Deadstock (Punktown)

Book Description

Punktown: established by Earth colonists on a faraway world, a crime-ridden megalopolis peopled by countless races. There is Stake, the private detective with chameleon-like abilities he can not control. There is his wealthy client, Fukuda, whose company mass produces life forms for labor and as playthings. There is Fukuda's beautiful teenage daughter, whose priceless one-of-a-kind living doll has been stolen. And there is the doll itself, growing in size and resentment. Meanwhile, at an abandoned apartment complex with a dark history, a tough street gang and a band of mutant squatters have been trapped inside by bioengineered life forms mindlessly bent on destroying them like an infestation of vermin. The destinies of all these individuals will converge and collide.

Customer Reviews:

Welcome to Punktown!.......2007-08-23

Deadstock is a wonderful sci-fi story of mystery and mythos set in Punktown. Punktown is a dark place where aliens and humans, as well as interdimensional beings and worlds all come together. And Jeremy Stake, a detective with special gifts brings this story all together. This book is a real page turner and consumed me to the point that some touching parts brought me to tears. Punktown is a wonderful world that is uniquely Thomas and well worth investigating if you have never had the pleasure of entering this world before. You'll be hooked. I highly recommend this book.

His adventures make for a very different alien setting........2007-06-10

Jeffrey Thomas' DEADSTOCK provides a 'punktown' novel about a crime-ridden metropolis on a colony world home to numerous aliens. Jeremy is a private detective with uncontrollable special abilities and a serious of challenging clients. His adventures make for a very different alien setting.

Readable if flawed blend of Punktown and the mythos.......2007-05-18

Deadstock is the latest offering in Jeffrey Thomas' Punktown saga. Mr. Thomas is pretty well known to most fans of horror and outré fiction for his stories set in the city Paxton on the planet Oasis, and for his interest in HPL's mythos. He is on the verge of making it to the big time. Previously his work has been released as short stories in genre magazines, then compiled in anthologies or single author collections, or as novels published by various small presses. As I understand it, Deadstock was a direct release to mass Markey paperback, a first for Mr. Thomas, and a signal that his backers think he can generate a significant audience.

Deadstock is published by Solaris, an imprint of BL Publishing in the UK. It costs $7.99, much less expensive than the typical small press fare and no doubt indicative of hopes for high sales. The evocative cover art is by Darius Hinks and, I think, superbly captures the futuristic feel of Punktown and the mutability of the main character in the novel. Page count is 414, although the text itself starts on page 9. All in all, good value for the money.

I think it is difficult for a novice reader to come into this story and fully appreciate it. Although Mr. Thomas tries to place everything into context, you need an appreciation of much of his previous output. First of all, you need to be familiar with Punktown itself, from the various short story collections (Punktown, Punktown: Shades of Gray and Punktown: Third Eye) to really have a sense of how gritty, crime ridden and tense the setting is. It would also be helpful to have already met the various human and humanoid races who inhabit this world, like the wide-mouthed Choom native to Oasis, the blue turbaned, gray skinned Kalians, the tentacle eyed Tikkihotto, etc. The reader also needs to be conversant with the fiction of Lovecraft. Mr. Thomas is a noted mythos author. Most of his stories are in the collection Unholy Dimensions from Mythos Books, which I highly recommend. More recently the author has attempted to blend his love of the mythos with Punktown. It's nothing new for him; you can read his series of short stories about the Old Ones in Unholy Dimensions. This new books is a direct descendent of Monstrocity published in hardcover by Prime Books in 2003, although it is not per se a sequel. There is no overlap of characters but the events and locations of Monstrocity are fresh in Punktown's recent past. The Great Old Ones of Lovecraft and Derleth are not solely or primarily concerned with Earth and humans, and are not constrained by time and spatial dimensions like we are. They can manifest to nonhuman races. If they lost a war with the Elder Gods (Nodens et al) and they are trying to regain primacy in this dimension, then they will manipulate whoever they must to open the interdimensional gates that will allow this to happen. So it should be unsurprising that the races that share Oasis have some myths, legends and horrific truths in common. Cthulhu and its ilk are the Outer Gods to the Kalians. In the future, no one raises cattle or chickens any more; they grow "living" lumps of chicken or beef flesh. Well, in Monstrocity, one of the growers of these foodstuffs is using the technology to raise monstrous creatures, spawn of the Outer Gods, to allow them to penetrate our sphere. Monstrocity deals with the discovery and confrontation of the cult doing these unspeakable things. That finally brings us back to Deadstock, set some time in the aftermath of Monstrocity.

