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

Righteous Kill

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Turk and Rooster, two aging NYPD detectives who have been longtime partners are faced with a serial killer who is murdering sociopathic criminals. They both have personal issues, and when they start working with a younger team, Perez and Riley, tensions between the pairs of partners is inevitable, especially since Turk is now living with Perez’s ex-girlfriend, also a homicide detective.

The Twilight Herald: Book Two of the Twilight Reign by Tom Lloyd

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Lord Bahl is dead and the young white-eye, Isak, stands in his place; less than a year after being plucked from obscurity and poverty the charismatic new Lord of the Farlan finds himself unprepared to deal with the attempt on his life that now spells war, and the possibility of rebellion waiting for him at home.

Now the eyes of the Land turn to the minor city of Scree, which could soon be obliterated as the new Lord of the Farlan flexes his powers. Scree is suffering under an unnatural summer drought and surrounded by volatile mercenary armies that may be its only salvation.

This is a strange sanctuary for a fugitive abbot to flee to–but he is only the first of many to be drawn there. Kings and princes, lords and monsters; all walk the sun-scorched streets.

As elite soldiers clash after dark and actors perform cruel and subversive plays that work their way into the hearts of the audience, the city begins to tear itself apart–yet even chaos can be scripted.

There is a malevolent will at work in Scree, one that has a lesson for the entire Land: nations can be manipulated, prophecies perverted and Gods denied.

Nothing lies beyond the reach of a shadow, and no matter how great a man s power, there some things he cannot be protected from.

The Twilight Herald is the second book in a powerful new series that combines inspired world-building, epoch-shattering battles and high emotion to dazzling effect.

Midwinter by Matthew Sturges

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Winter only comes to the land once in a hundred years. But the snow covers ancient secrets: secrets that could topple a kingdom.

Mauritaine was a war hero, a Captain in the Seelie Army. Then he was accused of treason and sentenced to life without parole at Crere Sulace, a dark and ancient prison in the mountains, far from the City Emerald. But now the Seelie Queen–Regina Titania herself–has offered him one last chance to redeem himself, an opportunity to regain his freedom and his honor.

Unfortunately, it s a suicide mission, which is why only Mauritaine and the few prisoners he trusts enough to accompany him, would even dare attempt it. Raieve, beautiful and harsh, an emissary from a foreign land caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. Perrin Alt, Lord Silverdun, a nobleman imprisoned as a result of political intrigues so Byzantine that not even he understands them. Brian Satterly, a human physicist, apprehended searching for the human victims of the faery changeling trade.

Meanwhile, dark forces are at work at home and abroad. In the Seelie kingdom, the reluctant soldier Purane-Es burns with hatred for Mauritaine, and plots to steal from him the one thing that remains to him: his wife. Across the border, the black artist Hy Pezho courts the whim of Mab, offering a deadly weapon that could allow the Unseelie in their flying cities to crush Titania and her army once and for all.

With time running out, Mauritaine and his companions must cross the deadly Contested Lands filled with dire magical fallout from wars past. They will confront mounted patrols, brigands, and a traitor in their midst. And before they reach their destination, as the Unseelie Armies led by Queen Mab approach the border, Mauritaine must decide between his own freedom and the fate of the very land that has forsaken him.

Before Austinite Matthew Sturges gained notice as a writer on several acclaimed comic book series such as Jack of Fables, The House of Mystery, and Eclipso: The Music of the Spheres, he garnered praise for his prose fiction as part of the publishing concern Clockwork Storybook.

[  Mood: Amused ]

My review of Chris Roberson’s End of the Century appears in today’s San Antonio Current.

That Was The Year That Was. Part Two.

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

The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston

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Webster Filmore Goodhue has found temporary work as one of the mop-up crew for the L.A. county crime division. In other words, he cleans up grisly crime scenes for the cops. But when the daughter of a recent Malibu suicide asks for his help to clean up after her brother got in a little trouble, every cell in Webs brain is telling him to turn it down.

One of the best titles ever!

Getting to Know You by David Marusek

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Not since William Gibson and Bruce Sterling galvanized science fiction in the 1980s has the emergence of a new writer been heralded with such acclaim as that attending David Marusek, whose brilliant first novel, Counting Heads, appeared to rave reviews in 2005. But Marusek did not come out of nowhere. Aficionados of the genre had already taken note of his groundbreaking short fiction: masterfully written, profoundly thought-out examinations of futures so real they seemed virtually inevitable.

