Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

Agatha H. and the Airship City
by Phil and Kaja Foglio

Promo copy:

Adventure! Romance! Mad Science!

The Industrial Revolution has escalated into all-out warfare. It has been eighteen years since the Heterodyne Boys, benevolent adventurers and inventors, disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Today, Europe is ruled by the Sparks, dynasties of mad scientists ruling over–and terrorizing–the hapless population with their bizarre inventions and unchecked power, while the downtrodden dream of the Hetrodynes’ return.

At Transylvania Polygnostic University, a pretty, young student named Agatha Clay seems to have nothing but bad luck. Incapable of building anything that actually works, but dedicated to her studies, Agatha seems destined for a lackluster career as a minor lab assistant. But when the University is overthrown by the ruthless tyrant Baron Klaus Wulfenbach, Agatha finds herself a prisoner aboard his massive airship Castle Wulfenbach–and it begins to look like she might carry a spark of Mad Science after all.

From Phil and Kaja Foglio, creators of the Hugo, Eagle, and Eisner Award-nominated webcomic Girl Genius, comes Agatha H and the Airship City, a gaslamp fantasy filled to bursting with Adventure! Romance! and Mad Science!

While the Tom Kidd cover is nice, it strikes me as odd that they decided to not go with a Phil Foglio cover or at the very least with a similar iconic cover design.

When Wicked Craves
by J. K. Beck

Promo copy:

Petra Lang is cursed never to love. One touch of her skin unleashes the vilest demons. Sentenced to death by the Shadow authorities, who fear she’ll turn her curse against them, Petra is rescued by vampire advocate Nicholas Montegue. As their bodies merge and transform into mist, Petra feels an erotic longing.

Nicholas risked his own life to save Petra, yet he knows he can never give in to the explosive attraction he feels for her. But the deep yearning they share tempts them. Together, they must find a way to lift the curse. For only a love this strong has the power to overcome such monstrous evil.

The Habitation of the Blessed
by Catherynne M. Valente

Promo copy:

This is the story of a place that never was: the kingdom of Prester John, the utopia described by an anonymous, twelfth-century document which captured the imagination of the medieval world and drove hundreds of lost souls to seek out its secrets, inspiring explorers, missionaries, and kings for centuries. But what if it were all true? What if there was such a place, and a poor, broken priest once stumbled past its borders, discovering, not a Christian paradise, but a country where everything is possible, immortality is easily had, and the Western world is nothing but a dim and distant dream?

Brother Hiob of Luzerne, on missionary work in the Himalayan wilderness on the eve of the eighteenth century, discovers a village guarding a miraculous tree whose branches sprout books instead of fruit. These strange books chronicle the history of the kingdom of Prester John, and Hiob becomes obsessed with the tales they tell. The Habitation of the Blessed recounts the fragmented narratives found within these living volumes, revealing the life of a priest named John, and his rise to power in this country of impossible richness. John’s tale weaves together with the confessions of his wife Hagia, a blemmye–a headless creature who carried her face on her chest–as well as the tender, jeweled nursery stories of Imtithal, nanny to the royal family. Hugo and World Fantasy award nominee Catherynne M. Valente reimagines the legends of Prester John in this stunning tour de force.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

Catacombs: A Tale of the Barque Cats
by Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough

Promo copy:

In Catalyst, award-winning authors Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough introduced readers to the beguiling Barque Cats: spacefaring felines who serve aboard starships as full-fledged members of the crew. Highly evolved, the cats share an almost telepathic bond with their minders, or Cat Persons—until, suddenly, there is no “almost” about it, and a particular Barque Cat, Chester, learns to exchange thoughts with his human friend, Jubal. Other cats soon gain the same ability.

Behind the seeming miracle is a mysterious cat named Pshaw-Ra, who possesses knowledge and technology far beyond anything the Barque Cats—or their humans—have ever seen. When fear of a virulent plague leads the government first to quarantine and then to kill all animals suspected of infection, Pshaw-Ra—with the help of Chester, Jubal, and the crew of the starship Ranzo—activates a “mousehole” in space that carries the refugees to a place of safety: Pshaw-Ra’s home planet of Mau, where godlike cats are worshiped by human slaves.

