Nick Mamatas's Blog, page 13
January 13, 2016
LOCUS review of THE LAST WEEKEND from 2014
Back when
The Last Weekend
was a pricey UK import, Tim Pratt reviewed it for the August 2014 issue of Locus. Since is the book is out in the US now, I asked Tim for the review, and here it is!
The Last Weekend, Tim Pratt:
When I encounter a zombie novel these days, I tend to shamble in the other direction as fast as possible. It’s not that I don’t like the mindless undead, whether they’re fast, slow, viral, or supernatural – they’ve just become too common in recent years, so ubiquitous in games, cinema, comics, and literature that they form an undifferentiated horde, often of mediocre or worse quality. The right author can tempt me away from my no-more-zombies stance, though – Daryl Gregory did it a few years ago with Raising Stony Mayhall, and now Nick Mamatas has done it with The Last Weekend .
Narrator Vasilis ‘‘Billy’’ Kostopolis is the son of Greek immigrants, an aspiring writer with destructive taste in women and booze. Misadventures and bad life choices lead him from college in Youngstown OH to San Francisco, where he drinks and tries to write, carrying around a printout of his one published story, impressing no one. He drunkenly sleeps through the beginning of the end of the world: a zombie apocalypse, but one that only takes place within the borders of the continental United States. He’s awakened by soldiers bursting into his apartment demanding he recite the alphabet, and once he proves he’s not the living dead (at least, not the flesh-eating kind), a social worker fills him in: the dead have risen across the country, and chaos reigns. Local governments are doing their best to hold on, but things are dire.
Except, in San Francisco, it’s not that bad. The city famously lacks graveyards – almost all the cemeteries were relocated elsewhere long ago – and since these zombies are of the slowly shambling variety, the city’s hilly terrain keeps them from getting around too easily. The city is a character here, and Mamatas depicts it well – though I don’t think I’d sign up for The Last Weekend walking tour if one were offered.
Even with the advantages of San Francisco geography, plenty of people die in the initial uprising, and most of those who are left behind are a lot like Billy: outsiders, loners, and rugged (or ragged) individualists. Those with close families tend to die quickly, after all, spending too much time hoping Mom isn’t really a murderous monster and not enough time bashing her brains out.
Billy takes a job with the city, working as a driller: he’s given a portable power drill and a phone, and after that, he’s on call. If a survivor in the city sees a newly dead or dying person, be they family or neighbor or friend, Billy gets a call. His job is to drill a hole in the dead person’s brain before they can rise as a zombie – messy, imprecise, ugly work, which brings him into contact with the desperate, the grieving, and the deranged. This wouldn’t be a Mamatas novel without a revolutionary streak, and Billy falls in with a group of agitators and activists determined to figure out the cause of the zombie uprising, with various competing conspiracy theories, and the idea that there might be secrets locked away in the basement of City Hall. Billy can’t be called an activist himself – he just likes dangerous women and makes poor decisions when he’s drunk, which is usually – but he stumbles on revelations nonetheless.
Mamatas has always shown a deft hand at appropriating genre tropes and twisting them to his own unusual ends, from the ghosts of Northern Gothic, to the parallel worlds of Bullettime, to the manipulative hive-mind of Sensation. He’s also adept at literary mash-ups, having in the past combined the sensibilities of the Beat writers, Hunter S. Thompson, David Foster Wallace, and even Raymond Carver with supernatural elements, usually Lovecraftian. This time, his chosen literary inspiration is the misanthropic, alcoholic, autobiographical barfly writer – Charles Bukowski will leap immediately to mind, but John Fante’s novel of life in Los Angeles, Ask the Dust, is an obvious influence, too. Still, if the tagline ‘‘Like a zombie novel written by Bukowski’’ appeals to you, this book delivers everything that summation promises. If you want a story where resourceful heroes fight to save humankind in the face of the ravenous dead, and the human spirit triumphs, I hear good things about that Brad Pitt movie loosely inspired by Max Brooks’s World War Z. But if you’d prefer dark humor, a streak of philosophical hopelessness, disastrous romance, and a resigned shrug in the face of metaphysical horror, pour yourself a drink and pick up The Last Weekend instead.
