Thursday, November 27, 2014

DIGITAL PARCHMENT SERVICES Publishes MIRROR, MIRROR By Star Trek And Fantastic Voyage Writer Jerome Bixby!



DIGITAL PARCHMENT SERVICES

Is Proud To Announce The Publication Of

MIRROR, MIRROR

Classic SF By The Famed Star Trek And Fantastic Voyage Writer

NEW JEROME BIXBY COLLECTION
CONTAINS THREE SF MAGAZINE STORIES THAT INSPIRED TELEPLAYS HE WROTE FOR THE ORIGINAL STAR TREK TV SERIES (1966-69)

For Immediate Release

"Mirror, Mirror", the first collection of Jerome Bixby's science fiction in nearly fifty years, showcases three forgotten pulp magazine stories by that Bixby adapted for the acclaimed Star Trek episode.

Before he wrote four fan-favorite Star Trek episodes (receiving a nomination for the coveted Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation), and the screen story for the movie Fantastic Voyage, Jerome Bixby (1923-1998) was a highly regarded professional science fiction magazine editor and writer remembered for his "yeoman work in raising the standards of the science fiction action story (…) whose own stories, though few, are much sought after by discriminating readers." (Science Fiction Stories 1953) 

Bixby soon deserted magazine editing for Hollywood, where he wrote a number of low-budget, late-1950s monster movies including It: The Terror from Beyond Space (the acknowledged inspiration for Alien), and landed scripting chores on the documentaryesque early science fiction television series, Men Into Space, before striking it big when he sold Fantastic Voyage to a studio.

Jerome Bixby is best remembered, however, for the four episodes he wrote for the original Star Trek television series, and is much revered by series fans for introducing, in "Mirror, Mirror," the concept of the "mirror universe" where The Federation and Kirk, Spock, et al, are all their evil exact opposites in character and deed.  

Bixby also wrote three other episodes, "By Any Other Name," "Day of the Dove," and, "Requiem for Methuselah," all of which critics and fans rank among the best in the series. 

Fans of all types will thrill to learn that this first-ever collection focusing on Jerome Bixby's science fiction will showcase a trior of never-before-reprinted novelettes containing ideas that Bixby would later mine and transmogrify in two of his highly regarded Star Trek episodes, "One-Way Street" and "Mirror, Mirror" (both used in the ST script "Mirror, Mirror") and "Cargo to Callisto" (used in "By Any Other Name"). 

The collection will also contain Bixby's most famous short story, "It's a Good Life," memorably dramatized first on The Twilight Zone, then in the Twilight Zone Movie, and finally reinterpreted for the twenty-first century on the series 2002-3 incarnation, in "It's Still a Good Life." 

Other Bixby classics include his first SF story for a pulp magazine, "Tubemonkey" (1949), and his very last, "The God Plllnk" (1964). You will also find a half-dozen other "lost" stories and novelettes reprinted for the first time since their original magazine publication in the 1950 and '60s. 

Mirror, Mirror was edited and features a long personal Introduction by his son, screenwriter and producer, Emerson Bixby.

To be released in both trade paperback and as an ebook, "Mirror, Mirror Classic SF by the Famed Star Trek and Fantastic Voyage Writer" is a collection with something for everyone; it's for fans of pulp magazines, for fans of good science fiction writing, and for every fan who has ever journeyed along the space lanes with Kirk, Spock and McCoy.

Digital Parchment Services ebooks and paperbacks are available online through Amazon, B&N, and other sites, while our ebooks debut at Amazon for Kindle, and other platforms and bookselling sites to be announced.

ebook            
Introductory price: $3.99 – Regularly $6.99            
ISBN 9781615082414

http://amzn.com/1503302431
Trade Paper             
Introductory price $9.99 – Regularly $14.99
ISBN 9781503302433

Distributed by Futures-Past Editions
Twitter: @futurespasted
Facebook: Futures-Past-Editions

For Review Copies Contact:
M.ChristianPublisher
Digital Parchment Services

Digital Parchment Services is a complete ebook and print service for literary estates and literary agents. The founders of Digital Parchment Services are pioneers in digital publishing who have collectively published over 2,500 ebooks and PoD paperbacks since 1998. 

