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Worlds Without End Blog

Good Omens – Official Teaser Trailer Posted at 2:09 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

I don’t know anything about the book but this trailer looks great to me. If you’ve read it tell us what you think of this little glimpse. Excited or worried?

American Gods Teaser Trailer Posted at 10:10 PM by Dave Post

Dave Post

I don’t think this is a particularly good trailer but it’s looks pretty decent. The guy they got for Shadow, Ricky Whittle, looks the part and you can’t beat Ian McShane. Lacking a bit in the excitement department for me but I enjoyed the book so I’ll hold out hope that Starz can pull off what I was hoping would come from HBO. What do you think?

Book Gift Suggestions: Horror Posted at 8:06 AM by Jonathan McDonald

jynnantonnyx

It’s been a while since we created our suggestion list for Fantasy, and the Month of Horrors seemed like the perfect time to cobble together a list for Horror. Been looking for some good genre book recommendations you can pass along to non-genre or genre-beginner readers? Here are some works of fiction that will blow their minds and make them addicts just like you.

Today’s list contains half a dozen Horror books to knock the socks off the people who don’t have good genre taste… yet.


The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird StoriesThe Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories, by H. P. Lovecraft

Arguably, you could hand a reader any collection of Lovecraft stories, and the effect would be just about the same. The master of weird fiction rotated regularly through just a few variations on his theme of supernatural terror: from intrusions out of the dream world to beautiful symbolic visions, from unnatural resurrections to polar-dwelling Elder Things, you can be sure that at least somebody will be losing his sanity, if not his lunch. Many of the stories in this volume also tie in to Lovecraft’s popular Cthulhu Mythos, so there’s plenty of temptation here to find more to read.

Perfect For: People who like old-timey scares and wish their steampunk novels had more unnatural geometry.


20th Century Ghosts20th Century Ghosts, by Joe Hill

One might shy away from Hill’s collection of short stories in favor of his more popular novels, but 20th Century Ghosts has something for everybody to enjoy. As I wrote in my longer review last year, the stories that especially stand out are “20th Century Ghost” (about a dead girl who loves the movies too much to leave the theatre), “The Black Phone” (a terrifying tale of kidnapping and phone calls from the dead), “The Cape” (a spooky story of a… different kind of superhero), and “Voluntary Committal” (wherein one might easily be lost amidst the cardboard maze in the basement). Don’t miss out on Hill’s sequel to Dracula and his personal take on Kafka’s Metamorphosis, either.

Perfect For: Anyone who likes disturbingly surreal tales.


DraculaDracula, by Bram Stoker

By far the most obvious recommendation on this list, you might be surprised how many people have never read the novel that sparked the popularity of the “romantic vampire” subgenre. Told entirely as an epistolary novel, Dracula follows the ever-shifting fortunes of a small group of English aristocrats as an ancient Transylvanian vampire decides to hitch a ride to their homeland from the old country. It’s both a look at the fragility of Victorian mores, and awe at the power of the mysterious foreign “other.” Arguably also a yearning for a spiritually-enriched world that the Enlightenment cast aside, Stoker’s novel offers a great deal even for a jaded, modern audience.

Perfect For: That friend who’s watched every Dracula movie.


House of LeavesHouse of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski

Danielewski isn’t well known for his fiction outside of this novel, partly because he hasn’t written much else, but mostly because his other work is so rarified and abstract that it only appeals to a niche audience. However, House of Leaves was his first and most popular work, despite some aspects that a popular audience might find pretentious. This is a story told from the perspective of a young tattoo artist Johnny Truant, writing about a found manuscript detailing a documentary that does not seem to officially exist, The Navidson Record. It’s a narrative within a narrative within a narrative, copiously (and often erroneously) footnoted. The documentary concerns a preternaturally-shaped house, which may or may not be haunted, and which frequently changes its inner layout and dimensions. It’s hard to be both scary and erudite, but Danielewski manages.

Perfect For: Someone who’s ready to make the leap into metafiction.


The Sandman: Preludes and NocturnesThe Sandman: Preludes and Nocturnes, by Neil Gaiman

Although Neil Gaiman has long had a reputation as a Horror writer, much of his fiction is simply Fantasy with a slight twist of Horror. Even most of his run on the Sandman comic series was more about Fantasy than Horror. But the first volume of this popular set definitely shows off Gaiman’s talent at writing Horror, albeit the sort influenced more by old Horror comics than novels. As he introduces the character of Morpheus, the King of Dreams, he is at great pains to remind us that Morpheus is also the King of Nightmares. The series found a larger audience after this first storyline, but I will always have a soft spot for this mash-up of Gothic and old-school comic book scares.

Perfect For: Wannabe goths and people wondering how Neil Gaiman got his start.


