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.