Author Archive
Thanks to Library Journal for this review of ASSAULT ON SUNRISE
by admin on Sep.02, 2013, under reviews
Shea, Michael. Assault on Sunrise. Tor. (Extra Trilogy, Bk. 2). Aug. 2013. 288p.
ISBN 9780765324368. $25.99: ebk. ISBN 9781429988278.
Reality TV has reached its extreme with the advent of live-action films in which the demise of a character (or an extra) involves the actor’s actual death—and in which the survivors receive a small fortune just for living through the “movie.- When a number of extras pool their resources and relocate to a town of their own, naming it Sunrise. CA, they provide a safe place for other survivors and arouse the anger of Panoply Studios, which paid out millions in much-needed funds.
Now studio CEO Val Margolian has developed a scheme for exacting his revenge on the surviving actors as well as their town. He also hopes to make a huge profit from filming the destruction of Sunrise through an attack by unstoppable mechanical insects. In the tradition of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome, Westworld, and The Running Man, Shea creates a brilliant and cautionary satire that questions what passes for modern entertainment.
VERDICT
This sequel to The Extra takes current reality TV several steps further, delivering a thrilling action-adventure that, naturally enough, would translate well to cinema.
NIFFT THE LEAN RETURNS
by admin on Aug.27, 2013, under Books, news
To the delight of many long time readers, Michael is currently having a good time working on a new Nifft the Lean story.
From this we present a small section of verse:
A MEDITATION ON MAN AND DEMON
Man for the million million years
He’s shared the earth with demonkind,
Has asked why they, in their ageless lairs,
So lust for his frail soul and mind.
Whatever hands set the clock of stars
Wheeling and wheeling down through time
Also sundered those empires
With barriers both now over-climb.
That men should go down to those sunless moors
Where Horror and Harm breed deathless forms,
Or to the Demon Sea’s littered shores,
Or its depths, where riches breed like worms:
That men do this (as the Privateer
Gildmirth of Sordon did in his pride)
Is no surprise, save that they dare
To sail that shape-tormented tide.
But why are netherworld nets flung here,
And men snagged out of their mortal terms–
Trawled kicking down from life in the air
To immortal drowning in monstrous arms?
Michael Shea at Dark Delicacies in Burbank on August 18, 2013
by admin on Aug.12, 2013, under news
To all interested readers in Los Angeles! Michael will be also reading at Dark Delicacies in Burbank, Ca.
from ASSAULT ON SUNRISE, the second volume of THE EXTRA trilogy, on August 18th at 2p.m.
You can preorder your signed hardback copy of ASSAULT ON SUNRISE:
http://www.darkdel.com/c52.htm
Patton Oswalt, Comedian/ Actor/ and Author, will be at the Dark Delicacies reading to introduce the book. Thank you Patton!
Dark Delicacies is located at 3512 W. Magnolia in Burbank, CA.
Tel 1-818-556-6660
Toll Free 1-888-DARKDEL
http://www.darkdel.com/
Michael Shea in San Diego on August 17, 2013
by admin on Aug.08, 2013, under news
Michael Shea is coming to San Diego to the Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore!
Come and listen to Michael as he reads from his latest novel “Assault on Sunrise.”
Join us on 08/17/2013 at 2:00 pm for this interesting event
The Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore is located in San Diego at 7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd., Suite #302,
For more information you can call the bookstore at tel. 858-268-4747
Locus Magazine’s Faren Miller reviews ASSAULT ON SUNRISE
by admin on Aug.06, 2013, under news, reviews
Faren MIller reviews ASSAULT ON SUNRISE in Locus Magazine
Locus Looks at Books: Faren Miller
Assault on Sunrise, Michael Shea (Tor 978- 0 -7653-2436-8, $25.99, 288pp, hc) August 2013
Though I haven’t been able to keep up with everything Michael Shea has written in various subgenres of SF and fantasy since I started reviewing his work more than 30 years ago, he never disappoints. Even when I arrive in midtrilogy (Assault on Sunrise is book two), it’s not hard to catch up with the quirky cast of players and techs associated with the future Hollywood introduced in The Extra.
As cities like Los Angeles become more like enormous slums and a few industry moguls run amok without fear of governmental restraint, some people escape to their own odd little communities: towns like Sunrise, up in the Trinity Mountains where the air is still clear and the corporate fist hasn’t quashed all freedom. But that’s about to change.