But Pshaw-Ra’s actions are less noble than they appear. The scheming cat plans to mate the Barque Cats with his own feline stock, creating a hybrid race of superior cats—a race destined to conquer the universe. Yet right from the start, his plans go awry.

For one thing, there’s a new queen on Mau: Pshaw-Ra’s daughter Nefure, a spoiled brat—er, cat—with a temper as short as her attention span. Pshaw-Ra’s other daughter, the rightful queen Renpet, is exiled, running for her life in the only direction available to her—down into the vast catacombs beneath the Mauan desert. Far from receiving the hero’s welcome he expected, Pshaw-Ra must use every bit of his considerable cleverness just to survive.

Meanwhile, as usual, Chester and Jubal stumble right into the middle of things, in the process uncovering the lost secrets of the Mauan civilization. But that’s not all they uncover. In the forgotten catacombs deep below the Mauan capital, something has awakened. Something as old as the universe. Something that hungers to devour all light and life—and that bears an undying hatred for cats.

Shotgun Sorceress
by Lucy A. Snyder

Promo copy:

BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE

For Jessie Shimmer, everything changed when she went to hell and back to save her lover, Cooper Marron. After tangling with supernatural forces and killing an untouchable spirit lord, Jessie finds herself gifted—or perhaps cursed—with dark powers. And when she and Cooper make love, her pleasure throes light the whole house on fire. What is a sorceress to do?

Jessie is about to find out. The circumstances of her birth, the mystery of a father she never knew, and the help of a cuddly ferret turned fearsome monster have made Jessie not just an outlaw from mundane society, but an accidental revolutionary in the magic realm. Encountering portals stitched into thin air and a fiercely sexy soul harvester, Jessie rushes headlong among enemies, horrors, wonders, and lovers into a place of self-discovery—or destruction.

Star Wars: Death Troopers
by Joe Schreiber

Promo copy:

When the Imperial prison barge Purge—temporary home to five hundred of the galaxy’s most ruthless killers, rebels, scoundrels, and thieves—breaks down in a distant part of space, its only hope appears to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting and seemingly abandoned. But when a boarding party from the Purge is sent to scavenge for parts, only half of them come back—bringing with them a horrific disease so lethal that within hours nearly all aboard the Purge die in ways too hideous to imagine.

And death is only the beginning.

The Purge’s half-dozen survivors will do whatever it takes to stay alive. But nothing can prepare them for what lies waiting aboard the Star Destroyer. For the dead are rising: soulless, unstoppable, and unspeakably hungry.

Star Wars and zombies?!?!

I participated in my first Mind Meld for SF Signal. With the Mind Melds, a question is posited to a variety of speculative fiction pros–writers, artists, critics and the like–and their answers are posted on the site. The topic for my first one:

Q: If you could publish a short fiction anthology containing up to 25 previously-published sf/f/h stories, which stories would it include and why?

Since only one anthology of ape fiction exists (The Rivals of King Kong ed Michel Parry Corgi, 1978) and given my proclivity for apes, I chose to compile my ultimate ape fiction anthology.

I included tales by Edgar Allan Poe, Robert E. Howard, Howard Waldrop, Joe R. Lansdale, Gustave Flaubert, V. S. Pritchett, Pat Murphy, Grant Morrison, J. G. Ballard, Italo Calvino, Arthur C. Clarke, Clark Ashton Smith, Philip Jose Farmer, Robert Bloch, Franz Kafka, and others.

Other contributors to this intriguing Mind Meld included Nancy Kress, A.M. Dellamonica, Scott A. Cupp, Steven H Silver, John Sanford, Kelley Eskridge, and Sanford Allen.

Check out the whole shebang over at SF Signal.

