Michael Shea

Viva June

Viva June

Mystic
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I finally got my bony hands on a copy of Michael Shea's The Autopsy and Other Tales, published by Centipede Press—a pricy book that got even pricier when it passed, or rather did not pass, through the Danish customs office. Still, what a tome! Oversized, heavy, black and signifying pure evil with that subtly shimmering skeleton engraved on the cover. Innards also very impressive on a superficial level, although em dashes and paragraphs are not typeset consistently and two of the beautiful full-colour title pages have the title spelt wrong. Also, why the ragged right margin? It seems wasteful. Minor complaints, obviously, but I can never ignore these details.

Content-wise, I have read maybe a third of the stories. "The Autopsy", the title novella, is the best so far, presenting a fusion of abstract medical jargon and the blood and guts that said jargon describes. Much of Shea's work involves this kind of mimicry, taking a particular idiom to its comic/horrific extremes. To me the irony seems irreverent but never disparaging, and the author's command of language is compelling in and of itself.

I shall add to this as I read more.
 
I just received my copy of The Autopsy and Other Tales too. However, I haven't had time to read it yet (one of a long list). In particular, I like its simplicity -- the subtly embossed cover, understated gilt title and ribbon marker. I was really surprised how heavy the book was (this helped justify the high price tag). I hadn't expected it to be so large and heavy; but, as with Centipede Press' "Masters of the Weird Tale" series, large and heavy books seems to have become their trademark.

As for the wonky right margins, I can only assume CP or Shea is taking some sort of artistic license with the typesetting. It's certainly intentional. Maybe they were looking to impart a sense of disorder? But, of course, this in only speculation on my part. They do a similar thing with the "Master of the Weird Tale" series. In the Algernon Blackwood collection, for example, there is an abnormally large bottom margin to each page, aprox. 2.5 inches of blank page, while the top and sides are only 1 inch.
 
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I just got my copy too. The design of the book reminds me of a textbook for some ph.d - level physics class (taught in the 1930's). It feels like one of Lovecraft's forbidden tomes. :eek: I can't wait to dive into it (but I want to finish Glyphotech first)
 
Centipede is now offering the book at sale price, $75. It is beautiful. I bought my copy at the last WHC and had Mike sign it. I've been hunting for his Arkham House book, but this reprints all of the tales therein. I love his command of language -- the writing is so accomplished. For the Lovecraftians at TLO, this includes Mike's first novel, The Color out of Time, in its entirety! This is one of the finest Mythos novels ever written, and it's interesting to see Mike write in a "traditional" Lovecraftian voice -- exactly and superbly. The book also includes "Fat Face" and "Tsathoggua." The book is introduced by Laird Barron -- one of horror's finest new writers, a writer of genius. It was getting this book of Mike's that made me ache to be publish'd by Centipede Press, because I love beautifully made books -- and Jerad really shocked me by accepting my book Inhabitants of Wraithwood, and he delighted me by saying that the book will be similar in construction to the Shea book.

All of the Centipede Press books are on sale for lower prices, so this is a good time to spend a little extra money and begin your collection.

Mike is now working on a new collection of modern Cthulhu Mythos fiction, which may be published by Hippocampus. He also has an unpublished Lovecraftian novel, a sequel to Lovecraft's "The Hound," that Elder Signs Press was interested in bringing out, but that may not be happening as ESP is going through some big changes and its founder, William Jones, is now working as editor for Chaosium's line of Mythos fiction titles.
 
Strangely enough, my favourite stories now that I have read more tend to be the fantasy-ish excursions—"The Rebuke" and "For Every Tatter in Its Mortal Dress", specifically. Some of the others, like "Uncle Tuggs" and "That Frog", degenerate into slapstick comedy, which I think is unfortunate. "Fill It with Regular" deserves a special mention for contemporary relevance:
He feared his ill-tuned engine stalling, so he idled it till it was good and warm. It mortified him that in doing this, he was feeding his world's new enemy, helplessly stoking the biological conflagration that had somehow, overnight, embraced it. The suspicion nagged him that this would be just how evolution's fallguys, the adaptively overtaken breeds, always exited the stage; by a droll, inadvertent suicide, mechanically revving up their long-sacred tricks of survival that the upstart, by some dire new ingenuity, has turned to death traps.​
I have yet to read The Color Out of Time and a few of the longer pieces.
 
