Ryan Schneider's Blog, page 10

How I Became the Curator of The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle by Lisa Mason (@LisaSMason)

How I Became the Curator of The Philip K Dick Award StorybundlebyLisa Mason
A writer-acquaintance who was acting as the Curator of a Storybundle earlier this year invited me to participate in his bundle.
I gladly did, having heard about Storybundle.com and all the good things the website does for readers and authors alike.
I love the Storybundle website, how they’ve set things up and their commitment to all things writing. Storybundle is a major player in the new independent publishing revolution and works well with readers’ passion for ebooks.
After the first bundle was done, and performed well, I began communicating with Storybundle, letting them know that I have an ebook backlist of previously published books and stories and that I’d been asked to serve as a judge for the 2016 The Philip K Dick Award.
Storybundle, ever alert for new bundle opportunities, was curious about my role as a judge. We’re slowly working out the details of how I may curate a 2016 Philip K Dick Award Storybundle next year. There are some logistical publishing hurdles to overcome, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, as a PKD Award judge, I had access to the master list of Finalistsand Winners going back to 1983, when the award was inaugurated. I became excited that a great high-concept for a bundle would be a Philip K Dick Award Storybundle comprised of Finalists and Winners.
Storybundle said yes! There were logistical publishing hurdles to overcome with this bundle, too. I’ve worked very hard as a Curator to make The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle happen.
So there you have it, my friends! The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle includes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher byKathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation), Maximum Ice byKay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist).

The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Download yours today at http://storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.
Thank you, Lisa, for sharing your story about how this came to be. Thank you for all your hard work.
And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.

Summer of Love by Lisa Mason is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle! (@LisaSMason)

Summer of Loveby Lisa Masonis in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle!
A Philip K. Dick Award Finalist. A San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book of the Year.
The year is 1967 and something new is sweeping across America: good vibes, bad vibes, psychedelic music, psychedelic drugs, anti-war protests, racial tension, free love, bikers, dropouts, flower children. An age of innocence, a time of danger. The Summer of Love.
San Francisco is the Summer of Love, where runaway flower children flock to join the hip elite and squares cruise the streets to view the human zoo.
Lost in these strange and wondrous days, teenager Susan Bell, alias Starbright, has run away to San Francisco to find her troubled best friend. Her path will cross with Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco, a strange and beautiful young man who has journeyed farther than she could ever imagine.
With the help of Ruby A. Maverick, a feisty half-black, half-white hip merchant, Susan and Chi discover a love that spans five centuries. But can they save the world from demons threatening to destroy all space and time?
A harrowing coming of age. A friendship ending in tragedy. A terrifying far future. A love spanning five centuries. And a gritty portrait of a unique time in American history--the Summer of Love.
From the author of The Gilded Age (A New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book), The Garden of Abracadabra, Volume 1 of the Abracadabra Series, Celestial Girl (A Lily Modjeska Mystery), and Strange Ladies: 7 Stories.
About the AuthorLisa Mason is the author of ten novels, including Summer of Love, a Philip K. Dick Award Finalist and a San Francisco Chronicle Recommended Book, The Gilded Age, a New York Times Notable Book and New York Public Library Recommended Book, a collection of previously published science fiction and fantasy, Strange Ladies: 7 Stories, and two dozen stories and novellas in magazines and anthologies worldwide. Her Omni story, "Tomorrow's Child," sold outright to Universal Studiosand is in development.
Mason is presently serving as a judge for the 2016 Philip K. Dick Award.
“Remarkable. . . .a whole array of beautifully portrayed characters along the spectrum from outright heroism to villainy. . . .not what you expected of a book with flowers in its hair. . . the intellect on display within these psychedelically packaged pages is clear-sighted, witty, and wise.”--Locus
“A fine novel packed with vivid detail, colorful characters, and genuine insight.”--The Washington Post Book World
“Captures the moment perfectly and offers a tantalizing glimpse of its wonderful and terrible consequences.”--San Francisco Chronicle
“Brilliantly crafted. . . .An engrossing tale spun round a very clever concept.”--Katharine Kerr, author of Days of Air and Darkness
“Just imagine The Terminator in love beads, set in the Haight-Ashbury ‘hood of 1967.”--Entertainment Weekly
“Mason has an astonishing gift. Her characters almost walk off the page. And the story is as significant as anyone could wish. This book will surely be on the prize ballots.”--Analog
“A priority purchase.”--Library Journal
Visit her at Lisa Mason’s Official Website for books, ebooks, stories, and screenplays, reviews, interviews, and blogs, adorable pet pictures, forthcoming projects, fine art and bespoke jewelry by Tom Robinson, worldwide Amazon.com links for Brazil, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, and Spain, and more!
And on Lisa Mason’s Blog , on her Facebook Author Page , on her Facebook Profile Page , on Amazon , on Goodreads , on LinkedIn , on Twitter at @lisaSmason, at Smashwords , at Apple, at Kobo, and at Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America
So there you have it, my friends. The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle includes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher byKathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation), Maximum Ice byKay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist).

