PRO SE ANNOUNCES BLACK PULP FEATURING BEST SELLING AUTHORS!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Publisher Announces BLACK PULP Collection

Featuring Best Selling Authors

Batesville, AR – 1/26/2013 – Pro Se Productions, a publisher of Genre Fiction, works to not only harken back to the classic fiction of Pulp magazines and adventure tales, but also to push the boundaries of modern Genre fiction in many directions.   To that end, Pro Se Productions reveals a new anthology to be released in early 2013, a collection featuring the work of various authors, including bestsellers Walter Mosley and Joe R. Lansdale. 

Cover for BLACK PULP
by Adam Shaw

Black Pulp is a collection of stories featuring African characters in leading roles in stories running the genre gamut.   Pulp Fiction of the early 20^th Century rarely, if ever, focused on characters of color and the handful of black characters in these stories were typically portrayed as racial stereotypes.  Black Pulp, a concept developed by noted crime novelist Gary Phillips, brings some of today’s best authors together with up and coming writers to craft adventure tales, mysteries, and more, all with black characters at the forefront.

 Also co-editor of Black Pulp, Phillips observed, “While revisionism is not history, as Django Unchained signifies, nonetheless historical matters find their way into popular fiction.  This is certainly the case with new pulp as it handles such issues as race with a modern take, even though stories can be set in a retro context.  Black Pulp then offers exciting tales of derring-do and clear-eyed heroes and heroines of darker hues appealing to all.”

Black Pulp features a new original essay on the nature of Pulp, both classic and modern, by award winning author Walter Mosley.  Known for his bestselling Easy Rawlins novel series as well as books featuring Private Eye Leonid McGill, Mosley is widely published in fiction, both literary and genre, and non-fiction. Mosley has received several honors, including a Grammy, PEN America’s Lifetime Achievement Award, and an O. Henry award.

Also featured in the anthology is a classic story by Joe R. Lansdale. Lansdale is not unfamiliar to Pulp, having written such notable characters as Tarzan as well many of his own original creations, including Hap & Leonard.  Winner of the Edgar Award, multiple Bram Stoker Awards, The Horror Writers Association Lifetime Achievement Award and many others, Lansdale’s story provides his own take on Black Pulp.

Black Pulp Co-Editor, Contributor,
And Idea Bringer
Gary Phillips

Other contributing writers include Chester Himes Award winner Phillips, two time Shamus Award winner Gar Anthony Heywood, noted author Kimberly Richardson who currently has two works enlisted for Pulitzer Prize nomination, Dixon Medal winner Christopher Chambers, critically acclaimed novelist Mel Odom, hip-hop chronicler Michael Gonzales, Pulp Factory and Pulp Ark Award winner Ron Fortier, Pulp Factory Award winner Charles Saunders, Pulp Ark Award winners Derrick Ferguson and Tommy Hancock(also Publisher co-editor of Black Pulp), and noted writers Michael Gonzales and Alan D. Lewis.

Black Pulp is slated for print and digital release in early 2013 and features an original cover by Adam Shaw.  For more information concerning Black Pulp and Pro Se Productions, contact proseproductions@earthlink.net.

Read More

VAN ALLEN PLEXICO UNLEASHES THE LORDS OF FIRE!

New Pulp Author Van Allen Plexico’s latest novel is the first in a series of Military Science Fiction New Pulp Space Opera adventure novels called The Shattering, published by White Rocket Books.

Press Release – For Immediate Release

THE SHATTERING: LORDS OF FIRE Arrives in Trade Paperback!

Plexico Brings Military SF/Space Opera to the world of New Pulp!

(January 28, 2013)  White Rocket Books proudly announces the release in trade paperback format of Van Allen Plexico’s THE SHATTERING, LEGION I: LORDS OF FIRE!

Stripped of his authority by the Emperor of Mankind and assigned to duty in deepest space for failing to prevent the greatest robbery in history, former Colonel Ezekial Tamerlane believes his career as a soldier is over.  But strange forces are at work, urging the Emperor to set out on a journey fraught with dangers into a nightmare realm a universe away from our own; and Tamerlane, like it or not, is going along for the ride.  What he and his high-tech super-soldiers find along the way will shake the Empire to its very foundations, and unleash a crisis of galactic proportions that not all the armies in creation can hold back...

"Plexico is the master of space opera." --Pulp Fiction Reviews

LORDS OF FIRE begins a new galaxy-shattering adventure from the author of HAWK: HAND OF THE MACHINE and LUCIAN: DARK GOD’S HOMECOMING, and bridges the divide between those two novels and universes.  Here we see the fallout from the war of the gods in LUCIAN, and the growing crisis that will lead to the creation of Hawk and the other Hands of the Machine.  Futuristic armies clash, godlike beings manipulate empires, and the gateway to the Underverse of the Below is reopened, unleashing slavering demonic hordes upon an unsuspecting galaxy!

