The Unvarnished Gary Phillips: A Mondo Pulp Collection

(Paperback)

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Description

Award-winning author, screenwriter, and editor Gary Phillips gathers his most thrilling, outlandish, and madcap pulp fiction in an 17-story collection that straddles the line between bizarro, science fiction, noir, and superhero classics.

Aztec vampires, astral projecting killers, oxygen stealing bombs, undercover space rangers, aliens occupying Los Angeles, right wing specters haunting the hood, masked vigilantes, and mad scientists in their underground lairs plotting world domination populate the stories in this rip-snorting collection. In these pages grindhouse melds with blaxploitation along with strong doses of B movie hardcore drive-in fare.

Phillips, editor of the Anthony Award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir, and author of One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem, said this about pulp. The most common definition of pulp is its fast-paced, a story containing out there characters and a wild plot. There is that. But certainly, as weve now arrived at the era of retro-pulp, these stories have elements of characterization: not just action, but a glimpse behind the steely eyes of these doers of incredible deeds. As an added bonus, Phillips resurrects Phantasmo, a Golden Age comics character created by Black artist-writer E.C. Stoner in an all-new outing of ethereal doings.

Reviews

Past Praise for Gary Phillips

For One-shot Harry

For thirty years Phillips has been a must-read writer. Lee Child

Phillips is a storyteller first, and the social chronicling never becomes didactic or overtakes the narrative. The New York Times Book Review

For Matthew Henson and The Ice Temple of Harlem
A wildly entertaining extravaganza.Booklist (Starred)

For The Obama Inheritance
Cheerfully strange and purposefully bizarre. The Washington Post

So sly, fresh and Bizarro World witty, they reaffirm the resiliency of the artistic imagination. Maureen Corrigan, NPRs Fresh Air

For Astonishing Heroes: Shades of Justice
Gary Phillips is the man. . . . Hand-to-hand combat action, demons and magic to boot, internal dialogue, buckets of high-caliber bullets, plus scantily clad women and the heroes they love. Add a Black Dynamite blaxploitative filter and youre in. Ebony

A book for anyone who remains nostalgic for the golden age of Toei films, blaxploitation movies, and lusty grindhouse cinema. Superhero Novels

Author Bio

Gary Phillips has been a community activist, labor organizer and delivered dog cages. Hes published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including South Central Noir and the Anthony award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He was also a writer/co-producer on FXs Snowfall (streaming on Hulu), about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. Recent novels include One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem. He lives with his family in the wilds of Los Angeles.