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Golden Gryphon Press Golden Gryphon Press was founded in 1997 by Jim Turner, the long-time editor of Arkham House. He wanted to publish handsome, quality books of short story collections. Upon his death in 1999, Gary Turner and his wife Geri took over the operations Shortly thereafter, Marty Halpern joined the publishing house to help in the acquisition and publication of new titles. Jim Turner won the 1999 World Fantasy Award for his work at Golden Gryphon Press.

Books slated for future release include:
The Wreck of the Godspeed and Other Stories -- James Patrick Kelly (2008)
Harvest of Changelings -- Warren Rochelle (trade paperback reprint, 2008)
The Well-Built City Trilogy -- Jeffrey Ford (trade paperback reprints, 2008)
   Book 1: The Physiognomy
   Book 2: Memoranda
   Book 3: The Beyond
California Somewhere -- Lucius Shepard (novel, TBA)
Holiday -- M. Rickert (TBA)
Empties -- George Zebrowski (TBA)

Below you'll find an overview of their books so far, with cover/title links to the SF Site reviews (where applicable) along with synopses of those titles yet to be reviewed (cover images are linked to larger images). They are in reverse order of release, with the newest ones on the left.

Golden Gryphon Press

Golden Gryphon Press Website

Books can be ordered by sending a check or money order only, payable to:
Golden Gryphon Press
3002 Perkins Road
Urbana, IL 61802
You may also order on-line from their web site.

Email :gryphon@goldengryphon.com

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Golden Gryphon Press

   No. 54
Nano Comes To Clifford Falls Nano Comes To Clifford Falls by Nancy Kress
Most of the stories in this collection have been picked for various "Year's Best" and Reader's Choice lists. The title story is typical; nanotechnology brings every wish to everyone, and yet on the human level problems of a dire nature are created. This is always the case: typically, you get two stories in one: a focus on cutting-edge technology and the emotional effects of such technology. In many of her stories the pathos of the human condition is explored, where humans plant seedlings and have to decide to weed or not weed—that is, to play God or let natural selection progress. Interfering with a culture, even to save lives, is not so straightforward in "Ej-Es."

   No. 53
The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories The Girl Who Loved Animals and Other Stories by Bruce McAllister
The seventeen stories showcase the author's five decades of writing, including his first professional sale, 'The Faces Outside' — written at sixteen. It includes his best-known work, novelette 'Dream Baby,' a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula awards, and the basis for his acclaimed novel of the same name. In this dark and foreboding first-person narrative of the Vietnam War, a young army nurse who dreams the deaths of her patients but cannot save them, finally transcends the pain and violence of war and at last is able to save her fellow comrades in arms who, in turn, save her."

   No. 52
The Guild of Xenolinguists The Guild of Xenolinguists by Sheila Finch
"In essentially all science fiction, the problems of actually talking to and understanding a new alien race is usually glossed over, by resorting to the 'universal translator' or by totally ignoring any difference in language. Sheila Finch has addressed this issue in a series of stories that range from the first contact with an advanced alien species on Earth to the development of a galaxy-wide Guild of Xenolinguists that handle all cross-culture communication, and indeed help ascertain if a species is intelligent or not."

   No. 51
A Thousand Deaths A Thousand Deaths by George Alec Effinger
"In The Wolves of Memory, the novel that opens this remarkable collection, author George Alec Effinger gives us a rather bleak future where Earth's governing body, the 'Representatives,' have relinquished control to computers that have grown increasingly more intelligent and more self-aware. In addition, this collection offers seven other stories for Sandor Courane fans."

   No. 50
Harvest of Changelings Harvest of Changelings by Warren Rochelle
reviewed by Kilian Melloy
Set in North Carolina in 1992, this novel features everything that makes fantasy a potentially great genre: epic struggles between good and evil; a blend of realism and magic; an enchanted view of the various fantastical species that dwell in realms other than our own, and sometimes trespass here softly or in malicious, murderous force. It starts with widower Ben Tyson meeting an enchanting woman of great beauty and charm named Valeria who proposes marriage. Marriage and parenthood bring with them a certain transparency, which means that Ben becomes privy to Valeria's secret: she is a leading figure among the Faerie.