InfernoInferno, by Dante Alighieri

Ok, this one might be pushing it a little. There’s no doubt that much of today’s Horror fiction simply could not exist without Dante, but his medieval epic poem does not easily fit into the genre as we know it today. It also does not provide the thrills-n-chills normally associated with Horror. It is rather a more intellectual look at the horrors of the human spirit, and a sober acknowledgement of where they lead us. That being said, I would stack up the story told by Count Ugolino in the ninth circle of Hell about his betrayal by an archbishop to a slow and very cruel death against anything written by Stephen King or Clive Barker. You can also learn how Hell actually froze over a very, very long time ago.

Perfect For: Poetry lovers and those curious about ancient cosmologies.


Have anything you’d like to add to the list? Let us know in the comments!

Neil Gaiman’s Last American Book Crawl Posted at 2:46 AM by Rico Simpkins

icowrich

Neil GaimanNeil Gaiman is about to launch what is billed as his last US signing tour:

I think the OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE tour will be the last actual signing tour I ever do. They’re exhausting, on a level that’s hard to believe. I love meeting people, but the sixth hour of signing, for people who have been standing in a line for seven hours, is no fun for anybody. (The last proper US signing I did, it lasted over 7 hours and I signed for over 1000 people. I’d suspect a lot of the signings on this tour will be like that, or bigger.)
Boy, Mr. Gaiman, you sure do make your signings sound appealing!

I for one, hope this isn’t the last.  Just in case, however, we at WWEnd will be in line when you arrive in Dallas.  For the rest of you, here is our last chance to meet Neil Gaiman in the flesh in your town:

 

21 Jun Washington, DC The Last US Signing Tour: Mr. Gaiman Goes to Washington [SOLD OUT]
22 Jun Decatur, GA The Last US Signing Tour: Gaiman on My Mind [SOLD OUT]
23 Jun Coral Gables, FL The Last US Signing Tour: Coral (signing) Line
24 Jun Dallas, TX The Last US Signing Tour: Fright-Hair on Elm Street
25 Jun Denver, CO The Last US Signing Tour: Under Cover Gaiman
26 Jun Phoenix, AZ The Last US Signing Tour: Changesgaiman [SOLD OUT]
27 Jun Los Angeles, CA The Last US Signing Tour: Visitations and Angels
28 Jun San Francisco, CA Last US Signing Tour: Mr. Gaiman, w/the book, in the Conservatory [SOLD OUT]
29 Jun Portland, OR The Last US Signing Tour: City of Books [SOLD OUT]
02 Jul Seattle, WA The Last US Signing Tour: Call of Clarion [SOLD OUT]
06 Jul Santa Rosa, CA The Last US Signing Tour: When We Walk in Fields of Copper [SOLD OUT]
07 Jul Ann Arbor, MI The Last US Signing Tour: A Man, A Book, A Theater, Ann Arbor
08 Jul Bloomington, MN The Last US Signing Tour: Rock ‘n’ Roll High School
09 Jul Chicago, IL The Last US Signing Tour: Gaiman Unabridged [SOLD OUT]
10 Jul Nashville, TN The Last US Signing Tour: Of Course You Know This Means War Memorial
11 Jul Lexington, KY The Last US Signing Tour: Manchester Reservation [SOLD OUT]
13 Jul Cambridge, MA The Last US Signing Tour: The Parish at the End of the Tour
06 Aug Toronto, ON An Evening with Neil Gaiman
07 Aug Montreal, QC An Evening with Neil Gaiman
08 Aug Vancouver, BC An Evening with Neil Gaiman
18 Aug Portsmouth, UK An Evening with Neil Gaiman
20 Aug Cambridgeshire Neil Gaiman at Ely Cathedral
21 Aug Oxford, UK Neil Gaiman in conversation with Philip Pullman [SOLD OUT]
22 Aug Birmingham, UK Neil Gaiman at Waterstone’s Birmingham New Street
28 Aug Dundee, UK Neil Gaiman at Waterstone’s Dundee
28 Aug Inverness, UK Neil Gaiman at the Ironworks Inverness
01 Oct Lewisburg, PA Bucknell University Forum: tech/no

Gaiman’s Apocalypse Posted at 7:49 PM by Jonathan McDonald

jynnantonnyx

This week’s entry in our ongoing Genre Poetry series comes from Neil Gaiman’s short story and poetry collection, Fragile Things. What would happen if every genre-spawned apocalypse hit us at once? Would we even notice, or would we finally reach Patton Oswalt’s Etewaf Singularity?