The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Download yours today at http://storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.
Thanks, Lisa. Congratulations on the success of your novel. Well done!
And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.

How I Became a 2016 Philip K. Dick Award Judge by Lisa Mason (@LisaSMason)

How I Became a 2016 Philip K. Dick Award JudgebyLisa Mason
After my Omni story, Tomorrow’s Child , optioned and then sold outright to Universal Studios, I went off for some years to study screenplay writing. I wrote half a dozen, including Tesla: A Worthy of His Time , now an ebook.
As generous as the people were who helped me with the Tomorrow’s Child deal, the Hollywood Machine is even more difficult to deal with than New York Publishing.
Anyway, writing prose is my first love.
When the e-book revolution took off in 2010, I devoted time to uploading Summer of Love , The Gilded Age , a number of my longer previously published stories, a story collection Strange Ladies: 7 Stories of previously published short fiction, an urban fantasy, The Garden of Abracadabra , and a historical romantic suspense, Celestial Girl (A Lily Modjeska Mystery).
Four years of relaunching into ebook publishing just wasn’t enough, though, and I returned to my roots: writing short stories. I spent some months in 2014 writing stories. Two of them sold, “Teardrop,” published in the May-June 2015 Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and “Tomorrow Is A Lovely Day,” to be published in the November-December Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.
The editor who acquired both stories was Gordon Van Gelder, the eminent publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, a venue that has published continuously since 1949 and featured Stephen King, Harlan Ellison, Jane Yolen, and other renowned authors.While preparing a story for publication, Gordon asked me in January, 2015 if I might be available to serve as a judge for the 2016 Philip K. Dick Award.
Of course I jumped at the chance.
The Philip K. Dick Award is conferred each year by a panel of five judges, four of whom are themselves professionally published authors and the fifth an academic. Each year, there are four Finalists and one Winner.
Serving as a judge has been an amazing experience for me. Publishers—large, medium, and small—have sent me their original trade and mass market paperbacks for the year. I’ve been fascinated to read what SF authors are writing and publishers feel strongly enough about to invest in.
This year’s judges are Eric James Fullilove, James Glass, David Higgins, Lisa Mason(that’s me), and Jack Skillingstead.
A series of events then led me to assume the duties of the Curator of The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle.
So there you have it, my friends. The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle includes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher byKathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation), Maximum Ice byKay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist).

The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Download yours today at http://storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.
Thank you, Lisa. The whole history of the PKD award and how it's bestowed is fascinating. It will be exciting to see which book and author receives the award this year.
And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.

Dark Seeker by K.W. Jeter @kwjeter is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle!

