World Fantasy Award Winning Author
This lens aims to introduce you to the Author Michael Shea and his work.
Michael Shea at a Glance
Michael Shea (1943-) is an American fantasy, horror, and science fiction author living in California. He is a multiple winner of the World Fantasy Award and his works include Nifft the Lean (1982) (winner of the World Fantasy Award) and The Mines of Behemoth (1997) (later republished together as The Incomplete Nifft, 2000), as well as The ARak (2000) and In Yana, the Touch of Undying (1985).
The Nifft stories, examples of the "sword-and-sorcery" genre modeled on Jack Vance, are notable for their imaginative depiction of the world of demons (which could be read as a satire on 1980s greed and con...
Michael Shea Bio
After attending UCLA on the advance Placement program while still in the tenth grade, he made his way to UC Berkeley for the wild-life there during the Time of Troubles.
He hitch-hiked twice across America and Canada, and at a hotel in Juneau Alaska, chanced on a battered book from the lobby shelves: Cugel the Clever, by Jack Vance.
Not till four years later, after a brief first marriage, and a year spent hitch-hiking through France and Spain, did he write an hommage to Jack Vance, for which that great man graciously declined to share the advance offered by DAW Books.Subsequently he ranged all over the L.A. Basin, painting houses and teaching Adult ESL by night. In 1978 he had the blessed luck to meet his wife, artist and author Lynn Cesar. The pair of them co-authored their beautiful and beloved children, Adele and Jacob, currently ranging the great North-West, and the world at large.
NEW: The Autopsy and Other Tales
by Michael Shea
The Autopsy and Other Tales
Amazon Price: $78.85 (as of 07/10/2009)
List Price: $95.00
Michael Shea has demonstrated an unnerving facility for the macabre, the cerebral, and the whimsical, and he possesses the deceptively effortless ability to conjure scenes of horror and dread leavened by sly humor. Over 590 pages long, this collection features all of Shea's best award-winning horror, fantasy, science fiction, and Cthulhu Mythos tales, with two complete novels and several stories that have never been collected.
Laird Barron's insightful introduction provides a unique look at this remarkable, visionary storyteller. Combined with the illustrations of John Stewart, as well as several color photographs and devices, this marks the most important collection yet from an undisputed master of the short story.
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Define: Horror
Michael Shea's AFTERWARD to his forthcoming collection, THE AUTOPSY
Horror in its first coinage is a ripple of the flesh - as in horripilation, when the tremor brings our hair erect. It is the shudder of awe and of ecstasy at reality's unbearable grandeur and beauty eternal, that seizure of fear and laughter that takes us when we remember where we really are: spinning inside a discus of dust and fire flung out by the huge first heartbeat of time.What, after all, is our landscape when we lie sleeping? When we've laid by our tools, and folded ourselves into darkness? We surf the methane storms of Jupiter, stride in our nakedness across the razor-sharp, un-eroded stone of the moon, indestructible wraiths fast as light, absolute zero our element, deathless diamonds our brains. We live in the Universe then, and deep in our spines, live always in the Universe.
Come sunrise, we walk around with our skull boiling with hierarchies, histories, holocausts, hymns and hyperboles... but our souls know always we have only our monkey-bones to scaffold our galactic visions, have only one fist-sized heart to hold the ice-white constellations, the wild-haired comets, and old Sol's nightly hemorrhage on a jade-the-amber sea. Horror is just our dying amidst the hair-raising wonder and heart-breaking glory that is flying apart all around us. Our knowing and feeling this - that is our soul.
I mean to say, that Horror is never mere butchery. Certainly, the Universal Recycling can be stressful. Time and gravity hammer us all back down to hydrocarbons, if nothing else gets us first, and we feel always the tug of this grand transaction's approach. But without the wild beauty of what we are losing, where is the Horror, really? Without the soul's hair-raising cry of heartfelt awe, what's been lost?
Michael Shea Books
Michael Shea's Awards
- Nebula Best Novellette Finalist (1980): The Angel of Death
- Nebula Best Novella Finalist (1981): The Autopsy
- Hugo Best Novellette Finalist (1981): The Autopsy
- Hugo Award Finalist (1981): Polyphemus
- World Fantasy Best Novel winner (1983): Nifft the Lean
- World Fantasy Best Collection Finalist (1988): Polyphemus
- World Fantasy Award (2005) Novella winner: The Growlimb
- International Horror Guild Award (2005) Finalist: The Growlimb
- British Fantasy Society Award (2005) Finalist: The Growlimb
- Horror Writers Association Bram Stoker Awards (2005) Nominee: The Growlimb
Prolific Reviews of Michael Shea's Books
You are welcome to add a link to a review of one of Michael's books. Unrelated links are not acceptable.
1
Michael Shea: Nifft the Lean
This review will be slightly different from other more...0 points
2
The Incompleat Nifft by Michael Shea
Fantasy and Science Fiction: Book Reviews by Eliza more...0 points
3
Yael Dragwyla's review of The A'Rak
I have loved Shea's stories about Nifft the Lean s more...0 points
4
The Incompleat Nifft by Michael Shea (Used, New, Out-of-Print) - Alibris
Alibris has The Incompleat Nifft and other books b more...0 points
Michael Shea Cover Art
Polyphemus
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nifftcover
mines
japnifft2
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inyana
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Farbe_aus_der_Zeit
colortime
color_out_of_time_da...
britinyana
arak
Jack Vance Interviews and Videos
Quick, what do you think of Michael Shea?
Shout Out For Michael Shea!
Share your stories, sightings, thoughts, rants, raves...
Christiana the Brit wrote
I am in desperate need of another fantasy infusion from Michael Shea. What say you to us fans of his fantasy works setting a date and time to mind blatt him with an overwhelming desire to nifft?
Posted April 18, 2009
Mark wrote
The world needs more sword & sorcery from Michael Shea. Please write another Nifft book or another standalone in the style of In Yana. Please! I'm so sick of seeing these endless big fat fantasy series from Jordan, Erikson, Goodkind and the rest. Come back and show everyone how it's done!
Posted February 14, 2009
Martin Edward Stephenson wrote
Nifft!!
Posted January 24, 2009
Pearce Hansen wrote
Anyone who hasn't read Michael's brilliant work is robbing themselves. NIFFT THE LEAN deserved all its kudos. THE COLOR OUT OF TIME would have made Lovecraft proud. And the best of Mr. Shea's shorts -- THE EXTRA and THE AUTOPSY being two personal favorites -- are among the masterpieces and classics of horror/fantasy.
Posted November 26, 2008
Lynn Cesar wrote
I want to recommend the new collection from Centipede Press, THE AUTOPSY AND OTHER TALES to Shea fans. A beautiful collection.
Posted October 27, 2008
Nicola Fontana wrote
I casually read "La leggenda di Nifft" and, at least in italian, it is a beautiful romantic book, really passional. The descent in the underground recalled me "La divina commedia"...
Posted June 11, 2008
Stephen Victor Jones wrote
I consider The Autopsy and Fatface to be two of the best horror stories I have ever read, and I have read many in the last 50 years. Michael Shea is one of the finest writers on this planet, up there with the likes of TED Klein but in Michael's case, a little more prolific. Best wishes, Michael.
Posted April 14, 2008
Here's my favorite link:
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