Series: Five Star Science Fiction/Fantasy | Publication Date: May 13, 2004
Brandt is a down-and-out guitarist and vocalist who believes his life has hit rock bottom. He can barely make the rent on his apartment, he drinks so much he can barely make it to the crappy gig that keeps his band afloat, let alone play when he gets there. When he leaves the bar one dark night with a bottle of Jose Cuervo in one hand and his guitar case in the other, he finds he's locked out of his apartment with nowhere to go. As he stands alone in the dark and feeling sorry for himself, he hears a lone harmonica being played in the distance. The sound is deep and powerful, and something in the music draws him away from his doorway and into an old alley where the homeless gather around garbage-can fires. What he finds there is the harmonica player -- an old black man who can play the blues like Brandt dreams of doing himself. When he begs the old man to teach him, Brandt finds that he has been both gifted and cursed.
David Niall Wilson lives in North Carolina. (20021201)
"From a darkly humorous tale of the power of words (Death and the Librarian) to a never-before-published response to events of September 11 (Ilion), Friesner's 12 stories illustrate the author's acutely sensitive vision of wonder in the everyday world... Known primarily for his 'Star Wars' novels... Zahn's short stories also deliver strong plots and memorable characters... Zebrowski's many novels (e.g. Macrolife) mark him as a visionary as well as a master of hard sf. The ten short stories collected in In the Distance provide a benchmark of his creativity... the author expands his concept of the human condition to embrace the stars. Part of Five Star's continuing commitment to showcasing the short fiction of the genre's most prominent author's, these three volumes belong in most libraries where short sf is popular." -- Library Journal (December 2002) (Library Journal 20020615)
"...Part of Five Star's continuing commitment to showcasing the short fiction of the genre's most prominent authors, these three volumes (Death and the Librarian and Other Stories/ Star Song and Other Stories/ In the Distance, and Ahead in Time) belong in most libraries where short sf is popular." -- Library Journal (December 2002) (Library Journal 20040501)
"Four more titles in Five Star's new series (God Is an Iron and Other Stories/ Generation Gap and Other Stories/ The Lady Vanishes and Other Oddities of Nature/ Suppose They Gave a Peace and Other Stories) of short fiction by noteworthy sf authors offer a variety of tales that illustrate the depth and staying power of the genre...Most of the stories in these volumes have only appeared in periodicals. Libraries wishing to augment their sf or short fiction collections should consider any of them." -- Library Journal (June 2002) (Library Journal 20050301)
"... [an] engrossing, poetic novel of spiritual evil and the possibility of salvation... Wilson demonstrates that a horror novel doesn't need gallons of blood to succeed, that spiritual terror can be even more effective." --Publisher's Weekly (May 2004) (Publisher's Weekly )
"Deep Blue is a wonderful find and well worth exploring." --Cemetery Dance Magazine, March 2005 (Cemetary Dance )
I was born in a very small town in Illinois. Clay County has less people in it than your average large city, and Flora , Illinois , is so tiny it barely hits the map. That's where it happened, though. My grandparents lived there, and I spent a lot of happy times with them in my youth -- particularly my grandfather, Merle Cornelius Smith, who was likely the most amazing man I'll ever claim association with. But that's another story, and this one is about me.
My first really clear memories start around my third year of life, when my father left. He took me out for a drive, let me sit on his lap, then went back out for milkshakes and never came back. Things blur quite a lot during that period, but after a period of living with my grandparents, my brother and I were whisked away to Charleston Illinois , where our mom had a job working in one of the cafeterias at Eastern Illinois University , and had married a barber named Robert Leland "Bob" Smith. I could write volumes about good ol' Bob, but I won't. If you really want to meet him, look between the lines of the bits and pieces of Deep Blue where Brandt talks about his father. Think Seagram's 7, Ballantine beer, cheap cigars, Hank Williams, Sr., and Archie Bunker and sort of squash it all together into a 6'4" 270 or so pound frame -- that was Bob. Formative? Yes. Important here? Nope.
I escaped Charleston , family, Bob, and a number of other things in 1977 when I left in June and joined the United States Navy. I headed for San Diego , where I went to boot camp, headed next to Groton CT for submarine school (which I dropped out of because my ears wouldn't equalize) and ended up in North Chicago attending Electronics Technician "A" school. I learned guitar, got engaged, unengaged, taught Bible School , got excommunicated, and moved on to San Diego , California once again as part of the crew of the USS Paul F. Foster.
