Spaceships and Tentacles

[ecosophia]

I'm delighted to announce that several fiction projects in which I've been involved to one degree or another are now available. First of all, Vintage Worlds -- an anthology of SF tales edited by me and the indefatigable Zendexor, set in the Old Solar System, the wholly imaginary but utterly entrancing realm of classic science fiction -- is now available in both print and e-book formats.

Think of it as space fantasy: tales of two- (or more-) fisted adventure set in a solar system that's chockfull of intelligent species, inhabitable worlds, and spaceships that look like something other than random collections of hardware -- yes, we're talking tail fins here. The mere fact that we turned out to inhabit a much less interesting solar system doesn't take anything away from the delight readers still get from the solar system tales of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Leigh Brackett, and the other great authors of science fiction's Golden Age, and there's no reason not to set new stories there -- after all, how many people quibble about the fact that Middle-earth and Narnia don't exist? 

This collection includes seventeen stories, including my "Out of the Chattering Planet," and amounts to 120,000 words of interplanetary adventure. You can pick up your copy here. 

There's also good news for readers of fantasy. The first two volumes of my epic fantasy with tentacles, The Weird of Hali, are heading into print in new paperback and e-book editions, with the others scheduled to follow over the course of the next year. The first volume, The Weird of Hali: Innsmouth, is already available in e-book format and can be purchased here, and the paperback edition is in press -- it can be preordered now (use the same link) and will be in print on December 17. The second volume, The Weird of Hali: Kingsport, will be released in print and e-book editions that same day; it can be preordered here. 

Those of you who haven't been following this end of my writing may want to know that, while these novels use the tentacle-ridden horror fiction of H.P. Lovecraft as raw material, they're not horror fiction. Lovecraft was a brilliant fantasist as well as a capable horror writer, and I've long felt that the fantastic end of his work has been neglected for far too long; the worlds of his imagination are also just too tempting a venue for fantasy for me to pass up.

The twist, of course, is that we're not getting your standard tale of how tentacled horrors out to devour the world, with the aid of their sinister human cultists, get stopped at the last minute by some combination of square-jawed investigators and sheer dumb luck. (That's been done not merely to death but out the other side into a couple of further reincarnations.) Au contraire, there's always at least two sides to any story; these tales are from the point of view of those awful cultists -- the ordinary men and women, that is, who discover the forbidden truth about those tentacled horrors (aka the old gods of nature) and get drawn into the ancient and terrible struggle between archaic gods and their all too modern, efficient, and up-to-date adversaries. It's a conflict on which the fate of the world does indeed rest, but, ahem, it's not the old gods of nature who are seeking to turn the living Earth into a smoldering, lifeless waste strewn with plastic trash...

So here are the first two volumes -- the stories, to be precise, of how the two main characters of the series find their way into a wider and more eldritch world. The third volume, The Weird of Hali: Chorazin, which launches those characters and several others on a desperate quest to awaken a sleeping goddess, will be out early in the new year.  The others -- The Weird of Hali: Dreamlands, The Weird of Hali: Providence, The Weird of Hali: Red Hook, and The Weird of Hali: Arkham -- will be in print by the end of 2019. Stay tuned for more announcements! 

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

At this rate I'll soon have an entire bookshelf devoted to your writing. Which is one of the best uses for a bookshelf, as far as I'm concerned.

[ecosophia]

Thank you! It's only fair to warn you that you'll need to make room for three more pieces of tentacle-laden fantasy, set in the same fictive world as the Weird of Hali but not part of the same story arc. The Shoggoth Concerto (currrently finished, and worming its way through the acquisition department of a big New York publisher -- wish me luck) and its sequel The Nyogtha Variations (about a third complete in rough draft) are a pair of romantic Lovecraftian fantasies about classical music and shoggoths. The third, which is currently going by the temporary moniker "the Hyperborea project," is a rollicking adventure, mostly set in Greenland, in which human/deep one hybrids, serpent folk from long-vanished Valusia, the Great Race of Yith, and the Terrible Old Man and his crew of undead pirates (released from their bottles for the duration) all play significant roles; it's in outline form at the moment, waiting for the completion of the last volume of the Weird and The Nyogtha Variations before it gets its share of writing time.

Will Lavinia make an appearance?

[(Anonymous)]

Even before I had read about your re-imagining of the world of the great old ones, I had this weird feeling that Miss Whately was a little misunderstood. (Okay, so I might have even had a little crush on her.)

Any references to Lavinny and her family in any of the upcoming books??

Re: Will Lavinia make an appearance?

[ecosophia]

Lavinia Whateley badly needs to tell her side of the story, or have it told by a sympathetic and knowledgeable narrator, but that's not something I'll be doing in this sequence. The novels in The Weird of Hali all take place along a timeline that starts more or less now, and extends for some twenty years into the future. The events of "The Dunwich Horror" are almost a century in the past by the time the story begins.

