Reviews

CROSSOVERS: A SECRET CHRONOLOGY OF THE WORLD 1 & 2


Crossovers is a massive timeline of crossover stories in which characters, situations, or universes are linked together in order to build the Crossover Universe. Lovingly compiled by crossover and Wold Newton expert Win Scott Eckert, Crossovers lists upwards of 2000 crossover stories, with innumerable additional timeline entries which outline the secret history of the land of fiction. 


With introductions by Kim Newman (Volume 1) and Jess Nevins (Volume 2), each volume is illustrated with over 200 book and magazine covers, and contains appendices covering myriad television crossovers, alternate universes, and Newman's Anno Dracula series.

Order from:
Black Coat Press direct: Volume 1 | Volume 2
Amazon.com
Barnes and Noble.com


 REVIEWS:


 
actusf:
"This is an extraordinary amount of erudition, covering not only the Anglo-Saxon, but also non-English-speaking as French, Spanish and even Turkish or Danish....  A must read that will inspire you to discover all these 'crossovers' most surprising and pleasing each other!"
-Jean-Luc Rivera
actusf, May 2010


The New York Review of Science Fiction (January 2011):
"Eckert's rules, scholarly style, and knowledge complement one another, and his work is done with such horrible intense love and logic that somewhere along the way it ceases to be flummery and becomes something more. What would seem an impossible task is achieved in a manner that not only entertains but also informs about the original work."
"...Fans of Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton stories and crossover fiction in general have good reason to celebrate. Win Scott Eckert's Crossovers should be viewed as an essential work of the metafictional canon with value to fans ans scholars alike, placing it next to such standard works as Jess Nevins's Encyclopedia of Fantastic Victoriana and Shadowmen by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier."
-Peter Rawlik

Solaris No. 179 (Summer 2011)
-Review by Richard D. Nolane


Blog reviews:


Volume 1:
Volume 2:

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    THE EVIL IN PEMBERLEY HOUSE

    For over thirty years, readers have marveled at Philip José Farmer’s inventive integration of popular fiction and literature’s most beloved characters, in a mythical web known as the Wold Newton Family. First described in the fictional biographies Tarzan Alive: The Definitive Biography of Lord Greystoke and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life, Farmer expanded his Wold Newton mythos in novels such as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Time’s Last Gift, Hadon of Ancient Opar, Flight to Opar, The Dark Heart of Time: A Tarzan Novel, and Escape from Loki: Doc Savage’s First Adventure.


    The Evil in Pemberley House, an addition to the Wold Newton cycle, plays with the Gothic horror tradition. Patricia Wildman, the daughter of the world-renowned adventurer and crimefighter of the 1930s and ’40s, Dr. James Clarke “Doc” Wildman, is all alone in the world when she inherits the family estate in Derbyshire, England—old, dark, and supposedly haunted.


    But Farmer, characteristically, turns convention on its ear. Is the ghost real, or a clever sham? In Patricia Wildman, Farmer creates an introspective character who struggles to reconcile the supernatural with her rational scientific upbringing, while also attempting to work through unresolved feelings about her late parents. He sets the action at Pemberley from Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and ingrains the various mysteries in the Canon of the Sherlock Holmes stories.


    The Evil in Pemberley House is a darkly erotic novel with broad appeal to readers of pulp and popular literature, particularly followers of Doc Savage, Sherlockians, and fans of Farmer’s own celebrated Wold Newton Family.


    The Limited Edition of The Evil in Pemberley House will come with an exclusive chapbook of bonus materials that includes Philip José Farmer’s original outline for the novel, as well as an extensive family tree for the Wold Newton Universe.