DPS clients include the estates of multiple Hugo winning author William Rotsler, and science fiction legend Jody Scott; authors such as Locus Award finalist Ernest Hogan, Hugo and Nebula nominee Arthur Byron Cover, prize winning mystery author Jerry Oster, psychologist John Tamiazzo, Ph.D., award winning nutritionist Ann Tyndall; and Best of Collections from Fate Magazine and Amazing Stories.

Twitter: @DigiParchment

Facebook: Digital-Parchment-Services

Tuesday, November 25, 2014

Ernest Hogan on Cortez On Jupiter!

Here's Ernest Hogan's beautiful introduction to the new edition of his groundbreaking novel, Cortez On Jupiter!


Not since Ayn Rand's Howard Roarke has there been an artist as iconoclastic, as idealistic, and as splendidly spectacular as Pablo Cortez. And look out, he's twice as radical!

"Energetic, fast-paced, funny, and thoroughly enjoyable." -Analog

Combining hard science fiction with pyrotechnics worthy of "The Stars, My Destination," Ernest Hogan tells the story of the painter who founds the Guerrilla Muralists Of Los Angeles, goes on to make Mankind's first contact with the sentient life-forms of Jupiter.

“If Hunter S Thompson and Alfred Bester had a Chicano child, it would be this. - Dave Hutchinson 

The Secret Origin of Pablo Cortez
An Introduction to CORTEZ ON JUPITER

A long time ago, in the outer fringes of Los Angeles County, I was working on a abstract painting, when Pablo Cortez popped out. The art teachers at Mt. San Antonio College ("Mount SAC") encouraged abstract art, none of this stuff with recognizable imagery or social commentary and certainly no commercial art or illustration. They were Fine Artists who created Fine Art that educated middle class people could dress up in their best clothes, visit on the weekends in downtown galleries or museums and feel civilized.

I was a Chicano kid (yeah, yeah, I was born in East L.A., my mother’s maiden name was Garcia – ya wanna see my I.D. while we’re at it, officer?) whose ideas of culture came from television, drive-in movies, and reading material I bought at liquor stores. I felt that my art should grow out of the funky environment that I lived in. The future starts now, and it also starts here.

No wonder Pablo Cortez popped out of that painting.

I was having a good time playing Jackson Pollock, slinging and smearing paint, putting stuff like paint thinner to make it drip . . . and there was a problem with the drips. I liked them, but they had a tendency to flow in the same direction – down. This would dominate the composition, nail it to the ground. I needed to defy gravity somehow. Like I was on an orbiting space station.

I was also experimenting with writing about Chicano characters – finding new veiwpoints for that gave a fresh, intense life to my stories. (Yeah, I could be an artist and writer. And I could understand science, too. Keep your borders out of my way . . .) I was interested in the things that weren’t in science fiction, after all, they were going to be in the future, too.

Also, once you’re got a good character – one that comes to life on the page and in the reader’s mind, you’re like a mad scientist who has zapped a monster to life. All you have to do after that is follow it around, study how it interacts with it’s environment, report to world what happens... that is if the military doesn’t come screaming down out of the sky and blasts it all away for common good.

This was the Seventies. The Sixties had burned out. The Vietnam War had just ended. Nixon and Watergate were dominating the news. The economy was in the toilet. Everything seemed to be out whack. A lot of people thought the world was coming to and end. As one of my teachers said, "You keep expecting to see people wearing crossed ammunition belts."

This was before Star Wars (yeah, I’m old) and everyone knew there was no money in science fiction, and there was none of the trendy talk about diversity we hear about now. Everybody seemed to think that the science fiction audience was all white nerds who would be alienated by "minority" stuff. I was looking out into a world that certainly was diverse, and the term "minority" was becoming meaningless. I was trying to create the best, most original writing that I could, because it had to be done, and I guess my intent was to be revolutionary.

In some ways, I was a crazy as Pablo Cortez.

My first version of the story of Pablo Cortez – a novelette that no longer exists, and I don’t even remember the title – was never published. I struggled to write it, then sent it around, and got rejected. A few editors thought I showed promise, but no one wanted to publish it.

