Let’s take a quick look to see what’s arrived in the mail here at the Geek Compound.
Sanctified and Chicken-Fried: The Portable Lansdale by Joe R. Lansdale
Promo copy:
Master of mojo storytelling, spinner of over-the-top yarns of horror, suspense, humor, mystery, science fiction, and even the Old West, Joe R. Lansdale has attracted a wide and enthusiastic following. His genre-defying work has brought him numerous awards, including the Grand Master of Horror from the World Horror Convention, the Edgar Award, the American Horror Award, seven Bram Stoker awards, the British Fantasy Award, Italy’s Grinzane Prize for Literature, as well as Notable Book of the Year recognition twice from the New York Times.
Sanctified and Chicken-Fried is the first "true best of Lansdale" anthology. It brings together a unique mix of well-known short stories and excerpts from his acclaimed novels, along with new and previously unpublished material. In this collection of gothic tales that explore the dark and sometimes darkly humorous side of life and death, you’ll meet traveling preachers with sinister agendas, towns lost to time, teenagers out for a good time who get more than they bargain for, and gangsters and strange goings-on at the end of the world. Out of the blender of Lansdale’s imagination spew tall tales about men and mules, hogs and races, that are, in his words, "the equivalent of Aesop meets Flannery O’Connor on a date with William Faulkner, the events recorded by James M. Cain."
Whether you’re a long-time fan of Joe R. Lansdale or just discovering his work, this anthology brings you the best of a writer whom the New York Times Book Review has praised for having "a folklorist’s eye for telling detail and a front-porch raconteur’s sense of pace."
My feelings toward Joe’s works are well chronicle. Simply put, this book is REQUIRED reading!
The Losers by Jack Kirby
Promo copy:
For the first time, Jack Kirby’s tales of World War II are collected! In 1974, while Jack Kirby was hard at work on such mind-bending epics as MISTER MIRACLE and KAMANDI, he also created a series of stories that drew on his own experiences in World War II. Starring DC war heroes Johnny Cloud, Captain Storm, Gunner and Sarge, this volume features stories in which The Losers stop a German attack using a tactic found in a comic book, German and American athletes who faced each other at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin meet again on the field of combat, and much more! Don’t miss this amazing collection of tales from OUR FIGHTING FORCES #151-162, and featuring a foreword by best-selling author Neil Gaiman (THE SANDMAN).
There is no such thing as too much Kirby!
Fragment by Warren Fahy
Promo copy:
In this powerhouse of suspense—as brilliantly imagined as Jurassic Park and The Ruins—scientists have made a startling discovery: a fragment of a lost continent, an island with an ecosystem unlike any they’ve seen before . . . an ecosystem that could topple ours like a house of cards.
The time is now. The place is the Trident, a long-range research vessel hired by the reality TV show Sealife. Aboard is a cast of ambitious young scientists. With a director dying for drama, tiny Henders Island might be just what the show needs. Until the first scientist sets foot on Henders—and the ultimate test of survival begins . . .
For when they reach the island’s shores, scientists are utterly unprepared for what they find—creatures unlike any ever recorded in natural history. This is not a lost world frozen in time, an island of mutants, or a lab where science has gone mad: this is the Earth as it might have looked after evolving on a separate path for half a billion years.
Soon the scientists will stumble on something more shocking than anything humanity has ever encountered: because among the terrors of Henders Island, one life form defies any scientific theory—and must be saved at any cost.
Conquest of the Planet of the Apes ORIGINAL, UNCUT VERSION
From the FantasticFest blog:
Nowhere was this more apparent than in J. Lee Thompson’s CONQUEST OF THE PLANET OF THE APES, the toughest, most violent and political of the entire series and one of the best science fiction films of its time. Test audiences in 1972 were shocked by the film’s violence and call for revolution, so much so that the film was cut by over 9 minutes for fears of earning an R rating from the MPAA.
Fox issued the uncut edition as part of the Blu-ray Planet of the Apes 40th Anniversary Collection. I have the standard DVD version of the uncut Conquest.