We’re starting to hear back from readers, and catching the odd — sometimes, very, odd, thanks John C. Wright — mention of our Jack Vance Tribute anthology, Songs of the Dying Earth. Here’s one bit back from the void, part of this review, in which most of the stories are touched upon: “Songs of the Dying Earth (****½) is an exceptionally strong collection, a rich and sumptuous banquet of tales from the end of time. The weak links here are not enough to dilute the impact of the best stories in the collection, and the best stories are thought-provoking, memorable and sharply funny.”

Stock Update: We’re down to the last 250 copies of the Trade Hardcover, so you may want to get your order in if you’re interested in snagging a copy.

The kudos keep piling up for K. J. Parker’s fantasy novella, Purple and Black. This time, it’s Fantasy Literature weighing in:

“K.J. Parker unerringly captures the relationship between two college buddies who are thrust into situations for which they were not prepared. Nico becomes emperor because his father, uncles, and older brothers all killed each other in a civil war. Phormio is a political philosopher and a college instructor, so he leads the military from a text book. Many of the letters cover the darker territory of wartime tragedies, but Purple and Black’s tone swings back and forth between lighthearted teasing and weighty affairs of state, and Parker manages the transitions seamlessly.”

We’re proud to announce the second in our series of shorter anthologies — for those keeping track, Yanni Kuznia’s A Fantasy Medley was the first.

This time out, Nick Gevers, esteemed editor and one of the honchos of PS Publishing, has gathered new stories by Robert Silverberg, Lucius Shepard, Jay Lake, Kage Baker, and Jeffrey Ford. The Book of Dreams will be released early next year, illustrated by J. K. Potter. As with A Fantasy Medley, we expect the limited edition (only 200 copies, signed by all the authors) to sell especially quickly.

A little further down the line on the anthology front, Jonathan Strahan and I are putting together a projected 150 page steampunk volume. We already have tales on hand by Bruce Sterling and Caitlin R. Kiernan, and expect another four tales before we’re done assembling the volume.

Vincent Chong has completed most of the artwork for Arturo Perez-Reverte’s The Club Dumas, including the drop dead gorgeous cover depicted here, and small duotone illustrations for each chapter. Right now, he’s putting the finishing touches on the full-color interior illustrations for the novel, and has already completed the “secret” image for the back of the dust jacket, much the same as he did for Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Shadow of the Wind.

Now that the chapter head illustrations are done, we’ve sent the book off to our designer, and will begin proofreading shortly. You can check out a number of the chapter head illustrations at the book page.

The headline says it all. You can read Michael Bishop’s gem, “The Pile” by clicking on the story title. Congrats, Mike, and thanks again for sending us the story. Readers will be happy to know we have another Bishop tale in inventory for a future issue of the online mag.

We’ve just seen the first copies of Ray Bradbury’s full color chapbook, The Shop of the Mechanical Insects, and Dave McKean’s design and illustrations make this short tale absolutely sing. Insects is selling very well, so we will not have copies available for our wholesale accounts or large online retailers. We expect the bulk of the copies to arrive in our warehouse in another week or so, and will begin shipping them as quickly as we can.

In the mood for a little steampunk? Head over to James P. Blaylock’s The Ebb Tide page and check out the opening chapter to his nifty novella. We’re just a couple of weeks from shipping the finished book, so you don’t have long to wait if the excerpt whets your appetite.

One of the advantages of Internet publishing is that it allows for topical stories to become pixels on screen on relatively short notice. Just a few short weeks ago, Kim Newman turned in a 20,000 word novella celebrating the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Hence, we’re thrilled to publish a new Diogenes Club story, “Moon Moon Moon.”

[As an aside, I cannot recommend his collection, The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club, highly enough. There’s much fun, some of it in the form of pop culture references that whiz past like supersonic paper airplanes. The collection is currently out of print from its excellent publisher, MonkeyBrain Books, but copies aren’t hard to turn up on the secondary market.]

Robert Silverberg’s Trips, the fourth volume of his collected short stories, received a mostly positive review in the current issue of SF Site, including this blurb: “‘Born with the Dead,’ which went on to win a Nebula Award for Silverberg, is perhaps the most successful of the stories included, but others, such as the titular ‘Trips’ or ‘The Dybbuk of Mazel Tov IV’ stand the test of time. These stories show that no matter how much Silverberg was feeling that times were changing around him, he could still tell a good story.”

The month of Jack Vance continues, this time with a long and laudatory article in the New York Times. As far as new Vance goes, we’ve recently shipped both Wild Thyme, Green Magic (a generous helping of the SF Grandmaster’s best stories) and Songs of the Dying Earth (in which writers such as Dan Simmons, Neil Gaiman, and George R. R Martin pay tribute with stories set in the ‘Dying Earth’ milieu). In just a couple of short weeks we’ll be shipping Jack’s autobiography, This is Me, Jack Vance!

Finally, readers should know that Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan are at work on a collection of Jack’s early stories for next year, Hard Luck Diggings. Look for a table of contents and ordering info late this summer or fall.