New publications

I just picked these new publications earlier today from the publisher and the printers. From the left: a small collection of Olavi Karjaliini's really weird stories from the 1830's, the new issue of Seikkailukertomuksia / Adventure Stories and the small booklet containing my translation of Ray Banks's hilarious PI story "Dirty Barry".

The Karjaliini book is a true oddity. I was going to publish it myself, but then it came to me to ask my regular publisher Turbator if they wanted to do it. And they did. These are very crudely written stories in dated vernacular, published in Elias Lönnrot's (the guy who did Kalevala) magazine Mehiläinen / Bee. None of them have ever been published in antiqua font, so I typed them up and wrote a short foreword. Turbator did a print run of 100.

The issue of Seikkailukertomuksia is the fifth and it will be the last one as I simply don't have enough time or energy to do these things or to broaden the reader base. The issue contains six stories:

Jussi Katajala: Hämäys (a new western short story by a good writer)

H. de Vere Stacpoole: Ihmeellinen muisti (published originally in Finnish Kiki 12/1929, translation by unknown, a mystery story by classic of the adventure genre, but I've been unable to locate the original title)

Iisakki Evä: Bora-Boran valkeapää: kertomus Etelämeren saarelta (published in Lukemista Kaikille 23/1934, originally probably a Swedish story, based on the fact that the story is accompanied by illos by a Swedish illustrator, Gunnar Ljungdahl - nevertheless the first real zombie story in Finnish I've encountered!)

Eino Leino: Laulu Vuorilammella (published in the book called Päiväperhoja, 1903), a weird, somewhat horrorish short story and a political allegory from the classic writer whose short fiction I've earlier published in Isku and Ässä

Juri Nummelin: Valkoisten jättiläisten valtakunta (the last installation of my sword and sorcery serial with the last Bjarmian in the lead, facing some white giants and their squid-like leader; will publish the serial later on as a paperback, fully edited and rewritten)

Hannu Väisänen: Mannerheim vignettes (some short-short stories about Marshal Mannerheim and his encounters with the classic adventure fiction heroes)

As for Ray Banks - well, he's Ray Banks. Go read the original story in English, it'll do you good. Both of my publications have very limited print runs. 

Review of the zombie book

Here's a review of my zombie anthology from the Portti magazine. It's pretty positive, for which I'm proud and happy. The main point: "Finland's never had her share of good trashy literature, so this is a step to the right direction!"

Zombie book out

Readers of this blog may remember that I had a zombie anthology coming. It's now out and soon available from the bookstores, and also straight from the publisher at rakennussanomat@pelipeitto.fi. On the left is the striking cover from Mika Myyry, and here, on another blog of mine, is my foreword to the book. The book's title means "The Land of the Thousand Zombies" - Finland has traditionally been called "the land of the thousand lakes".

The book is full of hilarious and horrific zombie stuff, with a certain melancholy Finnish bent. It was interesting to notice when the stories began to arrive for the book that even when writing about zombies the Finns do stories about the Finnish Civil War of 1918, the Second World War, depression, loneliness, domestic violence, etc., the traditional themes in Finnish literature. Some of the stories have lots of delicious political satire, which is rare in Finland nowadays, so this book should be a good treat for anyone looking for serious literature.

Anthony Neil Smith and Jonathan Maberry on terrorism

As I promised, I'll say some things about Anthony Neil Smith's and Jonathan Maberry's new books, Yellow Medicine and Patient Zero. Well, they are not new anymore, since these guys seem to be very active. Smith has been fiercely promoting his real new book, Hogdoggin', and based on his Facebook status updates, Maberry has a new book or a comic script coming out every month. (He just announced he's doing the novelization of The Wolfman, the coming film by Guillermo del Toro.)

Why am I putting the two books together? They both deal with international terrorism, the threat from Islamic infiltrators and warmongers. The results couldn't be much different from each other, but both books have cynical loners coming up with new courage to deal with terrorism. Anthony Neil Smith is a bit more ambiguous about the battle and its gains than Maberry, but there's always a bit of doubt in Maberry's hero, too.