************* Spoilers may follow, stop reading now if that bothers you.**********

Deadstock presents two stories that intertwine but never really mesh. Jeremy Stake, a veteran of the transdimensional Blue War, is a private eye. He is also a mutant whose features will mimic those of the person he is looking at, giving him characteristics a bit like a chameleon. He is hired by John Fukuda, a wealthy magnate of the artificial livestock industry (or deadstock, giving the novel its title) to retrieve a rare doll that was lost by or stolen from his daughter Yuki. These kawaii-dolls are all the range with Punktown teen girls. They are essentially artificial life forms. Yuki's doll, Dai-oo-ika, was the rarest, completely unique, and now it's gone missing. It turns out hers was vaguely anthropoid, with wings and claws, and feelers instead of a face. Sound familiar? Anyone who has read enough mythos fiction can catch a glimmering of where this is going. It also eventually comes out that it was fabricated with the same technology used for such ill purposes in Monstrocity. As Stake slowly unravels the whereabouts of Dai-oo-ika, he also begins to unravel some inconsistencies in the lives of Fukuda and his daughter. We learn more about his experiences in the Blue War, where he had experiences that would not be out of place in a novel about Vietnam and fell for a blue skinned sniper who could easily have been modeled after the enemy trigger woman in Full Metal Jacket. In parallel with this, an outcast Punktown mutant gang and a gang of tough street youths are trapped in an unoccupied building that was designed by Fukuda's brother. This apartment was to have nonhuman robotic servants for each apartment directed by an encephalon, an artificial brain, and they have now run seriously amuck. These disparate gangs are trapped together and try with increasing desperation to escape the merciless onslaught of these automatons. As Slake, Yuki and Fukuda are ultimately drawn to this building where the gangs are trapped, the two groups never meet or directly interact, even after the story reaches its climactic moment. What ties them together are how they are affected by the slow transformation of Dai-oo-ika, who is making its way to this apartment building also.

I never wrote a review of Monstrocity because I was not blown away by it. Unfortunately I am left with a similar impression of Deadstock. I really really like Jeffrey Thomas' short fiction, and my review of Unholy Dimensions shows how much I like his mythos stories. Unfortunately this novel fell a bit flat for me. None of the characters were really developed well; some of them came across as clichés. For example, I could have done without the whole interlude-in-flashback to the Blue War which read like a Vietnam knock off. I never got a good feel for why Stake fell so hard for an enemy combatant and I really disliked the Deus ex machine denouement of his relationship with her. After all the build up the plot seemed to fizzle out a bit, and I can't understand why the two plot threads were not more closely tied together to give the novel a greater sense of cohesion. I also was very put off by a shameless self plug in the middle of the book. Stake is trying to research the cult of the Outer Gods and on the web comes across two reference books. Oh, not the Necronomicon or Mysteries of the Worm, but rather Monstrocity and Everybody Scream. And the name of the bookstore where they were for sale was Shocklines. Of course, it is old hat for mythos authors to use the names of their friends and colleagues in a mythos story, but always as an inside joke for devoted fans. Maybe this was meant to be humorous? Sure didn't work for me!

So much for the bad. What was good? Well, Mr. Thomas has an accomplished hand at descriptive prose. The whole book was very readable and filled with interesting little asides and vignettes. He can also pencil a mean action sequence. The battle scenes were very exciting. He has the mythos in his blood; his descriptions of the development of Dai-oo-iki were nicely creepy and rang very true for the genre. Even though I didn't care for some broad brushstrokes of the plot, I liked the parts greater than the whole. In fact this book is a page turner that I read through in a couple of days. I never set it aside like I have been doing with Black Sutra. And, dang it, I just plain like everything about Punktown. I'm glad to have this book but I doubt I'll be rereading it soon. Maybe the mythos and Punktown work better for me in short stories than novels. I dunno. Your move.