    Limited: 200 numbered copies, signed by Win Scott Eckert, with bonus chapbook (SOLD OUT)
    Trade: Fully cloth bound hardcover edition
    REVIEWS:


    Booklist: "The Evil in Pemberley House. Farmer, Philip José (author) and Win Scott Eckert (author). Sept. 2009. 216p. Subterranean, hardcover, $40 (9781596062498). REVIEW. First published August, 2009 (Booklist).
    In the many novels of the Wold Newton series, the late Farmer proved fond of enhancing the "biographies" of famous literary characters, such as Verne's Phileas Fogg and Burroughs' Tarzan, with fanciful, "uncovered" details. Here, collaborating with sf colleague and Wold Newton enthusiast Eckert, he recounts the fate of Patricia Wildman, daughter of pulp fiction icon Doc Savage. When her parents are presumed dead in a plane crash, 22-year-old Patricia assuages her grief in a spate of short-lived, unfulfilling love affairs. Then surprising news arrives: Patricia is the sole heir to Pemberley House, the estate featured in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and she sets off immediately for England. Eager for the change of scenery, Patricia comes well prepared to meet her bawdy cousins and 103-year-old dowager aunt, still living at Pemberley, but is less prepared for the restless ghost still haunting the estate. Part pulp romance, part erotic thriller, Farmer and Eckert's yarn is a steamy, intriguing addition to Wold Newton lore.
    - Carl Hays
    (c) Booklist 2009
    The Washington Times: "When super heroes are conflicted."
    "It is safe to say that Patricia Clarke Wildman has sufficient baggage before she ever sets foot in the Pemberley House of Jane Austen fame...." "'Pemberley' is clearly a love letter rescued from the grave by co-writer Win Scott Eckert to Farmer's aged fans. It is replete with interrelated heroes and perverted sex scenes."
    - Ron Capshaw, The Washington Times, October 2009


    Green Man Review:
    "This one is fun--a good, tight story, enough psychology to keep it interesting, villains galore, characters with eccentricities that only the English can manage gracefully, a rich context, and lots of sex."
    - Robert M. Tilendis, Green Man Review, October 2009


    Blog reviews:


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    Philip Jose Farmer's THE PEERLESS PEER (afterword by Win Scott Eckert)


     
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    SHORT FICTION


    "The Vanishing Devil," Tales of the Shadowmen 1: The Modern Babylon, Black Coat Press


    "Death and the Countess," The Avenger Chronicles, Moonstone Books

    "No Ghosts Need Apply," The Phantom Chronicles 2, Moonstone Books

    "Captain Midnight at Ultima Thule," The Captain Midnight Chronicles, Moonstone Books

    "Fang and Sting," The Green Hornet Chronicles, Moonstone Books
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    THE GREEN HORNET CHRONICLES

    "...the anthology of new stories is also quite a ride.... It’s a romp well worth, ah, a good buzz . . ."
    - Dr. Wesley Britton, Bookpleasures.com 


    "In particular I got a huge kick out of Greg Cox’s 'I Had The Green Hornet’s Love Child!' which is every bit as much fun as it sounds, and Win Eckert’s own 'Fang and Sting,' a story that not only answers a question Hornet fans have wondered about for years but has a few Easter Eggs for the alert Wold Newton scholar, as well....  If you are curious about the Green Hornet and want to know more, but unsure where to start, well, you can’t do better than this collection."
    -Greg Hatcher, Comic Book Resources.

    "The stories in this collection represent a marvelous continuation of the Hornet's TV adventures and make me all the more wistful about the possibilities that might have been realized had the show continued into a second season."
    -John Allen Small, Yahoo Book Reviews

    "I didn’t fully appreciate the character--didn’t come to feel I really knew them--until I read this Moonstone book, The Green Hornet Chronicles. Now, at last, I’m more than a casual listener, viewer, or collector. I’m a fan.
    For that, I owe a debt to editors Joe Gentile and Win Scott Eckert. They assembled a fine group of writers and put together a collection of stories that draw the reader into the Hornet’s world as never before. We finally get inside the heads of Britt Reid and Kato and see what makes them tick. . .
    . . . Over the course of the book, they emerge from the shadows of The Lone Ranger and Tonto--and Batman and Robin--and stand as distinct and compelling heroes in their own right."

