Reviews
Posthumous Publication Brings to Light an Unknown Novel from A Well-Known Genre Master
Review by Dejan Ognjanović
Michael Shea, who died all-too-prematurely in 2014, was a writer who excelled in all major fantastic genres: twice winner of the World Fantasy Award for sword and sorcery fantasy, and twice nominated for Hugo and Nebula for his chilling SF-horror novelette “The Autopsy”, he was also a major voice in contemporary horror. His literary influences were Fritz Leiber and Jack Vance, but also Clark Ashton Smith – and H. P. Lovecraft. To boot, this August his Mr. Cannyharme, “A Novel of Lovecraftian Terror”, written in 1981 but never before published, is brought to light by Hippocampus Press.
Shea was one of those authors, like Ramsey Campbell and T.E.D. Klein, who pioneered contemporary Lovecraftian fiction for mature readers, especially through the stories recently collected in Demiurge: The Complete Cthulhu Mythos Tales (2018), edited by S. T. Joshi. This scholar also edited the manuscript of Mr. Cannyharme.
Exclusively for our readers, Joshi praises the scribe’s outstanding work in the Lovecraftian vein because of its “fusing cosmic horror with a portrayal of the gritty world of drug dealers, prostitutes, and others who tend to be scorned and loathed by bourgeois society. Shea depicts these figures with a sensitivity and insight that is enviable, but at the same time he makes them the victims (and a few times the victors) in a cosmic struggle with forces from beyond the cosmos. This fusion is utterly distinctive with him; I know of almost no one who has written stories of this sort.”
Shea used to work as a night clerk in San Francisco’s Mission District flophouse, so the novel is autobiographical to a point, as its main character is just such clerk, who starts noticing strange events in the disreputable hotel, linked to a mysterious old resident, Mr. Cannyharme. The writer’s first-hand experience and sympathy for the downtrodden are strikingly obvious in the novel’s realistic background, before the otherworldly forces start peeling off its fabric.
But how come that such a layered and personal work remained unpublished for four decades? Luckily for us, the author’s widow, Linda Shea, is at hand to elucidate: “Michael had negotiated Mr. Cannyharme’s sale in 1982 or 1983, but before it was published the imprint that wanted it was shuttered by its parent publishing house. In 1983, Michael won his first World Fantasy Award for Nifft the Lean. The interest generated by the award steered his writing explorations into Epic Fantasy, resulting in the production of four novels. Plus, in 1983 our first child was born, and we moved to northern California from San Francisco.”
With so much going on at the same time, the horror novel got sidetracked and almost forgotten. “Michael never looked back,” Mrs Shea adds, “at things that were finished, unless they had a direct reference to what he was currently involved in. Writing was something Michael needed to do, selling something he’d written was just a bonus. He just assumed things would sell, and if they didn’t immediately, he’d already moved on to the next project and didn’t think about it anymore. After the first sale didn’t work out, he put Mr. Cannyharme on the shelf and forgot about it. It only came back to him when I asked him decades later, since I had always liked it, if he thought it might be published. I’d piqued his interest, and he pulled it out to rework a bit. Personally, I think the novel was somewhat ahead of its time, because you could not put it into a neat bookstore genre category.”
The times have now caught with Michael Shea’s genre-bending ambitions, so the editor and publisher hope that the novel’s belated emergence (in a special and trade edition) will only enhance the high reputation that he enjoys as a pioneering author of weird fiction. As for Mr. Cannyharme’s significance for modern Lovecraftian fiction, Joshi doesn’t spare praise: “To me it is one of the most vibrant examples of that mingling of cosmicism and grim realism which I have described. At the same time, he interweaves a cosmic menace embodied in the enigmatic figure of the book’s title. It is incredible that Shea has taken one of Lovecraft’s poorer stories (“The Hound”) and made a full-scale novel out of it – a novel that is chillingly compelling from beginning to end. Very few successful Lovecraftian novels have ever been written, but this is one of them.”
Black Gate
The Collections of Michael Shea – Reviews by John ONeill
As much as I respect and admire Michael Shea’s fantasy novels — and many of them are magnificent — I think he did his best work at short length. And I believe his best collection, by a pretty fair margin, is his 1987 Arkham House volume Polyphemus.
Now we turn to something more recent, the first of a pair of novels that Locus Online called “dark, satirical novels about the movie industry.” The Extra arrived unexpectedly in hardcover in 2010, and when I first saw it I remember wondering if this was the same Michael Shea – it looked more like a biotech thriller than the kind of moody, cutting edge fantasy we’d come to expect from him. But, as Locus noted, there was a sharp satirical edge to this novel of a murderous, out-of-control Hollywood
But I still admit a greater fascination with his Nifft the Lean novels, Nifft the Lean (1982), The Mines of Behemoth (1997), and The A’rak (2000). Baen Books published the last two in attractive paperback editions, with covers by Gary Ruddell, and I’ve always thought they were some of the most eye-catching sword-and-sorcery on the market.