The Day the Saucers Came
by Neil Gaiman

That day, the saucers landed. Hundreds of them, golden,
Silent, coming down from the sky like great snowflakes,
And the people of Earth stood and
      stared as they descended,
Waiting, dry-mouthed, to find what waited inside for us
And none of us knowing if we would be here tomorrow
But you didn’t notice it because

That day, the day the saucers came, by some coincidence,
Was the day that the graves gave up their dead
And the zombies pushed up through soft earth
or erupted, shambling and dull-eyed, unstoppable,
Came towards us, the living, and we screamed and ran,
But you did not notice this because

On the saucer day, which was the zombie day, it was
Ragnarok also, and the television screens showed us
A ship built of dead-men’s nails, a serpent, a wolf,
All bigger than the mind could hold,
      and the cameraman could
Not get far enough away, and then the Gods came out
But you did not see them coming because

On the saucer-zombie-battling-gods
      day the floodgates broke
And each of us was engulfed by genies and sprites
Offering us wishes and wonders and eternities
And charm and cleverness and true
      brave hearts and pots of gold
While giants feefofummed across
      the land, and killer bees,
But you had no idea of any of this because

That day, the saucer day the zombie day
The Ragnarok and fairies day, the
      day the great winds came
And snows, and the cities turned to crystal, the day
All plants died, plastics dissolved, the day the
Computers turned, the screens telling
      us we would obey, the day
Angels, drunk and muddled, stumbled from the bars,
And all the bells of London were sounded, the day
Animals spoke to us in Assyrian, the Yeti day,
The fluttering capes and arrival of
      the Time Machine day,
You didn’t notice any of this because
you were sitting in your room, not doing anything
not ever reading, not really, just
looking at your telephone,
wondering if I was going to call.

All Hallow’s Read Posted at 1:09 AM by Rico Simpkins

icowrich

Labor Day has come and gone, and you know what that means. Well, here in Texas, it means no more long strings of 100+° days. For the rest of you, it could mean the start of a new school year, locking up your favorite white sweater, and stocking up for Halloween. Normally, I don’t think about that last thing until, oh, around noon on October 31st. This year, however, I’ll be scoping the used book stores about once per week in preparation for All Hallow’s Read, a new tradition that Neil Gaiman suggested so late last year that I wasn’t prepared to do anything about it. Well, this year, I’m going to be ready.

You can’t just give out any book, of course. It has to be scary. Because I want to promote the best in science fiction and fantasy, I also want them to be WWEnd books. After all, I have my standards. So, here’s my strategy: I made a list of the scariest novels in the WWEnd database for this week’s blog entry. Then, I’m taking my smart phone to the local Half Price Books, where I will pull up this very blog entry. See how organized I am? I’m hoping to get dozens of copies of the following books:

FrankensteinFrankenstein, by Mary Shelley

This one is a no-brainer. Not only does it appear on virtually every classic SF list (including Classics of SF, Locus, Guardian, and NPR), it has long been held to be the first science fiction novel ever (Brian Aldiss makes the argument in Billion Year Spree). It’s also worth noting that the first science fiction novelist was a woman, making Frankenstein the oldest book on the SF Mistressworks list. The novel is, perhaps, most scary to government officials, as it was variously banned in places like South Africa and (gulp) Texas.

 

DraculaDracula, by Bram Stoker

It wasn’t the first (or even the third) vampire novel ever written, but it is, of course, the most renowned. The Guardian said that the book "spawned fiction’s most lucrative entertainment industry," but we are more impressed by its literary chops. The critics of the day favorably compared Dracula to Shelly, Emily Bronte and even the great Edgar Allan Poe. Even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was impressed. Your trick-or-treaters are the best testament to the novel’s greatness, as Dracula is arguably the most popular Halloween costume — ever.

 

The Day of the TriffidsThe Day of the Triffids, by John Wyndam

Unless you are a fan of the old black and white B movies, you probably associated man-eating plants with Little Shop of Horrors. But before Audrey 2 there were Triffids, horrifying venomous carnivores that began to prey on humans right after a meteor shower renders virtually all humans blind. That’s double the horror! At one point, the seemingly intelligent plants figure out how to herd sightless humans into groups, to, you know, maximize the carnage. The Day of the Triffids is a must read according to the Guardian and David Pringle. It also made the Classics of SF list.

 

Other novels I might give out include The Midwich Cuckoos (John Wyndam, again), The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, by Robert Louis Stephenson, Shadowland by Peter Straub, and anything by Stephen King (including his BFS award winning novel, It) or Clive Barker. For more ideas, check out the Dark Fantasy sub-genre list… and, please, tell us in the comments section what books you are going to give out.

Recently Read Books in Brief Posted at 12:48 AM by Jonathan McDonald

jynnantonnyx

American GodsAmerican Gods, by Neil Gaiman

This is probably Gaiman’s most popular novel, and the 155 reads recorded from our members’ stats attests to that. I wish I could share their enthusiasm. While American Gods is certainly both competent and entertaining, I have enough problems with it that I simply don’t much care for it as a story. Gaiman’s prose style isn’t bad, though it is never great, and I would have liked something a little better for a story dealing with such high-minded ideas. But it is the ideas that are the problem, here. Gaiman has written about the survival of ancient, unworshipped gods before and since, especially in his Sandman series and in the later Anansi Boys. The big idea that he repeats in all these works is that gods are beings born out of the collective religious consciousness of a people, that they are phantasms which can exist only so long as they are worshipped, but who still possess what we would think of as godlike powers while they still live. This is hardly a dull idea, even if it is reheated Jungianism, and it’s not hard to see why it found such a large audience. Unfortunately, I simply cannot take Gaiman’s metaphysics seriously enough to enjoy the novel.

