We finally have the slipcases for the limited edition of the George R. R. Martin- and Gardner Dozois-edited Songs of the Dying Earth in our offices and will begin shipping at the end of this week. Please be patient, as we have over 450 individual orders to ship, with just a few dealer orders thrown in for good measure. We had hoped to have a few extra copies to offer our customers, but we didn’t receive enough overage on the limited edition — in fact, we’re having to use some legit (rather than PC) copies to give contributors. Unless a dealer cancels an order at the last second, we will not have any additional copies to offer for sale.

The first review of Unchained and Unhinged, Joe R. Lansdale’s mixed collection of short essays and very odd stories, is in, and it’s a winner. Straight from Publishers Weekly: “A must for Lansdale completists, this short collection is also a nice introduction to this unique author’s work.”

As we’ve recently published a brand new Langdon St. Ives adventure, The Ebb Tide, we thought it the perfect time to revisit one of the gentleman scientist’s other adventures, in a captivating audio read by Sam Mowry. Keep your lanterns, heavy winter jackets, and a firearm or two handy as you hear “Lord Kelvin’s Machine”.

We’ve just begun the heavy lifting on our next Neil Gaiman limited edition, his classic short story collection, Smoke and Mirrors. Once again, Dave McKean will be designing the book, as he did with The Graveyard Book. For Smoke and Mirrors, Dave will also be contributing original illustrations for each of the stories, 8-10 of them as full color plates, the rest as duotone illustrations to complement the presentation of the book.

Those of you who own our edition of The Graveyard Book know the sort of production you’re in for, a lovingly crafted volume meant for the permanent shelf. We’re taking the lettered edition a step beyond what we did with Graveyard, having a specially designed box created to hold the book, along with an original sketch by Dave. And that may not be all. We’ve discussed another extra for the lettered with Neil and Dave, but can’t say anything just yet.

All of our other Neil Gaiman titles are sold out. We expect this one to follow suit.

Finally, for the first week or so of ordering, you’ll notice we’re offering a significant discount on both the limited and lettered editions, to make things a little easier on your pocketbook.

We’re sold out of all but the lettered edition of Jack Vance’s sampler of stories, Wild Thyme, Green Magic, but there are still copies to be had out there in the wild, so we’re quite pleased to find that The Sacramento Book Review shares our opinion of this sampler of Jack’s best work: “Wild Thyme, Green Magic is the perfect introduction to those looking to read Jack Vance for the first time. Long time fans of the writer will want to have this beautiful edition on your shelf to peruse, skim, and voraciously read whenever you want.”

Publishers Weekly loves itself some novellas in the most recent issue, with very positive reviews for The God Engines (John Scalzi) and Thousandth Night and Minla’s Flowers (Alastair Reynolds).

First, their summation of John Scalzi’s newest: “If J. G. Ballard and H. P. Lovecraft had ever collaborated on a space opera, the results might have been like this: ferociously inventive, painfully vivid, dispassionately bleak and dreadfully memorable.”

And their take on Alastair Reynolds’ double novella book: “Larger-than-life characters, awesome extraterrestrial settings and spectacular technology fill these two novellas…”

We’ve just finished shipping all individual, retail, and wholesale orders for three new titles: Forever Twilight 2 (Peter Crowther); The Evil in Pemberley House (Philip Jose Farmer and Win Scott Eckert); and Crystal Nights and Other Stories (Greg Egan).

Next up are a half a dozen lettered editions, for which we recently received traycases, including Ubik: the Screenplay (Philip K. Dick), Project Moon Base and Others (Robert A. Heinlein); Your Hate Mail Will Be Graded (John Scalzi); Moby Dick: a Screenplay (Ray Bradbury); and Haggopian and Other Stories (Brian Lumley). We’ll post further updates as these head out the door. We’re also slated to receive cases for another ten lettered editions in the next few weeks.

The Sacramento Book Review lauds Joe R. Lansdale and Keith Lansdale’s Son of Retro Pulp Tales, highlighting most of the volume’s contents. Copyright fair use won’t let us reproduce the entire review, so here’s a taste: “To write in the format of a bygone era is to be in direct opposition with the sophisticated mindset of modern readers. All things considered, this collection fares quite well… Probably the best representation of Pulp’s sense of wonder is Harlan Ellison‘s twisted space fable, ‘The Toad Prince or, Sex Queen of the Martian Pleasure-Domes.’”

We’re waiting for the last few author corrections for Retro, and then it’s off to the printer for this throwback anthology.

The second installment of Peter Crowther’s homage to sf of the fifites, Forever Twilight 2: Windows to the Soul, has just hit our offices. If your tastes run to the nostalgic, with a setup as from The Twilight Zone or a Jack Finney novel, Forever Twilight 2 is a journey you won’t want to miss.

Limited HC:

$40

Publishers Weekly just weighed in on Peter F. Hamilton’s epic (in scope, and length) novel, The Reality Dysfunction: “Elements of space opera, Straubesque horror and adrenaline laced action make this a demanding, rewarding read.”