Brian Stableford

Simon Cannick, with the dubious assistance of possible extraterrestrial influence, seems to have largely recovered from his temporary death, his peculiar and continual lapses into dreamspace notwithstanding. However, fate, like the neider, is hydra-formed. Douglas Jefferson is willing to play dirty in the long game of inheritance and the longer game of resentment; Simon's half-sister, Marianne, and her unruly female descendants arrive at St. Madoc en masse and prove far from gentle in their attempts to unearth family secrets; and now Rome wishes to speak to Simon, too, or at least one Father Thomas Mallory, of the Order of Preachers, who might have some interesting information to share, if Simon is willing to disclose what he knows in return.The third and concluding instalment in the cosmic labyrinth of Brian Stableford's Morgan's Fork series offers no easy answers. Instead, Simon Cannick is drawn, almost against his will, into a tenebrous enlightenment, guided only by the dreaming, alien voices of The Truths of Darkness.

The Contes de f es, defined here as tales that contain f es, i.e.: "fays" (as opposed to "fairies," which in British literary history referred to imaginary entities often different from the French f es), were invented by aristocratic women of the 17th century, such as Madame d'Aulnoy, the Comtesse de Murat, Madame Leprince de Beaumont, etc. In making visible the operations of the human heart, they also did so with their torments, fears and resentments: the tightly-laced corset of social convention, the catastrophe of arranged marriages; the tyranny and frequent brutality of those in legal control of their lives and fortunes. Such aspects of everyday life were exaggerated by the conventions of the genre: the princesses were the most beautiful in the world, or the ugliest; the prisons in which they were contained were inaccessibly tall towers or lightless subterrains, often guarded by dragons; their captors were ogres, hags or giants, often addicted to setting them impossible tasks to complete, under the threat of dire punishment. And the fantasies of their salvation were exaggerated in consequence, beyond all reasonable expectation: the magic wand of a good fay, and, perhaps even more implausibly, the trustworthy love of a good man. Since the 1970s, there has been a spectacular increase in the popularity of a kind of fantasy that has revivified many of the imaginative materials previously developed in the contes de f es, and they can now be seen as a key link in a strand of imaginative literature that extends forwards from Classical literature and Medieval Romance all the way to a significant sector of contemporary literary production, and its extensions into visual media, connected not merely by the complex transference of imagery, but by the underlying psychology of composition and consumption. In order to understand modern fantasy fully, it is therefore necessary to understand its roots in previous literary genres, and one of the most important is the conte de f es. This volume also includes 38 exemplary stories sampled from 1696 to 1914, forming the most complete anthology devoted to the History of the Faerie to-date. Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 70 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books. He has also translated many of the works reviewed herein for Black Coat Press.

"As above, so below."This is the message Simon Cannick receives from his ailing mother, approaching her life's end, the first time he meets her. A mystical commonplace, or is there more to it?While Simon connects with his newly discovered family--half-sister Marianne and her middle-aged delinquent daughter, Zoe--the portents gather. Strange manifestations might be messages from the abyssal neider . . . unless other entities are involved.With plots afoot against his inheritance of the storied and centuried Murden estate in the briny Welsh coastal crook of Saint Madoc, will Simon find that the storm is up and all is on the hazard, or will he be navigating through an insubstantial pageant?This, the second volume in Brian Stableford's eccentrically cosmic Morgan's Fork series, takes up where Spirits of the Vasty Deep left off, with a cast of idiosyncratic misfits doing their best to claim small victories in the midst of extramundane vastness and human absurdity.

Mathieu Galmier, formerly of the Pasteur Institute, has to leave Paris under a cloud when one of his pioneering experiments in hematology goes awry. He is given refuge -- of sorts -- in London by Sir Juliam Templeforth.Unfortunately, the rewards both men hope to reap from continuing the experiments are slow to materialize. The research hits snags, and its human costs are beginning to weigh on Mathieu's conscience.Complicating matters further, some of Sir Julian's unruly Irish tenants have come to London to demand satisfaction, and Mathieu's presence has been detected by Philippe and Myrtille de Valcoeur, who have an intense interest in his research -- seemingly more mystical than scientific.When complications lead to catastrophe, Mathieu has to flee. But his past proves exceedingly difficult to escape...

Brian M. Stableford's latest novel, The Pool of Mnemosyne, concludes the saga of the immortal Axel Rathenius, from the artists' colony of Mnemosyne, an island located off the northern coast of what in our world is called France, in the Everlasting Empire, 2,000 years after the birth of the Divine Caesar... Rathenius now returns to Mnemosyne after his meeting with the legendary Madame Minerva only to be confronted by a new conspiracy which threatens to annihilate his beloved island...Brian M. Stableford has been a professional writer since 1965. He has published more than 80 science fiction and fantasy novels, as well as several authoritative non-fiction books. He has also been translating the works of numerous authors of French mysteries, scientific romance and fantasy for Black Coat Press, which has previously published his four Mnemosyne novels.

St. Madoc, on the coast of North Wales, seems like a suitably quiet place for an aging writer to work; when Simon Cannick moves into Raven Cottage he thinks it might even be too quiet. Stopping by the pub, he learns of local lore concerning mermaids, spirits and the Murden family who inhabit the nearby Abbey. Perhaps some of this might furnish Simon with material, but soon he finds he has little time to write. Before he can investigate the folklore it has already begun to investigate him, through the venerable and isolated Murdens, the bewitching Cerys and even a raven called Lenore. Truth, however, turns out to be stranger than folklore, and, as a storm approaches that has been brewing for generations, destiny intervenes to divert Simon's plans for a quiet life into deeper and vaster waters.Eccentric, erudite, adventurous, Spirits of the Vasty Deep by Brian Stableford, is an eclectic, bubbling cauldron full of cosmic vision, droll humour and off-beat science fiction. Intelligent fantasy for those who long ago strayed from the beaten path.