Even so, Gaiman imbues his story with some fine, human moments, and he even occasionally recalls his earlier skills as a horror writer. There’s a large section of the novel that takes place in an out-of-the-way town and which seems largely inconsequential to the story as a whole, despite a late attempt to tie it back into the main plot. The most entertaining part of the novel is that it makes you want to rummage through your Encyclopedia of Mythology to identify all the gods and demigods who appear (or you can use this cheatsheet, but where’s the fun in that?).

Not a bad read, but hard to take seriously, despite all its sound and fury. Might be worth reading as preparation for the upcoming HBO television adaptation.


The Demolished ManThe Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester

Ben Reich is a man troubled by dreams, living in a world of telepaths. Much as in Minority Report, crime is difficult to commit and easy to punish, and murder is all but impossible. The future sees humanity expanding to other planets, but still crippled by its faults and flaws. Bester does a magnificent job creating the world of 2301, and his prowess as world-builder is even better here than in his celebrated The Stars My Destination. Unfortunately, his skills as a crime-drama writer are not as good.

It’s not much of a spoiler say that Reich commits murder, because he does so very early in the novel. While there is some suspense in the first part of the book, that largely disappears once the murder is done. There is a long cat-and-mouse chase between Reich and the police, but frankly the reader spends most of his time waiting for the police to laboriously put together all the pieces he already knows, and then has to wait even longer to see if the unlikeable Reich ever gets caught and punished for his crime. The only suspense in the book concerns the identity of The Man With No Face, a dream image that haunts Reich’s dreams, but it’s not a very interesting mystery.

The Demolished Man is worth reading if only for some very intriguing prose interpretations of what a telepath conversation might be like, but not for the murder mystery which is at its core.


MistbornMistborn, by Brandon Sanderson

I became familiar with Sanderson after he was chosen to finish Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series, so I decided to give his most popular trilogy a try. Mistborn is set in something like a post-apocalyptic Middle Earth—it’s a fantasy world where the evil god/wizard/warrior has won the battle against the chosen hero and remade the world in his own image. This is a magnificent idea, and Sanderson has a lot of fun with it in the first book of the trilogy. The resistance fighters are something like real-world revolutionaries, and are very much the underdogs. The group of heroes in here isn’t even the first to have attempted a revolution. This isn’t the kind of setup that would work apart from the larger body of genre fiction to play off of, but I expect it will be especially appreciated by those who have read fantasy for years.

Still, this isn’t a great series. Sanderson is a good writer, but I think he has a weakness when it comes to plotting. The first novel works as a whole, but the latter two are comparatively formless and sprawling. The trilogy ends in a very strange way, with an unfortunately literal deus ex machina. However, the alchemically-based system of magic is actually very detailed and precise in its functioning, something rare in fantasy literature, and much appreciated.

The first novel is decent, but it will make you want to read the follow-ups that fail to live up to the original.

Neil Gaiman Inspired Scents Posted at 6:38 AM by Rico Simpkins

icowrich

Neil Gaiman - Black Phoenix Alchemy LabThe great thing about fantasy books is that they transport you.  They manage to do it in ways that are often more immersive than movies, which have the advantage of sight and sound.  For some of us, though, the story isn’t quite visceral enough.  You haven’t been truly transported until you’ve experienced the sights, sounds, and smells of your favorite characters.  If you are one of those types, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab has something for you.  Their own collection of Neil Gaiman scents.

No, they don’t actually smell like Neil Gaiman, but one of them smells like Mad Sweeney from American Gods.  Apparently, he smells like whiskey and oak.  If you’d rather sniff Mr. Ibis, well, you’re in luck, they’ve distilled his essence as well.  Want to inhale characters from other books?  You can choose from many varieties inspired by the worlds of Stardust, Anansi Boys, and The Graveyard Book.

We’re not sure that this is what Shakespeare meant when he said "verse distills your truth", but at least they’re doing their best to truly distil verse.

Profits go to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Gaiman Posted at 9:14 PM by Rico Simpkins

icowrich

Neil GaimanThe man who gave us American Gods, Stardust, and Anansi Boys has, in return, been given another year of life. There’s a nice new birthday tribute to the man on FindingDulcinea. One of his books nabbed two wins and six nominationaccording toour Book Trakr, leaving us to wonder which he has more… nominations or birthdays?

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