Plexico’s previous novel, SENTINELS: METALGOD, reached #1 on the New Pulp Best-Sellers List in December 2012.  “Nobody—not even Abnett and Lanning—does cosmic superheroes like Van Allen Plexico.  Nobody,” said Barry Reese, creator of the Rook and Lazarus Grey.

“I wanted this book to kick off the new “Shattering” saga with a bang—with action from start to finish,” says Plexico of LORDS OF FIRE, “and that’s exactly what it does.  I have no doubt that my loyal cadre of longtime readers will enjoy it, and I’m confident it will appeal to a new readership of bold Military SF enthusiasts who like a mash-up of high-tech combat and supernatural menaces in the vein of the Warhammer 40,000 books.”

White Rocket Books is a leader in the New Pulp movement, publishing exciting action and adventure novels and anthologies since 2005, in both traditional and electronic formats.   White Rocket books have hit the Amazon.com Top 15-by-Genre and reached #1 on the New Pulp Best-Sellers List, and have garnered praise from everyone from Marvel Comics Vice-President Tom Brevoort to Kirkus Reviews.

THE SHATTERING, LEGION I: LORDS OF FIRE is a $15.95, 6x9 format trade paperback from White Rocket Books.
316 pages.
ISBN-13:  978-0-61575-419-2  
ISBN-10:   0-61575-419-8  
(6x9” Trade Paperback)


Now available in paperback at Amazon.

Coming soon: 

The Shattering:

Legion II: Sons of Terra

Read More

IT’S A CHRONOLOGY OF SHADOWS ON THE LATEST SHADOW FAN PODCAST

The Shadow Fan podcast returns for his 16th episode! This time around, New Pulp Author Barry Reese talks about his feelings regarding the importance of new Shadow material, Dynamite's solicitations for April 2013, the classic novel "The Wasp Returns" and Rick Lai's reference work, "Chronology of Shadows: A Timeline of The Shadow's Exploits." It's a jam-packed episode, dedicated to the greatest pulp hero ever!

Join the conversation about pulp's greatest hero today at http://theshadowfan.libsyn.com/chronology-of-shadows

Read More

MONSTER EARTH DEBUTS FROM MECHANOID PRESS!

Contact: James Palmer

palmerwriter@yahoo.com

www.mechanoidpress.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

MONSTER EARTH Has Arrived!

Atlanta, GA—Mechanoid Press, a new New Pulp publisher, is pleased to announce the publication of their first anthology, MONSTER EARTH!

Welcome to a world where the Cold War was fought not with the threat of nuclear destruction, but with Giant Monsters.

Watch as the denizens of this Earth that might have been learn to harness the power of these legendary creatures for good and ill. In these seven tales you'll witness first hand as…

--A young boy learns the value of sacrifice when the Japanese use a giant monster to attack Pearl Harbor…

--An Inuit confronts his heritage to harness a frightening creature of the Great White North…

--A false guru's greed endangers 1960s Boston…

All this and more await you in the pages of MONSTER EARTH!

Join editors James Palmer (Slow Djinn), Jim Beard (Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker) and some of the most talented voices in New Pulp, including Nancy Hansen (Prophecy's Gambit), Edward M. Erdelac (The Merkabah Rider series), and I.A. Watson (Blackthorn: Dynasty of Mars) as they take you on a guided tour of a frightening vision of Earth…

MONSTER EARTH!

Monster Earth is an original giant monster anthology containing almost 75,000 words of monster mayhem.

MONSTER EARTH harkens back to the classic giant monsters of yesteryear like Godzilla, Mothra, Gamera, and King Kong, while focusing on the human element and what it would be like to live in such a world where giant monsters terrorize the Earth.

“There have been a few other giant monster anthologies over the years,” says Palmer. “But our book is going to be a bit different. It has a unifying concept, as well as a solid pulp style of storytelling.”

Developed by MONSTER EARTH co-editor Jim Beard (writer, Captain Action and the Riddle of the Glowing Men), each story in the book takes place in a different decade of the 20th century, which leads to a Cold War fought with giant monsters rather than the threat of nuclear weapons.

“I really wanted all the stories to have an underlying thread that weaves between all the stories, and Jim really came up with a winner.”

The stories in MONSTER EARTH have a strong human angle as well.

“Focusing in on the human beings living in this world is important to me,” says Palmer. “The monsters are like forces of nature, with the humans trying to control them. But don’t worry, these aren’t just regular human interest stories with a monster thrown in for window dressing. There are plenty of great monster battles and more than enough citywide destruction to please the most discerning kaiju fan – and anyone who loves a good tale.