That was after I gave up on studying art, the whole world of Fine Art made no sense to me, so I dropped out to pursue writing. I did have some minor success as an illustrator and cartoonist, but that was underground. For years I lived under a mound of rejection slips.

Granted there were personal encouraging notes from editors, and later on the occasional sales that kept me from quitting.

Then Ben Bova started his Discoveries series for Tor. He was look for new writers. My wife, Emily Devenport, urged me to send him something. He was asking synopses, so I sent him one of a surrealistic, sex-crazed (and still unpublished) space opera.

Ben didn’t go for that one. He explained that he was working for a conservative guy who wouldn’t go for such kinkiness, and wasn’t beyond burying a book that he didn’t like.

However, Ben felt that from my bio, I had something different to bring into the field with my ethnic and artistic background. He asked for another synopsis.

And of course, I didn’t know what to do.

Lucky for me, Pablo Cortez, like a good monstrous creation, had refused to die.

I had just sold a condensed version of Pablo Cortez’s story, "Guerrilla Mural of a Siren’s Song" to Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Weasley Smith’s Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine. I was taking Ray Bradbury’s advice that if you still believe in a story that you couldn’t sell, after a few years, cut out a page, and send it out again – andI cut a lot more than a page.

What if I take that story, shove a stick of dynamite up its ass. stand back, and take notes on what come splattering down all over the landscape?

Ben liked my Cortez on Jupiter synopsis, and suddenly, I had become a real writer, with contract with a New York publisher, an agent, and everything.

This was the Eighties. I did not sell Cortez on Jupiter as a Chicano science fiction novel. Nobody believed that there was an audience for such a thing. I’d be honest about my ethnicity, but because I wasn’t dealing with people face-to-face, they’d assume I was white like all the other sci-fi geeks. I said that the main character was named Pablo Cortez, but didn’t go on about his being a Chicano, or spoke Spanglish. I hoped they wouldn’t notice until it was too late.

To my surprise, Ben essentially, let me go wild, and write what I wanted, the way that I wanted. His advice was minimal, but dead on. I don’t think this happens much anymore.

Despite what some people might like to think, Cortez on Jupiter is not autobiographical. Like a lot of my viewpoint characters, Pablo Cortez started out as parts of me would live a lot differently if the went off on their own agenda. Good fictional characters usually have less sense of self-preservation than real people, and have a knack for getting into interesting kinds of trouble. Writers tend to find ways to get a long, so they can write.

But there are people who claim that they can’t tell my fiction from my nonfiction. Believe me, I’m always aware for where my life ends and the fiction begins.

Cortez on Jupiter got great reviews. I was compared to William Gibson. I smiled a lot.

Unfortunately, it didn’t become a runaway bestseller. And editor at Tor called it a "success d’esprit."

This was also a time when science fiction was going in one direction, and I was going in another. With bookstores, and publishers in the control of corporations, the genre was becoming nerd lit – that is, fiction created specifically for nerds, which is different from what I grew up reading. Modern readers wanted stories focus-grouped for their demographic, part of franchises they were familiar with, brought to them by multinational corporations they trust. And, please, no new ideas!

"I like sci-fi because I always know how it’s going to, and there are no surprises," as one once explained to me.

Still, Cortez on Jupiter attracted a loyal following. You could say it has become a bit of an underground cult novel. I’ve always kept one foot in the underground, so when the shit hit the fan, I’d have a place to stand.

Locus published two reviews, one comparing it to calling it the best science fiction first novel since Neruomancer, the other complaining about the "abominable prose style."

Like the rest of my work, people either love or hate Cortez on Jupiter.

Some fans were turned off by the Spanglish, thought it was alienating and hard to read while others loved it, telling me that it was the first time they saw language the used every day in print.One editor called my readers, " noisy minority.” Maybe the weren’t noisy enough.

And now that it’s the 21st century, and tides are turning, we’re hearing a lot of talk about diversity, postcolonialism, Afrofuturism and nerds that come in all colors, it may be that Cortez on Jupiter’s time had finally come.