So five months before the release of The A’rak, Baen bundled both of the first two novels into a single paperback, cleverly titled The Incompleat Nifft, signally the impending arrival of the what would be the final book in the series. At 576 pages it was a terrific bargain, collecting both Nifft the Lean and The Mines of Behemoth under a Gary Ruddell cover, and it has become perhaps the most collectible paperback in Shea’s catalog.
Michael Shea’s classic Nifft the Lean was published in 1982 and won the World Fantasy Award, a rare honor for a sword and sorcery collection. Nfift returned in a three-part novel serialized in Algis Budrys’ Tomorrow Speculative Fiction magazine (June – November, 1996), eventually collected by Baen Books in paperback as The Mines of Behemoth.
Nifft made one last appearance in the year 2000, in his third and final book: The A’rak.
SF Site
The Extra A review by Seamus Sweeney.
With its plentiful gallows humour, competitive struggling in a world of scarcity, and dark extension of the reality TV concept to a logical extreme, The Extra is an entertaining mirror of our own strange days.
Los Angeles Times
‘The Extra’ by Michael Shea (Reviewed by Erik Himmelsbach) on February 11, 2010.
Fantasy Book Critic
“The Extra” by Michael Shea (Reviewed by Robert Thompson) on January 27, 2010.
[…] Michael Shea’s “The Extra” is an exhilarating thrill-ride full of creativity, insane action, and accomplished writing. Hugely entertaining, I can’t wait for the rest of the trilogy…
Colin Azariah-Kribb’s August 24, 2010 review of THE EXTRA (Tor, 2009) and COPPING SQUID COLLECTION (Perilous Press, 2010).
A Quest for Simbilis
ANDURIL
Anduril Sword & Sorcery Fanzine #5
July 1975, England Contains a review of A Quest for Simbilis, Shea’s first novel, by Mike Ashley.
And compares/contrasts it to the original Vance book.
LOCUS
NIFFT Locus 12/82 (Faren Miller) COLOR OUT OF TIME Locus 6/84 (Faren Miller
POLYPHEMUS LOCUS 6/88
The Mines of Behemoth, Locus magazine #443: 10/97, USA
Review by Faren Miller.
HEAVY METAL
NIFFT HEAVY METAL 6/83 “Horror 33” HEAVY METAL 12/84
CHEAP TRUTH
NIFFT CHEAP TRUTH 6/83 (Bruce Sterling)
ASIMOV’S MAGAZINE
NIFFT ASIMOV’S MAGAZINE 6/83 (Baird Searles)
COLOR/TIME ASIMOV’S MAGAZINE 3/85 (Baird Searles)
The Colour Out of Time
FANTASY REVIEW
COLOR/TIME FANTASY REVIEW 1/85 (David Engebretson)
SPELLBOUND
COLOR/TIME SPELLBOUND 6/85 (Marion Gibbons, Walter Sauer)
BOOKLIST
Polyphemus UK
POLYPHEMUS BOOKLIST ?/87
SPELLBOUND
COLOR/TIME SPELLBOUND 6/85 (Marion Gibbons, Walter Sauer)
BOOKLIST
POLYPHEMUS BOOKLIST ?/87
PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY
PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY 11/87
OTHER REALMS
OTHER REALMS 21 ?/88
THRUST
THRUST 6/88 (Daniel Temianka)
N.Y. Review of SF
NIFFT N.Y. Review of SF, Vol. 2, No. 10 (issue #22), June 1990 (Jessica Salmonson)
STEVEN SILVER
Nifft The Lean hard copy by Darkside Press, 1994 Review
The Scream Factory
Interview by Darrell Schweitzer The Scream Factory Mag. #16, Win. 1995
Order Here
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction 6/88 (Algis Budrys)
The Incompleat Nifft “Monster Mash” by Elizabeth Hand Sept. 2000
Locus
LOCUS
The A’rak Locus December 2000
Review by Faren Miller
SF SITE
DAW
DAW 30th Anniversary anthologies included Shea’s novella “The Rebuke.”
SF Site 2002 online review says “the best stories in the collection come from contributors like Michael Shea” (Alma A. Hromic). Link
Order DAW 20th Anniversary here!
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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
Author's Dreams by Linda Cecere Shea