The Last Weekend, Tim Pratt:
When I encounter a zombie novel these days, I tend to shamble in the other direction as fast as possible. It’s not that I don’t like the mindless undead, whether they’re fast, slow, viral, or supernatural – they’ve just become too common in recent years, so ubiquitous in games, cinema, comics, and literature that they form an undifferentiated horde, often of mediocre or worse quality. The right author can tempt me away from my no-more-zombies stance, though – Daryl Gregory did it a few years ago with Raising Stony Mayhall, and now Nick Mamatas has done it with The Last Weekend .
Narrator Vasilis ‘‘Billy’’ Kostopolis is the son of Greek immigrants, an aspiring writer with destructive taste in women and booze. Misadventures and bad life choices lead him from college in Youngstown OH to San Francisco, where he drinks and tries to write, carrying around a printout of his one published story, impressing no one. He drunkenly sleeps through the beginning of the end of the world: a zombie apocalypse, but one that only takes place within the borders of the continental United States. He’s awakened by soldiers bursting into his apartment demanding he recite the alphabet, and once he proves he’s not the living dead (at least, not the flesh-eating kind), a social worker fills him in: the dead have risen across the country, and chaos reigns. Local governments are doing their best to hold on, but things are dire.
Except, in San Francisco, it’s not that bad. The city famously lacks graveyards – almost all the cemeteries were relocated elsewhere long ago – and since these zombies are of the slowly shambling variety, the city’s hilly terrain keeps them from getting around too easily. The city is a character here, and Mamatas depicts it well – though I don’t think I’d sign up for The Last Weekend walking tour if one were offered.
Even with the advantages of San Francisco geography, plenty of people die in the initial uprising, and most of those who are left behind are a lot like Billy: outsiders, loners, and rugged (or ragged) individualists. Those with close families tend to die quickly, after all, spending too much time hoping Mom isn’t really a murderous monster and not enough time bashing her brains out.
Billy takes a job with the city, working as a driller: he’s given a portable power drill and a phone, and after that, he’s on call. If a survivor in the city sees a newly dead or dying person, be they family or neighbor or friend, Billy gets a call. His job is to drill a hole in the dead person’s brain before they can rise as a zombie – messy, imprecise, ugly work, which brings him into contact with the desperate, the grieving, and the deranged. This wouldn’t be a Mamatas novel without a revolutionary streak, and Billy falls in with a group of agitators and activists determined to figure out the cause of the zombie uprising, with various competing conspiracy theories, and the idea that there might be secrets locked away in the basement of City Hall. Billy can’t be called an activist himself – he just likes dangerous women and makes poor decisions when he’s drunk, which is usually – but he stumbles on revelations nonetheless.
Mamatas has always shown a deft hand at appropriating genre tropes and twisting them to his own unusual ends, from the ghosts of Northern Gothic, to the parallel worlds of Bullettime, to the manipulative hive-mind of Sensation. He’s also adept at literary mash-ups, having in the past combined the sensibilities of the Beat writers, Hunter S. Thompson, David Foster Wallace, and even Raymond Carver with supernatural elements, usually Lovecraftian. This time, his chosen literary inspiration is the misanthropic, alcoholic, autobiographical barfly writer – Charles Bukowski will leap immediately to mind, but John Fante’s novel of life in Los Angeles, Ask the Dust, is an obvious influence, too. Still, if the tagline ‘‘Like a zombie novel written by Bukowski’’ appeals to you, this book delivers everything that summation promises. If you want a story where resourceful heroes fight to save humankind in the face of the ravenous dead, and the human spirit triumphs, I hear good things about that Brad Pitt movie loosely inspired by Max Brooks’s World War Z. But if you’d prefer dark humor, a streak of philosophical hopelessness, disastrous romance, and a resigned shrug in the face of metaphysical horror, pour yourself a drink and pick up The Last Weekend instead.
January 12, 2016
Friday, Friday, Friday!
In Manhattan, ever so briefly, for this!