I have this bad habit of being ahead of my time. Maybe that’s why I became a science fiction writer.

So, meet Pablo Cortez, the product of the life of renegade Chicano. His story isn’t nerd lit. Nerds – whatever their ethnicity – need to be challenged, not coddled, like bulls who refuse to charge the matador, and need to be stuck with firecracker-studded banderillas to perform. Maybe it will inspire you to perform, face the unknown, or even our own future. The future always contains the unexpected, and danger.

And it if you have the right attitude, it can be wicked fun.

–Ernest Hogan

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Our LOSCON Program Book Ad - Featuring SF Books Distributed By DPS and Futures-Past Editions By LASFS Members

Check this out: the lovely Digital Parchment Services/Futures-Past Editions ad we will be running in the LOSCON Program Book ... featuring many SF books by current and past LASFS members ... like Arthur Byron CoverWilliam Rotsler, Charles Lee Jackson II, and Jack Jardine/Larry Maddock!


Stephen King on FATE Magazine, the World's Leading Publication of the Paranormal and the Unexplained

On the premier episode of the 2014 season of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s PBS television show, Finding Your Roots, Professor Gates asked prolific horror novelist Stephen King where he got his ideas for stories. King's reply stunned longtime readers of FATE, the oldest and most respected magazine in its field.



"I grew up interested in nightmares, scary stories, things that go bump in the night," King explained. "My mother used to read FATE magazine  Which was about the paranormal, flying saucers, and all that stuff.  She would read the stories to me and I was fascinated."

Now you can read The Best of FATE, a new series of books examining key subjects in the fields of the paranormal and the unexplained—such as UFOs, psychic healing, ghosts, angelic manifestations, ESP, and a great deal more—through in-depth studies drawn from the pages of FATE magazine.

Start now with...


CLICK BELOW TO BUY.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Tim Powers On William Rotsler!

(From the official William Charles Rotsler site)

We are very pleased to be able to bring you this wonderful interview with the celebrated author Tim Powers ... featuring some touching reminiscences about his experiences with William Rotsler:


Tim Powers is the author of numerous novels, including Last Call, Declare, Three Days to Never, and On Stranger Tides, the inspiration for the blockbuster film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, starring Johnny Depp and Penélope Cruz. 



Tim Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare.
1.  How did you first meet William Rotsler?

It was at a Westercon in San Francisco in 1971, when I was nineteen. I had gone there with the rare book dealer Roy Squires, and he introduced me to Rotsler and Paul Turner, and they asked me if I'd be interested in working for them when we were all back home in the L.A. area. The work sounded informal and irregular and paid in cash, so I said sure. I was of course already aware of Rotsler's drawings in fanzines.

2. What was your first impression of Bill?

He seemed big and confident and worldly and humorous -- the sort of guy you're flattered (especially if you're nineteen) will pay attention to you.

3. Can you share some fun anecdotes about Bill?  We know that he was (ahem) quite the character....

I remember one time we went to a Mexican bar to hire guys to dress up as Arabs and be extras in "The Street of a Thousand Pleasures" - the offer was five bucks a day and the opportunity to see naked women dance, and there were lots of takers. On the way back to the van, while we were crossing a bridge over a culvert, Bill felt a hand lifting his wallet out of his back pocket; Bill spun around and rolled the guy right over the rail. I don't know how the would-be pickpocket fared, but Bill kept his wallet. I was enormously impressed.

4.  Our mutual great friend, Paul Turner, and fantastic pal to Bill Rotsler, asked us to ask you about Bill's (ahem) 'adult' film Street Of A Thousand Pleasures ...?

I carried equipment around and helped build lots of sets for it - cutting walls and turrets out of plywood and painting them with a mix of paint and sand - but I wasn't there when they were filming. I think that was out of consideration for my impressionable youth. But I got to spend a number of nights at their house up on Ridpath in Laurel Canyon, and I vividly remember swimming in the pool, and hanging out with Norman Spinrad and George Clayton Johnson, and drinking beer and eating spaghetti with chili while Cat Stevens' "Tea For the Tillerman" played on the stereo.


