featured works
A Complete Autopsy of ‘The Autopsy’
by admin on Nov.03, 2022, under featured works, news
“The Autopsy” is now streaming on Netflix, along with seven more stories from Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities.
Upon being handpicked to direct an episode of Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, director David Prior was offered a choice between del Toro’s menu of delectably spooky treats. Prior selected “The Autopsy,” based on the iconic Michael Shea short story of the same name.
Learn more about The Autopsy’s behind the scenes.
The Autopsy Premieres on Netflix
by admin on Oct.18, 2022, under featured works, news, Stories
On October 26, 2022 the Michael Shea short story The Autopsy premieres on Netflix!
Just in time for Halloween, Guillermo del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities is unleashed, revealing a host of spooky, kooky surprises.
The new horror anthology series was personally curated by Guillermo del Toro, with eight handpicked directors taking on a new frightening tale in each episode.
What you need to know about The Autopsy:
Directed by: David Prior (The Empty Man, AM 1200)
Written by: David S. Goyer (The Sandman, The Dark Knight, Batman Begins), based on a story by Michael Shea
Cast: Academy Award winner F. Murray Abraham (Mythic Quest, Homeland, Amadeus), Glynn Turman (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Fargo, The Wire) and Luke Roberts (Ransom, Black Sails)
Plot: A small-town sheriff (Turman) investigates a gruesome string of missing persons cases with the help of his medical examiner friend (Abraham).
Watch the Official Teaser video on Youtube:
Guillermo Del Toro bringing Michael Shea’s “The Autopsy” to Netflix
by admin on Oct.21, 2021, under Books, featured works, news, Stories
Netflix has announced the new and upcoming, Cabinet of Curiosities, originally slated to be titled 10 After Midnight. Oscar winner Guillermo Del Toro has selected 10 stories by different writers for this omnibus series.
Michael Shea’s World Fantasy Award winning novella, THE AUTOPSY, is planned to be the second story aired. Details released below:
“Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham (Mythic Quest), Glynn Turman (Fargo), and Luke Roberts (Black Sails) will appear in an episode written by David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight; Batman Begins) and based on a short story by Michael Shea, and directed by David Prior (The Empty Man; AM1200)”.
Patton Oswalt reads THE EXTRA by Michael Shea Book Trailer
by admin on Feb.09, 2010, under featured works, reviews
The Extra Trilogy
by admin on Jan.19, 2010, under featured works, news, reviews
REVIEWS FOR THE EXTRA
LA Times February 2010
BOOK REVIEW
‘The Extra’ by Michael Shea
…He envisions a Hollywood in which “live action” is quite literally that — action scenes resulting in actual death…
“The Extra” is mostly a pulpy comic book that’s equal parts bromance, over-the-top Hollywood satire and blood-spewing horror tale.
It’s dark and ridiculous, but like any death match story worth its salt, it traffics in just enough plausibility to make us feel unsettled.
As the extras fight for their lives, the behind-the-scenes bloodlust transforms the book from sci-fi bombast into a deliciously depraved morality tale.
Sure, “The Extra” is brutally over the top, and its characters function more as types than flesh and blood. But Shea’s broad strokes are pretty vibrant and never less than fully entertaining.
You know, it’s a spectacle. Can’t wait to see the movie.
By Erik Himmelsbach, Los Angeles writer and producer.
Locus Magazine January 2010
Review by Paul Witcover
The novel is pubbing in early February–an early valentine for anyone who loves movies…
Nathanael West set his outrageous Hollywood apocalypse, The Day of the Locust, in the Depression; Michael Shea sets his in a depressed near future that West would have recognized and appreciated.
The future of The Extra reads as an all-too-likely extrapolation of the present day, with a government run by a coterie of multinational corporations known as the Corps and a highly stratified and static social order that pits the lower classes against the middle classes for the benefit of the upper classes.
