INCOMING

 A few goodies found their way to my doorstep this week:

• William Gray Beyer, Minions of the Moon.  Classci science fiction novel.  "Move over, Buck Rogers!  When Mark Nevin was put under general anestheric, he expected to wake up minus his appendix.  That was all.  To his shock and horror, he discovered himself 6000 years ub the future, long after mankind had reverted back to savagery.  Fortunately for Mark, the surgeon who had accidentally placed him in suspended animation carefully laid him in a crypt containing all the means for survival available in the 20th century.  And he would need them, for he was about to plunge into a world more dangerous and primitive than the long-dead one he had known.  and Mark would not be alone.  There was the beautiful Nona Barr.  And the mysterious Omega, a disenbodied moon-mind with the personality of a mischievous child yet possessing the transformative power of a god.  Not to mention assoreted cannibals and an actual dragon."   This was Beyer's first attempt at fiction and it was serialized in Argosy in 1939; and it was released as a book in 1950 (the fifth novel to be published by science fiction small press pioneer Gnome Press).  An abridged version appeared in a science fiction magazine in 1952.  and then silence...until it was reissued in 2017 by Altus Press as part of their Argosy Library series.  But the whimsical nature of the book proved popular with Argosy readers, and Beyer brought Mark Nevin back for three additional novel-length adventures; all four novels were released as an omnibus (Minions of the Shadow: and Other Mark Nevin-Omega Novels) in 2003 by the Battered Silicon Dispatch Box, but copies are hard to find.  Beyer also pub;ioshed four mystery novels in the mid-1940s.
• James Blish, The Tale That Wags the God.  A posthumous collection of essays, edited by /Cy Chauvin.  Blish was a major science fiction figure in the 50s and 60s (A Case of Conscience. Cities in Flight, "Surface Tension", as well as two important  books of science fiction criticism as by "William Atheling"); his reputation may have taken a hit by adapting all of the origional Star Trek episodes for paperback collections, beginning in 1967.  The essays in the boomk are "mostly about science fiction and fantasy.  These include studies of Poul Anderson, James Branch Cabell [Blish was a Cabell scholar -- JH], and the application of Spengler to science fiction.   Other pieces range from "Music of the Absurd" (modern music -- more fantastic than any fiction) to the autobiographical "A Science Fiction Coming of Age" (focused on Blish's childhood), and a conversation with Brian Aldiss that reveals the emotion behind Blish the man and his fiction, as well as his intellect.  Blish's comments on his two [revious Advent books (The Issue at Hand and More Issues at Hand) were intended primarily for writers, although readers found his criticism facinating as well.  The essays in this collection are more genrrtalized and theoretical.  The five essays in Part I are thematically linked, and present a mosaic of Blish's view of science fiction, helping place it in the general context of art, literature, and life.  Together, these essays seem to form part of the extended theoretical and historical work that many critics and writers wished Blish would write.  Alas, he died too soon.  Last but not least is a very detailed 96-page Bibliography of the Works of James Blish, by his widow, Judith Lawrence Blish."  I've mentioned before that Blish's writing blows hot and cold for me, but when he was good, few could touch him.  And there is no denying his genius.  I look forward to dipping into this book, both now and well into the future.
• Harlan Ellison, with J. Michael Straczynski, editors, The Last Dangerous Visions.  At last!  It's finally here after a fifty-one year wait!  Well, it's kind of here.  TLDV was intened to be the third and fianl volume of the ground-breaking Dangerous Visions series, following 1967's Dangerous Visions and 1972's Again, Dangerous Visions.  The original anthology contained 33 stories and "almost single handedly.. changed the way readers thought about science fiction."  Stories in the anthology won two Hugo Awards and two Nebula Awards, with another story being nominated for a Hugo.  The 1972 follow-up anthology contained 45 stories and one poem; one sotry garneed a Hugo and one a Nebula.  The Last Dangerous Visions was scheduled to be published in 1973.  It didn't happen.  For nearly hnalf a decade, editor Ellison kept fiddling with the contents -- adding stories, dropping stories, swapping stories until TLDV became the most famous book that was never published.  The number of stories and authors kept changing.  The most "complete" table of contents was releaed in 1979 and included 113 stories by 102 authors, to be published in three volumes (as per the June 1979 issue of Locus); many of the authors listed have since died, and some of the stories have been published elsewhere by the author or the author's estate; n ine of the stories that had been previously announced were not included in this list.  Late in 2020, Straczynski, who is the excutor of Ellison's estate announced he would undertake puiblication of TLDV.  He would not include withdrawn stories (as many of themn were over the years), or "stories overtaken by rreal-world events."  (To be honest, many of the tales wedged alongside truly brillianr stories in the first two volumes were bloated or insignificant; I suspet the same wojuld have been true for the final volume.)  The final length of the book wis about one-sixth of that which had previously been announced by Ellison.  Anyway, what we have ended up with is 31 stories by 24 authors, 24 of the stories were originally selected by Ellison, with the remaining seven selected by Straczinski.  The stories selected by Ellison were by Stephen Robinett, D. M. Rowles (eight brief stories), Richard E. Peck, Edward Bryant, Stephen Dedham, Steve Herbst, A. E. van Vogt, John Morrissey, Jonathan Fast, Howard Fast, Robert Wissner, Steve Utley, Robert Sheckley, Dan Simmons, Ward Moore, P. C. Hodgell, and Mildred Downey Broxon.  More than 40 stories originally purchased by Ellison have been published elsewhere.  All rights to stories not used have been reverted back to the authors.  It is good to have the book -- in whatever form -- available, but I suspect that the Dangerous Visions time has passed, and that fw of these tales will be regarded in the future as classics.