Someone has said that in Patient Zero Maberry puts "terror" back in "terrorism". Well, that's about right, since the Islamic terrorists have invented a new virus - no: a prion (remember the mad cow's disease?) - that transforms people into empty-eyed, flesh-eating corpses. The US government sets up a secret group of some bad-ass motherfuckers to deal with these new kind of zombies, and the leader of the group is one Joe Ledger, a loner cop whose attitude towards life can be summed as: "I don't really give a fuck, unless someone I care about is in danger."

Maberry has no qualms in depicting all the terrorists as pure evil, scary one-track minded persons who cheat and lie. Given the book's genre, that could be just an advantage, but having something else, too, might bring some more life into the book. I also thought the book could've used some trimming - I was thinking if it might've been better if Maberry had concentrated only on the Americans trying to come up with an explanation, especially since the book is told both in Joe Ledger's first-person narration and the third-person narration (which is omniscient at times). If Maberry had sticked with Ledger, the result might've been a lot better.

That said, I found the book very exciting, especially battle scenes in which zombies are slaughtered by the dozen. Maberry handles that stuff very well and I found myself thinking: "Why isn't there more of this?"

Now, Anthony Neil Smith has something else in his mind in Yellow Medicine, his first book from Bleak House Books. Deputy Billy Lafitte, working somewhere in the back fields of Minnesota, has some trouble with his own life and with some other people's lives as well. In fact he's a shrewd manipulator and a liar in the best Jim Thompson sense. But take this pathetic anti-hero and put him in the middle of the terrorist plan to gather up money through drug trafficking in Minnesota (obviously as good place to start as any) and you'll find there's lots of courage in him.

In Yellow Medicine Smith spins a mean tale in which no one is taken prisoner and there's always some doubt in the back of the reader's mind: should we really believe in this guy's heroics and should we take a stand with him?

However, Yellow Medicine could've been trimmed a bit. Smith uses a technique that works fine in, say, the Coen brothers' Blood Simple: tell first what happens and tell only afterwards why it happened the way it happened. In Yellow Medicine the technique feels forced at times. The opening is great, though, in just this respect.

Both books would make great movies, by the way.

Zombies keep on coming

I've already got 12 stories to use in the book, two came today. But it's occurred to me that I should choose only those that take place in Finland, hence I could drop two stories out and leave ten intact. Then I could name the book Tuhansien zombien maa / The Land of the Thousand Zombies.

(Umm... in case this is not clear to everyone: Finland has traditionally been called "the land of the thousand lakes".)

Zombie Reprise, pt. 2

In one week I've managed to gather a collection of eight or nine zombie stories, four or five in reprints and the rest original. I have one coming and one I haven't as yet read. I haven't proposed this idea to the publisher (I'm thinking it should be Turbator), but I'm ready to do it cheap and also do the layouts for the book. I even got a cover art. Check it out - it's by Mika Myyry, who's done great illos for my fanzines. (The headline must be changed, though.)

All this in one week! Thanks to e-mail, Facebook and discussion groups! How were these books done before digital communication?

There's just one minor problem. You know, I have this story called "Jumalten tuho" (= "Gotterdämmerung" or "Twilight of the Gods", if you will). It was published in the Finnish fanzine Tähtivaeltaja in 1988 (and it was for long my only published piece of fiction) and it has lots of zombies. And it takes place in Wild West. It has a giant mole called El Topo. It has UFO's and aliens. It has two FBI agents called Frank Gruber and Jonathan Latimer. It has a weird divinity called El Cucaracha. So, what's not to like? It's just so shittily written I'm not sure if I can use it. I just dug it up from an old 3.5 diskette and took a look at it. Oh my God... Do you think it would serve as a joke if I was open about in the foreword? So that everyone knew I'm perfectly aware it's a piece of shit? There's this, you know: it's one of the first pieces of Finnish literature that has zombies in it. So it's practically an important document.

(Yeah, right...)

Zombies? Zombies, yeah!

J.D. Rhoades is writing about the recent zombie revival at the Murderati blog and it really sounds like I gotta get me one of those Jonathan Maberry books. One of his zombie novels starts with this line that I just love (the politics of it notwithstanding):

"When you have to kill the same terrorist twice in one week there's either something wrong with your skills or something wrong with your world. And there's nothing wrong with my skills."