Vernal Memorandum - Two (three) New Books

Dear Colleagues:

On behalf of International Authors in collaboration with Null23, I am happy to announce the publication of two new books by Michael Butterworth: Butterworth and My Servant the Wind. Congratulations to Mr. Butterworth and Null23 publisher Gareth Jackson. Cover images of the new books appear at the end of this communication.  The balance of the “press kit” follows:

Butterworth presents the collected short works of the author Michael Butterworth—previously found in long out of print anthology paperbacks and yellowing magazines such as New Worlds and other offshoots submerged by the accumulation of time, and which have been mostly lost and overshadowed by his later “Ecker” infamy as the co-publisher of the Northern provocateurs Savoy Books... These works are often located in a post atomic wasteland of haunted deserts, conjoined with a dislocated Manchester of memory—being speculative fictions with veins of autobiography. The page becomes a structural space in which narrative is dismembered and arranged. Place becomes uncertain and hallucination is explored with thoughtful rigour. Neither of the future nor of then, these are works which occupy an era but conversely exist outside of any catalogued time.

My Servant the Wind: Navigating his story, there is nothing linear; autobiography becomes speculative memoir that crosses into fiction. In alien contacts the geography of the page disintegrates and time has become uncertain—located neither here nor there. The wind is blowing from the future deserts which he remembers from his youth. He is haunted by himself and memories of the apocalypse. He has travelled through new worlds and wild turbulence, protracted labour—a difficult birth. The wind blows a novel against his receiver and he transcribes…

Michael Butterworth is a UK author, publisher and editor. He was a key part of the UK New Wave of Science Fiction in the 1960s, contributing fiction to New Worlds and other publications. He began publishing small press literary magazines, including Corridor in 1969, and in 1975 founded Savoy Books with David Britton. He co-authored Britton’s controversial novel Lord Horror (1989), and in 2009 launched the contemporary visual art and writing journal, Corridor8. His last book was a memoir, The Blue Monday Diaries: In the Studio with New Order (2016). He is a regular contributor to Emanations. Website.

Descriptions of the new books as well as links to respective Amazon sales pages can be found at the International Authors website, HERE. 

Here are links to Amazon, UK:

Butterworth

My Servant the Wind

Other business:

Our interests and strategies vary widely, and beyond our concerns for experimentation, mythology, satire, and metaphysical hypotheses, our creative paths are as diverse as they are unique.  Nevertheless, it is our shared keenness for creating something new—or the illusion of something new—that unites our efforts in a formal and identifiable aesthetic. Apropos to the wording of our Emanations Call, I should not wish to alter that formula, nor should I wish to favor specific aesthetic paradigms that might narrow our understanding of what is possible.  Nevertheless, when a significant work of criticism emerges that so closely addresses our interests, our methods, and our aspirations, it is necessary to bring that touchstone to the attention of our consortium, and to suggest that everyone “have a look.”  Ergo, I am happy to note the recent publication of the third edition of Richard Kostelanetz’s A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes (Routledge, 2018).  By clicking the link to the Amazon page, you can view a description of the new volume (including my brief review). Please consider purchasing the book.  Alternatively, I urge you to contact your university and public libraries to ask them to add the book to their collections.  In considering the opportunity we have to use our community to advance our various projects—related or otherwise—I think you will agree that Mr. Kostelanetz’s book represents a remarkable lens through which we may view the philosophical, historical, and critical concerns that have drawn us together to pursue our work.

Amazon link

Amazon, UK link

Finally, I am at work completing the Invisible Tower Trilogy. Please anticipate a late-summer Call for Emanations 8.

Please broadcast this information widely.

With best wishes,

Carter Kaplan

International Authors