I am just now reading Nift the Lean by Michael Shea. It is enjoyable and as many others have pointed out, it is very similar to a Dying Earth novel by Jack Vance, whose works I love.

Though I also have A Quest for Simbilis on my shelves, I have not read other works by Shea yet and wonder what people recommend and why. What is Polyphemus like, for example?
 
In Yana, the Touch of Undying, set in the same universe but not featuring Nifft is well worth a look imho, although copies seem to be quite pricey now...
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xir4kkOfVO4
This is worth a watch, his wife Linda talks about unpublished books and a little known urban fantasy called Apricot Brandy that he written under the name Lynn Cesar!
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51nmyXflnPL.jpg
I had heard recently about the 4th Nifft book but I'm still not sure about how ready for publication it might be, a Baen editor told me this story
Title: Epistle from Lebanoi
was an excerpt from the novel which would have the same title.
 
Never heard of Mr. Cannyharme before.

The collection Polyphemus has the great short stories "Polyphemus" (horrifying and grotesque Vancean/Lovecraftian science fiction fantasy on alien planet, featuring a giant beholder) and "The Autopsy" (impressive story about an alien parasite).

The novelette Fat Face is one of his best. Lovecraftian horror set in realistic modern city setting, featuring shoggoths. A favorite of mine.
 
And a special effective sense of humor. Slowly building up, score delayed, parts suddenly coalescing together unexpectedly into a very funny situation.
 
Michael Shea - Nifft The Lean

For too long I held the misguided idea that I should read the foundational genre texts before the books built on them. I've had this book for maybe as long as 15 years and it was sitting on a very small shelf of books I was most eager to read, I really should have started reading it the day I bought it (I got the whole series at the right time, before they became collector's items). I first heard about this from Pringle's guide to the 100 best fantasy novels, and it sounded incredible, especially the comparison to Bosch paintings.

It lives up to it's reputation. It's a collection of 4 long stories, the only way in which they rely on each other is that some creatures are described fully in one story and not in another. So it doesn't feel like a mosaic novel, but it's such a balanced collection that it doesn't have any notable dips in quality. A bunch of reviewers like the 4th story a lot less but I admire it a great deal, I found some of the landscape/architecture descriptions confusing but it's amazing watching all this travelling, construction and destruction from such a distance, it's almost like the videogame Civilization but in the span of weeks or months.

Shea's writing is beautiful, a real visual artist who works in prose, the pages bustle with detail and invention. He surpasses most of the weird fiction he's building on, he never has any hackneyed language. My only problem with the book is there aren't enough paragraph breaks, I feel like I've been served my favorite meal but it's slightly exhausting to chew through because the chef hasn't chopped it up enough, I often decided to read something else because I didn't possess the energy to take everything in. I think this might be the reason it didn't stay in print for much longer? It won a World Fantasy Award, it's been highlighted in a few guide books and it is a cult classic but it deserved a much bigger audience. I hope the series is reprinted and if the unreleased 4th book is ready to go, it needs to happen sooner than later. A big publisher marketing it to Dark Souls fans would be a reasonable idea but so would a Penguin Classics edition. And I would buy a Michael Shea t-shirt.

Check out the original DAW cover art (Michael Whelan) and the Italian edition. A lot of the other covers sell it short.
 

