As you know, we had some hiccups with our hardcover printer, but we’re back online and proud to announce the 2nd Editions of Cirsova’s hardcovers! The real highlight of this is the 2nd Edition of Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars!
Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars 35th Anniversary Edition Omnibus
This fabulous 700+ page tome collects all four volumes of Michael Tierney’s science fiction epic.
Also available from Cirsova Publishing:
Summer 2016 [Vol 1, #2] [Kukuruyo Variant]
Our latest issue is now available for print pre-order on Amazon!
This is an all-star issue you won’t want to miss!
Alpdruck! by Michael Reyes
Clock has been dispatched to the private hell of a powerful demon–and only a being of true evil on its own path towards redemption can aid him in this deadly fight!
Pour Down Like Silver, by Cynthia Ward
Banished for refusing to follow her order-pair into death, Rhesanna seeks the Tower of Ancient Time to free her comrade’s soul from the demon they failed to slay!
Lest Darkness Wreck the Stars, by Robert Zoltan
When Dareon and Blue uncover a mysterious gemstone in the wastes, a strange violet star appears in the sky and visions of a lovely woman invade Dareon’s dreams!
The Golden Pearl, by Jim Breyfogle
After a harrowing experience in their search for Burning Fish, Kat and Mangos are determined to never be poisoned again–could a Golden Pearl be the answer?!
Slave Girls for Sacrifice, by D.M. Ritzlin
A powerful sorceress with a bestial lover requires a blood sacrifice to complete her vile rites… Will Avok’s brawn and bag of tricks be enough to stop the witch?!
Praying to Thasaidon, by Tais Teng
No one prays to the Charnel God–but when a necromancer comes to collect on a family’s debts, there may be nowhere and no one to turn to but a god of death!
Adeste, Fideles, by G. Scott Huggins
Long ago, the “Last Fleet” was sent to find a new world for Earth’s orphaned children! That expedition to the fringes of space had been thought lost… Until now!
Return of the Dark Brotherhood, by Adrian Cole
Aruul Voruum nears completion of his witchfinder training… but the remnants of Daras Vorta’s cult have worked their tendrils into the heart of Mars’s government!
Outside the Outside?, by J. Comer
A review of The Tingleverse and Feast of Legends
My Name is John Carter (Part 8), by James Hutchings
James Hutchings continues his longform poem…
Recently, Barnes & Noble decided to try something for Black History Month that everyone decided was a Bad IdeaTM. No, that wasn’t a Babylon Bee article, they took characters from classic works [in many cases the villains, ironically] and made them black on the cover art as part of a promotion.
Last year, we put out a fully-illustrated edition of Brackett’s Planet Stories-era Stark adventures, and one thing we wanted to be sure to do was portray him on the covers and in the interior the way he’s described: black. No, not ethnically black, but dark-skinned; easily shorthanded as “black”.
Some people take issue with or confuse Stark’s changed nature with the de jour racial politics: “How is pretending Eric John Stark’s sun-blackened skin makes him a different race any better than just straight up race swapping characters?”
Who is Stark? Is he a white man? Is he a black man? Is he a white man with black skin?
His skin is black and everyone calls him a “great black ape.”
He’s stripped of any white ethnic identity by his physical condition as well as his upbringing.
He’s an eternal outsider.
He identifies as N’Chaka, Man with no tribe.
If Stark was ever “white”, he is no longer–he feels no racial kinship with “white” men of Earth. But he’s not “black” either, in that he is not African, nor would he feel any racial kinship with “black” men of Earth, though given his upbringing, he might feel more sympathetic towards them.
Brackett was a huge fan of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Tarzan, and in some ways Stark may be looked at as an anti-Tarzan.
Tarzan was Nature over Nurture. Burroughs emphasized the importance of his noble Anglo blood that always shone through despite the circumstances of his upbringing; Tarzan was always true to his blood and nothing could change that. When he meets fellow whites, he knows them to be his people.
Stark was Nurture over Nature. His environment changed him physically and mentally; though he was the child of frontier settlers from earth, at his core he is a savage, more kin with the the wild Mercurian indigenous hunters than with the earth men who found him and dragged him back to earth in a cage “to civilize him”. That Stark was at some point in his early childhood a white boy would be immaterial to his ethnic identity as it presents to every other person he comes in contact with, and you can be damn sure he feels no sense of racial connection to “white” people. He’s a character who was crafted to be completely and totally an outsider among any race.
To say “he’s white with black skin” glosses over the experiment Brackett was doing with the character, creating someone with conflicting ethnic signifiers and no racial identity besides “other”.
