Volume 6, Issue 1
January 13, 2010

Happy New Year!

Thank you for your continued support in 2009; we wouldn't be here without you.

The Latest

Mark your calendars! We've been confirmed as dealers at BayCon 2010 (May 28-31, Santa Clara, CA).

In the past month we've added over 300 photos (browse newly photographed items here), attended 2 signings/events (see our Just Arrived page), and posted countless new items to our inventory.

We now have over 11000 items available through Biblio and over 7000 through Amazon.

Scott & Tammie
Handee Books, LLC

• Sandman Slim - Kadrey
• Move Under Ground - Mamatas
• The Domino Men - Barnes
• The Lord of the Sands of Time - Ogawa
• The Wall of America - Disch
• Generation Loss - Hand
• Stacks of magazines and scads of comics

• The Drowning City - Downum
• Four Freedoms - Crowley
• Innocents Abroad - Wolfe
• The Somnambulist - Barnes
• The Word of God - Disch
• Escape from Hell! - Duncan
• Majestrum - Hughes
• Stacks of magazines and scads of comics

I’ve made it my mission to at least sample every book or magazine given to me at the 2009 World Fantasy Convention (WFC).

First up was Sandman Slim by Richard Kadrey. Kadrey’s published several other novels, two of which I’ve read and enjoyed, as well as numerous short stories, a couple of works of nonfiction and a serialized graphic novel originally published by Vertigo. This novel is different in subject matter from his previous work, being an urban fantasy set in contemporary L.A.

It begins with Kadrey’s anti-hero Jimmy Stark escaping from Hell, to which he’d been banished eleven years before by Mason Faim, a powerful and cowardly magician jealous of Stark’s own superior abilities. Having been forced to fight in an arena for the enjoyment of Hell’s denizens, Stark returns to Earth with a couple of cursed artifacts and fighting abilities which make ninja look like drunk street fighters. He also returns with a goal: kill Mason as well as the other members of his magic circle which contributed to his being sent “downtown”. It’s an ultra-violent hardboiled detective story as Stark enlists a willing video store clerk, an immortal alchemist and a reformed vampire and runs afoul of Homeland Security’s Golden Vigil division, which is literally in league with the angels.

Incredibly violent, this reads like James Ellroy and Mickey Spillane collaborating on a supernatural fantasy. Readers who enjoy Mike Carey’s Felix Castor books and the Hellblazer comics will like this. Fast moving and visceral, this is not recommended for the easily offended or faint-of-heart.

“The Chimera Transit” is a short story by Jack Skillingstead which appeared in the February 2007 issue of Asimov’s. It’s the first thing I’ve read by Skillingstead, and I loved it. He has a novel and a short story collection out which I’ll be looking for. If you like Philip K. Dick, check this guy out.

Other magazines I sampled include The Fabulist, an online magazine I check in with every once in a while but which hasn’t posted anything new since October 2009 (best story in their print sampler: “Where Is the Enchilada of Death?” by Jen Burke Anderson); Other, an eclectic (and defunct) magazine focussing on gender issues which has published fiction by a number of interesting people including Rudy Rucker; and Realms of Fantasy, which I almost never read. The December 2009 issue featured the excellent “A Road Once Traveled” by Richard Parks, an author with whom I was familiar but had never read.

Nick Mamatas’ first novel, Move Under Ground was published by our friends at Night Shade in 2004. A trade paperback edition is available from Prime. It’s well worth picking up if you’re either a Lovecraft fan or if you admire Jack Kerouac’s work but don’t hold it sacred.

The central conceit is brilliant: while hiding out at Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s cabin at Big Sur in the early ‘60s (with a Hindu deity he calls Marie), Kerouac receives letters from Neal Cassady warning of the rise of Old Ones. Kerouac sets out in search of Cassady as strange events begin to occur in the area - there’s a particularly effective scene in which suburban visitors to Big Sur abandon their cars to trek, trancelike, to the ocean and view the rising of R'lyeh. Kerouac passes through San Francisco, where he meets up with Allen Ginsburg (who has gone literally underground) before finally discovering Cassady in Nevada. As the two journey to New York with no clear goal in mind they encounter cultists and minions and William S. Burroughs and witness the end of the world. The joke here is that only individuals who are “attuned” in a certain way can see Cthulhu’s influence.

The satire is sharp and Mamatas does an amazing job of capturing Kerouac’s voice. Lovecraft pastiches have been done to death in recent years, but every once in a while a good one comes along. This is a great one.

I skipped Jonathan Barnes’ first novel, The Somnambulist, when it came out in 2008, despite receiving a review copy and loving the opening paragraph; there’s just too much to read. Barnes’ second novel, The Domino Men, was included in the WFC bag and I loved it. It’s an indirect sequel to The Somnambulist, but knowledge of the previous book isn’t necessary to enjoy it.

