Now in his latest book, Black Hills, Simmons continues his fascination with the nineteenth century, but this time, he writes about the heartwrenching life and times of Paha Sapa, a Sioux Native American who lived through the bloody days of the American West. His next book, Drood, is a Victorian gothic mystery thriller narrated by Wilkie Collins as he tries to puzzle out the mental stability of his friend Charles Dickens, who had taken a turn for the worst after surviving a horrific train accident. The Terror, which landed Simmons on the New York Times list and gave his publishers an excuse to market him as “speculative fiction”, is about the ill-fated lost voyage of Sir John Franklin’s expedition to find passageway through the Arctic in 1847. Recently, the settings for his latest novels have roamed throughout the nineteenth century. After all, he’s best known for the Hyperion Cantos, a four-book space opera that’s structured after Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron, and his sci-fi epic Illium/Olympos draws from Homer’s Iliad. Much of his success lies in his clever inspirational play between classical forms and fantastical content. In fact, Dan Simmons is one of those writers who has spanned multiple genres in his career, leaping easily from sci-fi to horror to historical to crime thrillers and even blending them all at once. I had the chance to get an advanced copy for Dan Simmons’ latest book Black Hills, which pubs this month, a book that easily falls into several bins: historical fiction, supernatural suspense, and Weird West. I devoured this book in two days after getting it, and was able to get in touch with Karin for an interview about writing THE GASLIGHT DOGS. The two of them and the steadfast Whishishian native guide Keeley must work together to master a deadly power or else everyone – both colonialist and native – will suffer dire consequences. THE GASLIGHT DOGS, a fantasy set on the wild borderlands of the frozen North where, in the epic words of the back cover: “an ancient nomadic tribe faces a new enemy – an empire fueled by technology and war.” Sjenn, a young spiritwalker from the Aniw tribe, is taken prisoner for murder by the Victorian-esque Ciracusans settlers and meets Captain Jarrett, a brash soldier with daddy issues and a terrible gift. Dick Award.īut enough singing of praises for her previous work. WARCHILD was the first of a trilogy that continued with BURNDIVE and CAGEBIRD, and both WARCHILD and BURNDIVE were nominated as finalists for the Philip K. Karin Lowachee’s publishing career began when she was won a first novel contest judged by Tim Powers (yes, fellow steampunks, *that* Tim Powers, author of The Anubis Gates) and had her book WARCHILD published in 2002. 3 With the increased influx of Chinese people entering the American west, specifically within California, in search of golden prospects, promises of abundant land, and industrious opportunity their expanding population was leading to unsettling the sedate Western imprint of removed mysticism shown of oriental representation as the advancing closeness of Chinese residents were informing fearful features upon its distantly complacent cast.īut it would be months until I got get my hands on the physical book, and was quite pleased when I finally did. The stereotyped imprint of Chinese immigrants was initially contentedly rendered in the pictured accounts in mid-nineteenth century America through publications such as Harper’s New Monthly in the 1850’s that showed the distinctive pig-tail and conical basin hat of “John Chinaman’” and this picturesque “Celestial” was a widespread Western rendition in American periodicals, drawn from imparted occidental accounts of the “mystical men of the Orient”. 1įor even as the Occident regards the Far East, so does the Far East regard the Occident, – only with this difference: that what each most esteems in itself is least likely to be esteemed by the other.–Lafcadio Hearn/ Koizumi Yakumo, Kokoro 2 Occidental Outlines – Asian defacement in American popular periodicals, run from the story papers and bound ‘yellow-backs’, to the periled portrayals wrapped in America pulp. #Best weird west novels full#For those interested in the Works Cited resource information for the full essay, please contact me.ħ. Note from Ay-leen: This is part 2 of Noah Meernaum’s essay about minority representations in Weird West.
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