So, when I say “Eric John Stark is black,” I’m not saying “Eric John Stark is either descended from African American slave stock or is a Sub-Saharan African”; I’m saying he’s literally black.
More details on our 70th Anniversary Illustrated Stark can be found here.
Jim Breyfogle’s Mongoose & Meerkat are back in an all new adventure, The Golden Pearl.
We still have a little bit of room left for advertisements inside, so try to get them in to us ASAP!
eBook Pre-Order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0847SD58P
Merch: https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/7730992-the-golden-pearl
Paperback and Hardcover: coming soon!
This issue contains:
Alpdruck! by Michael Reyes
Clock has been dispatched to the private hell of a powerful demon–and only a being of true evil on its own path towards redemption can aid him in this deadly fight!
Pour Down Like Silver, by Cynthia Ward
Banished for refusing to follow her order-pair into death, Rhesanna seeks the Tower of Ancient Time to free her comrade’s soul from the demon they failed to slay!
Lest Darkness Wreck the Stars, by Robert Zoltan
When Dareon and Blue uncover a mysterious gemstone in the wastes, a strange violet star appears in the sky and visions of a lovely woman invade Dareon’s dreams!
The Golden Pearl, by Jim Breyfogle
After a harrowing experience in their search for Burning Fish, Kat and Mangos are determined to never be poisoned again—could a Golden Pearl be the answer?!
Slave Girls for Sacrifice, by D.M. Ritzlin
A powerful sorceress with a bestial lover requires a blood sacrifice to complete her vile rites… Will Avok’s brawn and bag of tricks be enough to stop the witch?!
Praying to Thasaidon, by Tais Teng
No one prays to the Charnel God–but when a necromancer comes to collect on a family’s debts, there may be nowhere and no one to turn to but a god of death!
Adeste, Fideles, by G. Scott Huggins
Long ago, the “Last Fleet” was sent to find a new world for Earth’s orphaned children! That expedition to the fringes of space had been thought lost… Until now!
Return of the Dark Brotherhood, by Adrian Cole
Aruul Voruum nears completion of his witchfinder training… but the remnants of Daras Vorta’s cult have worked their tendrils into the heart of Mars’ government!
Outside the Outside?, by J. Comer
A review of The Tingleverse and Feast of Legends
My Name is John Carter (Part 8), by James Hutchings
James Hutchings continues his longform poem…
Cirsova Magazine of Thrilling Adventure and Daring Suspense is a semi-pro publication that, in 2019, paid .0125 per word for original fiction. In addition to its flagship magazine, Cirsova Publishing has released original fiction in Misha Burnett and Louise Sorensen’s Duel Visions and the 35th Anniversary Editions of Michael Tierney’s Wild Stars.
Cirsova has published 38 eligible works of fiction in 2019.
[Bold works are Tangent Recommended; * indicates Ursa Major Award eligibility]
Novel
Novella
Novelette
Short Stories
Covers for the Spring and Fall issues + Wild Stars Omnibus were done by Anton Oxenuk.
Cover for the Summer Special and art for our Illustrated Stark were by StarTwo.
Covers for the 35th Anniversary Editions of Wild Stars were by Mark Wheatley.
Duel Visions’ cover was by Susan Bolhafner.
Happy Birthday to Leigh Brackett, the Queen of Space Opera Science Fiction! Leigh Brackett was one of the best and possibly most important authors you’ve never heard of [unless you follow us, of course].
She was a fan-favorite in the pages of the pulps [and yes, the readers knew she was a woman, and if a neophyte reader misgendered her in the letters columns, editors were quick to correct them]. Some of her Hollywood screenplays are among the most beloved classics of all time.
These days, she gets short shrift in some circles, in part because of the Year Zero approach to culture that requires glass ceilings to be broken over and over again–plus the uncomfortable fact that she not only spoke up about NOT facing discrimination for being a woman in Science Fiction [Hollywood was another story], she was unapologetically /our girl/–her final sci-fi epic, Skaith, was Atlas Shrugged in Space with a black man siccing his psionic dogs on hippies and communists so that the people who worked for a living could escape to the stars with their labor intact.
We’re such huge fans of Leigh Brackett that this year, we published a fully illustrated 70th Anniversary edition of her Eric John Stark Planet Stories adventures!
Be sure to check those out [they’d make great Christmas presents] and her other many thrilling works!
Apparently Amazon is liquidating their stock of Stark.
The hardcover omnibus with over 100 illustrations is currently just $10.00.
Limit one per customer…
This is 80% off and cheaper than even I can get my hands on them [I used my one purchase to send another copy to our artists] Grab this now!