My time in the US Navy would fill a dozen books. In fact, parts of it can be found in almost everything I've written. Many of my novels were typed on US Navy computers (later on my own, but still on board) and the first two issues of my magazine, THE TOME, were printed and published on board the USS Guadalcanal (thank you Uncle Sam for supporting the arts). I was stationed on a lot of ships, went on a lot of cruises, lived in Rota , Spain for three years, and wound up retired in Norfolk , Virginia . I've worked as a contractor ever since, a variety of computer, networking and database related jobs, and all that time, I've been writing.
Now I live in the historic William R. White house in a tiny place called Hertford , NC , where you buy your hardware from a man named Eerie Haste, and you can still get an ice-cream cone for fifty cents. I have a woman who loves and supports me, Patricia Lee Macomber, two great boys by a previous marriage who live in Virginia, but visit us every couple of weeks, a beautiful, talented teenage daughter named Stephanie who sometimes seems to be the only adult in the family, a taller-by-the-day video game and sports loving son named Billy whose biggest failing is he likes the Oakland Raiders, and a beautiful, way-too-smart little girl named Kathryn Mary -- Katie Bug, for short -- all of whom I adore, and who appear to have looked past my faults to love me in return.
I've sold twelve novels to date (though hopefully by the time many of you read this that will be a larger number. I've published over 150 short stories, been in 32 or so anthologies, countless magazines, year's best collections, won awards -- notably The Bram Stoker Award for poetry, which I share with co-authors Mark McLaughlin and Rain Graves. I've been President of the Horror Writer's Association, and I'm an active member of both SFWA and the newer International Thriller Writer's Association.
I have long been a fan of Mr. Wilson's finely crafted works of fiction (This is my Blood, Dark Ages Clan Vampire novel Lasombra, and many more), and you will become a fan, too, when you read his latest, Deep Blue, a complex and lyrical blues riff about agony and spiritual redemption. When a soul-dead, burned-out blues guitarist/singer named Brandt encounters a homeless black man whose heart-wrenching harmonica music rises from the depths of true agony, he begs the old man to teach him how to play that way. The old man warns Brandt that it is the pain, not the technique, that produces the sound. Brandt insists upon taking the burden of the old man's pain into himself so that he can play the blues with the same aching quality, but soon discovers that his new gift is also a curse. Brandt's music becomes imbued with sad, otherworldly beauty, but he finds he must play and play and play, lest the burden of the pain he's invited into his soul overwhelm him. Brandt and his band embark upon a spiritual quest to keep the restless spirits that surround them at bay and to fight the demonic force that feeds and grows powerful upon the world's pain. This is an exquisite meditation upon the nature of pain and redemption written with a blues sensibility that rolls through the mind like bleak, resounding chords of dark music. The perfect novel for a hot, sultry night.
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Brandt defines the down and out musician. When he's not soused in Jose Cuervo he plays rhythm guitar for an unremarkable band in a hole-in-the-wall bar. Until one night he hears a lone harmonica playing music so deep, so pure, so full of pain he wanders the empty streets driven by the desire to play it. One by one the music transforms the other members. They feel pain so sharp and piercing it could only be the pain of the entire world straining for release. The band sells all to follow Brandt and seek out that one song. The one song behind it all. The one perfect pattern that blends each piece in harmony.
Deep Blue is that song. It lives in the words, bleeds off the page, and seeps into your being. Mood, story, emotion bound together and layered on top of rich, rhythmical cadences that thrust the reader forward in wave after unrelenting wave.
Deep Blue left this reader with something to ponder. Deep Blue left this writer with something to aspire to. David Niall Wilson's Deep Blue is simply the best novel I've read this year.
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This review is from: Five Star Science Fiction/Fantasy - Deep Blue (Hardcover)
Deep Blue is one of those exceptional works of horror fiction that is able transcend genre. Rarely bloody but often unsettling, Wilson's language is poetic, his imagery surreal, and the overall impression is that the reader has stepped into a world that is similar--but not exactly the same--as the one we live in.
One of the greatest strengths of the novel are Wilson's characters, each one unique, each with a secret that drives the plot home. Down and out guitarist Brandt is given center stage at the opening, but by the end of the book the drummer Dexter, with his ability to recognize patterns and shapes in the randomness of life, has become one of its most important players. Like the novelist himself pulling plot strings, Dexter is the one who pulls them together at the end, fitting the pieces into a whole that is much greater than the sum of its parts.
Beginning in a city full of restless ghosts, ending in a rural backwoods setting complete with an electrifying mountain legend called the Sineater, Wilson's Deep Blue is a masterful work of fiction, and one of the most unique and thought-provoking novels you will read this year.
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