Reger on Heidegger

Happy Holidays.  Frohe Festtage.

Reger on Lavatories

Centipede Press Collection

The Centipede Press has now made available my collection, The Divinity Student and Others, for pre-order on Amazon. This collection includes:

The Divinity Student
The Golem
The Tyrant
The Traitor
Secret Hours

and some additional short stories, including one previously unpublished tale.  The Divinity Student has been augmented with more original art by Harry O. Morris, creator of the image there on your left.

The Divinity Student and Others can be found HERE.

The Centipede Press makes beautiful, universally acclaimed limited editions and paperbacks.  In addition to this version, there is a limited edition of slipcovered hardbacks as well.

Also, my short story, "This is Tumor Speaking," appears in the current issue of The Weird Fiction Review.

In other news -- there may be a new novel from yours truly appearing next July from Chomu Press.  More information as it becomes available.

CELEBRANT streaming audio 4

Part #4 of ...?

CELEBRANT streaming audio 3

Part #3 of ...?  (this is the second half of the first chapter, which was too long for a single post).

CELEBRANT streaming audio 2

Part #2 of ... ??

CELEBRANT streaming audio 1

Part #1 of ...?

CELEBRANT reading

Hello all --

At the other end of this rapidshare link, you should find an mp3 of a hoarse old drone reading a bunch of crazy nonsense.

CELEBRANT preamble

Should anyone be so foolhardy as to listen, let me know if it doesn't come through properly.

I recently had the honor of participating in a collection of new stories paying homage to the great Bruno Schulz, whose painting, "Spotkanie" (ie, "The Encounter") appears above.  Your reporter's story from that collection, "The Vile Game of Gunter and Landau," can also be found on the web here, at the Weird Fiction Review.

9.14.12

The art is by Shuji Tanase.

Ben Godby has posted a review of The Great Lover at Strange Horizons, and you can read it here.

This review, like D.F. Lewis' real-time review of Celebrant, which can be found here, however flattering to my vanity, is, more importantly, proof to me that the work I do does get across, and that I'm not spinning my wheels in unintelligible solipsistic monologues. This is a very difficult thing to know from my "side" of the writing.

I'm currently at work on a new novel. If I am able to muster up, I will begin posting recordings of myself reading extracts from the material here on this blog soon.

9.1.12

Adrian Slunj, from CELEBRANT.

I sometimes find images of characters before I write them, sometimes after. In this case, after.

This is actually German actor Fritz Rasp, as "der Mann" in Fritz Lang's Frau im Mond.

8.7.12

H.P. Lovecraft

There are men who address only his shadow

And fasten on the moon of hyacinth

Gifts of clear light, of an extinct color,

Nothing but fearsome names.

The carpet, winding in its course,

Fills an enclosure with its arabesques.

There is no one here. I am here. I am no different than

The king who creates prodigies and is astonished.

To a sad Mars in his chlamys of ammonia

The Deadly Inhabitor sends his cold

Mandate, which is an angel or a demon.

I have lost something, without having been its owner:

A phantasm perhaps, a pallor of summer

Dissolves in the ambience of my dream.

-- Emiliano González (1955 -- ????)
from his wonderful story, "La Herencia de Cthulhu" ("The Legacy of Cthulhu") available in the original Spanish here.

5.5.12

CELEBRANT has received a positive review in Publishers Weekly:

Phantasmagorist Cisco (The Tyrant) explores the concept of reincarnation in a chimerical story about a homeless man named deKlend—who may actually be institutionalized in a sanitarium—and his attempt to make a pilgrimage to the imaginary country of Votu, a fantastical realm where time runs backward, the inhabitants worship five “natural” robots that formed spontaneously, and gangs of theriomorphic waifs (rabbit girls and pigeon girls) struggle to survive as urban scavengers. As deKlend’s quest progresses, he meets Phryne, a lead addict who self-medicates her lead poisoning by absorbing the energies from other people’s incestuous encounters, and Goose Goes Back, a soul inhabiting a bizarre fusion of machine and cadaver until it can be reincarnated. An extensive expansion of topics only touched upon in “The Thing in the Jar,” Cisco’s contribution to The Thackery T. Lambshead Cabinet of Curiosities, this fusion of surrealist travelogue and journey of self-discovery is an impressive work of weird fiction, and its images and ideas will resonate with readers long after the novel ends. (June)

*****

On behalf of CELEBRANT and all its resonations, Phantasmagorist Cisco says "Thank you!" My thanks also to those who attended my May Day reading in New York.

4.30.12

Better beware ... Walpurgis Night, tonight.

Your reporter will be reporting in hideous person tomorrow.

New York Review of Science Fiction Readings:

WHO:
Michael Cisco
John Shirley

WHEN:
Tuesday, May 1st
Doors open at 6:30, event at 7:00

HOW (much):
Free; $7 donation suggested

WHERE:
The SoHo Gallery for Digital Art
138 Sullivan Street (bet. Houston & Prince)

4.23.12

Your reporter is very pleased to announced that

THE GREAT LOVER

has been nominated for a Shirley Jackson Award.

Please join me in expressing thanks to the judges on behalf of THE GREAT LOVER.

***

“With Michael Cisco doing things like this, sometimes it feels like the rest of literature might as well get up and head home.”

China Miéville

3.29.12

Hello all --

CELEBRANT now has a page of its own at the Chomu site, here.

Pictured here is the marvellous cover art by Christopher Askew.

Release date is mid-June, the fourteenth I think.

2.16.12

Updates ...

The Dadaoism anthology from Chomu Press is going forward as planned. Here is the TOC.

Ex Occidente's tribute volume dedicated to Bruno Schulz has its webpage as well, here. My story, "The Vile Game of Gunter and Landau" is included, and I am proud to have the opportunity to salute Schulz.

There has been a bit of an exchange involving the Bealu translation. In other translation-related news, I've recently completed what I believe is the only English version of Julio Cortazar's short story "Headache" ("Cefalea"). I hope to be able to present it soon.

I've also just finished translating a collection of short stories first published a little over a hundred years ago, and also, to the best of my knowledge, never before rendered in English: Cuentos Nerviosos, or Nervous Stories, by Carlos Diaz Dufoo, Sr. I'm currently working on doing the same for his son, Carlos Diaz Dufoo Jr (hijo), who wrote epigrams, philosophical essays, and apparently plays. Information about these two is very scarce in English.

2.6.12

You can read a posthumous interview with Franz Kafka, as relayed by your reporter to the best of his meager necromantic abilities, here.

And the opening passages from three of my unpublished novels, The Wretch of the Sun, MEMBER, and UNLANGUAGE, have been posted here.

The image is accurate, excepting in that I'm right handed.

1.19.12

Announcement:

New novel:

Title: CELEBRANT

Publisher: Chômu Press

When: 2012

More details to come.