Category Archives: pulp

Weird Menace Volume 2 Now Available

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Weird Menace 2 WebI know some of you bought Weird Menace Volume 1 when it went on sale a few weeks ago.  (Thank you!)  Well, the second volume is now available in both electronic and print editions. It’s a fine companion to the first volume.  And remember, the set makes a fine Christmas gift!

Here’s the announcement Rough Edges Press publisher James Reasoner posted last night:

The Shudder Pulps are back! In fact, it’s like they never left in this second great collection of new stories inspired by the classic Weird Menace magazines such as DIME MYSTERY and TERROR TALES. Those pulps may have ended in the early 1940s, but some of today’s top authors give us the same sort of pulse-pounding, spine-chilling tales they might have published if they had stayed around.

World War II casts its looming shadow in Mel Odom’s “The Spider-God of Nauru!”

Hell comes to a tropical paradise in Keith Chapman’s “Lust of the Cave Spirit”.

American GIs encounter a horror unlike any they ever expected in Michael Bracken’s “Attack of the Nazi Snow Warriors”.

Weird Menace mixes with hardboiled detective thrills in Paul Dellinger’s “Ghost Writer”.

The protagonist of John McCallum Swain’s “The Hades Mechanism” confronts a legendary, undying evil.

And Ray Lovato’s popular character Doc Atlas returns to face a new challenge in “Howl of the Werewolf”!

These action-packed stories are sure to entertain. Editor James Reasoner and Rough Edges Press are proud to present WEIRD MENACE VOLUME 2!

Weird Menace Volume 1 Now For Sale

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Weird Menace 1 aJames Reasoner announced this morning that Weird Menace Volume 1 is now for sale.  Electronic copies are $2.99 and paper copies are $9.99.  Volume 2 will follow soon.  Look for an announcement here when it does.

Here’s an excerpt from the introduction along with the table of contents.

The Weird Menace pulps flourished for less than a decade, from the mid-1930s to the early ’40s, but while they were popular, they delivered adventure, excitement, and spine-tingling thrills in quantities rarely seen before or since. Mad scientists, deranged henchmen, damsels in distress, and stalwart heroes raced through their pages in breathless, over-the-top, never-ending action. A good Weird Menace yarn really is just one damned thing after another.

Rough Edges Press asked some of today’s best authors of popular fiction to write Weird Menace stories, and they delivered. Settle back and let us spin a few yarns for you…

But keep an eye out behind you. You never know when something might be sneaking up on you.

Stories in this volume include:
“Bodies for the Brain Butcher” by John C. Hocking
“A Night on Madhouse Mountain” by Bill Crider
“The Curse of the Monster Makers!” by Scott Dennis Parker
“Farmhouse of the Dead” by Keith West
“The Hideous Blood Ray” by Robert E. Vardeman
“Blood Treasure for Satan’s Buccaneers” by James Reasoner

Weird Menace Volume 2 is Coming

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Weird Menace 2 WebI’m not in this one, but if you’re interested in Volume 1, I suspect you’ll want to know about Volume 2 as well.

Here’s the Table of Contents:

“The Spider-God of Nauru!” by Mel Odom
“Lust of the Cave Spirit” by Keith Chapman
“Attack of the Nazi Snow Warriors” by Michael Bracken
“Ghost Writer” by Paul Dellinger
“The Hades Mechanism” by John McCallum Swain
“Howl of the Werewolf” by Ray Lovato

Unlike the first volume of Weird Menace, which contains period pieces, these are the type of story the weird menace pulps would likely have published had they continued past the early 1940s.

I’ll post a publication date when one becomes available.

Weird Menace Volume 1 is Coming!

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Weird Menace 1 aI am very pleased to announce that Weird Menace Volume 1 will be published sometime in the next few weeks.  (I’ll let you know the exact date when I know.)

You can see from the cover to the right that it will contain stories by James Reasoner, Bill Crider, John C. Hocking, Robert E. Vardeman, Scott Dennis Parker, and…er…ahem…Your Intrepid Blogger.

Here’s the ToC: Continue reading →

Envisioning the Feminine Future

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Feminine FutureThe Feminine Future: Early Science Fiction by Women Writers
Mike Ashley
Dover Thrift Editions
ebook and print both $4.50
Amazon B&N

So in a previous post, I wrote about forgotten women writers from the early days of the science fiction pulps.  While I was reading Partners in Wonder (the book under discussion in that post), I came across a review of The Feminine Future.  Several of the stories in the latter were specifically singled out by Eric Leif Davin in the former.

I immediately picked it up.  It didn’t cover quite the same ground as Partners in Wonder, which looked at women authors in the early pulps.  In other words, the time period it was concerned with began in 1926, when Hugo Gernsback launched the first pulp devoted entirely to science fiction, Amazing Stories.