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    MYTHS FOR THE MODERN AGE: PHILIP JOSE FARMER'S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE
    In his classic "biographies" of fictional characters (Tarzan Alive and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life), Hugo- and Nebula-award winning author Philip Jose Farmer introduced the Wold Newton family, a collection of heroes and villains whose family-tree includes Sherlock Holmes, Fu Manchu, Philip Marlowe, and James Bond. In books, stories, and essays he expanded the concept even further, adding more branches to the Wold Newton family-tree. MYTHS FOR THE MODERN AGE: PHILIP JOSE FARMER'S WOLD NEWTON UNIVERSE, edited by Win Scott Eckert, collects for the first time those rarely-seen essays. Expanding the family even farther are contributions from Farmer's successors--scholars, writers, and pop-culture historians--who bring even more fictional characters into the fold.
    "I realized when I had the idea for a cosmic event linking and explaining the origin of my favorite pulp characters, that the tentacles would reach very far and very wide. I am very impressed with the ingenuity and research Mr. Eckert and his colleagues have shown in expanding my universe. I'm just waiting for then to prove I am also part of the extended family."
    -Philip Jose Farmer
    Locus Recommended Reading 2006 list and 2007 Locus Award Finalist.
    REVIEWS:


    "Pulp addicts and those addicted to six-degrees-of-separation sorts of literary games will likely love this book, and may want to follow up on it by visiting one of the half-dozen or more websites (including one in French) that are devoted to expanding the Wold Newton families, the most thorough of which seems to be Eckert's own at http://www.pjfarmer.com/woldnewton/Pulp.htm."
    - Gary K. Wolfe, Locus magazine, Locus Looks at Books: Short Takes (April 2006 issue). Locus Online. Featured in Locus magazine's New & Notable Books (March 2006 issue).
     "A loving homage to the dreamweavers who have created all those thrilling heroes and to Philip Jose Farmer, who so cannily understood how primally popular fiction's adventure heroes impacted on Western imagination and culture."
    -Claude Lalumiere, The Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2005 at Locus Online.
    "Informative, witty, and endlessly fascinating, this anthology of post-Farmerian speculation should appeal to literary scholars, genre aficionados, and lay readers alike."
    -Paul Goat Allen, The Barnes & Noble Review.
    "It really is weirdly fun, reading all these essays and theories on how these various pulp classics fit together, and if you go to pjfarmer.com and click on the Wold Newton link, you'll see for yourself. Or you could just pick up Eckert's new collection of essays on the subject."
    -Greg Hatcher, Comic Book Resources.
    ""There's fun to be had with this bloodline of the gods, and the book immerses itself in sanity-melting levels of minutiae. We learn how H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu have infiltrated the sunlit world, how Mowgli is kin to Tarzan, how a zillion different Zorros can be shoe-horned into one definitive history. It's a dry intense read but if the thought of Sherlock Holmes being great uncle to MacGyver makes you smirk, then this one's for you."
    - Nick Setchfield, SFX #139 (January 2006 issue).
    Prof. Santa's Best Christmas List Ever, 2005, Ain't It Cool News.
    "Anyone who calls himself a fan of classic pulp fiction should own this...I truly love this book."
    -Ron Fortier, Pulp Fiction Reviews, writer, The Green Hornet, Terminator: Burning Earth, Captain Hazzard, Brother Grim, etc.
    The Agony Column
    "Myths for the Modern Age expands the boundaries of the reader's imagination? This is a must-read and a definite reference book for all literature icon readers...I can't get enough of it!"
    -Paul Dale Roberts, Jazma Online.
    "Outstanding book, in presentation, content, and participation. I am sure Farmer is quite pleased."
    -Blue Tyson,     Not Free SF Reader.


    "Like most of the authors in Myths for the Modern Age, I discovered Farmer's biographies in middle school and spent quite a while afterwards convinced that Sherlock Holmes, Lord Greystoke, Clark Savage and the rest were based on real people. Like them, I got over that but still enjoyed playing with the idea of it... Eckert's introduction, and Dr. Peter Coogan's essay on the theory and methodology of Wold-Newtonry, go a long way to helping readers unfamiliar with the basic framework understand the basic concept. It's important to approach this book with the understanding that Wold-Newtonry is not a hard and fast field of study -- it's meant to be fun, a point Dr. Coogan makes clear early on... You'll absolutely enjoy yourself getting lost...and you might even start making connections from the main Wold Newton Universe research to your own favorite novel or tv show. I know I'm already trying to figure out if there are connections to the works of Madeleine L'Engle and the tv show Lost."
    -Anthony Cardno,     LiveJournal. 

