SF/Fantasy/Horror Notes

Prime Books rolls out two avant-garde anthologies: Breaking Windows, a "fantastic metropolis sampler," edited by Luís Rodrigues, featuring short fiction, interviews and essays by the likes of Michael Moorcock, Jeff VanderMeer, China Miéville and Carol Emshwiller (Prime [www.primebooks.net], $29.95 344p ISBN 1-894815-79-3; $17.95 paper -59-9); and Strange Pleasures 2, edited by John Grant and Dave Hutchinson, which includes stories by such upcoming writers as N. Lee Wood and Vera Nazarian ($17.95 paper 252p -08-4).

Those looking for offbeat literary fantasy will welcome Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was, by Argentinean writer Angélica Gorodischer. Translated from the Spanish by Ursula Le Guin, this is the first appearance in English of this prize-winning South American fantasist. (Small Beer [www.smallbeerpress.com], $16 paper 256p ISBN 1-931520-05-4)

Fans and students of the legendary pulp magazines will find much to cheer in The Eerie Mr. Murphy: The Collected Fantasy Tales of Howard Wandrei: Volume II, edited by D.H. Olson, which gathers the remainder of Wandrei's SF and fantasy, both published and unpublished, not included in the earlier companion volume, Time Burial (1995). An added bonus is a 30-page section of b&w reproductions of Wandrei's fantasy artwork, highly reminiscent of both Harry Clarke and Maxfield Parrish. (Fedogan & Bremer, $35 436p ISBN 1-878252-44-5)

Devotees of John Wyndham (Day of the Triffids) won't want to miss No Place Like Earth, a collection of this classic British author's hard-to-find shorter fiction edited by John Pelan. One tale, "Blackmoil," is published here for the first time. (Darkside [www.darksidepress.com], $40 285p ISBN 0-9707349-9-9)

Robert E. Howard's Waterfront Fists and Others, edited by Paul Herman, collects the creator of Conan the Barbarian's boxing fiction. Mark Finn provides an insightful introduction. (Wildside [www.wildsidepress.com] $39.95 308p ISBN 1-59224-136-0)

The same publisher also offers The Thomas Ligotti Reader: Essays and Explorations, edited by Darrell Schweitzer, with appreciations of this modern master of the weird by such experts as Stefan Dziemianowicz and Ben P. Indick. ($35 188p ISBN -129-8; $19.95 paper -130-1)