Dark Seeker by K.W. Jeteris inThe Philip K Dick Award Storybundle!
His son is dead...Or that's what he believed. Caught up in the lethal madness of a Manson-like cult, Tyler has lost everything that once mattered to him. Out of prison, on a strict regimen of medications to keep the demons inside his head from returning, he knows he's always one small step away from returning to that dark place and its horrors.
So when his ex-wife emerges from the shadows into which she had fled, and tells him that their son is still alive, kidnapped by another former member of the murderous group, Tyler has some tough, soul-threatening decisions to make. He can take the safe route that will keep him sane and alive, and just assume that his ex-wife is lost in some psychotic delusion about their dead son. Or he can take the risk that maybe -- just maybe -- she's somehow telling the truth. He can stop taking the medications that the doctors give him, and go back into that dark world of madness and murder, to try and find the child that had gone missing so long ago. But if Tyler finds his son, will he be able to save him? And what will be left of him when he does?
"The real pleasure of this book is in the quality of the writing. Jeter places three-dimensional characters in authentic Southern California landscapes with more grit than glamour . . . Dark Seeker provides an intense experience that sticks in the mind — further proof of Jeter’s versatile talent."
– Locus
". . . this may well be his best book yet. It is directed, dynamically paced, extremely well-written in a modified Chandleresque style, gritty and unsentimental about the failures of humanity, tight and economical, and with a lot to say about people and the devils inside them. It never lags but is deliberate when it needs to be; the plot denouement, usually the Achilles’ heel of horror, is splendidly worked out. It often seems in this genre that even the best writers can set up all the elements for the last twenty pages, yet never come through on them. Jeter has done an admirable job . . ."
– OtherRealms
"This made me feel like a church gargoyle looking out over a witch hunt in some zombie thrash pit. Not only that, it's really well written...”
– SF Book Reviews, sfbook.com
"Effective, briskly paced, nicely tense..."
– Goodreads.com
"Fully realized, Jeter describes the endless roadways, the underpasses, the street corners and movie theaters with much color, much dread."
– Douglaspurdy.com
K. W. Jeter is an American science fiction and thriller author known for his literary writing style, dark themes, and complex, paranoid characters. His latest novels are THE KINGDOM OF SHADOWS, set in the sinister & glamorous world of the film industry of the Third Reich, and the Kim Oh Thrillerseries -- KIM OH 1: REAL DANGEROUS GIRL, KIM OH 2: REAL DANGEROUS JOB and KIM OH 3: REAL DANGEROUS PEOPLE, with more to come.
“Jeter is an exhilarating writer who always seems to have another rabbit to pull out of his hat.”
-- The New York Times Book Review
“Brain-burning intensity . . .”
-- Village Voice
So there you have it, my friends. The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle includes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher byKathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation), Maximum Ice byKay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist).

The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Download yours today at http://storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.
And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.

What Is the Philip K. Dick Award? The Philip K. Dick Award Storybundle

What Is the Philip K. Dick Award?The Philip K. Dick Award Storybundle
The Philip K. Dick Award is presented annually with the support of the Philip K. Dick Trust for distinguished science fiction published in paperback original form in the United States. 
The award is sponsored by the Philadelphia Science Fiction Society and the Philip K. Dick Trust. The award ceremony is sponsored by the NorthWest Science Fiction Society.
The award was inaugurated in 1983 after the untimely death of Philip K. Dick on March 2, 1982 of a stroke at the age of fifty-three. Thomas Disch (the author, now deceased), David G. Hartwell (the editor and anthologist), Paul S. Williams (Dick's longtime friend and a music journalist), and Charles N. Brown (the founder and publisher of Locus Magazine, also deceased) helped found the award.
The current administrators are Patrick Lo Brutto (an editor), John Silbersack (a literary agent), and Gordon Van Gelder (the publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction).
Dick’s forty-four novels were published as paperback originals. Given the implosion of New York publishing over the past twenty years, many SF/F books of excellent quality have been, and are now, published as paperback originals, trade or mass market.
Personally, I love trade paperbacks. Trades are more substantial than mass market paperbacks and often have the collectible quality of hardcovers.
So there you have it, my friends. The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle includes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher byKathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation), Maximum Ice byKay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist).

The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Download yours today at http://storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.

And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.

Points of Departure by Pat Murphy is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle!