Mystery Writers of America
Friday, January 15th
6pm
MWA Orientation
Attending authors include:
Donna Andrews, Craig Faustus Buck, Laura k. Curtis, Ray Daniel, Hannah Dennison, Brendan DuBois, Laura Durham, Daniel Hale, Rachel Howzell Hall, Ted Hertel, Linda Joffe Hull, Harry Hunsicker, Julie Hyzy, Kay Kendall, Allison Leotta, Larry Light, Nick Mamatas, Tony Perona , Lori Rader-Day, Randy Rawls, Mark Stevens, Jaden Terrell, and Elaine Viets
Come on by and meet some of the best mystery writers in the business!
The Mysterious Bookshop
58 Warren Street
New York, NY 10007
Will be signing, I hope, The Last Weekend, and other titles.
Mystery Writers of America
Friday, January 15th
6pm
MWA Orientation
Attending authors include:
Donna Andrews, Craig Faustus Buck, Laura k. Curtis, Ray Daniel, Hannah Dennison, Brendan DuBois, Laura Durham, Daniel Hale, Rachel Howzell Hall, Ted Hertel, Linda Joffe Hull, Harry Hunsicker, Julie Hyzy, Kay Kendall, Allison Leotta, Larry Light, Nick Mamatas, Tony Perona , Lori Rader-Day, Randy Rawls, Mark Stevens, Jaden Terrell, and Elaine Viets
Come on by and meet some of the best mystery writers in the business!
The Mysterious Bookshop
58 Warren Street
New York, NY 10007
Will be signing, I hope, The Last Weekend, and other titles.
January 11, 2016
January 8, 2016
Friday Quick Links
This Is Horror, a UK website/publisher, has announced its annual award nominees, and my anthology with Masumi Washington, Hanzai Japan is one. I don't know much about TiH except that they published a very good e-novella by Nathan Ballingrud, but their ballot is very good—I only saw one "What the HELL?" nominee there, and I hadn't even read that work; the author is just historically awful and may have improved. It's a public vote, so I voted thusly:
Novel of the Year
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson
(Didn't read any of the novellas, so left them out.)
Short Story Collection of the Year
Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link
Anthology of the Year
Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan, edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington (Yeah, I voted for myself. I'm the fuckin' best.)
Cthulhu Fhtagn!, edited by Ross E. Lockhart
Fiction Magazine of the Year
Apex Magazine
Black Static
Publisher of the Year
Word Horde
Lazy Fascist Press
Podcast of the Year
The Horror Show with Brian Keene
Film of the Year
It Follows
What We Do in the Shadows
Artist of the Year
Joey Hi-Fi
Vincent Chong
You should vote to, for whatever you read and liked.
Speaking of reading and liking, The Last Weekend (only nine copies left on amazon!) is one of io9's books everyone will be talking about this month, which is odd because so far it's mostly just been me talking about it. I am, apparently, "Mamatas is always good for a weird time", which is what she said. One wrinkle here is that these ad-posts have Amazon buttons and Gawker Media actually says how many people buy via their link. Over the course of a year, you can see that sometimes hundreds or even thousands of people bought through Gawker, which "may" receive a commission. Anyway, if you felt like giving people who like antagonizing Hulk Hogan money—and since Roddy Piper is dead—why the hell not?
In other, and by other I mean actual, news, a bit on fire-starting. The Atlantic has been positioning itself as the liberal rag right-wingers can enjoy, while Reason is the stopped clock right twice a day libertarian rag. Neither of them know anything about fire, as it turns out. Burn bans out West are there for a reason, and the second fire only damaged one acre thanks to firefighters pulled away from a larger lightning-caused fire. The issue of mandatory minimums is different than the issue of whether five years is too harsh for two arsons. Five years is just fine.
Novel of the Year
A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay
Skullcrack City by Jeremy Robert Johnson
(Didn't read any of the novellas, so left them out.)