Utterly Mundane.......2007-04-05

Jeremy Stake is a private investigator in Punktown whose mutant genes give him the ability (albeit without control) to take on the appearance of other people. In this novel, Stake has been hired by a rich entrepreneur named John Fukuda to find out what has happened to a bio engineered living "doll" that has been taken from his daughter Yuki. Mr. Fukuda owns a company that manufactures "Deadstock" which is bio engineered meat grown in the form of headless, legless cattle, pigs, etc. These dolls are all the rage amongst Yuki's private school peers and this particular doll is unique. At the same time the novel follows Javier and his Punktown gang of mutants,the Folger Street Snarlers. The gang has gone in search of a missing member whose trail leads them to an abandoned apartment building. The apartment building seems to have some very dark secrets.

Jeffrey Thomas has certainly introduced some very interesting concepts into his future world of Punktown including bioengineering, mutants, alien races, and dimensional travel. However, I found these to be hollow concepts that just didn't seem true to any sort of possible physics. For example, interdimensional travel is possible, and there are several alien races yet everyone is driving hovercars and talking on wrist phones? Thomas' races are also very derivative of cultures today with the most apparent being his description of the Ha Jiin, a race of Blue humanoids which are stand ins for Vietnamese in appearance, language, culture, and homeworld. In fact, Thomas' has Jeremy Stake as a veteran of the "Blue War" which is essentially an Oliver Stonesque version of the Vietnam War replete with the oafish and brutal colonial troops, the "freedom fighting" Ha Jiin, and the steamy jungles, not to mention that Jeremy's side was of course fighting for control of the Ha Jiin's vast amounts of Gas vapor.

At any rate this book really was no more than a B level sci fi/monster movie in a sort of revivalist 40's gumshoe noir novel. I didn't find the book to be particularly compelling after the first few chapters as the story moved into rather predictable territory. While the science fiction/future world aspects were mostly contrived and dubious, they did serve as the novels lone bright spot if only BECAUSE of their extravagance. Other than that, this book was disposable.

Creepy SciFi Page-Turner.......2007-04-01

If you're looking for a well written creepy SciFi thriller, you've found your book. This here's a great little treat. Never read this author before, and will read more by him.

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Great stories
Incomparable stories of a fantastic, futuristic metropolis and it's denizens
Get Lost In Punktownýyou wonýt want to come back out
A compelling and genre-defying read!
A Melancholic Triumph of the Ages

Punktown
Jeffrey Thomas , and Michael Marshall Smith
Manufacturer: Prime Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 1894815750

Amazon.com

Like Ray Bradbury, Jeffrey Thomas writes dark science fiction at the border of horror, and like Bradbury's collection, The Martian Chronicles, Thomas's Punktown uses a shared setting to tell very different stories of very different characters, both human and alien. The Martian Chronicles follows the rise and fall of the human colonization of Mars, while Punktown's nine stories (seven previously unpublished) follow a more subtle arc, examining the course of human development, from destructive youth through the dangers of parenthood and career to late adulthood, when losses and the weight of memories bring their own horrors. As The Martian Chronicles uses the future to consider mid-American, midcentury concerns, Punktown uses the future to reflect a fin-de-siècle present shaped by brutally rapid change, by rampant abuse, by the dehumanizing acts of governments and corporations, and by serial-killer epidemics and schoolroom massacres. But in the end, Punktown little resembles The Martian Chronicles. And, though it is not in the same league as Bradbury's classic, Punktown demonstrates that Thomas is a rising talent of considerable power and imagination.

In "The Reflections of Ghosts," an artist clones himself to make art for sadistic patrons, until he finds himself trapped in the ultimate self-absorption. The shadows of Poe and Lovecraft lie subtly over "The Palace of Nothingness," a mysterious, abandoned factory that may not be empty after all. And a chip-implanted detective who can forget nothing must examine mass-murder scenes in "The Library of Sorrows." --Cynthia Ward

Book Description

In the city they call Punktown, on a planet where a hundred sentient species collide, you can become a creator of clones. You can become a piece of performance art. You might even become a library of sorrows..."

From a master of dark fantasy, a collection of related stories set in Punktown, featuring "Reflections of Ghosts", chosen for The Year's Best Fantastic Fiction. An author whose work has frequently appeared in year's best anthologies. Gothic, punkish science fiction surreal fantasy.

