Showing posts with label Meteor House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Meteor House. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 10, 2024

Crossover Cover: Strange Incursions

 

This chapbook contains two stories by Jason Scott Aiken.

"The Blood of Raizor" is set in 11,550 BCE. In Northeast Africa, the lion Raizor and his sons, Tyton and Rohrdeth, battle a leopard-like alien. Raizor is killed, but his sons are changed by devouring the flesh of their foe. Tyton finds himself invulnerable, possessing more powerful claws, and unaging. In Nemea, he is slain by Heracles. Rohrdeth and his descendants possess a golden hide and enhanced intelligence and senses. The alien is of the same race as Coeurl from A. E. van Vogt’s “Black Destroyer.” According to Philip José Farmer’s Time’s Last Gift, Heracles was really John Gribardsun, an immortal time traveler from the future. One of Rohrdeth’s descendants will have a connection to Gribardsun.

In "Galazi in the Enchanted City," Galazi the Wolf investigates the murders of three members of his tribe of “ghost-wolves,” not far from the village of the People of the Axe, led by his friend Umslopogaas. Galazi sees a baobab tree that bears the images of the so-called demons of Lake Tanganyika: Loubari, Mgoussa, and Mousammouria. Galazi is captured and taken to a temple whose roof bears a grey stone sphere with a winged marble woman atop it. He is brought before Queen Touloumia of Mkinyaga. Long ago, the capital of Touloumia’s nation, Akribanza, was just one of a hundred cities in the vast empire of Kôr. A cavern wall bears the image of a man with a knife and a bow. The witch Nomma receives visions from the waters of a crystal basin. Among these visions are a muscular bronze-skinned youth breaking a leopard’s back, a bronze-skinned swordsman and a bearded giant battling soldiers, another bronze-skinned young man and a one-eyed dwarf, a white man wielding a cat-headed staff, a giant looking much like the earlier one battling what appears to be an older version of Umslopogaas, and a black warrior wielding the same type of sword as the bronzed swordsman fighting alongside a grey-haired white man and a robed bronze-skinned man battling beastly creatures near a giant crystalline stalk. Galazi the Wolf is from H. Rider Haggard’s Nada the Lily. Umslopogaas appears in not only that book, but the Allan Quatermain series as well. Loubari, Mgoussa, Mousammouria, and Queen Touloumia are from Eugène Hennebert’s The Enchanted City. The statue of the winged woman is a symbol of Truth seen in Haggard’s She and Philip José Farmer and Christopher Paul Carey’s The Song of Kwasin. Kôr is the city ruled by Ayesha, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed. The man with the knife and bow is Sahhindar from Farmer’s Khokarsa series. Sahhindar is also the immortal time traveler John Gribardsun from Farmer’s Time’s Last Gift, but he is best known as the lord of the apes. The crystal basin is from Haggard’s She and Allan. The bronze-skinned youth is King Minruth from the Ancient Opar books in his younger years. The bronze-skinned swordsman and the bearded giant are Hadon of Opar and his cousin Kwasin from the Ancient Opar series. The other bronze-skinned young man is Hadon’s son Kohr, while the one-eyed dwarf is Paga, whom Farmer meant to be Pag from Haggard’s Allan and the Ice-Gods. The white man with the cat-headed staff is Robert E. Howard’s Puritan adventurer Solomon Kane. The battle between Umslopogaas and the bearded giant Rezu (whose description is identical to Kwasin’s, whose fate is left open-ended at the end of The Song of Kwasin) is depicted in She and Allan. The black warrior, N’desi, is from Carey and Win Scott Eckert’s “Iron and Bronze.” The grey-haired man is Hareton Ironcastle from J.-H. Rosny Aîné’s Hareton Ironcastle’s Amazing Adventure, adapted and translated by Farmer as Ironcastle. The bronze man is Doc Ardan from Guy d’Armen’s Doc Ardan: City of Gold and Lepers, who Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier’s translation identified with a certain bronze-skinned doctor and crimefighter. The beastly creatures are the Wandarobo from John Peter Drummond’s Ki-Gor pulp stories, who Carey and Eckert implied to be exiles from Opar, originally from the Tarzan novels. The crystalline stalk is an extension of the mineral-vegetable-king from Ironcastle, and related to the Crystal Tree of Time from Farmer’s Tarzan and the Dark Heart of Time.

These crossovers are two of over a thousand covered in my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming this summer from Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2

Saturday, June 22, 2024

Crossover Cover: The Lazarus Cabal

 

Are you a pulp fan?

Then you'll love my just-announced chapbook The Lazarus Cabal, coming this summer from Meteor House! You can preorder it at their website, and also as part of a package deal with Crossovers Expanded Volume 3! I will be signing all copies of both at FarmerCon in August!

Wednesday, April 10, 2024

Crossover Cover: It's Always Darkest

Are you a fan of Philip Jose Farmer's Secrets of the Nine series?

Then you'll love this official novella in the series by Frank Schildiner!

For more information, be sure to purchase my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, coming this summer from Meteor House! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!
 

Thursday, February 1, 2024

Crossover Cover: Watch Your Back, Mr. Minamoto

 

Are you a John P. Marquand fan?

Then you'll love this chapbook by Frank Schildiner, in which a mysterious Japanese man called Mr. Minamoto takes on Jack London's Assassination Bureau, Ltd.!

For more information, including the other crossovers in this chapbook, be sure to buy copy of my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3 when Meteor House publishes it! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2! Incidentally, not only was this story also published by Meteor House, but it shares its cover artist, the enormously talented Keith Howell, with Crossovers Expanded!

Thursday, November 30, 2023

Crossover Cover: Phileas Fogg and the Heart of Osra

 

Are you a Jules Verne fan?

Then you'll love this novella, Joshua M. Reynolds' second follow-up to Philip Jose Farmer's The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, in which Fogg has an adventure in the kingdom of Ruritania from Anthony Hope's The Prisoner of Zenda, Rupert of Hentzau, and The Heart of Princess Osra!

For more information, including coverage of the other crossovers in the book, be sure to purchase a copy of my book Crossovers Expanded: A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3 when Meteor House publishes it! All three volumes are AUTHORIZED companions to Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Tuesday, February 14, 2023

Crossover Cover: The Monster on Hold

 

Are you a fan of the late great science fiction Grandmaster Philip Jose Farmer?

Then you'll love this novel, a posthumous collaboration between Farmer and Win Scott Eckert, and the fourth book in the Secrets of the Nine series, which takes place in both the Nine Universe and the Crossover Universe!

For more details, see my book Crossovers Expanded:  A Secret Chronology of the World Volume 3, to be released by Meteor House! All three books are AUTHORIZED companions to Win's invaluable pieces of research Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Volumes 1 and 2!

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Crossovers Expanded Proofs

Meteor House's Facebook page just posted this pic with the following text: "Eight (yes eight!) proofs in from the printer over the last few days. These books will all be debuting at FarmerCon!

http://www.pjfarmer.com/upcome.htm
"


I could not be happier. Thanks to Michael Croteau, Paul Spiteri, and last but never least the incomparable Win Scott Eckert for giving my first published books a home!

Monday, April 25, 2016

Crossover Cover: Bothon

This issue of Amazing Stories includes Gerald S. Whitehead's "Bothon," a tale of Atlantis and reincarnation. R'lyeh, the sunken city from H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos tales, is mentioned. Bothon is originally from Whitehead's Gerald Canevin story "Scar-Tissue." The Canevin story "The Shut Room" has a crossover reference to William Hope Hodgson's Carnacki story "The Whistling Room," further cementing this story in the CU.

A write-up of Whitehead's story along with many other short stories, books, movies, TV shows, audio dramas, and comics, will be included in my forthcoming books Crossovers Expanded Vols. 1 and 2 from Meteor House, companion volumes to Crossovers: A Secret Chronology of the World Vols. 1 and 2 by Win Scott Eckert. Both sets of books, when read in conjunction, give one a true feel for the scope of the Crossover Universe, a term originally coined by Win. The books will debut at FarmerCon/PulpFest in Columbus, OH, on July 21-24, 2016. Win and I will be at the Meteor House booths signing and selling copies, and Keith Howell (cover artist for both volumes) and William Patrick Maynard (author of the foreword for Vol. 2; Win is providing Vol. 1's foreword) will be there and available to sign the books as well.

Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Crossovers Expanded

The books now have an order page on the Meteor House website. Click this link. :)

As you can see, they will be Crossovers Expanded Volumes 1 and 2, rather than Crossovers Volume 3 and 4, since it is an expansion rather than a sequel. After all, it covers the same span of time as the original volumes, rather than picking up after the Time Traveler battled the Morlocks. :) Also, dig those awesome covers by Keith Howell! I cannot begin to tell you how excited I am right now!

Friday, October 9, 2015

Crossover Cover: Exiles of Kho

The priestess Lupoeth leads a band of her fellow Khokarsan exiles on a journey which results in the fulfillment of a prophecy she will found a great city. The god Sahhindar accompanies them, and says the city founded by Lupoeth and her companions will be very important to him. The foreword states the bulk of the story is derived from the recently discovered notebooks of Sir Beowulf William Clayton, the Oxford linguist who provided a partial translation of Phileas Fogg’s secret diary. The story has been reconstructed from Clayton’s translation of a tablet enigmatically designated “Holly 27-A.” Sahhindar refers to the star-shaped being from which the roots of the Tree of Kho emanate. Sahhindar and other members of Lupoeth’s group, including the priest Methquth, are captured by the K’goroshanaka tribe. Sahhindar later tells Lupoeth ingesting the nethkarna, the seed of the Tree, caused Methquth to experience visions of the future of Khokarsa. Exiles of Kho effectively serves as a prequel to Philip José Farmer’s Ancient Opar series, detailing how Lupoeth arrives at the site where she will build the city of Opar, from Edgar Rice Burroughs' novels. Sahhindar is the immortal, time-traveling John Gribardsun, as readers of Farmer’s Time’s Last Gift will recognize. Sir Beowulf William Clayton, a distant cousin of Gribardsun, is from Farmer’s The Other Log of Phileas Fogg. Holly is a reference to Ludwig Horace Holly from H. Rider Haggard’s novel She and its sequels. In She, Ayesha states her oracular powers only encompass events in Africa; her ability is derived from the same source as Methquth’s. According to Farmer, Ayesha’s native city, Kôr, was founded by Kohr, the son of Hadon of Opar. The star-shaped being is from Farmer’s translation and adaptation of J.-H. Rosny aîné’s Ironcastle. The K’goroshanakas are the ancestors of the Goura-Zannkas from Ironcastle.


Sunday, June 15, 2014

Crossover of the Week

Summer
THE WOLFF THAT ONE HEARS
            Archaeologist François Bordes explores the caves at Lascaux, and finds a stone with a tablet inside, which has strange writing inscribed upon it. Trying to decipher the inscriptions, he searches a book by his colleague Aristide Clairembard. An hour later, he discovers similarities between the writing and samples recorded by Professor Lidenbrock in Iceland in the 19th Century. According to Clairembard, only one person was able to decipher the text unearthed by Lidenbrock: Robert Wolff, a professor at Traybell University in Busiris, Illinois. Traveling to Busiris to meet with Wolff, Bordes and his American colleague encounter Dr. Oscar le Rouge.
            Short story by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier in The Worlds of Philip José Farmer 2: Of Dust and Soul, Michael Croteau, ed., Meteor House, 2011. François Bordes was a real life archaeologist, geologist, and scientist, who also wrote science fiction novels under the pen name Francis Carsac. This story reveals where Bordes got the idea for his novel Ceux de Null Part (Those from Nowhere.) Professor Wolff (aka Jadawin) and Dr. le Rouge (aka Red Orc) are from Farmer’s The World of Tiers series. Traybell University appears in Farmer’s novel Traitor to the Living; an alternate universe version of the University appears in Farmer’s story “The God Business.” Busiris, Illinois is a recurring stand-in for Peoria in Farmer’s works. Professor Aristide Clairembard (or Clairembart) is one of the allies of adventurer Bob Morane in novels by Henri Vernes. Professor Otto Lidenbrock’s Icelandic expedition was chronicled by his nephew Axel Lidenbrock and edited by Jules Verne into a book entitled Journey to the Centre of the Earth. This story is set in the early 1950s, and Bordes is described as “barely thirty.” Since Bordes was born in 1919, 1950 is the most likely year for it to take place.

Sunday, March 30, 2014

Upcoming Crossovers: Phileas Fogg and the War of Shadows


Meteor House, which will be publishing my new volumes, has just made Phileas Fogg and the War of Shadows available for pre-order. This novella by Josh Reynolds is a sequel to Farmer's The Other Log of Phileas Fogg. I have a personal connection to this book. When you look at the credits page, you'll see two Continuity Editors listed. One is Win. The other is me. I won't spoil any plot details, but I will say that there will definitely be some crossovers in this one. It's an honor to be involved with this book, and I truly appreciate Win asking me to take part in it. He's a great friend!

Friday, March 7, 2014

Crossover Covers: The Scarlet Jaguar

This excellent novella by Win serves as a sequel to his and Farmer's equally great novel The Evil in Pemberley House. Both tomes feature Patricia "Pat" Wildman, the daughter of a certain bronze-skinned pulp hero. As is often the case with Win, there are plenty of crossovers, and therefore I've written it up for Volume 4. Win is the perfect person to carry on Pat's adventures.