“Ellison’s stories provide a skewed and indignant view on our own world and its foibles.”
Harlan Ellison has been compared to an annoying gnat, a no-see ’em buzzing in your peripheral vision till you try to swat him, and he’s gone.
Ellison’s a double agent who lures you into the bush, and when you blink, he’s gone; you don’t know whether to turn left or right, or just dig a hole. He crafts enigmas set to entrap you. When Ellison sees where a story is going, he figures—since he’s writing for the smartest readers alive—you do, too. So he stops and turns left. Or right. Or widdershins. Or digs a cave with 200 tunnels.
Strokes be damned! Ellison’s still here! HE’s still writing! And with more new books published in the last ten years than any preceding decade of his career, his third act is proving to be the kind other living legends envy.
Why We’re Excited About This Book: Harlan Ellison has been at the forefront of genre writing for years; there’s little point classifying his stories as ‘horror’ or ‘science-fiction’ or anything else when they are all so uniquely Harlan Ellison stories. By turns amusing and scary, his work provides a skewed and indignant view on our own world and its foibles. Now Can & Can’tankerous gathers ten previously uncollected tales from the fifth and sixth decades of Harlan Ellison’s writing career (with the limited edition including four bonus tales).
One of the pleasures of reading any Ellison collection is the non-fiction pieces that always accompany the fiction, explaining, hectoring and lecturing the reader on why the stories came to be, on what has happened in Ellison’s life to provoke him. Can & Can’tankerous includes short italicized pieces describing Ellison’s recent stroke. They are as truthful, poignant, angry and funny as you can imagine–because whatever the stories in this book are fact or fiction, the important thing is they are all Harlan Ellison stories.
Can & Can’tankerous is out now from Subterranean Press.
“African Monsters is an anthology to savour.”
Here be Monsters! They lurk and crawl and fly in the shadows of our mind. We know them from ancient legends and tales whispered by the campfire. They hide under the dark bridge, in the deep woods or out on the great plains, in the drizzling rain forest or out on the foggy moor, beneath the surface, under your bed. They don’t sparkle or have any interest in us except to tear us apart. They are the monsters! Forgotten, unknown, misunderstood, overused, watered down. We adore them still. We want to give them a renaissance, to re-establish their dark reputation, to give them a comeback, let the world know of their real terror.
Why We’re Excited About This Book: Fox Spirit won best independent press at the 2015 British Fantasy Society Awards, and African Monsters is another of their original and striking publications which shows why. African Monsters is a coffee table style book filled with prose and graphic stories about monsters from African folklore, myths and legends. Given the theme, lots of the stories have a strong horror aspect and the book features many African writers; the contributors include Sarah Lotz, Nnedi Okorafor, Joan de la Haye, Tendai Huchu, Chikodili Emelumadu, Vincent Holland-Keen, Nerine Dorman and many more.
As well as the fantastic stories themselves, African Monsters is graced by excellent cover and interior artwork, making it an anthology to savour.
This is the second book in the series; European Monsters was released last year and Asian Monsters follows in the second half of this year. We can’t wait.
African Monsters is out now from Fox Spirit.
JAMES EVERINGTON