Points of Departure by Pat Murphyis in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle!
Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award: Nineteen stories of power and humanity from a science fiction master with otherworldly talent
For Pat Murphy, the process of writing is a journey to somewhere very different. Her stories are the messages she sends back.
Points of Departure collects the most memorable of Murphy’s tales. These stories explore the shifting boundaries between the real and the imaginary, blending visionary storytelling with uncompromising realism. A chimpanzee with the memories of a teenage girl must find her way in a hostile world. An alien visitor seeks refuge among the Mayan people of the Yucatan peninsula. A woman comes to terms with a spirit that invades her apartment. A young man, following in his dead father’s footsteps by venturing alone into the Himalayan wilderness, makes an unexpected discovery. In Murphy’s worlds, the supernatural is just a few steps away—in the static of an old movie on TV, on an abandoned subway platform, in a cluttered room where an alien spaceship is under construction.
As children we all knew that there were monsters under the bed, fairies in the garden, and fantastic creatures everywhere, just out of sight. With these stories, Murphy opens the secret doorway, letting strange beings enter our world and allowing us to visit theirs.
Points of Departure is a collection of short stories tinged with barbed humor that won the 1991 Philip K. Dick Award.Alternating between hope and despair, Pat Murphy's stories range from "Rachel in Love," which portrays a chimpanzee whose brain is implanted with the personality of a young girl who has died to "His Vegetable Wife," the story of a farmer who grows a spouse from a packet of seed only to find that she is more quiet than docile. All but one of the 19 stories in this collection have been published previously in magazines and anthologies.
From Publishers Weekly
Although infused with a gentle sort of magic, the stories in Murphy's (The City, Not Long After) enjoyable collection are also tinged with barbed humor, alternating between hope and despair. Nebula Award-winner "Rachel in Love" portrays a chimpanzee whose brain is implanted with the personality of a young girl who has died. When the researcher who cared for the chimp dies, the hybrid draws on her mingled primate and human knowledge to make her way in a world that can be at once hostile and kind. In "Prescience," a fortune-teller learns that there's a difference between seeing the future and changing it. Conversely, in "Orange Blossom Time," a woman who travels through time cannot change the past or the present as she watches the city and the man she loves suffer painful deaths from rampant disease and the exhaustion of resources. Unappreciated wives get the last word in two stories: a wife's spirit escapes her abusive husband to join the "Women in the Trees," and a farmer who grows a spouse from a packet of seeds finds that "His Vegetable Wife" is more quiet than docile. All but one of these 19 stories have been published previously in SF magazines and book anthologies.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.Pat Murphy’s novels and short stories include Rachel in Love, The Falling Woman, The City Not Long After, Nadya, Wild Angel, Adventures in Time and Space with Max Merriwell, and The Wild Girls. Her fiction has won two Nebulas, the Philip K. Dick Award, the World Fantasy Award, the Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award, and the Seiun Award. In 1991, Pat co-founded the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, an annual literary prize for science fiction or fantasy that expands or explores our understanding of gender roles. This award harnesses the power of chocolate chip cookies in an on-going effort to change the world.
For Pat’s insightful blog about reading as a child, writing, and inspiration, you must check out http://www.brazenhussies.net/murphy/index.php/Why-I-Write/
So there you have it, my friends. The Philip K Dick Award Storybundleincludes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher by Kathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation), Maximum Ice by Kay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist).

The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Download yours today at http://storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.

And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.

Michael Bishop’s Elegy for Philip K. Dick

Michael Bishop’s Elegy for Phil
Philip K. Dick is dead, a Lasswith dark hair said. Her tears flowed wholesale,
remember? Phil wrote like a relentless dentist,
drilling the pocked enamel of reality to expose
its beautiful decay. Midway through the wood
he popped fish-shaped paranoia pills, chewed
the holy fat of messianic redemption, & chased
the godly lot with pot after pot of hot black
coffee, all of it decanted from percolators whoop-
whoop-whooping their projective derangements. Beer
furred his tongue. Mars floated mauve in his
eyeballs. The smell of ozone-depleting aerosolswafted from his armpits, ubiquitously. When Anwar
Sadat died, he scarred himself with a can of Orange
Crush in spontaneous homage. He took courage
when Linda Ronstadt sang “Different Drum” & no
bleak umbrage if a buddy crooned “Una cosa me da
risa – Pancho Villa sin camisa.” He was fully sane
in Berkeley, Fullerton, & Santa Ana. He was crazy
in California. Kafka had nothing on either Philip
K. or the latest demented broadcast from Radio Free
Albemuth. (Oh, to be a Blobel!) If he wakes as
a Brobdignagian beefsteak tomato to orbit Papaan angrily expanding sun, take cover. “Not ‘rekal’
but recall,” the receptionist corrects him. He
readies himself for Papa’s apotheosis with a jolt
of Nov(a)cain. He essayed suicide because Elijah
left him. “There is nothing worse in the world,
no punishment greater, than to have known God
and no longer to know him.” To eulogize Phil
properly, recall from the post-apocalyptic junkyard
a menagerie of maimed automata – ersatz sheep, a robot
German shepherd, a naggish simulacrum of Secretariat –
and a crew of pertinacious little people, from Lumkyto Isidore to Tagomi, then set them singing until
they entropically abort. As calm as caffeine, Phil
fled aboard a talking taxi to Sri Lanka, suffered
in remainderdom, elbowed Norman Mailer for a side
of macaroni, was rediscovered, restored to print,
cultified, read, reread, & queried. If we want
him to digest it, we’ll have to eat his celebrity
for him. The ambulance that hauled him to hospital
babbled beneath its wailing like his long-dead baby
sister while a blue-zillion rusty percolators whooped
in aromatic chorus for the conveyance of his soul.for Phil, dead on March 2, 1982Copyright 1982—2015 by Michael Bishop
Published by permission of Michael Bishop
(Many, many thanks for sharing this, Mike.)http://www.michaelbishop-writer.com/
So there you have it, my friends. At the City Limits of Fate by Michael Bishop was a PKD Award Special Citation. Due to a publishing technicality, he was unable to participate in this bundle.
The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle includes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher byKathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation), Maximum Ice byKay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist).