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Robert Adam Gilmour said:
Michael Shea - Nifft The Lean

For too long I held the misguided idea that I should read the foundational genre texts before the books built on them. I've had this book for maybe as long as 15 years and it was sitting on a very small shelf of books I was most eager to read, I really should have started reading it the day I bought it (I got the whole series at the right time, before they became collector's items). I first heard about this from Pringle's guide to the 100 best fantasy novels, and it sounded incredible, especially the comparison to Bosch paintings.

It lives up to it's reputation. It's a collection of 4 long stories, the only way in which they rely on each other is that some creatures are described fully in one story and not in another. So it doesn't feel like a mosaic novel, but it's such a balanced collection that it doesn't have any notable dips in quality. A bunch of reviewers like the 4th story a lot less but I admire it a great deal, I found some of the landscape/architecture descriptions confusing but it's amazing watching all this travelling, construction and destruction from such a distance, it's almost like the videogame Civilization but in the span of weeks or months.

Shea's writing is beautiful, a real visual artist who works in prose, the pages bustle with detail and invention. He surpasses most of the weird fiction he's building on, he never has any hackneyed language. My only problem with the book is there aren't enough paragraph breaks, I feel like I've been served my favorite meal but it's slightly exhausting to chew through because the chef hasn't chopped it up enough, I often decided to read something else because I didn't possess the energy to take everything in. I think this might be the reason it didn't stay in print for much longer? It won a World Fantasy Award, it's been highlighted in a few guide books and it is a cult classic but it deserved a much bigger audience. I hope the series is reprinted and if the unreleased 4th book is ready to go, it needs to happen sooner than later. A big publisher marketing it to Dark Souls fans would be a reasonable idea but so would a Penguin Classics edition. And I would buy a Michael Shea t-shirt.

Check out the original DAW cover art (Michael Whelan) and the Italian edition. A lot of the other covers sell it short.
Click to expand...
Since discovering Michael Shea in the late 1980s, I've been a huge fan of his writing. When I learned that he had worked in Mission District (in San Francisco) flop houses, places where i resided for a number of years, I felt an immediate kinship. It saddens me that I never found the opportunityto meet Mr. Shea in person.
'Nifft the Lean' in particular, is like an old friend: one i revisit regularly and never grow tired of. His stories are highly inventive, and even his pastiches ('Simbilis' and 'Color Out of Time') arguably surpass the original authors.
'In Yana, the Touch of Undying' is also excellent. I'm surprised it's never been reprinted in hardcover.
 
The Mines Of The Behemoth

The comedy is dialed up in this sequel, more in the vein of Vance's Cugel stories (Shea written two of his own Cugel stories), Nifft and Barnar are consumed with greed and they treat captured demons very cruelly. I think this made them seem less interesting and sometimes the comedy wore thin for me. It's another underground world, we have another young brat character, and I missed the variety of the first Nifft book... and yet it's still pretty amazing. The richly fussy detail, sense of scale and life growing everywhere endlessly is impressive as ever.I feel the novel could have been tighter, not sure we needed to see as much of Nifft and Barnar's work and toil but it all comes together well in the end. Definitely seek this out if you crave enormous bugs on the rampage.
 
Robert Adam Gilmour said:
Nifft The Lean

... the Italian edition. A lot of the other covers sell it short.
Click to expand...
By Hildebrandt. It is lovely, but was probably not made for this book originally.

Robert Adam Gilmour said:
The Mines Of The Behemoth

... Definitely seek this out if you crave enormous bugs on the rampage.
Click to expand...
This second book sounds rather doubtful, ... to me anyway. I have not been enthused enough to buy it. Giant bugs is the least convincing branch in fantasy and science fiction. The 1950s was full of it, especially in film; "THEM!", "Tarantula", "Attack of the Giant Mantis", "Attack of the Giant Woman", ... etc.
But Shea was such a talented writer, that I am sure it's still worthwhile.

There is also a third book in the series, The A'rak, that has not been commented on much.


Nifft the Lean is very impressive; ... My favorite part is the episode out by the sea.

I still have not read In Yana, the Touch of Undying. But the title alone is enigmatic and provocative!
 
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