   No. 49
The Jennifer Morgue The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross
reviewed by Stuart Carter
Bob Howard, like James Bond, works for the British Secret Service -- but that's where the resemblance ends. Howard is a computer networks manager for the Laundry, the arm of the British Secret Service that deals with events that, for want of a better word, we might label "occult." "Lovecraftian" might also do, even "transdimensional" at a pinch, but not "glamorous" -- never glamorous.

   No. 48
Map of Dreams Map of Dreams by M. Rickert
"Fantasy has come to be associated with a literature of escapism but this collection hearkens back to the root meaning of "fantasy," from the word "phantasia" or "a making visible." Myths exist here, not as old stories, but as ancient truths about the nature of being a modern human. There are winged creatures in these stories, and there is odd magic as well, but these serve as elementals of emotion, making apparent the inner lives of humans. There is terror, and humor, too; love and sorrow, despair and recovery — all in a reality where dreams and nightmares do not fade away upon close inspection. Rickert's stories do not lull; they awaken."

   No. 47
Threshold Shift Threshold Shift by Eric Brown
reviewed by Paul Kincaid
Eric Brown is an author who, for near enough two decades, has hovered around the top of the second division of British writers, without ever quite making the breakthrough into the first rank. He's a solid writer who has steadily earned good if not ecstatic reviews and who has attracted a sizeable body of adherents. Yet there has never been the groundswell of support, the word-of-mouth excitement, the great attention-grabbing work that would propel him to the next level. Reading this entertaining new collection one begins to understand why.

   No. 46
Sleeping Policemen Sleeping Policemen by Dale Bailey & Jack Slay Jr.
"High in the Smokey Mountains, in an instant of gut-wrenching horror, five lives are about to change forever. For Nick Laymon, that night begins like any other evening during his four years at Ransom College — with cold beer in the company of his closest friends, Finny Durant and Reed Tucker, followed by the sweet midnight promise of the girl he's always dreamed of, Sue Thompson. It will end nine hours later, when Nick and his friends run down a lone pedestrian on a stretch of deserted mountain highway."

   No. 45
Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts Black Pockets and Other Dark Thoughts by George Zebrowski
"This is George Zebrowski's first collection of horror stories, culled from throughout his career, with an emphasis on the more recent, and one original novella, the titular "Black Pockets." The 19 stories are divided into Personal, Political, and Metaphysical horrors, i.e. stories that should scare you individually, stories that should terrify you as a social animal, and stories that should scare the whole human race, in the collective."

   No. 44
The Empire of Ice Cream The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford
reviewed by Rich Horton
The title story is about a man with synesthaesia. He becomes an accomplished piano player and composer, even as he perceives the notes he plays or composes as sights or smells or tastes. Somehow coffee ice cream causes a special hallucination: a young woman. As he grows older, he finds that pure coffee allows real contact with this woman, and he learns that she, too, is an artist and a synesthaesiac. The story climaxes as he tries to complete a major musical composition.

The Empire of Ice Cream The Empire of Ice Cream by Jeffrey Ford
reviewed by Nathan Brazil
This is the second volume of short stories from Jeffrey Ford, the first being the award-winning The Fantasy Writer's Assistant and Other Stories. He is one among a rare breed, a writer's writer who still knows how to connect with the reader in the manner of a friend telling good tale. Even Jonathan Carroll is a fan.

   No. 43
The Cuckoo's Boys The Cuckoo's Boys by Robert Reed
"'[Robert] Reed may be one of the most prolific of today's young writers... [his] stories... count as among some of the best short work produced by anyone in the '80s and '90s. . . .' Thus wrote editor Gardner Dozois in his Year's Best Science Fiction anthology series. Reed's second collection gathers twelve of the best stories from his prolific short fiction output of the past decade and into this, the twenty-first century."

   No. 42
The Fiction Factory The Fiction Factory by Jack Dann
"Authors develop certain styles, certain niches in their writings. When two or more authors collaborate on a story, frequently their joint creation exceeds what would have been accomplished by the individuals. In this collaborative collection of Jack Dann's short fiction, all were written with one or more co-authors, including Susan Casper, Gardner Dozois, Gregory Frost, Jack C. Haldeman II, Barry N. Malzberg, Michael Swanwick, Janeen Webb, and George Zebrowski."