Short Story Collection of the Year
Get in Trouble: Stories by Kelly Link
Anthology of the Year
Hanzai Japan: Fantastical, Futuristic Stories of Crime From and About Japan, edited by Nick Mamatas and Masumi Washington (Yeah, I voted for myself. I'm the fuckin' best.)
Cthulhu Fhtagn!, edited by Ross E. Lockhart
Fiction Magazine of the Year
Apex Magazine
Black Static
Publisher of the Year
Word Horde
Lazy Fascist Press
Podcast of the Year
The Horror Show with Brian Keene
Film of the Year
It Follows
What We Do in the Shadows
Artist of the Year
Joey Hi-Fi
Vincent Chong
You should vote to, for whatever you read and liked.
Speaking of reading and liking, The Last Weekend (only nine copies left on amazon!) is one of io9's books everyone will be talking about this month, which is odd because so far it's mostly just been me talking about it. I am, apparently, "Mamatas is always good for a weird time", which is what she said. One wrinkle here is that these ad-posts have Amazon buttons and Gawker Media actually says how many people buy via their link. Over the course of a year, you can see that sometimes hundreds or even thousands of people bought through Gawker, which "may" receive a commission. Anyway, if you felt like giving people who like antagonizing Hulk Hogan money—and since Roddy Piper is dead—why the hell not?
In other, and by other I mean actual, news, a bit on fire-starting. The Atlantic has been positioning itself as the liberal rag right-wingers can enjoy, while Reason is the stopped clock right twice a day libertarian rag. Neither of them know anything about fire, as it turns out. Burn bans out West are there for a reason, and the second fire only damaged one acre thanks to firefighters pulled away from a larger lightning-caused fire. The issue of mandatory minimums is different than the issue of whether five years is too harsh for two arsons. Five years is just fine.
January 7, 2016
Why yes, it is another content-free post about my latest book.
The Last Weekend is twelve bucks on amazon and at this time there are only seventeen left in stock. Why not buy one and reduce that number. That's only one-fiftieth the price of an Oculus Rift, and my novel works on the inside of your face, not the outside.
January 5, 2016
THE LAST WEEKEND
Finally out in the U.S. in paperback and ebook, The Last Weekend. (link to Kindle but it is everywhere!)
Check it out. Fanzine We The Nerdy declares This is a dark, dark book that might make you feel kind of awful as if that were one of the book's downsides!
Check it out. Fanzine We The Nerdy declares This is a dark, dark book that might make you feel kind of awful as if that were one of the book's downsides!
January 1, 2016
What year is it?
2016 is the year we all finally receive our just deserts.
Try to act surprised when it happens.
Try to act surprised when it happens.
December 31, 2015
THE LAST...of the year
Well, if you do what you do on the last evening of the year every day of the new year, I'll be pleased to paste rave newspaper reviews of my novels into this LJ for twelve months. To wit, the San Francisco Chronicle has reviewed my latest, the US edition of The Last Weekend (published Tuesday, shipping from Amazon early though!) and it's great. It's also behind a paywall, so here's the whole thing!
The Last Weekend
By Nick Mamatas
(Night Shade Books; 256 pages; $15.99 paperback)
If you plan to weather the zombie apocalypse, San Francisco isn’t a bad place to do so, especially if you’re handy with power tools.
Such is the predicament of Vasilis “Billy” Kostopolis, would-be writer and experienced drunk, who has come to the West Coast from the Rust Belt to seek his literary fortune without much preparation beyond having sold a single story. With the rest of the U.S. having collapsed under the assault by the undead, he works for the city of San Francisco as a “driller” of reanimated corpses, punching a bit through their skulls before they become ambulatory and homicidal.
Faced with the end of the world, Billy is content, more or less, to drink himself to death, but he retains enough social skills to hook up with a pair of female revolutionaries with other plans. They want to know why San Francisco has chosen for so many years to bury all of its dead in Colma and what secret cache of information is hidden within San Francisco City Hall.
The author of “Love Is the Law,” Mamatas is fond of the genre mashup. He evoked the horrific side of Jack Kerouac and the Beats in “Move Under Ground.” In collaboration with Brian Keene, he brought together Hunter S. Thompson and H.P. Lovecraft for “The Damned Highway: Fear and Loathing in Arkham.”