The book sports an awesome cover by Eric Johns inspired by the American release of the Godzilla film Destroy All Monsters.

MONSTER EARTH is available in print via Createspace http://www.createspace.com/4125968

and Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Monster-Earth-James-Palmer/dp/0615753469/

It is also available as an e-book from Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00B0QIVAE

and Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/275981

About Mechanoid Press:
Mechanoid Press is a new imprint specializing in science fiction, New Pulp, and steampunk ebooks and anthologies. For more, visit www.mechanoidpress.comor follow the robot revolution on Twitter. You can also like Mechanoid Press on Facebook.

Read More

How Many Genomes Have Been Sequenced?

There are several types of genome sequence. Some are relatively incomplete and they don't really count. Others have been thoroughly sequenced and we have a good permanent draft sequence. The best ones are the "finished" genome sequences where the preliminary drafts have been checked and gaps have been filled.

How many "finished" or permanent draft complete genome sequences have been published?

How many of them are eukaryotes?

Here are the answers from: GOLD

(Apologies for the Three Domain influence.)

Archaea: 181
Bacteria: 3762
Eukaryotes: 183

Why are there so few eukaryotes? Because many eukaryotic genomes are very large and it takes a lot more work to sequence that much DNA. Furthermore, many eukaryotic genomes are full of junk DNA and it's difficult to sequence and assemble repetitive regions in order to get a complete chromosome. The bottom line is money—for most labs it's too expensive to sequence the genome of their favorite eukaryote but it can be quite cheap these days to sequence a bacterial genome.

---

[Hat Tip: Jonathan Eisen]

Read More

Why You Should Become a Postdoc Instead of Taking a Job in the Private Sector

Eric Lewellyn is an enthusiastic postdoc in the Drubin/Barnes Lab at US Berkeley. (They work on membrane trafficking.)

Eric tries to convince you to stay in university using song and dance. He describes all the good things about slaving away enjoying science in a research lab. I don't know Eric but I have met his mother—she's the cousin of one of our best friends.

---

Read More

What Does the Liberal Party of Canada Stand For?

I've long been a supporter of the Federal Liberal Party of Canada. It's the party of Mike Pearson and Pierre Elliot Trudeau—two Prime Ministers that I greatly admire. I even like Jean Chrétien!

Lately I'm having trouble understanding what the Liberal Party stands for. They've just had two leaders (Michael Ignatieff, and Bob Rae) who are complete mysteries to me. I really don't know what they stand for, or what they're passionate about.

Apparently I'm not alone. Here's the view of Thomas Walkom from a column in the Toronto Star a few days ago [Do Canada’s, or Ontario’s, Liberals matter any more?].

On the other hand, it’s not clear what the Liberals represent any more. They would like voters to think of them as the non-Conservatives — the alternative to Stephen Harper federally or to Tim Hudak in Ontario.

But are they?

Paul Adams, an astute political observer writing in iPolitics, argues that the federal Liberals have transformed themselves into the old Progressive Conservatives, socially progressive but fiscally to the right.

I’d go further. I reckon the old PCs of Joe Clark would find federal Liberal leadership candidate Martha Hall Findlay’s talk of dismantling farm marketing boards a bit too right-wing for their tastes

Similarly, Liberal front-runner Justin Trudeau’s enthusiastic embrace of the Alberta oilsands would probably be seen as a tad naive by the Red Tories of former Ontario premier Bill Davis, most of whom believed that strong business required equally strong regulation.

As a party, the Liberals haven’t had a new idea since the 1980s. Individual party members have (Stéphane Dion’s green shift comes to mind).

But the party, as a whole never signed onto Dion’s environmental agenda. Nor has it signed onto anything else.

The Liberals talk of holding policy conventions that would replicate that golden period of the 1960s, when the party embraced medicare, public pensions and welfare reform.

But they never do. Former federal leader Michael Ignatieff hosted a thinkers’ conference that headlined prominent conservatives. Nothing came of it.

The conventional wisdom among Liberals is that strong policy positions should be avoided at all costs in order to avoid alienating voters. Instead, Liberals prefer to talk about what they call values.

We've been discussing this issue with our former Liberal MP, Omar Alghabra, who happens to be a member of Justin Trudeau's team. Justin, for those of you who don't follow Canadian politics, it the son of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and he's running for the leadership of the Federal Liberal Party. We want Justin, and all the other candidates, to speak out on what the Liberal Party stands for.

Omar sent us a link to this video. It's obvious that Justin is avoiding the question. He stands for some trivial issues like legalizing marijuana but what about the bigger issues? How do I tell the difference between the Liberal Party and Conservative Party or the New Democratic Party? I don't think I can vote for Justin Trudeau or for any of the other leadership candidates. In fact, I'm not sure I can vote for the Liberal in the next election. The NDP is looking very attractive.

---

Read More