Now, in this collection of ten short stories, Marusek’s fierce imagination and dazzling extrapolative gifts are on full display. Five of the stories, including the Sturgeon Award-winning “The Wedding Album,” a shattering look at the unintended human consequences of advanced technology, are set in the same future as Counting Heads. All ten showcase Marusek’s talent for literate, provocative science fiction of the very highest order.

The Vampire Agent by Patricia Rosemoor and Marc Paoletti

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On the sultry streets of New Orleans, Captain Scott Boulder and Leah Maguire are about to begin a deadly mission. The traumatized, genetically altered subjects of a Department of Defense experiment gone wrong have escaped, among them Rachel Ackart, a beautiful, seductive, and powerful woman–who is now under the dangerous influence of Andre Espinoza de Madrid, a vampire of incomparable evil and power.

While Predator drones circle above New Orleans, and the sound of Black Hawk helicopters rends the air, Scott and Leah must fight their growing attraction to each other as they pursue their quarry amid the haunted and the damned. But Rachel is one step ahead of them. Andre’s vampire agent will soon unleash the greatest terror of all.

Just a little aside, Paoletti wrote the Michael Lark-illustrated tale for my anthology Weird Business.

FeedFlix crunches your Netflix data and offers interesting data about your Netflix account, warts and all.

The good? My average movie cost (includes rentals and instant watch) comes to $0.11!

The bad? A good friend told me he had no interest in the new Battlestar Galactica since he despised the original. After telling how I, too, loathed the original, but really enjoyed the politically subversive new incarnation, he decided to give the show a chance.

Later in the same conversation with the same friend, he was telling me how much he loved the new Dr. Who. My dislike of Dr. Who is well chronicled. My friend wisely pointed out that shouldn’t the same logic I used for BG apply to the new Dr. Who?

I know when I’ve been out maneuvered and besides the first three seasons of the new series are available through Instant Watch through my Roku player.

So here’s my current Instant Watch stats.

Guess when Brandy and I started watching Dr. Who?

I’ve officially had to eat crow regarding the new adventures of the good doctor. We’re now in the midst of season three and officially hooked!

The ugly? I now have quantitative evidence of how much time I waste watching DVDs and Instant Watch. Never a good idea to stare into the abyss. It’s frightening in there!

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I’m taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

One of the countless Barney parodies, Smarmy (1993), created by Joe Preston and Ian O’Keefe, recounts the disturbing tale of a sexually-deviant purple dinosaur who becomes a scout master.

Click on image for full sized version.

Art by O’Keefe

Words by Preston Art by O’Keefe

Preston and O’Keefe previously teamed far more successfully in "Soul in the Hole" for my 2001 Blackbird Comics anthology Modern Perversity.

from "Soul in the Hole"
Words by Preston Art by O’Keefe

I published Preston one more time in Wild West Show (Mojo Press, 1996).

from "Letters From Arizona" Wild West Show (Mojo Press, 1996)
Words by Preston Art by John Lucas and Martin Thomas

While "researching" a recent Nexus Graphica, I had reason to look through my collection of Comics Of Unusual Size. This set of the big and small and odd of comicdom offers many gems. Deciding that I really should share some of these largely forgotten and sometime rare pieces, I’m taking you through a tour of the more interesting selections.

I first met Tom Stazer when we were both working in the trenches at Blackbird Comics. He had already established a cult following for his hilarious sf parody Spaced (no relation to the Pegg and Wright TV series) and the funny animal series Lionheart (no relation to Richard I). For Blackbird he produced two issues of his post-modern anti-consumerist fable Crazy Bob. (if any of my publishing friends are listening, all three of Stazer’s titles deserve to be collected.)

Tom and I became friends which included him sending me one of the most disturbing and funny Christmas mini-comics/cards of all time. With his kind permission, I present Davey’s Magic Christmas in it’s entirety.

Click on image for full sized version.

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

The Complete Green Lama Volume 2: Featuring the Art of Mac Raboy

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Dark Horse Archives completes the entire Green Lama series with this second high-quality hardcover – collecting the final four issues of a Golden Age classic! The emerald-clad freedom fighter returns to mete out further justice courtesy of famed artist Mac Raboy and writer/editor Joseph Greene! And, while this 1940s anthology series is best known for its eponymous Buddhist superhero, it featured an astonishing variety of short comics and prose pieces. Daring do-gooders the Boy Champions, Merlin-powered Lieutenant Hercules, flying ace Rick Masters, and the mischievous sprite Angus McErc together show off the creative experimentation that caught fire in the wake of Action Comics #1!