Published in May of 2000 by The Ministry of Whimsy Press, Punktown contains nine stories, seven of which have not appeared in print, having been specifically reserved for publication in this collection.

Customer Reviews:

Great stories.......2007-06-26

This was a great collection of stories. I feel that the first stories were the strongest and the last stories the weakest but even at it's worst these were wonderfully crafted stories. The writing style never fails to make you sympathize or in some cases, even empathize with the characters involved. Great to get you started in the always colorful, probably with gore, Punktown (Paxton to the socialites). Great stuff. Highly recommended place to start for all P-Town related books. Move in to Monstrocity after this and find out how bad things in the city REALLY are.

Incomparable stories of a fantastic, futuristic metropolis and it's denizens.......2005-08-03

"Punktown" is a collection of short stories of the futuristic city of Paxton (a.k.a. Punktown).

This collection is Thomas at his best (and if you have read his works "Monstrocity" or "Letters from Hades", you know this is high praise). Speaking of "Monstrocity", it is a novel also set in Punktown and is highly recommended as a follow-up to "Punktown".

While each story in this collection can stand on it's own, they are best when read together. There is a continuity present throughout these stories, and as a whole, they create a collage of a fantastically creepy city. Thomas delivers in creating a world like no other, and he does it well.

Get Lost In Punktownýyou wonýt want to come back out.......2004-04-24

All I can say to this new author is...WOW! What a great compilation of stories. Interesting, well written, imaginative, and absorbing; you won't want to leave Punktown once you submerge yourself into its seedy depths.

On the planet of Oasis, an Earth established colony is formed called Paxton, but is known to everyone on Oasis as Punktown. In this colony, people from many different worlds and cultures live crowded into the apartments and streets, the colony overflowing with teeming life forms from the native Choom to the strange L'leweds and Antses and Waiais and of course the Humans.

Although each chapter is a separate story, they all blend into each other as a single fully developed tale of the colony itself, and the lives that carry out their existence there. When I read the first two chapters, I found myself being a little disappointed that they seemed to end rather "unfinished", like there should have been more wrap up to that particular tale. But as you read along, this feeling will fade because you realize that the overall concept of the book is that "life goes on", and you begin to feel the continuum of Punktown itself; as an entity comprised of individuals and not the individuals themselves.

My favorite chapter has to be the first one, "The Reflections of Ghosts", about an artist who clones himself to make artwork out of his creations, twisting the helix here and there to cause mutations according to whatever specs his customers wish. He calls them "Starfish" because of their complete lack of intelligence, but his narcissistic captivation with his "art" will be his downfall. Wait till you read about his "wall piece". Yuck.

Next, in "The Flaying Season", we follow a human woman named Kohl who lives in the Antse part of the neighborhood, and cannot seem to let go of her past even though it has already been erased.

"Wakizashi" is a very strange tale, introducing us to the L'lewed, one of the strangest residents Jeffrey Thomas dreamed up for Punktown. This chapter gives us a reason to ponder just how far does Tolerance extend when you are dealing with such diverse cultures?

"Precious Metal" is a new look at "Man vs Machine", a rather interesting tale that would be at home in Asimov's "I Robot". (Yes, it's that good!) Mob bosses and a robot jazz band and beautiful women make this tale a tasty and satisfying addition to this collection.

"Heart For Heart's Sake" is a beautiful tale of love conquering both evil, and artistic desires. Teal has created the perfect piece of art, his best work ever, and his girlfriend Nimbus does the performance art within his creation. But what price could possibly be worth such a treasure?

"Face" is a different kind of love story; the unconditional love of a parent for their child. This chapter is not about the conquering power of love, but the gut-wrenching pain that familial love can cause, and just how far one will go to never let go of their love. Or avenge it.

"The Palace of Nothingness" is a short, futuristic Haunted House story.

"Immolation" is an interesting and sad tale of a "Culture"; which is a clone specifically created for work. Would these "Cultures" have feelings? Love? Anger? Would there be room in their "brain-drip educated" minds to feel friendship, affection, or perhaps even seek vengeance?

The last chapter in the book, "The Library Of Sorrows", is about a cop named MacDiaz who has a photographic memory chip installed in his brain. This proves to be great for solving crimes and tracking killers, but just how many grisly scenes can he handle having total image recall of? At what point does one grow weary of the carnage?

