“Contingency” by Kris Straub
UPDATE: Last night I learned that this might be a riff on actual prepared U.S. Civil Defense recordings. ☹️🇺🇸
Continue reading “RECOMMENDED VIEWING for all True Patriots”
Recommended Read: Dale Bailey’s “The End of the End of Everything”
In many ways, this story is the exact opposite of the last Dale Bailey story I recommended—which, in a way, almost makes them philosophical book ends. That said, the real philosophical counterpart (counterpoint?) to Bailey’s “The End of the End of Everything” is Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death“; please read them back to back and decide where you stand. That’s what stories are for.
LAST CHANCE: Support Charity and Get 20+ DIY/Maker Books!!!
In just a few hours the Makerspace Humble Book Bundle closes.
- SHORT VERSION: pay what you want, support excellent charities, get up to 21 awesome DIY/maker books from No Starch Press (including both my musical instruments book and hella-rad geeky craft projects book).
- LONG VERSION: Here’s my spiel from before.
Get good books, support good work; it’s an easy win-win.
Reminder: Dropping a few bucks on the Makerspace Humble Bundle gets you $200+(!!!) in DIY/Maker books…
… while supporting Art, Free Speech, and other Good Things™
Check it out: Humble Book Bundle: Makerspace by No Starch Press (pay what you want and help charity)
(Need details? Here’s my spiel from a week ago.)
Support Art and other Good Things™: Get $120 in DIY/Makerspace Books for $1!
The Humble “Makerspace” Book Bundle from No Starch Press is live an insanely good deal! Pay a buck, and get six rad DIY-ish books (including my first book—Snip, Burn, Solder, Shred—as well as a few of my No Starch favorites). Pay $8, and get another six books (including my second DIY book, Junkyard Jam Band). Pay a bit more…well, you get the picture. All in, you can drop $20 and get more than $400 worth of DIY while supporting excellent charities. 
There are so many books I love in this one! Yoshihito Isogawa’s LEGO Technic books are both amazing and agelessly inspiring, Carlos Bueno’s Lauren Ipsum has been huge for my son (he read it twice in a row when it first came out, and still hits it again a few times a year now—it’s like the Information Age’s Phantom Tollbooth), No Starch’s Scratch and Arduino books are rock solid, and Jason R. Briggs’s Python for Kids is an excellent intro to Python for everyone (i.e., it’s how I learned enough Python to work on a documentation project with a U-M roboticist last year).
Also, I’ll level with you: These bundles (and book/game bundles in general) are a huge boost to authors/creators, both in getting our names and ideas out there, and in getting money into our pockets. When you buy a bundle like this, you’re doing a Good Thing™ for the dissemination of new art and human knowledge, in addition to getting a good deal.
Humble Book Bundle: Makerspace by No Starch Press (pay what you want and help charity)
Dave Chappelle has an excellent alibi
“Grandpa! Don’t talk about liberating Auschwitz—you’ll upset Trevor!”
eBooks! eBooks! FreeBooks!!! New horror and sci-fi from Dave-o!
Three offerings today—and you can get ’em all for less than a Subway sub:
- My most recent novella, There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House is now available as a standalone ebook. Read the horror tinged “Non-Euclidian architectural petty-crime adventure” that’s racking up kudos and five-star reviews at a humbling clip. (If you want backstory on the story, here’s an interview I did with F&SF about it.)
- Price drop on my novelette “The Traveling Salesman Solution.” A time portal story, and also a grim moral koan. If I’ve ever written a story I think everyone in America should read, it’s this one. For a limited time this lil fella—my first sale to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and only true hard-SF tale—is just 99-cents!
- FREEBIE ALERT!!! From now until Monday my time-travel novelette “There Was No Sound of Thunder” is free on Amazon! This is the story that introduced the Parable of Too Many Hitlers. Read the story Locus magazine’s Lois Tilton called “Stoopid” (although, in all fairness, it was also a finalist for that year’s Asimov’s Award so maybe check it out and make the call for yourself?)
I know a goodly portion of you have already read one or more of these stories; all are woeful shy on Amazon/Goodread reviews. If you wanted to swing by and leave your thoughts, it’d be much appreciated. Thanks in advance for helping nudge the wheel!
Goodreads links:
- There Was a Crooked Man, He Flipped a Crooked House (coming soon?!)
- “The Traveling Salesman Solution“
- “There Was No Sound of Thunder“
I’m the YEAR’S BEST, mofos!
(Probably more accurate to say “I’m [the author of one of several works counted among] the YEAR’S BEST [stories within the horror genre], [my esteemed] mofos!“, but, whatevs, right?)
I keep forgetting to crow about this: The last story I sold to The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction–“Whatever Comes After Calcutta” (link to my interview about it)–has been selected for Ellen Datlow’s Best Horror of the Year (Vol. 10).
The full table of contents is good company, and the cover art kicks ass! Keep an eye peeled in your local bookstore this summer.
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Better You Believe Carole Johnstone
- Liquid Air Inna Effress
- Holiday Romance Mark Morris
- Furtherest Kaaron Warren
- Where’s the Harm? Rebecca Lloyd
- Whatever Comes After Calcutta David Erik Nelson
- A Human Stain Kelly Robson
- The Stories We Tell about Ghosts A. C. Wise
- Endosketal Sarah Read
- West of Matamoros, North of Hell Brian Hodge
- Alligator Point S. P. Miskowski
- Dark Warm Heart Rich Larson
- There and Back Again Carmen Machado
- Shepherd’s Business Stephen Gallagher
- You Can Stay All Day Mira Grant
- Harvest Song, Gathering Song A. C. Wise
- The Granfalloon Orrin Grey
- Fail-Safe Philip Fracassi
- The Starry Crown Marc E. Fitch
- Eqalussuaq Tim Major
- Lost in the Dark John Langan
Incidentally, I immediately spent the money I got for this reprint on a bunch of “folk metal” and “hauntology” music. The former is probably self-explanatory (metal music heavily influenced by folk music of various regions—this article is a good place to start, if you’re curious). The latter is apparently a British thing, where folks make fake soundtracks to non-existent low-budget 1980s horror films and British paranormal TV series. My current heavy rotation faves are:
- Blood of the Black Owl (Pacific Northwest folk metal—big Americana and Native American influences, neat soundscapes)
- Zuriaake (Chinese folk metal)
- Klaus Morlock/The Unseen (pretty straight hauntology—i.e., fake soundtracks for non-existent 1980s horror films/paranormal UK TV shows)
- Thorsten Schmidt (more hauntology)
- Nubiferous (I’m not sure what this is–it’s like folk metal without the metal, or hauntology without the pretense. It’s from Russia)
Recommended Read: “The Donner Party” in @FandSF (updated)
“The Donner Party” is mos def my fave story in the last issue of F&SF. It seems like an obvious gag straight through to the untangle—at which time it becomes bone chilling. Downright perfect dismount, in my humble. Recommended.
See also: Interview: Dale Bailey on “The Donner Party” : The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction
UPDATE: If you’re look to read something by Bailey right this second, he has a story up at Tor.com: “The Ghoul Heads West“
Continue reading “Recommended Read: “The Donner Party” in @FandSF (updated)”