In Darkness Waiting

Spiritually undernourished souls adrift in denatured worlds of anomie and isolation are the focus of these tales of contemporary horror and near-future speculation. Though uneven in execution, the Continue reading »

On the eye-catching cover of Shirley's latest, a full moon radiates light over the head of a young woman, probing beneath her skin to trace her veins and bones. That image captures this slim Continue reading »

Less than six months after the publication by Cemetery Dance of his mini-masterpiece Demons, Shirley returns with another small-press offering that pushes the envelope of fantasy and horror and Continue reading »

A semi-talented television actor is an unlikely channel for gnostic mysticism and pop phenomenology in this loopy dark fantasy from Shirley (From Hell; Continue reading »

Shirley (Bleak History), a prolific and genre-spanning author, delivers a grim collection that manages to be weaker than the sum of its parts. Focusing on Shirley's "extreme" stories, many of which Continue reading »

"He was a startlingly rare bird. He was like no other," writes Shirley of G.I. Gurdjieff, one of the most influential and most enigmatic spiritual masters to appear in the West. Born, he Continue reading »

Kidnapped by the alien Meta, college student Martin Wirth (nickname: ""Zero'') wakes up on another planet. The previous abductees call it ``Fool's Hope'' for its combative population of shanghaied Continue reading »

To a novella of the same title, Shirley (...And the Angel with Television Eyes) adds a lengthy aftermath that, though it couples clunkily, offers a crafty Continue reading »

The insectoid monsters in this visceral horror novel may seem like the stuff of '50s drive-in B-movies, but Shirley (Crawlers, etc.) gives them a modern Continue reading »

Shirley has been writing SF, including a dozen novels ( City Come A-Walkin', A Splendid Chaos ), for over a decade. His first collection of short fiction contains 19 selections, three of them Continue reading »

In this slim, grim, and powerful novel, Shirley lets his imagination loose on the frightening possibilities of a massive natural disaster striking a small American town. A tidal wave transforms Continue reading »

The 37 stories in this mind-shaking collection are grouped into four sections of ascending weirdness, from Really Weird to Really, Really, Really, Really Weird. Considering that the first entry, I Continue reading »

Angels and aliens alike figure in this metaphysical SF novel from proto-cyberpunker Shirley (Heatseeker), who here throws UFOs, black helicopters, several major biblical figures and spiritual Continue reading »

In this collection of new and reprinted stories, Blue Öyster Cult songwriter and cyberpunk pioneer Shirley (The Other End ) demonstrates his talent for Continue reading »

In Shirley's frightening new novel, he extends the smart work he did in Demons (2002), investing a fierce genre tale with spiritual import. Here Shirley Continue reading »

This urban occult fantasy from cyberpunk author and screenplay writer Shirley (Black Glass ) reads like the script for a bloated summer blockbuster, loaded with Continue reading »

Best known as one of the founders of cyberpunk for his novel City Come A-Walkin' (1980) and as the principal screenwriter of the cult classic film The Crow, Shirley (Silicon Embrace, 1996) has a Continue reading »

Veteran horror writer Shirley (Cellars ) swaps gory for glory in this inventive if politically heavy-handed left-wing answer to Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Continue reading »

Like many works defining the wild cyberpunk fringe in the 1980s, this depiction of a near-future dystopia, here revised and updated since its 1985 debut, seems almost acceptably mainstream today. But Continue reading »