This is the first book I have read of Jeffrey Thomas's, and I must say it is absolutely wonderful. I loved the world he created, and the different aliens. His descriptions of the strange beings bring them out into flesh without teetering over into boring repetitiveness or patronizing "you should know what I'm thinking" prose. The characters are well though out, believable, and likeable; and the scenes they wander through flow like mind candy past the eye. Punktown is a fast read, which is good, because you will want to stay up reading this one. Enjoy!

A compelling and genre-defying read!.......2003-02-09

Jeffrey Thomas' is a grim, grimy, and enthralling world. A genre-busting collection, Punktown has cyberpunk and horror (even a touch of splatterpunk) in its lineage, and a compelling collection of tales merging a smattering of species on a faraway planet with the gritty, crumbling, degraded desperation of life in a huge megopolis slowly suffering the unstoppable enfeeblement of its advancing age. A future noir in its own vein. Thomas' stories bring life and death, excess and blight, triumph and failure to Punktown with a clear, sharp writing style. Punktown is not to be missed.

A Melancholic Triumph of the Ages.......2002-05-10

In the realm of the concave of space, in the infinite palette of stars, we experience this broad brush of great talent in Mr. Thomas's aspect of his eye. He is brimming with imagination, almost choking the literary world with this book's essence and flair. I thoroughly enjoyed this series of stories of the incredulous, and can't wait to read more, and to stoke my memory with the imagery it hangs in midair like a surreal Dali freakout. Suspended by sheer imagination, this book is a complete work by itself, evenly charged with bountiful prose that guts even the most mundane of human boor's soul, peels it back, and hoses out the insides. Bravo!

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Blue War: A Punktown novel
Jeffrey Thomas
Manufacturer: Solaris
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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Adventure | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1844165329

Book Description

Over a decade ago Earth’s Colonial Forces battled in a bloody war against the blue-skinned Ha Jiin people. Now, the hard-won peace is about to crumble as the work of an Earth-owned biotech corporation goes disastrously wrong. It’s up to Jeremy Stake to uncover the truth behind mysterious events, and prevent a new war from beginning...

Product Description

This 70,000 word short story collection by Scott Thomas features nearly all-original material set in and around the Victorian era. Limited to only 250 signed and numbered copies, it features an introduction by Michael Pendragon, a foreward by Jeff VanderMeer, and artwork by Colleen Crary. Signed by all. "Machen, Hodgson, Dunsany, White--and Scott Thomas. Scott Thomas redefines what it is to be 'old school' in Cobwebs and Whispers. Thomas takes command of the Victorian era horror tale and drags it kicking and screaming into the new millennium. The poetic and bizarre 'A Fine Death for Hubert Hillaby,' the exotic, Gaiman-esque 'Ellette,' the haunting and bittersweet 'Marcy Waters,' the terrifying 'The Puppet and the Train,' all are a delightfully wicked read. The visions conjured in Cobwebs and Whispers will linger with you long after you've closed the book. Highly recommended!" --Brian Keene

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Returning to Punktown has never been sweeter, nor as horrific...

PUNKTOWN: Shades of Grey
Jeffrey Thomas , and Scott Thomas
Manufacturer: Bedlam Press/Necro Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Anthologies | Science Fiction | Science Fiction & Fantasy | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 1889186317

Product Description

China Miéville called Jeffrey Thomas PUNKTOWN something wonderful, and Ellen Datlow proclaimed it a brilliant collection. Now, in PUNKTOWN: SHADES OF GREY -- a brand new collection of stories -- Jeffrey Thomas is joined by brother Scott Thomas in giving voices to the citizens of this futuristic urban hell. In its dangerously alluring streets, you will meet: extradimensional monsters, murderous aliens, vampiric mutants, coffee-loving robots, confused clones, and war vets looking for one last, bloody battle to fight. Welcome: you are now entering Punktown. You are now entering the city that Publishers Weekly described as equal parts H. P. Lovecrafts Arkham and Blade Runners dark metropolis.

Customer Reviews:

Returning to Punktown has never been sweeter, nor as horrific..........2006-02-27

This time, talented author Jeffrey Thomas has teemed up with his equally talented brother Scott Thomas to give us another heaping helping of Punktown and it's mystic, alien attractions.