• Percival Everett, James.  Huckleberry Finn reimagined.  Already acclaimed as one of the best books in recent times, James has won the 2024 Kirkus Prize, the National Book Award for Fiction, and the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, and was a finalist for the 2024 Booker Prize and for the 2025 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction.  It has appeared on 33 lists of the best books of the year.  If Huckleberry Finn could be considered the great American novel (because it is!), then James may come in at a close second, or perhaps even surpass it.  Time will tell.
• Christopher Golden, Prowlers Series:  Four Complete Novels.  Omnibus of four horror novels:  Prowlers, Laws of Nature, Pedator, and Prey.  Werewolves are the myth.  Prowlers are the savage reality.  Werewolves of legend are human beings transformed by the moon into wolves; Prowlers are savage beasts masqueraading as humans.  Led by Owen Tanzer, the Prowlers are expanding, mooving from city to city to avoid detection.  They are being u hunted by Jack Dwyer, aided by the ghost of his best friend, and Molly Hatcher, Jack's love interst, Jack vows to eliminate the Prowlers from Earth.  And allies, dead or alive, must join together in a final conflict.
• Christopher Golden and James Moore, Bloodstained Oz.  A dark fantasy, the first in a series.  "Something's gone wrong over the rainbow...1933.  The winds of the Dust Bowl have reduced what had been the nation's breadbasket to a desert full of broken dreaams and desperate prayers.  The water is gone, the crops are ruined and, for the people of Hawley, Kansas, there's little left to struggle for except the chance for another day in hell.  There's a storm coming, one that will rip the roofs from farms and scatter the wretched crops far and wide.   One little girl will find a treasure trove in a ruined field and converse with a nightmare.  One man will find salvation in the dirt and damnation close on its heels.  One woman will suffer the sins of her husband and seek hope in the actions of her only child.  Dying faith will be test, because that isn't rain wetting the crops, it's blood.  Those aren't trinkets and toys that are lying hidden in the fields; they're nightmares wrapped in false promises.  And while the darkest storms bring the brightest rainbows, that isn't a pot of gold waiting at the far end; it's an emerald that gleams and flickers with its own infernal light.  [...]  there's no hell like home..."   Golden is a prolific author who weaars many hats; I've found he looks pretty daened good in all of them. 
• Amor Towles, editor, Otto Penzler, series editor, The Best Mystery Stories of the Year 2023.  Penzler had previously edited (among many other books) The Best American Mystery Stories of the Year for 24 volumes.  In 2020 it was announced that Penzler was out and that Stephen Cha would become series editor, with a slight title change to The Best American Mystery and Suspense.  In response, Penzler announced that a new series from Penzler's Mysterious Press and The Mysterious Bookshop would produce an annual The Best Mystery Stories of the Year.  This book is the third in that series.  As with the earlier series, Penzler (aided by Michelle Slung) would ferret out a long list of what he considered the best of the year, and a changing roster of guest editors would make the final selection.  It should be noted that Penzler's definition of what defines a mystery is extremely broad, allowing stories from mainstream publications and literary magazines that might not be considered by other editors.  This 2023 edition contains 21 stories first published in 2023, plus a "bonus" story by Edith Wharton first published in 1926.  Familiar authors include Doug Allyn, T. C. Boyle, Andrew Child, Jeffrey Deaver, Brendon DuBois, Michael Mallory, and Joseph S. Walker.