DARRELL SCHWEITZER :

R E F U G E E S

From an Imaginary Country

19 tales of weird fantasy

Cover and interior artwork by Stephen E. Fabian

Published jointly by

Owlswick Press & W. Paul Ganley: Publisher

1999

     This was published by the late George Scithers (of Owlswick Press) and myself, in collaboration.  It was one of the last books I published.  (I did my final three with other small presses... because I had the mistaken idea, starting back in 1997, that I would not live much longer... and I wanted to fulfill my obligations to those three authors.  {Brian Lumley and the late Janet Fox were the other two.}  But evidently I was wrong, because I still seem to be around.)

Note added later:  I just noticed something bizarre:  my post office box address, listed on the back cover, has the wrong zip code!!!

I love this book and I love the illustrations (I have shown two photos of typical interiors — I had curl a copy up to get the pictures, so they came out slightly distorted).  There are ELEVEN of these full page Stephen E. Fabian drawings, and there are also little tiny drawings starting off each story.

Are you fond of Tanith Lee and her many many fantastic stories?  Then look what she says about Darrell Schweitzer, on the back cover of this book (see photo #2)!!!!  Proud to have been able to print that quotation on the back cover!!

Anyway, it should be clear that this book is also available elsewhere (after all, it did have two publishers!).  My copies are just out of the box in which they were sent to me, so they qualify as "new" or "mint" (okay... I admit it — I finally found them in the disorganized stacks of boxes which were piled randomly in my basement by the folks who helped us move awhile back).  Because of the way they were shipped, without styrofoam packing, there is a bit of scraping along the edges in many cases, but I will choose the best copies I can find for you... and they really are quite excellent.

These are NOT "print on demand" books.  And they are first editions, first printings (although there is no statement of such inside).

The author is not as well known as folks like Stephen King and Ann Rice, but he is a terrific writer of very very weird fiction, and if you haven't read his work, I heartily recommend that you do (yes, even if you don't buy this from me!).  I am proud to have been one of his very first publishers — way way back in the seventies.  For more information about the author, try wikipedia:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Schweitzer

And now, also borrowed from Wikipedia, here is more information than you probably ever wanted to know:

Refugees from an Imaginary Country is a collection of dark fantasy short stories written by Darrell Schweitzer. It was first published in hardcover and trade paperback 

by W. Paul Ganley and Owlswick Press in March 1999.

The collection consists of nineteen early works of the author, including one of his tales about the legendary madman Tom O'Bedlam. The pieces were 

originally published from 1988-1997 in various speculative fiction magazines and anthologies.

Contents

• "Savages" (from Masques IV, Oct. 1991)

• "On the Last Night of the Festival of the Dead" (from Interzone no. 90, Dec. 1994)

• "The Outside Man" (from Narrow Houses, Dec. 1992)

• "Minotauress" (from Amazing Stories v. 65, no. 6, Mar. 1991)

• "Malevendra's Pool" (from Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy, Aut. 1989)

• "Angry Man" (from Fear no. 16, Apr. 1990)

• "The Sorcerer Evoragdou" (from The Ultimate Witch, Oct. 1993)

• "The Strange Rider from the Far, Dark Land" (from Pulphouse no. 6, 1990)

• "The Mysteries of the Faceless King" (from Weird Tales v. 50, no. 1, Spr. 1988)

• "Runaway" (from I, Vampire, Sep. 1995)

• "The Knight of Pale Countenance" (from The Merlin Chronicles, Oct. 1995)

• "One of the Secret Masters" (from Dark Destiny, Dec. 1994)

• "Climbing" (from After Hours no. 25, Win. 1995)

• "The Death of Falstaff" (from Shakespearean Whodunnits, 1997)

• "King Yvorian's Wager" (from Weird Tales v. 51, no. 2, Win. 1989/1990)

• "Going to the Mountain" (from Monochrome: The Readercon Anthology, 1990)

• "The Last Dangerous Lunacy" (from Amazing Stories v. 63, no. 3, Sep. 1988)

• "Last Things" (from Classical Whodunnits, Oct. 1996)

• "Refugees from an Imaginary Country" (from Interzone no. 116, Feb. 1997

This book has 4.57 stars from Goodreads (out of 7).  

 TWO reviews from GOODREADS:

This is where Darrell Schweitzer shines -- the short story. The novels that I've read and reported on in this blog did not hold my interest, but these short stories were completely engrossing, and reminded me why I enjoy the genre.
I don't think it would come as a surprise to anyone to report that Schweitzer writes more for tone, or feeling, than he does for character or plot, but he does it well enough that you can forgive him for it. So many of these stories were memorable, even if the endings were anticipated. "Minotauress," "The Sorcerer Evoragdou," "The Mysteries of the Faceless King," "The Knight of the Pale Countenance," "The Death of Falstaff," "Refugees ..." all have stuck with me, and I recall them fondly, even if , in some cases, I knew exactly how it was going to end. (And some ended in surprising ways.)
I had some mixed feelings, going in to this collection, having read the two novels not so long ago, but this was a welcome return to the "weird" genre, and reminds me why I recalled Schweitzer's name as fondly as I did.
Recommended for anyone looking to read something that was representative of magazines such as Weird Tales. 

What a surprise this was. I'd read and enjoyed the occasional Schweitzer short story I'd come across in various horror anthos over the years, but this was as satisfying and eclectic a collection I've read. Schweitzer does weird fiction, straight horror, and sword and sorcery with equal ease. I say sword and sorcery, but the ratio is something like 20% sword/80% sorcery/all strange -- definitely more Clark Ashton Smith than Robert E. Howard. Only a little more...reserved, I suppose. The story depicted in the above illustration ("Minotauress") is a clever upending of the hero's tale, told from the big baddy's perspective rather than the brave knight's.
       The writing here is uniformly excellent, with an elegant, poetic flavor to many of the tales that never seemed showy or ostentatious. Most of the offerings have a sustained, creepy atmosphere throughout, rarely solely reliant on some final twist for its effectiveness (though there are some twists). They're almost all rather subtle and low-key, and at times can be opaque or confusing, yet there's an underlying sense of unease that permeates the horror entries, and some of the fantasy stories as well, which kept me absorbed throughout. The ideas and imagery that Schweitzer conjures up can be quietly stunning, reminding me a bit of Ligotti at times, and the illustrations by Stephen E. Fabian complement the pieces well.

__________________________________________

 WOW!   I wrote a book!!! —  Want to take a look??? ———

just go here:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/CTHULHU'S-COUSINS-and-Other-Weirdnesses-W-Paul-Ganley-Wildside-Press-2016-/255154711891?hash=item3ace43fc32