Nothing is what it seems to be chez Tiptree, least of all, Tiptree. Don’t think for a moment that knowing their legal name was Alice Sheldon, AKA Raccoona, AKA Alli, leaves you on any solid ground. Our subject is a psychologist who helped forge the modern CIA from the disjointed remnants of the OSS—and who was still leaking classified information in their first novel over a decade after they supposedly left The Agency. They must have been a regular terror at the old “tell me three things about yourself, one of which is a lie” game. Consider how well a CIA psychologist could fuck with your mind. After they pinched a pseudonym from a venerable UK manufacturer of marmalades they found they could fuck with more minds than ever through the medium of fiction. Continue reading
Scott Nicolay
Ana Kai Tangata
Tag: Michael Bukowski (page 4 of 5)
When Michael Bukowski and I first conceived this series, our working title was something like “Great Weird Stories Hidden in Plain Sight.” I must take responsibility for that stillborn monstrosity, alas. Fortunately Michael suggested the much more felicitous rubric under which we debuted and now operate. I mention this here because this week’s tale exemplifies that original concept perhaps better than any other. Continue reading
John C. Foster unburies the genesis of his Libros de Inferno trilogy (Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing) which starts with Dead Men, playing in an ugly rough reality that is slipping and in decay, how he develops his storytelling via set pieces and way stations, his repulsion for spoon-feeding readers, his fascination with the concept of dread and creating a sense of jeopardy even for a tough guy, aiming for a dark Americana, Dead Men’s setting in Texas and northern Mexico, moving the second novel Night Roads (Oct. 2016) to Louisiana, blending hard-boiled and noir with more horrific elements, square-jawed heroes versus flawed characters in new lives, a dialogue with Frankenstein’s creation, writing as a corridor with many windows and doors, a Star Wars interlude, his influences including Stephen King, Raymond Chandler and Donald Westlake’s Parker novels, his other upcoming novel which is a dark espionage thriller called Mr. White (Grey Matter Press, March 2016), why you should “get out of the way when you see that 
black Cadillac coming,” using Mad Max as a structural model, epic narratives such as Gilgamesh and the notion of demi-Gods, revealing character through action, burial suits, damned books, occult versus super-science, the fearlessness of Laird Barron, what’s next for John including another novel, collection and upcoming short stories including “Dead Air” in the highly anticipated Lost Signals, edited by Max Booth III, and his reading recommendations of other contemporary writers to watch including Peter Straub (Koko), Josh Malerman (Bird Box), Paul Tremblay (A Head Full of Ghosts) and Thomas Ligotti (Penguin editions).
News of the Weird with Justin Steele includes the monumental anthology Leena Krohn: Collected Fiction and the VanderMeer Winter Mix StoryBundle which also includes eBooks of Anna Tambour’s Crandolin, Michael Cisco’s The Narrator, and seven other exciting works, an exciting offer which expires on Dec. 31. Also another major story reveal from Lost Signals, edited by Max Booth III, another upcoming Laird Barron novella, an update on Lovecraft eZine’s Autumn Cthulhu Kickstarter, the Ramsey Campbell tribute anthology The Children of Gla’aki. edited by Brian M. Sammons and Glynn Owen Barrass (Dark Regions Press) and new books from Dunhams Manor Press. Plus, a clue about Stories from the Borderland #3, posting tomorrow at www.ScottNicolay.com and artist Michael Bukowski’s yogblogsoth.
This archival episode will be available again at This Is Horror soon. In the meantime, subscribe at iTunes or Blubrry to make sure you don’t miss an episode.
Next week’s guest: Laird Barron and Justin Steele join Scott for a roundtable on The State of the Weird 2016.
It’s a great drug Ultram intended for the treatment of moderate to severe pain.
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Evans didn’t even merit cover credit. The other stories from this issue are entirely forgotten.
A horror story about children can be especially disturbing—Something Wicked This Way Comes, IT, “The Specialist’s Hat.” Throwing adults into unnatural peril is one thing—they at least can grasp their options, draw on support, choose to make sacrifices. Children are at once incredibly vulnerable yet charged with potential, so we fear more for them and the immense possibility of their futures than we do for the intrepid polar explorer, the graying antiquary, or the other interchangeable narrators of so many weird and gothic tales. How cruel the author who chooses children as protagonists in a narrative of weirdness and monsters. Continue reading
Who remembers Joseph Payne Brennan? Some of you I am sure, though not nearly as many as his work deserves. He merits a position in the lineages of Weird Horror analogous to those of David Goodis, Chester Himes, Jim Thompson, Dorothy B. Hughes, and Charles Willeford in Noir—a major practitioner of the form who arose in its postwar Silver Age. Stephen King remembers him, and has paid him homage in stories such as “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” and “The Raft.” Thomas Ligotti remembers him, and it becomes apparent in his verse—Brennan was perhaps the finest poet Weird Fiction ever had—yes, better for the most part than even Clark Ashton Smith, who had a tin ear (though “The Hashish Eater” is a masterpiece, no argument there). Continue reading
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