The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone! Download yours today at http://storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.

And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.

The Cipher by Kathe Koja (@kathekoja) is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle!

The Cipher by Kathe Koja is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle!
THE CIPHER is Kathe Koja'sclassic, award-winning horror novel: the story of Nicholas, a failed poet, and Nakota, his feral lover, who discover a strange hole in the storage room down the hall: "Black. Pure black and the sense of pulsation, especially when you look at it too closely, the sense of something not living but alive."
At first it’s a curiosity, a joke - the Funhole. But then the experiments start. "Wouldn't it be wild to go down there?" says Nakota. Nicholas says no—but from the first, they’re not in control. And the experiments turn to obsession, and violence, and a very final transformation for everyone who gets too close to the Funhole.
The Cipher was the winner of the 1991 Bram Stoker Award as well as a Finalistfor the Philip K. Dick Award, and was named one of io9's Top 10 Debut Science Fiction Novels That Took the World By Storm.
Here’s The Ciphertrailer, shot on location in a gritty industrial complex in Detroit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5O3LxoJl0g
Here’s Kathe’s video interview with the Lovecraft Ezine panel about The Cipher, writing, authors and their reputations, inspiration, and encouragement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=07sXBJlvidc
And be sure to check out Kathe’sinterview with Jeff VanderMeer about The Cipher and weird fiction at http://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/05/interview-kathe-koja-and-the-weird/.
Kathe Koja is an award-winning writer whose novels range from horror to YA to historical. She creates immersive performance events with her ensemble, nerve.
http://www.kathekoja.com/blog/
http://gonerve.com
"Combines intensely poetic language and lavish grotesqueries." – BoingBoing

“This powerful first novel is as thought-provoking as it is horrifying.” – Publishers Weekly

"Kathe Koja is a poet ... [T]he kind that prefers to read in seedy bars instead of universities, but a poet." - The New York Review of Science Fiction

"Her 20-something characters are poverty-gagged 'artists' who exist in that demimonde of shitty jobs, squalid art galleries, and thrift stores; her settings are run-down studios, flat-beer bars, and dingy urban streets [a] long way from Castle Rock, Dunwich, or Stepford, that's for sure." - Too Much Horror Fiction

"Unforgettable ... [The Cipher] takes you into the lives of the dark dreamers that crawl on the underbelly of art and culture." – Locus

“[Kathe Koja] has been likened to Franz Kafka, Clive Barker, Don DeLillo, Marcel Proust  . . .” – Dark Echoes

"An ethereal rollercoaster ride from start to finish." - Detroit Free Press

"[The Cipher] is a book that makes you sit up, pay attention, and jettison your moldy preconceptions ... Utterly original." – Fangoria

From Booklist: (Caution: SPOILERS)
Koja’s debut has yet to lose one iota of impact. It’s a marvel of bleak economy: Nicholas, going nowhere in his video-store-clerk job, discovers a foot-wide black vortex in an old storage room of his apartment building. His caustic sometime-lover, Nakota, christens it “the Funhole” and begins inserting experimental items: a jar of insects (they combine and mutate), a live mouse (it is ripped apart), a human hand from the morgue (it reanimates), and, finally, a video camera, which records a self-eviscerating figure of awe-inspiring dreadfulness—Koja only teases its description. Nakota becomes obsessed with the Funhole (a place of “blood and sex and revelation”) and is driven mad when it is Nicholas, not her, whose flesh becomes gloriously infected. The grungy, sweaty two-person drama, delivered in Nicholas’ vulgar ramble, widens to include additional viewers of the videotape who become fast new acolytes. Seemingly influenced equally by Clive Barker, David Cronenberg, and a particularly distasteful nightmare, this entry into the body-horror canon carries with it the kind of fatalism horror readers prize—it’s going to end badly, for sure, but just how badly?. . . Well worth rediscovering, if you’ve got the guts.
So there you have it, my friends. The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle includes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher byKathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation), Maximum Ice byKay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist).