Shea’s prose is brutal and his mood savage in this horror show glimpse of things to come. The Extra presages a dystopia we Westerners can witness going up, brick by brick. Bare knuckles satire at its finest.
-Laird Barron, Author Imago Sequence
Michael Shea’s The Extra offers intensity, great characters, action, satire that may well be prescient, fine writing, and intelligent nonstop entertainment. What do you want, dammit? This is the one!”
– John Shirley, Author of multiple books and Screenwriter, The Crow
THE EXTRA packs more violence, hilarity and speed-freak action in its throw-away asides that most science fiction books build an entire story around. This is a hot ticket.
– Patton Oswalt, Actor and Comedian
I have been reading Michael Shea religiously for years, and while his work is always original, always disturbing, I do not believe he has ever written a book as exuberant, energetic and gleefully mordant as The Extra. In Mr. Shea’s witty extrapolation of current trends in popular entertainment, a downtrodden trio of urban gladiators must survive the most lethal technology Hollywood can devise in order to earn a few clacks, sell a few tickets, and escape the “zoo” of L.A. In other words, it’s show business as usual: you’re either killing or dying.
Horror, humor, action, pathos, bread, circuses, giant mechanical spiders — oh hell, where can I buy a ticket?
-Sam Hamm, Screenwriter of Batman and author
All the hallmarks of Shea’s much-lauded storytelling are here: strong, sinewy sentences–muscular metaphors–crafty characters immersed in action both horrific and hilarious. What’s really new is a greater generosity of spirit. As the action revs up, we get to love these characters. And when the sawed-offs start blasting through the crush of spider-hordes, you feel both the recoil of the shotguns and the leaping hopes of our heroes’ hearts.
– Marc Laidlaw–author of multiple books and Half-Life game designer
Michael Shea puts his people in the damndest nightmares. He puts you in there with them, and drives the whole lot of you through a delirium of breakneck action and mad invention– hillarity and hellfire itself. Wanna be in the movies? Step inside…….
– Stuart Gordon, Director/ Screenwriter Re-Animator
Michael Shea has been writing dazzling books of fantasy and horror since the early eighties, and over the intervening decades, readers who come to him for the first time invariably wind up asking, Where has this guy been all my life? Shea offers a combination of gifts unique to him, I think: an innately edgy feel to the writing; a descriptive ability comparable to that of Jack Vance; a wild blazing, imaginative capacity; a sense of humor permanently set to what reflemen used to call “rock and roll.” THE EXTRA starts out at a dead run and accelerates from there, effortlessly wrapping the reader into its tale of gone-to-hell L.A. and a little bank of gutsy starvelings with blood on their hands.
– Peter Straub, Author Ghost Story
With The Extra (Tor; 283 pages; $22.99), Michael Shea, the Bay Area author of “Nifft the Lean,” finds a new wrinkle in “the most dangerous game.” Set in a near-future Hollywood, the novel satirizes the current reality-TV craze while delivering plenty of fast-paced, gory thrills.
-Michael Berry, Chronicle Staff Writer
FIRST BOOK NOW AVAILABLE!
Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: Tor Books
In the not-too-distant future, humanity is so decimated by poverty that people will do anything for money.
An innovative producer gives the poor hope by offering them work as extras in a series of “live death” films where they’ll be stalked by giant, blood-thirsty mechanical monsters.
The job is easy – survive.
|
Hardcover
|
Audio CD
|
MP3 CD
|
Audio Cassette
|
Jim Frenkel / TOR Books purchased a trilogy via agent Eleanor Wood of Spectrum Literary Agency, based upon Michael’s story THE EXTRA. The original short story was included in his World Fantasy Award finalist collection from Arkham House, POLYPHEMUS.
The three novels in the series are:
- THE EXTRA
- ASSAULT ON SUNRISE
- FORTRESS HOLLYWOOD
-
Welcome to Michael Shea!
This is the official website of Michael Shea, Author and World Fantasy Award Winner. Stay updated by subscribing to the RSS feed.
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