Mainly in order to strike back at the little group of upstarts who disrupted filmmaking in The Extra, Panoply Studios’ vengeful CEO trumps up a murder charge that condemns Sunrise and all of its inhabitants to the latest, most sweeping and ruthless form of judicial sentence: a ‘‘live-action’’ filming of an attack (also known as Assault on Sunrise), that follows an exhaustively planned script where invading monsters aren’t just special effects. Instead of digital manipulations, Panoply’s Hollywood conjurers deal in something more like mad science, an unholy combination of genetics and robotics.
The refugees have enough experience, and links to insiders still in the business, to get some notion of what they’ll face, yet they can only scramble to set up makeshift countermeasures as the attack escalates and grows ever more complex. Soon they’re busy stealing ‘‘rafts’’ (the flying ships suitable for either camera shots or bombings), lab testing a sample of the bizarre gel that develops into seemingly immortal, selfregenerating giant bugs, or pursuing an urgent quest for design flaws in the finished products.
Shea doesn’t simply give us harried action figures in a sketchy landscape. By Chapter XII, ‘‘The Monster’s Flesh’’, we know these people well enough to feel the host of individual presences and high emotions that jostle against each other in a passage like this one:
At the back corner of Ike’s Engine Repair’s
big-vaulted garage was a small, crowded
machine shop. Devlin bade everyone in.
Mazy, Lance, and Radner were already
there. Shutting the door, she sealed them
all in the cold oily smell of machinery. It
was somehow the right scent, a smell of
mustered weapons, of danger and urgent
defenses.
One character – whose wife is four months pregnant in the book’s opening scene – takes a more direct hold of later chapters, speaking in the first person. Like a film’s occasional uses of close-up and specific focus among larger vistas, Curtis takes us with him into the heart of his own adventures, though he never looms as an epic hero would – not even after managing, with a ‘‘lucky shot,’’ to blow the head off an insectile invader.
Amid such mayhem, not everybody can survive, and each loss cuts deep. But enough do make it through, or get born into chaos, to leave me eager for the battles of book three, Fortress Hollywood.
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Free Stuff from Author Michael Shea
In Memory Drive Slow
“In Memory Drive Slow” is a weird tale inspired by a handwritten sign the author once saw on a Sonoma Country back road.
And Death Shall Have No Dominion
Year: 2017
Publisher: Hippocampus PressMichael Shea (1946–2014) was one of the most distinguished, respected, and beloved figures in the fields of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. He won two World Fantasy Awards, and his <i>Nifft the Lean</i> series of fantasy adventure novels attracted a wide audience. He also wrote powerful tales of supernatural horror, including several tales elaborating upon H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos.
This first major volume of writings and tributes to appear after his untimely death contains an array of fiction, poetry, and other writings that demonstrate Shea’s effortless skill in different genres and styles. Four substantial tales–including the unpublished novella “Credit Card” and the award-winning “The Growlimb”–are included, together with an intriguing assortment of weird and fantastic poetry, published and unpublished, including verses that appeared at key moments in his novels and stories.
The volume features tributes to Shea’s unique personal and literary gifts by such figures as Laird Barron, Cody Goodfellow, Marc Laidlaw, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, and Jason V Brock, as well as a portfolio of artwork illustrating Shea’s writings by such artists as Michael Whelan, Alan Clark, John Stewart, Allen Koszowski, and Steve Gilbert. The book concludes with a comprehensive bibliography of Shea’s writings.
This book is a poignant testimonial to the imperishable imprint that Michael Shea left upon the domain of imaginative fiction, and upon the individuals whose lives he touched.
Linda Shea, writer and artist, was married to Michael Shea for more than thirty years. S. T. Joshi is a leading author, critic, and editor in the realm of weird fiction and included Shea’s writings in several of
his anthologies, including the acclaimed <i>Black Wings</i> series.Price: $20.00
Purchase NowDemiurge – The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales of Michael Shea
Year: 2018
Publisher: Dark RenaissanceFor more than thirty years, Michael Shea has been making his own distinctive contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos devised by H. P. Lovecraft—an entire universe of gods and monsters that hundreds of writers have imitated. But Shea has done a lot more than merely mimic Lovecraft’s prose or add a new god or “forbidden book” to the Mythos. In his Mythos tales, Shea has infused his own unique vision and perspective.The much-reprinted “Fat Face” takes us into the seedy underworld of prostitutes and drug dealers in San Francisco, while other tales such as “Dagoniad,” “Copping Squid,” and “Tsathoggua” vividly meld Lovecraftian cosmic horror with the contemporary world of California, with its swimming pools and beachcombers. Shea was also fascinated with Lovecraft’s novel of Antarctic horror, At the Mountains of Madness, and his stories “Under the Shelf” and “Beneath the Beardmore” take us to that frozen land of death and terror.