5.  Can you please share with us some thoughts about Bill's amazing creativity?  His work as an author, cartoonist, photographer, filmmaker, etc?

Well, the guy was the complete artist, in every form I can think of except maybe needlepoint. Actually, I think he'd have been more successful if his skills had been limited to one or two areas! But they were all things he was very good at, and he wanted to play with them all.

6.  Last, but not least, could you share with us how William Rotsler affected your life ... personally as well as professionally?

He, along with Philip K. Dick, impressed me with the chaotic life of a freelancer - stretches of wonderful idle time interspersed with periods of intense work, and how you have to be able to fully enjoy both. Financial reverses pass, and recur, and pass again. Roll with the punches and don't give up.

Read 5 Time Hugo Winner William Rotsler's Patron Of The Arts ($2.99 - Free on Amazon Unlimited) and The Far Frontier ($2.99)

Monday, November 17, 2014

DIGITAL PARCHMENT SERVICES ANNOUNCES The Republication of Ernest Hogan's Controversial Science Fiction Romp CORTEZ ON JUPITER


DIGITAL PARCHMENT SERVICES ANNOUNCES
The Republication of Ernest Hogan's Controversial Science Fiction Romp
Cortez On Jupiter

"Ernest Hogan is the creator of a Xicano science fiction genre with a crossover readership. …raw creativity." 
–Frank S Lechuga 

Digital Parchment Services through its Strange Particle Press science fiction imprint, and Ernest Hogan, are extremely proud to announce the publication of a brand new trade paperback edition of Hogan's Locus Award finalist science fiction novel, Cortez On Jupiter.  

The enhanced ebook version of Cortez On Jupiter, which contains a new introduction about the writing of this highly controversial novel which introduced Chicano tropes to science fiction, is available now – and a premier trade paperback edition will be coming out in January, 2015.

Hogan, who describes himself as "–a recombocultural Chicano mutant, known for committing outrageous acts of science fiction and other questionable pursuits" has had stories published with great acclaim in publications such as Amazing Stories, Analog, Science Fiction Age, Semiotext(e)SF, and many others.

Cortez On Jupiter will be followed by Ernest Hogan's High AztechTezcatlipoca Blues, and a collection of Ernest Hogan's short stories: Pancho Villa's Flying Circus.

Cortez On Jupiter is the story of a wild young Chicano artist who covers Greater Los Angeles with fantastic graffiti and a beautiful African telepath who opens the door to communications with the deadly Sirens of Jupiter. 

Not since Ayn Rand's Howard Roarke has there been an artist as iconoclastic, as idealistic, and as splendidly spectacular as Pablo Cortez. And look out, he's twice as radical! 

Combining hard science fiction with pyrotechnics worthy of The Stars, My Destination, Ernest Hogan tells the story of the painter who founds the Guerrilla Muralists Of Los Angeles, goes on to make Mankind's first contact with the sentient life-forms of Jupiter. 

It's a roller-coaster ride from vulgarity to the transcendent, as the unforgettable Pablo Cortez struggles, selfishly and selflessly, to expand humanity's consciousness on a journey from the barrio to the stars. 

"Hard SF, satire, adventure, and some very strange humor combine in this intriguing, inventive, and sometimes disconcerting SF story." 
Science Fiction Chronicle

"An alien first contact story featuring a hyperactive, irreverent, and self-absorbed Chicano artist from East LA. Cortez is recruited to make contact with creatures discovered on Jupiter who "speak" in projected images. It's a dangerous assignment; previous attempts to communicate have ended in insanity and death, but Pablo is always up for a little bit of craziness." 
–Michael Lichter, Amazon 

"It grabs you and won't let you go. The best [first novel] I've read in science fiction since Neuromancer."
–Tom Witmore, Locus

"Energetic, fast-paced, funny, and thoroughly enjoyable." 
Analog

"If Hunter S Thompson and Alfred Bester had a Chicano child, it would be this." 
–Dave Hutchinson 

Prepublication price $3.99 - regularly $5.99
ISBN: 9781615085804

Review copies: M.Christian, Digital Parchment Services Publisher m.christian@digitalparchmentservices.com

Digital Parchment Services is a complete ebook and print service for literary estates and literary agents. The founders of Digital Parchment Services are pioneers in digital publishing who have collectively published over 2,500 ebooks and PoD paperbacks since 1998.