The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Download yours today at http://storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.
And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.

Why Is Philip K Dick Considered Iconic? The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle

Why Is Philip K Dick Considered Iconic?
The Philip K Dick Award StorybundleUnlike pulp genre science fiction of the nineteen-fifties, featuring spaceships and macho ship captains and bug-eyed aliens, Philip K Dick explored philosophical, sociological, political, and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments, and altered states of consciousness.
In his later works, Dick's thematic focus strongly reflected his personal interest in metaphysicsand theology. He often drew upon his own life experiences in addressing the nature of drug abuse, paranoia, schizophrenia, and transcendental experiences.
He was a breath of fresh air to his fellow authors and SF readers of the nineteen-sixties and seventies and remains an inspiration and influence to this day.
His high concepts have translated well into other media. Eleven popular films based on his works have been produced, including Blade Runner , Total Recall , A Scanner Darkly , Minority Report , Paycheck , Next , Screamers , The Adjustment Bureau , and Impostor .
As Lewis Shiner eloquently wrote on Facebook, “One of the reasons I was so pleased to be nominated for the Philip K Dick award is that Dick was and is one of my favorite writers of all time. I've never read anybody who did a better job of finding the frayed seams in reality and sticking his hand through them. He spun paranoia, desire, and disappointment into novels and stories of terrible beauty.” https://www.facebook.com/lewis.shiner?fref=ts
In 2005, Time magazine named Ubik one of the hundred greatest English-language novels published since 1923. In 2007, Dick became the first science fiction writer to be included in The Library of America series.
So there you have it, my friends. The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle includes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher byKathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation), Maximum Ice byKay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist).

The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Download yours today at http://storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.


And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.

Life by Gwyneth Jones (@AnnHalam) is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle!

Life by Gwyneth Jones is in The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle!
Life by Gwyneth Jones is a richly textured fictional biography of the brilliant Anna Senoz, a scientist who makes a momentous discovery about the X and Y chromosomes. Anna’s discovery provokes widespread sexual rage and cruelly impacts her career, her marriage, and her child. Ultimately, Anna faces a challenge that the practice of science alone cannot meet.
Gwyneth Jones, born in Manchester UK, 14th February 1952, is the author of many novels for teenagers, fantasy, horror and thrillers, using the name Ann Halam, and several highly regarded SF and fantasy novels for adults. Her critical essays and reviews are collected in Deconstructing The Starships, 1999 and Imagination/Space 2009. Among other honours she's won two World Fantasy awards, the Children of the Night award, the Philip K Dick award, the BSFA award and the Pilgrim award for Science Fiction criticism. Several of her novels have been nominated for the Arthur C Clarke award, the latest being Spirit, 2009; she won the award for Bold As Love in 2002. She lives in Brighton, UK, with her husband and son, some goldfish and two cats called Ginger and Milo; likes old movies, practices yoga & has done some extreme tourism in her time. Hobbies include gardening, cooking, staring out of the window, and playing zelda.
Follow her on Twitter and check out her website.
So there you have it, my friends. The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle includes Aestival Tide by Elizabeth Hand (PKD Finalist), Life by Gwyneth Jones (PKD Winner), The Cipher byKathe Koja (PKD Finalist), Points of Departure by Pat Murphy (PKD Winner), Dark Seeker by K. W. Jeter (PKD Finalist), Summer of Love by Lisa Mason (PKD Finalist), Frontera by Lewis Shiner (PKD Finalist), Acts of Conscience by William Barton (PKD Special Citation), Maximum Ice byKay Kenyon (PKD Finalist), Knight Moves by Walter Jon Williams (PKD Finalist), and Reclamation by Sarah Zettel (PKD Finalist).

The Philip K Dick Award Storybundle runs only until October 15. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. Download yours today at http://storybundle.com/pkdaward and enjoy world-class, award-winning reading right now and into the holidays.
And for more kick-ass sci-fi, check out my novel EYE CANDY. It's a sweet, romantic, daring adventure with an ensemble of characters you'll love. And follow me on Instagram for daily writing inspiration and sneak peeks of my work.