   No. 41
From the Files of the Time Rangers From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes
reviewed by Matthew Cheney
The Time Rangers are a band of people orphaned from the Timestream, plucked from the loneliness of their particular circumstances by the Fagins of an almost-eternity ruled by the Titans of the Greek pantheon. The job of the Time Rangers is to maintain the multiverse, to prevent events and eruptions that could lead to, among other things, a future death of the gods.

   No. 40
Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories by Gregory Frost
reviewed by Matthew Cheney
It is a rare writer who is well served by a large retrospective collection of their short fiction, and, unfortunately, Gregory Frost is not one of them. He is a good writer, a skilled writer, a writer responsible for a couple of stories that are, in fact, better than average. A collection of 150 pages or so would have shone his strengths well.

Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories Attack of the Jazz Giants and Other Stories by Gregory Frost
reviewed by David Hebblethwaite
If you've not heard of Gregory Frost before, the epigraph from Andrei Sinayavsky gives an idea of what to expect: "Realism is a literary technique no longer adequate for the purpose of representing reality." Quite so. This idea is most effectively embodied here in "Collecting Dust," the story of a family being literally ground down by modern life.

Chapbooks
   No. 4
Mere Mere by Robert Reed
reviewed by Matthew Cheney
The author's imagination is so fecund, his writings so fueled by tremendously strange and vivid visions of distant futures and strange forms of life, that each story benefits from our memories of the wonders he has delivered in the past, so that with the first paragraph of each new tale, our readerly desires are funnelled down into a single yearning to know what marvels await us this time.

   No. 3
The Angel in the Darkness The Angel in the Darkness by Kage Baker
reviewed by Margo MacDonald
It's an interesting contemplation. Many people who decide to have children feel that in having offspring, a part of themselves becomes immortal. But what if you already are truly immortal and can't have offspring? What if you lived forever watching generation after generation of your kin be born, grow, and die? How far would you go to protect them? What would you risk to be near them and to keep them out of harm's way?

   No. 2
A Better World's In Birth! A Better World's In Birth! by Howard Waldrop
reviewed by Steven H Silver
The story details a world in which a Communist revolution succeeded in central Europe in the middle of the nineteenth-century. Twenty years later, as the last of the old guard are dying, there is a series of reports of visitations by the spirits of the martyrs of the revolution, Karl Marx, Joseph Engel, and Richard Wagner. It is dropped in the lap of Comrade Rienzi to determine why these apparitions are appearing.

   No. 1
Turquoise Days Turquoise Days by Alastair Reynolds
reviewed by David Soyka
Set in the same far-future setting of his grand space opera novels, this novella portrays sibling rivalry and reconciliation in the context of planetary invasion and destruction. Sisters Naqi and Mini Okpik are researchers on the largely aquatic world of Turquoise, studying a life form that coats the oceans in an algae-like way. (A song lyric by Echo and the Bunnymen apparently inspired the setting.) The life form is a Pattern Juggler, which inhabits other worlds (and figures a bit in the author's other novels).

   No. 39
George Alec Effinger Live! From Planet Earth George Alec Effinger Live! From Planet Earth by George Alec Effinger and Friends
"George Alec Effinger Live! From Planet Earth, the author's second book from Golden Gryphon Press, contains a hearty selection of Effinger's critically acclaimed short fiction. This collection features twenty-two tales handpicked by those who knew him best — among others, fellow writers and editors Neil Gaiman, Mike Resnick, Michael Bishop, Barbara Hambly, and Howard Waldrop. Then, as a tribute to Effinger, who passed away in April 2002, these friends each contribute commentary about their favorite story, offering insights into its writing, as well as personal anecdotes about the author himself."

   No. 38
Wild Galaxy Wild Galaxy by William F. Nolan
"In an extremely productive career that has spanned more than 50 years, William F. Nolan is best known for co-authoring Logan's Run, which first appeared in print in 1967, became a cult-classic movie in 1976, moved into television as a CBS series, and is now being remade by Warner Brothers for a new big screen release. In addition to the Logan (and many other) novels, he has written numerous award-winning short stories, ranging from the serious to totally off-the-wall zany stories, such as "Toe to Tip, Tip to Toe, Pip-Pop as You Go," where everyone is kept in a perpetual drugged state, and social deviates are those who are straight. These nineteen stories, representing the best of fifty years of William F. Nolan's career."