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     TARZAN ALIVE
    "In 1972, Popular Library published Philip Jose Farmer's Tarzan Alive, a biography of this fictional character written as if he were a real person. Later, Esquire magazine published Farmer's 'Tarzan Lives: An Exclusive Interview with the Eighth Duke of Greystoke,' and his 'Extracts from the Memoirs of "Lord Greystoke"' was published in a collection of his works.

    Now for the first time, these three amazing narratives are published together, along with a new foreword by Win Scott Eckert, an introduction by Mike Resnick, five lengthy addenda and a selected bibliography of more than 200 resources.
    This easily readable scholarly tome filled me with nostalgia for the first time I visited Africa with Tarzan many years ago and reminded me that, in the books, at least, Tarzan still lives... Grade: A."
       -Mark Graham, Rocky Mountain News, Brief Reviews (June 30, 2006).
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    Tales of the Shadowmen, Volume 1: The Modern Babylon


    TALES OF THE SHADOWMEN, VOLUME 1: THE MODERN BABYLON     edited by Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier. Black Coat Press, 2005. T    his anthology features short stories inspired by French pulp fiction, written by several Wold Newton "creative mythographers," including Matthew Baugh, Win Scott Eckert, Greg Gick, and Rick Lai, as well as other science-fiction writers such as Brian Stableford, Jean-Marc & Randy Lofficier, John Peel, Terrance Dicks, Chris Roberson, and Robert Sheckley, among others. Nor are the stories limited to only French characters... Wold Newton Family members such as Doc Savage, Fu Manchu, Sherlock Holmes, and The Shadow, all make appearances in the anthology (even if some of them appear in disguise), as do perennial French Wold Newton Family members C. Auguste Dupin and Arsene Lupin. Several of the stories refer to or utilize Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Family theories and concepts. For fans of the monster corner of the Wold Newton Universe, there are stories featuring Frankenstein's Creature, the Cthulhu Mythos, and Erik (Phantom of the Opera).
    "Many of the contributors are well known for their work elsewhere, some are not, but all share an affinity for French pulp fiction and a talent to bring their chosen characters alive for the reader. The result is an enjoyable read from start to finish and further proof that good stuff comes from the halls of Black Coat Press."
    -Kevin R. Tipple, Blether Book Reviews


    "After publishing their monumental encylopedia, Shadowmen (2003) and Shadowmen 2 (2004), subtitled respectively "Heroes and Villains of French Pulp Fiction" and "Heroes and Villains of French Comics," Jean-Marc and Randy Lofficier took the next logical creative leap and commissioned an original anthology featuring many of the classic characters whose biographies had been given. The result, Tales of the Shadowmen: The Modern Babylon, is a feast of retro-styled thrills. A varied troupe of authors, including such familiar names as Robert Sheckley (in what must surely be one of his last appearances), Brian Stableford, Chris Roberson, and Terrance Dicks, bring all their affection for the famous creations of other authors into a postmodern melange of adventure. As you read these pieces, you can play the game of identifying the more familiar figures--Maigret, Lupin, Dupin, Robur, Holmes--before turning to the handy key at the rear of the book that tallies the various appearances of lesser-known personages. The stories range from low-key homages to gonzo outings. It takes Roberson, for instance, some convolutions to get Batman's parents on the French scene, but he does so expertly. A second volume of this series is already scheduled for 2006. With a third installment of Alan Moore's allied League of Extraordinary Gentlemen coming up soon as well, we'll have a banner year for interbook, trans-author commingling."
    -Paul Di Filippo, Asimov's Science Fiction, September 2006



    Tales of the Shadowmen, Volume 2: Gentlemen of the Night


    "An anthology of new stories about old favourites from French, British and American popular fiction. The authors reflect this wonderful mixed heritage! As always from Black Coat Press, the book is attractive and enticing, and these Tales of the Shadowmen are deliriously exciting."
       -The Sherlock Holmes Society of London






    Reviews of the French translations of the series, Les compagnons de l’Ombre.
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