Part One written by Jeffrey Thomas includes these stories:

'The Unbearable Being Of Light' introduces a new species to Punktown, the silent and disfigured N'R'J, who have centered their old colony around iridescent floating blobs called blastulas and a strange creature stuck between dimensions.
'The Hate Machines' blends home and office décor with anger management.
'Sweaty Betty, Termite Queen Of The Deranged'. When a house becomes a home, or perhaps a womb.
'Purple Wings' is written in the rhyming intonations of popular Punktown musicians.
'Perfectly Beastly'. Who are the pets?
'Adrift On The Sea Of Milk'. What could possibly feed on us in the carnivals of Punktown?
'Hydra'. The downfalls of perfect cloning and too much wealth.
'Willow Tree'. They symbol of a neighborhood becomes an object of fear and challenge.

Part Two by Scott Thomas includes these stories:

'Pulse'. Beings too strange even for Punktown.
'Frankenstein's Reflection'. Godlike compulsion without thought to the consequence of those left alone.
'A Shade Of Gray'. Questioning consciousness in a robotic world.
'I Have Killed Millions'. A rather vague thought process of revenge. I didn't quite get it.
'Under The Cherub'. Jealousy gone awry.
'Veterans'. A strange tale of a strange war. Again, I didn't quite get this story.
'The Merciful Universe' is a lovely tale of time, companionship, and the sometimes-miracle of cloning.

Following the stories of our beloved Punktown is a nice biographical peekhole into authors Jeffrey and Scott Thomas, artist Travis Anthony Soumis, and publisher David G. Barnett.

Thomas's 'Punktown' world belongs with Mieville's 'New Crozubon', VanderMeer's 'Ambergris' and 'Veniss Underground', and M. John Harrison's strange worlds that have passed the test of time.

There are always more surprises, more aliens, new ghettos, darker monsters, creepier alleys, byways, and canals, darker motivations, and more squalor and valor than ever in this new Punktown collection. All these twisted stories written in Thomas's precise and gifted prose will make you more than glad you picked up this addition to the ongoing events that squirm and writhe inside Punktown. Well worth the money. Enjoy!

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PUNKTOWN: THIRD EYE
Thomas Jeffrey (editor) Simon Logan Jonathan Lyons Charlee Jacob Paul G. Tremblay Michael McCarty Mark McLaughlin Garrett Peck Thomas Andrew Hughes Scott Thomas
Manufacturer: Wildside Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000VGRWQS

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An astounding collection!
What a collection!
"Third Eye" takes a different look at Punktown

Punktown: Third Eye

Manufacturer: Prime Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

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ASIN: 189481536X

Customer Reviews:

An astounding collection!.......2004-06-28

With a Punktown tale from editor Jeffrey Thomas, and amazing work from Charlee Jacob, Jonathan Lyons, Simon Logan, T.A. Hughes, and more, this collection of SF-horror hybrid is not to be missed.

What a collection!.......2004-06-19

Apart from Thomas' own entry, this collection sports unqualified masterpiece proems from Charlee Jocob and T.A. Hughes; an astounding story from industrial fiction pioneer Simon logan; and a hip take on the Faustian bargain for rock superstardom from Jonathan Lyons.

"Third Eye" takes a different look at Punktown.......2004-05-19

Welcome back to Punktown, the incredible and diverse slum city of Paxton on the world Oasis. Punktown is a diverse colony of outcasts from many different worlds, including the race native to Oasis called the Choom. "Third Eye" a collection of short stories that take place in Punktown, just like the first book by Thomas. What is different is that Thomas wrote only one story in this collection, with the rest contributed by other authors.

Unfortunately, that is what makes "Third Eye" a four star compared to the five I gave "Punktown". Thomas seems to be the only author that had a firm grip on the ideal of the city. Not to say that the rest of the stories were bad in anyway, they just didn't fit his mold as well, and seemed to be more of a general Sci-Fi connection.

The best story in the book is the one Thomas himself wrote, "The Color Shrain", which isn't really about this particular color that only one alien race can see, but about Specola's unique way of making things disappear and reappear. Unique and disturbing.