   No. 37
Thumbprints Thumbprints by Pamela Sargent
reviewed by Chris Przybyszewski
In her Afterword, the author talks about the importance of science fiction to rebuild a new world, a post-9/11 world. "There were, after all, a number of anecdotes about science fiction readers who had become physicists working on nuclear weapons, or to cite a more hopeful example, science fiction fans who ended up as engineers, research scientists, even as astronauts. The world could be remade, and your writing might even, in some small way, help to remake it."

   No. 36
Prince of Christler-Coke Prince of Christler-Coke by Neal Barrett, Jr.
reviewed by Matthew Cheney
Pity poor Asel Iacola, who only gets to be Prince of Christler-Coke for an hour and a half before Ducky Du Pontiac Heinz kills his family, steals his new bride, and sends Asel off to the National Executive Rehabilitation Facility. No-one of such fine breeding as Asel should suffer the deprivations of tacky clothes and honest work. By the end of the novel, though, Asel will have experienced far worse.

Prince of Christler-Coke Prince of Christler-Coke by Neal Barrett, Jr.
reviewed by Rich Horton
Asel Iacola is the newly come-of-age Prince of Christler-Coke, one of the corporations that dominates America East. The book opens with his arranged wedding to the rather dim Loreli, from the family of Pepsicoma-Dodge. But almost at this hour his family is attacked, a scheme of Asel's hated rival Ducky Du Pontiac-Heinz as well as a power from the West, Califoggy State's Peter Cee, of Disney-Dow. Asel's family is obliterated, and Asel is sent to prison in Oklahomer, forced to wear tacky middle class clothing and feed himself.

   No. 35
Secret Life Secret Life by Jeff VanderMeer
reviewed by Greg L. Johnson
"Jeff VanderMeer writes as if in a fevered dream." That's one opening line that came to mind while reading this collection. "Jeff VanderMeer writes with one foot rooted in the Victorian Era and the other planted in next-century's answer to post-modernism." That's another. Throw in a disarmingly witty reference to VanderMeer's own sense of humor and you have a review that begins to do justice to stories that are in turn funny, amusing, horrifying, mystifying, surreal, thought-provoking, and sometimes just plain weird.

   No. 34
Breathmoss and Other Exhalations Breathmoss and Other Exhalations by Ian R. MacLeod
reviewed by Chris Przybyszewski
In the novella, "Breathmoss," the author sets the story on a fantasy world that implants spores called Breathmoss into the lungs of its young so that they can breath in the environment. The world of is terribly original, a living, breathing space of reality that lacks ornamentation and that holds an internal truth. It teaches the reader a new language, one that draws the reader into the story and as we understand the language more regularly, we perceive the characters in a new way.

   No. 33
The Atrocity Archives The Atrocity Archives by Charles Stross
reviewed by Rich Horton
The novel is a neat mix of horrific fantasy -- demons and Lovecraftian monsters and the like -- with smart contemporary SF. Add aspects of spy thrillers and Dilbertian office comedy, and throw in Nazis and nasty Islamists and a very secret branch of British Intelligence. It's told very wittily, though the central horrors are still pretty scary. The overall tone is snarky and fun, not horrific.

   No. 32
Bumper Crop Bumper Crop by Joe R. Lansdale
reviewed by Jayme Lynn Blaschke
He writes some damn horrific stuff, things that one wouldn't go within a hundred miles of otherwise. But the author has such a natural skill with the written word that you become enraptured by the raw elegance of his storytelling down to the sentence level. He writes with such an unabashed confidence -- treats the most hideous subjects with a reverent tenderness, shovels the most rancid cow pies with the straightest face -- that there's almost no way a reader can't fall under his spell.

Bumper Crop Bumper Crop by Joe R. Lansdale
reviewed by Alisa McCune
This is an imaginative collection of 26 short stories each introduced by the author. It, along with High Cotton, are a definitive collection of his short stories. The author's introductions to each story alone are worth reading the book. We are advised that many of his stories are the product of his wife Karen's popcorn.

   No. 31
Two Trains Running Two Trains Running by Lucius Shepard
reviewed by David Soyka
The author literally "bums around" in this collection of his award winning work. This volume is a bit different in that it includes a non-fiction piece, "The FTRA Story," a shorter version of which was originally written for Spin magazine, that inspired the characters and settings of the two short stories, "Over Yonder" and "Jailbait."

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