March Publications

Continuing the 25-volume series begun by Isaac Asimov and Martin H. Greenberg in 1979, master anthologist Robert Silverberg teams up with the latter to offer Robert Silverberg Presents the Great SF Stories (1964). It was the year of Dr. Strangelove, the Tokyo Olympics and Lyndon Johnson's election to the presidency, and it was a great year for science fiction. Included in this collection of 15 stories are gems by Jack Vance, Frederik Pohl, Roger Zelazny and Ursula K. Le Guin. (NESFA [P.O. Box 809, Framingham, Mass. 01701], $25 395p ISBN 1-886778-21-3)

March brings four story collections from Five Star (295 Kennedy Drive, Waterville, Maine 04901) to launch its new SF line: Robert Silverberg, winner of four Hugos and five Nebulas, offers In Another Country and Other Short Novels, a collection of four previously published novellas including "This Is the Road," a trippy tale of the dangerous Tree Companions and the marauding Teeth ($23.95 300p ISBN 0-7862-3876-3); Hunting the Snark and Other Short Novels gathers four by the super-prolific Mike Resnick, another Hugo and Nebula winner who's pseudonymously published hundreds of novels and thousands of articles ($24.95 240p -3878-X); a socio-historian gets "swallowed whole" inside a chimp's mind in the title story of Gregory Benford's Immersion and Other Short Novels($23.95 244p -3877-1); and Pamela Sargent presents two tales of aliens and one about artificially engineered children in Behind the Eyes of Dreamers and Other Short Novels($23.95 215p -3879-8).

Elvis is back from the dead, aliens have taken over the White House and Terror Monsters are invading Japan in Ken Hollings's hallucinogenic illustrated novel, Destroy All Monsters. Android Muri and her human American friends Yena and Mai navigate a world of seedy Technicolor—sex, drugs, assassinations—as Muri finds herself pursued by evil scientists and the world veers toward apocalypse. Illustrations by Savage Pencil. (Marion Boyars [www.marionboyers.co.uk], $14.95 paper 320p ISBN 0-7145-3062-X)

Elizabeth Engstrom (Lizzie Borden, etc.) has selected 25 stories—most previously published—from her 20-year writing career and gathered them up in Suspicions, a spooky collection of tales inspired by the author's questions and theories about death, sex, government, technology, family and the unknown. The characters, places and even genres vary widely: while "Fates Entwined" leans toward erotica, for example, "Rivering" is a fantastical tale of a woman who fishes for souls, and "Romana" reveals a basic love triangle with a paranormal twist. (TripleTree [www.tripletreepub.com], $16.95 paper 352p ISBN 0-9666272-9-6)

February Publications

The playwright, artist, film producer and horror-master extraordinaire makes his original six paperback collections from 1984 and 1985 available in one monstrous volume with Clive Barker's Books of Blood. Barker not only gave "his blessing" to the reprinting of stories like "Down, Satan!" and "Pig Blood Blues," writes consulting editor Peter Atkins—he also designed the cover and provided the creepy jacket photo. (Stealth [www.stealthpress.com], $39.95 830p ISBN 1-58881-040-2)

James B. Blaylock and Tim Powers give their fictional poet his own real-life recipes, and more, in The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook. There's Chicken à la Ashbless and Can O' Beans Salad, mini-essays inspired by Ashbless's letters to Dean Koontz, lots of good-natured cooking advice—and even an afterward attributed to Ashbless, who indignantly notes that he isn't dead after all. Goofiness abounds. (Subterranean [www.subterraneanpress.com], $40 140p ISBN 1-931081-46-8)

Michele Slung, an accomplished editor whose past books include I Shudder at Your Touch and Murder & Other Acts of Literature, has selected stories that muse on the matter of unfamiliar faces from eight decades of creepy fiction in Stranger: Dark Tales of Eerie Encounters. In addition to the usual suspects—Ray Bradbury, H.P. Lovecraft, even Patricia Highsmith—there are pleasant (and very literary) surprises: contributions from Shirley Jackson, Mark Helprin and Edith Wharton. (HarperPerennial, $13.95 paper 368p ISBN 0-06-105245-0)