Eight more stories follow, featuring tales of sentient robots, a singer who makes the bigtime by leaving her body behind, a Choom detective chasing down a telekinetic alien, a lesson on getting to know your friends better before making a pass at them, and others.

I somehow got the feeling that some of the efforts by the other authors were "early career works", often just a tad disjointed in the flow of the tale; not well cemented and lacking a stylish flow to them.

However, over all, the collection is worthwhile; just pick up Punktown first to catch a firm grip of the city before taking this "Third Eye" view of one of my favorite places. Enjoy!

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PUNKTOWN (Expanded Edition)
Jeffrey & Michael Marshall Smith (introduction) Thomas
Manufacturer: Prime Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000NOYLI0

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PUNKTOWN - SHADES OF GREY
Jeffrey & Scott Thomas Thomas
Manufacturer: Bedlam Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000MRJ764

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PUNKTOWN: THIRD EYE
Thomas Jeffrey (editor) Simon Logan Jonathan Lyons Charlee Jacob Paul G. Tremblay Michael McCarty Mark McLaughlin Garrett Peck Thomas Andrew Hughes Scott Thomas
Manufacturer: Wildside Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
ASIN: B000P0ZVW2

Book Description

Religion and Empire is an innovative and provocative study of the two largest states of the Precolumbian Americas, the Aztec and Inca Empires. By examining the causes of the formation and expansion of these two empires, the authors identify similar patterns and processes underlying their rise and decline. They demonstrate that in both examples among the critical elements in the transition from marginal people to imperial power to disintegrating society were changes in traditional religion, including the elaboration of Aztec human sacrifice and Inca worship of the corpses of their kings. The authors show that the complex interaction between such ideological shifts and political and economic factors generated the spectacular historical trajectories of these Pre-Colombian empires.

Customer Reviews:

Do we really need a reprint of an old and not very good book?.......2007-01-06

The interpretations of the Aztec empire in this book were misleading and deficient when it was first published in 1984; now they are both bad and outdated. According to the authors, the driving force of Aztec imperial expansion was rabid religious fanaticism. Crazed bloodthirsty warriors supposedly ran around conquering peoples with no sense of planning of strategy, and with no economic motivation (sounds sort of like the bloodthirsty Maya of Mel Gibson's movie Apocalypto). This interpretation does not for work Apocalypto, and it does not work for the Aztec empire either.

I'm not qualified to evaluate the Inka sections of the book. But if you are interested in Aztec imperialism, please check some of the post-1984 literature.

Excelent, well thoughtout arguments.......2002-12-13

I read this book as part of a research project into the rise and fall of the Mexica, or Aztec. This book offered an interesting view of the Aztec, as a warfaring society which was propelled by a religous zelous that got out of hand and eventually caused the destabilization of a great empire. While I happen to disagree with certain arguments in this book they are all well justified with valid arguments. This field is constantly changing and is full of writers who don't have the background or the backing for their arguments, this is not one of them. Conrad and Demerest use fresh, compelling, and well thoughtout arguments to make an interesting point. If researching the Inca and Aztec this is a must read to achieve a good view of these two expansionist empires.

Has good and bad points.......2001-12-21

I read this book for a class on the emergence of state society. The book was great for its review of Aztec ideology and its resulting effects on the society. Too many authors ignore the importance of the way people think. However, archaeological evidence does not support their conclusions about the Inca's ancestor worship. But the book was good read, very fast paced and enjoyable. I recommend it.

Very detailed........2000-01-20

The book really gets into the nuts and bolts of the empires, showing you how ideas could give birth to and help expand the two cultures. But it also shows how the same ideas could hinder and even start to destroy the empires later in their existance. Yet it is not hard to read and even delightful at some points. They answer alot of questions I had about the Aztec and Inca, making sure to support everything they say with lots of details. A must of any history library.

This book is excellent........1998-09-22

It explains how modern/western thought fails when applied to the cultures of the Aztecs and Incas. This book is good for beginning students for the narrative is easy to follow. However, it is outstanding for the more advanced scholar. This book would make a great companion book to broader studies of these two cultures. The authors criticise modern archaeology for its dogmatic unbending views.The authors also take modern political theory and apply it to these ancient cultures. What happens is that it falls apart. Marx, Hegel, et al have met their match against these ancient ones. What a great departure from the faulty theories of socialism & communism.

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