DPS clients include the estates of multiple Hugo winning author William Rotsler, and science fiction legend Jody Scott; authors such as Locus Award finalist Ernest Hogan, Hugo and Nebula nominee Arthur Byron Cover, prize winning mystery author Jerry Oster, psychologist John Tamiazzo, Ph.D., award winning nutritionist Ann Tyndall; and Best of Collections from Fate Magazine and Amazing Stories.

Friday, November 14, 2014

Out Now: The NEW Edition Of William Rotsler's PATRON OF THE ARTS!


Digital Parchment Services (distributed by Futures-PastEditions), through it's Strange Particle Press science fiction imprint, and the estate of William Charles Rotsler is extremely pleased to announce the publication of a brand new edition of William Rotsler's Nebula and Hugo finalist novel, Patron Of The Arts. 

This new edition features never before seen content – including a forward by the Nebula winning Dr. Gregory Benford.  The enhanced ebook version is available now – and a premier trade paperback edition will be coming out in January, 2015.

Coming soon, also from the author's estate and Digital Parchment Services, will be William Rotsler's To The Land Of The Electric AngelFar Frontier, a collection of his short stories, and a book of interviews by and about William Rotsler.

"Patron of the Arts gives us a future where art is a major driver in the culture. He envisions new technologies that deepen our arts and alter how we see our world. Rotsler at the top of his form." –Gregory Benford

Brian Thorne was a billionaire. There were only two things he cared about: women and art. And because he could afford it, he paid the world's finest artist to combine the two, to make a work of art of the unforgettable, incomparable Madelon in the new and extraordinary artform: the sensatron. Then Madelon and the artist disappeared – through the sensatron. And all the money in the world could not help Brian Thorne. To solve the secret of the sensatron, he was strictly on his own...

That is how Brian Thorne, billionaire, found himself helpless—caught in a magnificent crystal creation that grew on Mars, and without any resources even if he could get away from the killers who trapped him there. For although they knew he was Brian Thorne, he couldn't prove it. To find Madelon and the sensatron, he had gone to considerable trouble to cover his tracks. Now he wished he had not been so thorough in turning his back on the luxury-lined and very well-guarded life he lived back on Earth. Now, when it was too late! 


"A fine novel!" –Harlan Ellison

Special introductory price $2.99 (regularly $4.99)

ISBN: 9781615085828

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Please Help Elvis!

(from Arthur Byron Cover's site)


Arthur Byron Cover's partner Lydia Marano has posted a call on Facebook to help their beloved dog Elvis:
Elvis needs your help. As you may know, Art and I literally picked him up off the side of the road, in March, where he'd been hit by a car. Our vet gave him a 25% chance of walking again. We worked hard, everyday, to rehabilitate him and Elvis beat the odds. He can run now but as winter approaches it becomes more and more obvious that he still needs ACL surgery. The cost: at least $1500. That's half of what we already spent and, frankly, we're tapped out. Saving up on a fixed income is hard, but we’re trying.By sheer chance, we noticed that Elvis has a tumor in his mouth which is growing over his side teeth. The vet said it had to go ... duh. In one week it’s extended to his lower, right canine. The vet estimated it will cost about $700. We put down what we had — $100 — but he needs more. To date, we've raised an additional $364 -- more than half of what we need for his oral surgery! If you can donate any amount it would be greatly appreciated. 
I’ve added new designs to my Red Bubble page.  
http://www.redbubble.com/people/Telzey. Elvis will get $4-6 per item sold. You can send funds to lcmarano@gmail.com at PayPal. Or, better yet, send money directly to my vet: Rim Forest Animal Hospital at 909-337-8589. 
To those of you who have already donated, you have our eternal thanks. Everyone else -- thank you for listening. Asking for help is the hardest thing I've ever done, but Elvis is worth it.
Please help any way you can!  As Lydia has said, Elvis is more than worth it!