Creepy Archives Volume 2

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This vein-chilling second volume showcases work by some of the best artists to ever work in the comics medium, including Alex Toth, Gray Morrow, Reed Crandall, John Severin, and others. Each archive volume of Creepy is packed with stories (usually up to eight short stories were featured in every issue!) running the gamut of gruesome subject matter, from reimagined horror classics such as "The Cask of Amontillado," to spectacularly mind-twisting shorts such as "The Thing in the Pit," or the macabre maritime yarn "Drink Deep."

I’ve been eagerly awaiting this book. I devoted part of the October "Nexus Graphica" to the Warren magazines and listed the first volume among my ten best graphic novels of the year.

From my review of Volume One:

Highly Recommended!

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

Eclipse 2: New Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Jonathan Strahan

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To observe an eclipse is to witness a rare and unusual event. Under darkened skies the sun becomes a negative image of itself, its corona transforming the landscape into a strange space where anything might happen, and any story may be true…

In the spirit of classic science fiction anthologies such as Universe, Orbit, and Starlight, master anthologist Jonathan Strahan (The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year) presents the non-themed genre anthology Eclipse: New Science Fiction and Fantasy. Here you will find stories where strange and wonderful things happen–where reality is eclipsed by something magical and new.

Following in the footsteps of the multiple-award-nominated Eclipse One, Eclipse Two delivers new fiction by some of the genre’s most celebrated authors, including Alastair Reynolds’s star-spanning saga of Imperial assassination and courtly intrigue; Stephen Baxter’s tantalizing tale of impermanence and memory, as first contact with an alien artificial intelligence has very real consequences; Nancy Kress’s claustrophobic fable of shared space, life delayed, and critical choices; and Ted Chiang’s evocative story of an all-metal world, its argon-breathing inhabitants, and the scientist who performs the ultimate self-examination.

This Is Not a Game by Walter Jon Williams

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Once upon a time, there were four of them. And though each was good at a number of things, all of them were very good at games…

Dagmar is a game designer trapped in Jakarta in the middle of a revolution. The city is tearing itself apart around her and she needs to get out.

Her boss Charlie has his own problems — 4.3 billion of them, to be precise, hidden in an off-shore account.

Austin is the businessman — the VC. He’s the one with the plan and the one to keep the geeks in line.

BJ was there from the start, but while Charlie’s star rose, BJ sank into the depths of customer service. He pads his hours at the call-center slaying on-line orcs, stealing your loot, and selling it on the internet.

But when one of them is gunned down in a parking lot, the survivors become players in a very different kind of game. Caught between the dangerous worlds of the Russian Mafia and international finance, Dagmar must draw on all her resources — not least millions of online gamers– to track down the killer. In this near-future thriller, Walter Jon Williams weaves a pulse-pounding tale of intrigue, murder, and games where you don’t get an extra life.

Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor by Matthew Stover

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Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader are dead. The Empire has been toppled by the triumphant Rebel Alliance, and the New Republic is ascendant. But the struggle against the dark side and the Sith Order is not over. Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, and their faithful comrades have had little time to savor victory before being called on to defend the newly liberated galaxy.

Powerful remnants of the vanquished Empire, hungry for retaliation, are still at large, committing acts of piracy, terrorism, and wholesale slaughter against the worlds of the fledgling New Republic. The most deadly of these, a ruthless legion of black-armored Stormtroopers, do the brutal bidding of the newly risen warlord Shadowspawn. Striking from a strategically advantageous base on the planet Mindor, they are waging a campaign of plunder and destruction, demolishing order and security across the galaxy–and breeding fears of an Imperial resurgence. Another reign of darkness beneath the boot-heel of Sith despotism is something General Luke Skywalker cannot, and will not, risk.

Mobilizing the ace fighters of Rogue Squadron–along with the trusty Chewbacca, See-Threepio, and Artoo-Detoo–Luke, Han, and Leia set out to take the battle to the enemy and neutralize the threat before it’s too late. But their imminent attack on Mindor will be playing directly into the hands of their cunning new adversary. Lord Shadowspawn is no freshly anointed Sith Chieftain but in fact a vicious former Imperial Intelligence officer–and Prophet of the Dark Side. The Emperor’s death has paved the way for Shadowspawn’s return from exile in the Outer Rim, and mastery of ancient Sith knowledge and modern technology has given him the capability to mount the ultimate power play for galaxy wide dominion. Dark prophecy has foretold that only one obstacle stands in his way, and he is ready–even eager–for the confrontation.

All the classic heroes, all the explosive action and adventure, all the unparalleled excitement of Star Wars come breathlessly alive as the adventures of Luke Skywalker continue.