Even the King of Rock and Roll can’t elevate the inane dice rolling game out of the halls of lame-assery.

Though it hasn’t stopped USAopoly, makers of countless improbably licensed versions of Monopoly, Risk, Clue, and other classic games, from producing two different colored sets of the Elvis Yahtzee: black and blue, each with a unique design.

No matter how cool Elvis may be, Yahtzee still stinks.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor Archives Volume 1
Written by Donald Glut
Art by Jesse Santos and Dan Spiegle

Promo copy:

First appearing in 1972, the adventurous and wily Doctor Adam Spektor is an occult detective and monster hunter who travels the world over in search of the supernatural, aided by a Native American assistant, Lakota Rainflower. Investigating everything from rumors of odd, ghostly occurrences to appearances of strange, deadly creatures, Doctor Spektor spends his time in the field putting his life at risk to save innocents from the sinister and the grotesque. Whether conducting occult experiments on curing vampirism or fighting unearthly behemoths, Doctor Spektor stalks the forces of evil – to record and investigate their existence as well as protect us! As artist Santos said in a 1975 interview, "When you’re dealing with dead warriors and monstrous demons… let me tell you, you’ve got to think weird!" Created by writer Donald Glut and artist Dan Spiegle, The Occult Files of Doctor Spektor are the chronicles of a strange protector – a character who often breaks the fabled "fourth wall" to address readers directly and narrate a terrifying tale from his impressive files.

Odd Is on Our Side
Written by Dean Koontz & Fred Van Lente
Art by Queenie Chan

Promo copy:

When things get scary, it’s nice to know that Odd is on our side.

The one and only Odd Thomas is back—in his second edgy and enthralling graphic-novel adventure from #1 New York Times bestselling suspense master Dean Koontz.

It’s Halloween in Pico Mundo, California, and there’s a whiff of something wicked in the autumn air. While the town prepares for its annual festivities, young fry cook Odd Thomas can’t shake the feeling that make-believe goblins and ghouls aren’t the only things on the prowl. And he should know, since he can see what others cannot: the spirits of the restless dead. But even his frequent visitor, the specter of Elvis Presley, can’t seem to point Odd in the right direction.

With the help of his gun-toting girlfriend, Stormy, Odd is out to uncover the terrible truth. Is something sinister afoot in the remote barn guarded by devilish masked men? Has All Hallows Eve mischief taken a malevolent turn? Or is the pleading ghost of a trick-or-treater a frightening omen of doom?

Ryder of the Storm Issue 1
Written by David Hine
Art by Wayne Nichols

Promo copy:

Ryder on the Storm follows Ryder, a private eye hired by the beautiful femme fatale Katrina Petruska to investigate the horrifically bizarre suicide of her lover, Michael Hudson. Ryder’s journey to solve the case and finish Hudson’s work leads him to discover a truth more sinister and terrifying than he could ever have imagined – daemons walk among us. Now, he must team up with the last daemon hunter, Charles Monk, to take down the cabal of ancient evil controlling the city while struggling to reconcile the dark side of his own nature.

Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.

Johnny Halloween: Tales of the Dark Season
by Norman Partridge

Promo copy:

Norman Partridge’s Halloween novel, Dark Harvest, was chosen as one of Publishers Weekly‘s 100 Best Books of 2006. A Bram Stoker Award winner and World Fantasy nominee, Partridge’s rapid-fire tale of a small town trapped by its own shadows welcomed a wholly original creation, the October Boy, earning the author comparisons to Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and Shirley Jackson.

Now Partridge revisits Halloween with a collection featuring a half-dozen stories celebrating frights both past and present. In “The Jack o’ Lantern,” a brand new Dark Harvest novelette, the October Boy races against a remorseless döppelganger bent on carving a deadly path through the town’s annual ritual of death and rebirth. “Johnny Halloween” features a sheriff battling both a walking ghost and his own haunted conscience. In “Three Doors,” a scarred war hero hunts his past with the help of a magic prosthetic hand, while “Satan’s Army” is a real Partridge rarity previously available only in a long sold-out lettered edition from another press.