There are quite a few Whateleys in the story, mostly in minor parts; there's an engaging young man named Will Bishop (of the highly decayed Dunwich Bishops, of course) who has a similar parentage and certain anatomical peculiarities, and there's a young woman named Patty Dombrowski whose out-of-wedlock child Evan has, shall we say, a very distinguished father -- you'll be pleased to know that she ends up happily married to a pleasant young man of Tcho-Tcho ancestry whose parents came over as refugees after the Vietnam War.

But Lavinia as such -- no, she'll need a story of her own. Have you considered writing it?

Re: Will Lavinia make an appearance?

[(Anonymous)]

We'll see. If my creativity ends up meandering into fiction, then my stories will likely be told on the stage rather than the page. I have a feeling community theater will play an important part in the de-industrial future, and that may just be where I end up leaving my mark. And if the rays of Awen turn out to be shining tentacles, then I may just have to tell the story about how a pale, snowy-haired beauty who wandered the hills during thunderstorms broke my heart for a tall, dark stranger in a wide-brimmed hat (perhaps driving a black Mercedes Simplex roadster whose license number you can never quite make out...)

Re: Will Lavinia make an appearance?

[ecosophia]

I'll look forward to it! Lovecraft doesn't translate well into cinema, but live theater's quite another matter, since it works with the imagination of the audience rather than simply trying to show everything.

[(Anonymous)]

"Out of the Chattering Planet" is a reference to "Out of the Silent Planet" I assume? If so, I am just going to have to pick this one up! The Space Trilogy is one of my favorite SF, but I've actually not read much else from that era.

[ecosophia]

Yes, though it's kind of a sidelong reference. One of the (offstage) characters in the story is a fan of classic SF, and Lewis' Deep Heaven trilogy is mentioned in passing.

Paper back editions!

[(Anonymous)]

I'll definitely purchase the whole lot in paper back edition! I have been waiting for those for years as I am not into ebook formats!

Karim

Kingsport marathon

[mesosylvania]

This morning, I bought the ebook of Weird of Hali: Kingsport from the publisher, and I couldn't stop reading- I've just now finished it. Truly amazing. Brings tears to my eyes. For instance, the scene of Jenny with the candles and potpourri (to refer to it obliquely, so as not to spoil anything), stirred something deep within me. I found myself researching the ritual uses of potpourri (including within your Encyclopedia of Natural Magic), and thinking through what oils could be used to refresh the scent, how to consecrate them, creating special blends for the Stations of the Year, and so on and so forth, all only a subset of my reactions to one simple scene, not even mentioning my reaction to the spiritual aspect. Your work reaches straight out of the book, causing wheels to spin outward into the world. Bravo. :-)

I'll ask next Monday if that's more appropriate, but you mentioned that your reworking of the Mythos pantheon should work magically and spiritually- does this mean that a "Golden Dawn of the Great Old Ones" could be conceivably fashioned? That would be my dream.

Re: Kingsport marathon

[ecosophia]

Thank you -- that's the kind of thing every author loves to hear.

A "Tentacular Order of the Golden Dawn" would indeed be possible, though I hope it would call itself "The Esoteric Order of Dagon" instead! The one difficulty is that Lovecraft has, as far as I know, no divine names with only four letters, so the standard Pentagram ritual wouldn't work as well. I'd probably suggest using the Sphere of Protection as a basic ritual instead -- that could be constructed with great ease.

Re: Kingsport marathon

[mesosylvania]

Wonderful! That's even better for me, since I'm working through the Druid Magic Handbook, and soon most likely the Dolmen Arch course. Not to mention the fact that it seems like a solar+telluric system matches well with the Mythos (White/Green Ceremonies, light and dark voor, etc).

I'll continue to ruminate and brainstorm about how a "Tentacular Order of Ancient Druids" (TOAD) might look. ;-)

In the meantime, would you consider at some point doing a post briefly outlining your Mythos pantheon? I'm imagining something similar to your appendix on the Welsh gods at the end of Druid Magic Handbook- enough to get someone started if they're interested in exploring.

Re: Kingsport marathon

[ecosophia]

Oh, a Druid order would be easy! There's an old Robert Bloch story from his Cthulhu mythos days, "Notebook Found in a Deserted House," that has sinister Druids running around New England invoking Shub-Ne'hurrath -- of course he uses Lovecraft's misspelling of the name. And the solar and telluric material in the stories, well, let's just say that's not accidental... ;-)

As for the Mythos pantheon, let me whet your appetite with this...



All of these deities feature in one or another of my stories, either in The Weird or in the novels connected to it...

[(Anonymous)]

:-D You just blew my mind!

[ecosophia]

Glad to hear it. As we used to say back in the day, "'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds..."