Henry Lamb is a milquetoast former child star of an awful mid-’80s sitcom called “Worse Things Happen at Sea”. Now working as a file clerk, he’s still recognized on the street and constantly implored to recite his character’s catch phrase, “Don’t blame me. Blame Grandpa”. Trouble enters his life when he’s conscripted by a shadowy organization called The Directorate which has been fighting a secret war with the House of Windsor for over 150 years.

The plot twists and turns, the narrative jumping between Henry’s firsthand account of fighting the good fight alternating with a second voice detailing the Prince’s struggles with his conscience and his addiction to a substance called Ampersand. The plot hinges on finding a missing Directorate operative, Estella, who may be the savior of London. The supporting cast, including Henry’s boss Dedlock, coworkers Mr. Jasper, Barnaby and Barbara and especially The Prefects are all expertly handled. If Tom Robbins and Neil Gaiman collaborated, you might get something like this.

Tachyon has published two books by Thomas M. Disch, The Word of God, a novel, and a short story collection, The Wall of America. The Wall of America is a marvelous book, funny and sometimes surprisingly light. My favorite is the title story, in which the the NEA lessens the eyesore that would be a 2,000 mile-long wall between the U.S. and Canada by turning the wall into a massive art gallery. In “Canned Goods” an art collector turns dealer and barters away his collection for...I wouldn’t want to spoil the story. Stories such as “The White Man” and “A Family of the Post-Apocalypse” are much darker, but there’s not a weak story in the bunch.

Elizabeth Hand’s Generation Loss surprised me. First, those looking for a fast-moving plot should look elsewhere. It’s a character study, the protagonist being Cass Neary, in Hand’s words “your prototypical amoral speed freak crunched kleptomaniac murderous rage-filled alcoholic bisexual heavily-tattooed American female photographer.” She had her 15 minutes 30 years ago when she was one of the foremost chroniclers of the American punk scene of the mid-70s. Since then she’s been on a continuously downward spiral fueled by drugs and her own apathy toward, well, everything. Her shot at redemption arrives when a friend offers her a job interviewing Aphrodite Kamestos, an influential and reclusive photographer whose two books lit a spark for Cass years before.

What makes this book a tough read is the protagonist herself. Cass is a (self) damaged person, only occasionally sympathetic; the book is told entirely in the first person, from her point of view, making for a relentlessly nihilistic read. What surprised me was how involving Cass’ story is. As she comes into contact with the woman who most inspired her and with those who admire Cass herself, she struggles with the decision to make a better life for herself. Generation Loss is a subtle and rewarding book.

The Lord of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa is another release from Viz’ Haikasoru imprint, and like the other one I read from them, Zoo by Otsuichi, it suffers from a workmanlike translation. Which is a shame, because there’s a compelling story here.

Decades after humanity has been forcibly removed from Earth by creatures referred to as E.T.s, an army of genetically engineered soldiers called Messengers are sent back in time to ready Earth for the coming invasion. The novel focusses on one Messenger, Orville, and his travels to 248, 1943 and the dawn of our species as he attempts to unite humanity and defeat the E.T.s before they even arrive. The problem is that the E.T.s have the same basic idea.

Ogawa’s story is complex, fraught with paradoxes and alternate timelines. He constructs a bittersweet romance, between Orville and Sayaka, the lover in his present (2598) who he knows he’ll never see again, regardless of whether he’s successful or not. A recurring theme, that uniting people is like herding cats, is timely and makes the story relevant. The problem here, as mentioned before, is the translation. While the prose is adequate I can’t believe the original was this colorless. Aside from the title, the book is completely devoid of poetry. That said, it’s a solid read and I’d recommend it to those who’ve enjoyed John Varley or even Olaf Stapledon.

Reading now: Amanda Downum’s first book, The Drowned City. I’ll admit it: I picked it up for the beautiful cover art. So far (about halfway through) it’s a creditable job of world-building.

BEST OF THE YEAR

Two books this year. First is the best book I read which was published in 2009: Sunnyside by Glen David Gold, a brilliant evocation of the birth of celebrity culture told from the points of view of Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and a host of other characters both fictional and not. There’s a lot going on here and I intend to make time to read it again. [Read the August 11, 2009 edition (vol 5, issue 4) of our newsletter for Scott's full review]

The best older book I read this year was The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson, the first of his novels about Walt Longmire, sheriff of Absaroka County, WY. Thanks again to David Lewis for handing me a copy and saying, “read this”. [Read the November 18, 2009 edition (vol 5, issue 7) of our newsletter for Scott's full review]