Science fiction had of course existed long before then, although it was called scientific romance.  (I find it interesting that scientific romances were considered respectable, science fiction was, and at times still is, viewed as trash.)  Mike Ashley doesn’t confine himself to the pulp era.  He gathers stories from women writers going back to the popular fiction magazines of the late 1800s.

Here’s what the book includes: Continue reading →

Return to the Empire State in The Age Atomic

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The Age Atomic
Adam Christopher
Angry Robot Books
UK Print
ISBN: 9780857663139
Format: Medium Paperback
R.R.P.: £8.99
US/CAN Print
ISBN: 9780857663146
Format: Large Paperback
R.R.P.: US$14.99 CAN$16.99
Ebook
ISBN: 9780857663153
Format: Epub & Mobi
R.R.P.: £5.49 / US$6.99

The Age Atomic is the sequel to Adam Christopher’s debut novel, Empire State (reviewed here).  Since that book was published, he’s also produced a superhero novel, Seven Wonders, which has been in my TBR pile since last summer.  (The Great Move happened just after that and really threw my reading schedule off; I still haven’t caught up.)

The Age Atomic continues the story begun in the first installment of this series.  When the tale opens, private investigator Rad Bradley is in the process of stumbling on a plot involving an army of robots.  If that weren’t bad enough, the Skyguard has disappeared.  So has Captain Carson.  The Fissure has as well, cutting off the Empire State from New York.

And speaking of New York, a dead woman named Evelyn McHale runs a government sponsored agency called Atoms for Peace.  What she’s doing is building a robot army to invade the Empire State.

Evelyn McHale

Christopher pulls out all the stops in this one.  There are not one but two robot armies.  (I think I see one of the reasons this novel appealed to this particular publisher.)  The writing was smoother and the characters more defined than in Empire State.  That was one of the things that appealed to me.  Christopher carefully selects some of the minor characters and lets us in on things from their viewpoints.  It deepens the story and gives it more of an epic feel.  What’s happening isn’t a battle between a few superpowered mystery men.  It will have an impact on everyone, great and small.  By fleshing out the bit players, the walk-ons, and the redshirts, Christopher adds a layer of humanity to his story.

The action moved the story along at a fast clip.  There are plenty of chases, fights, and intrigue for fans of pulp fiction.  There isn’t as much superhero action as there was in the previous novel, but that’s more than made up for by the robot armies.

If you liked Empire State, this is one you will most certainly enjoy.  Pick it up.  Adam Christopher’s books are currently Featured Books at Adventures Fantastic Books.

Here’s a sample:

Big Apples in Peril

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Empire State
Adam Christopher
Angry Robot

US/Canada
27 December 2011
416pp Trade Paperback
$12.99 US $14.99 CAN

ebook
27 December 2011
£4.49

If you like pulp superheores, noir, action, mystery, and a fun read, then this is the book for you.  If you notice, the release date on this novel is two days after Christmas, so you will have something to buy with that Christmas money Grandma always sends.

I was fortunate to score an eARC through the Robot Army, and I’m glad I did.  The storyline wasn’t quite what I was expecting, but that’s good.  Angry Robot has a pretty solid track record of publishing stuff that isn’t the same old thing.

So what’s the story about, you say?  I’m glad you asked that.

Now I don’t want to give too much away, because a great deal of the fun is how Christopher plays with your perceptions of what’s really going on and who’s on whose side.

The novel opens like a burst from a Tommy gun, literally.  Rex, a small time Manhattan bootlegger, is on the run from a bigger bootlegger he’s offended.  While making his escape, he gets caught up in the crowd watching a battle between the Skyguard and the Science Pirate over the Empire State Building, under construction at the time the book opens.  These are New York’s two superheroes, once partners and now bitter enemies.

The Chairman

The battle creates a pocket universe, the Empire State, which isn’t a nice place.  It’s a darker version of New York, filled with perpetual rain and fog and governed by the Chairman of the City Commissioners.  That’s an actual photo of him to the right.  (Really.  It is.  Don’t believe me?  Read the book.  You’ll see.)

Over in the Empire State, a detective named Rad is hired to find a missing woman.  It’s at this point that the novel departs from the superhero genre into the PI genre, at least for a while.  You can rest assured the case will involve superheroes, since Rad had a run-in with one just before he gets this case.

Being a detective in the Empire State is even harder than it is in New York.  For one thing, the Empire State is in a perpetual state of Wartime, fighting the Enemy, an unseen foe somewhere out in the fog.  Every few months a new fleet of ironclads is launched, crewed by men who have been turned into robots.  In all the years of Wartime, no ironclad has ever returned.  Until now…

I’ll refrain from telling you further details of the plot.  I don’t want to spoil anymore surprises.  There are twists, turns, crosses, and double crosses in this one.  It has a delightfully pulpy feel to it.  Especially during the airship chase.

I know that at least one person who follows this blog has been waiting for this one.  It’s almost here, and I think you’ll find it will have been worth the wait.

Here’s a sample chapter: