The Mumpsimus

  I'm thrilled that the ebook edition of The Last Vanishing Man is now available from the major ebook vendors: Amazon , Barnes & Noble , Kobo , and probably some others I don't know about. For the announcement image we're using on social media, we added a rainbow in honor of Pride Month, one of the only times we're violating the austere palette of the book's design. But Pride's important right now, during a time of escaling attacks on LGBTQIA+ people and culture. The Last Vanishing Man is a queer book in just about every way — indeed, if any general genre accounts for it all, that genre is the Queer Weird (Queird?). In the latest issue of Locus , Ian Mond offers a generous review of the collection and of my work generally. He notes that the book "depicts the melancholy of older gay men who were never able to fully express their affections" and "the loneliness and isolation of younger gay men in a post-AIDS world". Not easy stuff, of co...

Today, Open Road Media releases e-book editions of a number of Samuel R. Delany's best books . I've had the chance to look at the Kindle edition of Dhalgren , and it's really excellent. Indeed, it looks to be the most accurate text, incorporating the corrections to errata in the Vintage editions , which were, until now, the most accurate. The other Open Road editions (which I haven't yet seen) are: Babel-17 , Nova , Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand , The Motion of Light in Water , and the four Nevèrÿon books.

I have contributions in three new e-books that offer all sorts of wonders and joys: Don't Pay Bad for Bad  is a collection of rare and previously unpublished short stories by Amos Tutuola (author of The Palm-Wine Drinkard, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts , etc.). The e-book includes an introduction by Tutuola's son Yinka, and an afterword by me in which I try to give some of the context for how Tutuola's writing has been perceived by readers over the years. [Available from Weightless (Epub & Mobi formats), Wizard's Tower (Epub & Mobi), Amazon .] Tainaron: Mail from Another City  by Leena Krohn is a nearly-indescribable novella, easily one of my favorite pieces of writing of the last few decades, and so I'm thrilled to have provided an afterword for the e-book. [Available from Weightless (Epub & Mobi formats), Amazon .] The second issue of the lit journal  Unstuck  includes all sorts of stories, poems, essays, whatzits, etc., including a little ...

First, just a reminder that Lydia Millet will be reading tonight at McNally Robinson in Manhattan in support of her new novel How the Dead Dream , which is very much worth reading. I'm planning on being there, though will probably arrive a few minutes late. Second, there are suddenly a bunch of free books available for download via their publishers and authors: As many people have noted, Tor Books is giving away a free ebook each week to people who register with them. The current book is Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, which I happen to know is a book Lydia Millet is a fan of... Nightshade Books has a few downloads available, including Richard Kadrey's Butcher Bird , which looks like it could be marvelous. Wired.com's Geekdad blog has an interview with Jeff & Ann VanderMeer from which you can download Jeff's novella The Situation (coming soon from PS Publishing ).