Now in “The Last Weekend,” it is the shades of Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, John Fante and other hard-drinking scribblers who haunt the pages. Mamatas knows how to the skewer the pretensions of tortured aspiring artists, but he clearly has a fondness for the masters of boozy fiction.
Mamatas finds new life in the old apocalyptic cliches, and even this late in the zombie craze, he manages to deliver a highly caustic and entertaining end-of-the-world satire. You don’t need to be a San Franciscan to appreciate “The Last Weekend,” but if you know the Bay Area, the jokes are that much funnier.
The Last Weekend
By Nick Mamatas
(Night Shade Books; 256 pages; $15.99 paperback)
If you plan to weather the zombie apocalypse, San Francisco isn’t a bad place to do so, especially if you’re handy with power tools.
Such is the predicament of Vasilis “Billy” Kostopolis, would-be writer and experienced drunk, who has come to the West Coast from the Rust Belt to seek his literary fortune without much preparation beyond having sold a single story. With the rest of the U.S. having collapsed under the assault by the undead, he works for the city of San Francisco as a “driller” of reanimated corpses, punching a bit through their skulls before they become ambulatory and homicidal.
Faced with the end of the world, Billy is content, more or less, to drink himself to death, but he retains enough social skills to hook up with a pair of female revolutionaries with other plans. They want to know why San Francisco has chosen for so many years to bury all of its dead in Colma and what secret cache of information is hidden within San Francisco City Hall.
The author of “Love Is the Law,” Mamatas is fond of the genre mashup. He evoked the horrific side of Jack Kerouac and the Beats in “Move Under Ground.” In collaboration with Brian Keene, he brought together Hunter S. Thompson and H.P. Lovecraft for “The Damned Highway: Fear and Loathing in Arkham.”
Now in “The Last Weekend,” it is the shades of Charles Bukowski, Henry Miller, John Fante and other hard-drinking scribblers who haunt the pages. Mamatas knows how to the skewer the pretensions of tortured aspiring artists, but he clearly has a fondness for the masters of boozy fiction.
Mamatas finds new life in the old apocalyptic cliches, and even this late in the zombie craze, he manages to deliver a highly caustic and entertaining end-of-the-world satire. You don’t need to be a San Franciscan to appreciate “The Last Weekend,” but if you know the Bay Area, the jokes are that much funnier.
December 28, 2015
Is It Still Christmas?
Didn't have much of a Christmas this year, but am heading East soon, to Pennsylvania, and then to Connecticut to teach.
But here's a little present for you. In my forthcoming novel, I Am Providence, which you should totally pre-order so I can hit the goal of shipping 5000 copies, there is a zine that a character encounters, with life-changing results. That zine is called Fuck Tentacles, and thanks to the good offices of Erica Satifka (Livejournal's own
themachinestops
, several pages of the zine will appear within the book. Here's the cover:
Look good? There's more, coming in August. Pre-order now, why don't you?
But here's a little present for you. In my forthcoming novel, I Am Providence, which you should totally pre-order so I can hit the goal of shipping 5000 copies, there is a zine that a character encounters, with life-changing results. That zine is called Fuck Tentacles, and thanks to the good offices of Erica Satifka (Livejournal's own
themachinestops
, several pages of the zine will appear within the book. Here's the cover:Look good? There's more, coming in August. Pre-order now, why don't you?
December 24, 2015
Dayjob ebook SALE!
Hey all. If you get a phone or e-reader tomorrow (or just have one) you can have your fill of Haikasoru's Japanese science fiction list thanks to our $4.99 Haika-holiday sale. Amazon Kindle has most of the books at $4.99 already, and Google Books provided this nice little sale page. There's no one-click solution for NOOK, but spot-checking tells me that Hanzai Japan, Gene Mapper and other titles are $4.99.
Kobo should be lowering its prices today as well. The sale goes through the New Year but not much longer, so do not delay!
Kobo should be lowering its prices today as well. The sale goes through the New Year but not much longer, so do not delay!
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