Customer Reviews

The Autopsy and Other Tales

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Can you get by without owning all of Michael Shea's finest short fiction in one handsome, sturdy volume? Personally, I cannot. When "The Angel of Death" showed up in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, my best friend got and read his copy ahead of me, and called to tell me I had to read this story. When "The Autopsy" appeared, I felt psychic pain at the thought that others had read it but I had not...because everyone who'd read it, told me about it with great urgency. I hope this review pains you in the same way. You simply must read these stories and the many others, from across a career that is only getting better.

This volume contains the following stories:

The Angel of Death
The Horror on the #33
Fast Food
Grunt-12 Test Drive
Salome
Fat Face
Uncle Tuggs
Fill it with Regular
Nemo Me Impune Lacessit
Polyphemus
That Frog
The Extra
The Growlimb
The Autopsy
The Rebuke
Delivery
For Every Tatter in its Mortal Dress
The Pearls of the Vampire Queen
I Said the Fly
'Tsathoggua
The Color Out of Time

According to Centipede Press, there are only 500 copies of this book. Each book is signed and numbered by the author, with the signature and number appearing at the end of the book.

This was the first Centipede Press book that I purchased, and I was absolutely stunned by the contents and by the book's design, with the beautiful sinister artwork (much reproduced in color). Following an excellent Introduction by Laird Barron, we are presented with a number of works that span Shea's career. One early work presented here is the complete novel, THE COLOR OUT OF TIME, a fine novel of Lovecraftian horror that I had originally read when it came out in paperback from DAW Books in 1984. I loved it then and I love it now. It is truly evocative of Lovecraft's age-old cosmic horror, yet the novel brings that nameless horror superbly into the modern world. Shea's classic shoggoth story, "Fat Face," is also included -- and it never loses its eldritch appeal. Gawd, he is such a brilliant writer of Cthulhu Mythos fiction, true to the Mythos and yet utterly modern in his approach. Perilous Press published an entire book of Shea's Cthulhu Mythos tales, COPPING SQUID -- another book that I can HIGHLY recommend! Michael Shea is one of weird fiction's true masters, and this masterful collection contains much of his brilliant work. A fabulous book, breathtakingly beautiful, and one that I return to time and time again.

This is a very well made book, sort of a feast for fantasy fans. It is also an instant collector's item since there were only 500 printed, all signed by Mr. Shea (look in the back of the book). Whereas this is not a complete collection of his work it is a substantial part of it. By the way, the stories are really good!

It was amazing to me that with all of the stories coming from the same inditer that there was such a disparity between the quality of the stories. Some of the stories were amazingly original, inventive, and creepy, some were just ok, and some were real stinkers. Overall I loved the book although it was very expensive but I certainly don't regret buying it as the good outweighed the bad...