The title story, “Demiurge,” is a previously unpublished novella that draws upon Lovecraft’s tales of psychic possession in its chilling portrayal of a nameless monster who may be the harbinger of the overthrow of the entire human race. Michael Shea (1946–2014) was the award-winning author of The Color out of Time, the Nifft the Lean series of fantasy novels, and the classic tales “Polyphemus” and “The Autopsy.” This volume of his complete Cthulhu Mythos tales has been assembled by S. T. Joshi, a leading authority on Lovecraft and the Mythos.This volume features wraparound cover artwork and five interior illustrations by renowned artist Aeron Alfrey (MADHOUSE)
Price: $23.94
A Quest For Simbilis
Year: 2020
Publisher: SpatterlightBy dint of a mispronounced spell, Cugel the Clever finds himself once again unceremoniously dumped by a winged demon onto the bleak far northern shores of the Sea of Cutz — the location of a fierce battle aeons past between the archmagician Simbilis and the hordes of the subworlds league. Vowing to exact comprehensive revenge from Iucounu, the Laughing Magician, Cugel sets forth on the long journey back to Almery.
Expecting potent magical gifts in recompense, Cugel swears fealty to Mumber Sull, the exiled Thane of Icthyll. Under the guttering blood-red sun, the two set off across the lands of the Dying Earth to obtain the aid of the legendary Simbilis. They must face cannibals, sorcery, demons, and all the other deadly and sinister creatures that populate the Earth in its final days…
In this — his first published novel — World Fantasy Award winner Michael Shea recounts the further adventures of Cugel the Clever with the permission of Jack Vance, author of The Eyes of the Overworld. Shea subsequently wrote his seminal Nifft the Lean stories, which are foreshadowed, in many ways, in the present work. Dan Temianka, author of The Jack Vance Lexicon, provides an introduction for this new edition, which sheds light upon Shea, Vance, and Temianka’s lifelong friendship with Michael Shea.
On the Paladins of Vance label, Spatterlight publishes original works by authors who have given their own imagination free rein in the many wonderful worlds of the Grandmaster of fantasy & sci-fi.
Price: $13.95
Mr Cannyharme, A Novel of Lovecraftian Terror
Year: 2021
Publisher: Hippocampus PressMichael Shea wrote the previously unpublished novel Mr. Cannyharme in 1981, and it constitutes a remarkable adaptation of H. P. Lovecraft’s early story “The Hound” (1922), about the depredations of an ancient Dutch vampire. In Shea’s novel, Mr. Cannyharme stalks the seedy Mission District of San Francisco in the aftermath of the hippie movement of the 1960s. Holed up in a rundown hotel, the seemingly harmless Cannyharme—aged, feeble, bent almost double with a crippling disease—is the focus of the supernatural terror in the novel.
Mr. Cannyharme, written in a vibrant prose that brings to life the multitude of characters that populate the book, is a triumph of Lovecraftian terror, but also speaks of the way in which those who are regarded as the refuse of society can assert their dignity and self-worth in a grim environment. In this sense, it proves to be a novel affirming the triumph of the human spirit over the horrors facing it.
Price: $20.00
Purchase now
Note: PREVIOUSLY UNPUBLISHED
The Autopsy / Best Weird Stories of Michael Shea
Year: 2022
Publisher: Hippocampus PressA new 2022 Collection of Michael Shea Stories by Hippocampus Press and a great way to read his classic story “The Autopsy” which has been adapted for TV for Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities. “The Autopsy” is one of several tales that mingles gruesomeness and science fiction. Others include “Polyphemus,” where the members of a spaceship encounter the titanic eye of some unthinkably vast and hostile entity. “The Angel of Death” exhibits the battle of two alien entities as they successively inhabit hapless human beings in their quest for supremacy.
Shea’s sensitivity to the downtrodden is exhibited in such tales as “The Horror on the #33,” “Water of Life,” and “Tollbooth,” populated by homeless people, prostitutes, drug dealers, and other disdained members of society. Shea’s affinity for California is shown in “Fill it with Regular,” “Upscale,” and other tales that bring his native state to life. As a bonus, two unpublished stories are included: “Feeding Spiders,” evoking the work of a writer who adopted California as his home-Ray Bradbury; and “Ghost,” where a vengeful ghost stalks the tough streets of South Boston.
Price: $20.00
Purchase now