and sensibly by comparison, these shuddery thrillers introduce you to: a mad bomber, a hangman, a corrupt PR man, the guy who drives the nitro truck, the demon-god of street violence, assorted murderers and their victims and, in a brand-new story done especially for this collection, an encounter with the tired little old man who wasn’t there. Harlan Ellison, winner of the Mystery Writers of America 1974 award for Best Short Story (included in this book), shows you a frightening world of paranoia and panic, fear and fantasy… with no way out!”
2. Event Factory, Renee Gladman (2010)
(Cover for the 2010 edition)
From the back cover: “A ‘linguist-traveler’ arrives by plane to Ravicka, a city of yellow air in which an undefined crisis is causing the inhabitants to flee. Although fluent in the native language, she quickly finds herself on the outside of every experience. Thinks happen to her, events transpire, but it is as if the city itself, the performance of life there, eludes her. Setting out to uncover the source of the city’s erosion, she is beset by this other crisis—an ontological crisis—as she struggles to retain a sense of what is happening.”
3. The Lord’s Pink Ocean, David Walker (1972)
(Josh Kirby’s cover for the 1973 edition)
From the back cover: “RED TIDE DESTROYS MILLIONS OF FISH ALONG SEACOAST… such were the headlines in American newspapers at the very time the hard-bound edition of this remarkable novel appeared. Subtitled, “A Novel of the Future,” David Walker’s THE LORD’S PINK OCEAN seemed to be coming true in the very present. But the “red tide” of mutated algae slowly went away—that year. But will it come again? Soon?”
4. Cities of the Red Night, William Burroughs (1981)
(Thomi Wroblewski’s cover for the 1982 edition)
One critic blurb from the back cover: Heathcote Williams, Guardian, says, “Burroughs’s nightmares render Brave New World and Nineteen Eight-Four as innocuous as The Archers.”