But there’s more to this holiday celebration besides fiction. “The Man Who Killed Halloween” is an extensive essay about growing up during the late sixties in the town where the Zodiac Killer began his murderous spree. In an introduction that explores monsters both fictional and real, Partridge recalls what it was like to live in a community menaced by a serial killer and examines how the Zodiac’s reign of terror shaped him as a writer.

Halloween night awaits. Join a master storyteller as he explores the layers of darkness that separate all-too-human evil from the supernatural. Let Norman Partridge lead you on seven journeys through the most dangerous night of the year, where no one is safe…and everyone is suspect.

I’ve long been a Norman Partridge fan. I reviewed the above referenced Dark Harvest, declaring that "[it] thrills with staccato scenes of action, ideal for a horror novel. Using a quick, lean prose reminiscent of the finest Gold Medal-era fiction and, at the same time, as fresh as a Quentin Tarantino film, Partridge packs more into this slim volume than most authors do in a bloated 600-page epic."

Salute the Dark (Shadows of the Apt, Book 4)
by Adrian Tchaikovsky

Promo copy:

The vampiric sorcerer Uctebri has at last got his hands on the Shadow Box and can finally begin his dark ritual–a ritual that the Wasp-kinden Emperor believes will grant him immortality–but Uctebri has his own plans for both the Emperor and the Empire.
The massed Wasp armies are on the march, and the spymaster Stenwold must see which of his allies will stand now that the war has finally arrived. This time the Empire will not stop until a black and gold flag waves over Stenwold’s own home city of Collegium.

Tisamon the Weaponsmaster is faced with a terrible choice: a path that could lead him to abandon his friends and his daughter, to face degradation and loss, that might possibly bring him before the Wasp Emperor with a blade in his hand–but is he being driven by Mantis-kinden honor, or manipulated by something more sinister?

All Clear
by Connie Willis

Promo copy:

In Blackout, award-winning author Connie Willis returned to the time-traveling future of 2060—the setting for several of her most celebrated works—and sent three Oxford historians to World War II England: Michael Davies, intent on observing heroism during the Miracle of Dunkirk; Merope Ward, studying children evacuated from London; and Polly Churchill, posing as a shopgirl in the middle of the Blitz. But when the three become unexpectedly trapped in 1940, they struggle not only to find their way home but to survive as Hitler’s bombers attempt to pummel London into submission.

Now the situation has grown even more dire. Small discrepancies in the historical record seem to indicate that one or all of them have somehow affected the past, changing the outcome of the war. The belief that the past can be observed but never altered has always been a core belief of time-travel theory—but suddenly it seems that the theory is horribly, tragically wrong.

Meanwhile, in 2060 Oxford, the historians’ supervisor, Mr. Dunworthy, and seventeen-year-old Colin Templer, who nurses a powerful crush on Polly, are engaged in a frantic and seemingly impossible struggle of their own—to find three missing needles in the haystack of history.

Told with compassion, humor, and an artistry both uplifting and devastating, All Clear is more than just the triumphant culmination of the adventure that began with Blackout. It’s Connie Willis’s most humane, heartfelt novel yet—a clear-eyed celebration of faith, love, and the quiet, ordinary acts of heroism and sacrifice too often overlooked by history.

RevSF Books Editor wrote this about Blackout and All Clear:

For the fine folks over at Moving Pictures, I interviewed Barry Munday director Chris D’Arienzo and stars Patrick Wilson and Judy Greer.

Read more of my discussion with D’Arienzo, Wilson, and Greer at Moving Pictures.

For my regular SF Site column Nexus Graphica, I produced a companion piece of sorts to the Uncanny Un-Collectibles: Missing Comic Book Trades.

Beyond the origins of the project, I also supplied some analysis of the survey.

Read the entire article (with also includes three reviews of recent books) and be sure to check out the Uncanny Un-Collectibles. ’nuff said!