Ticonderoga Publications is excited to announce the forthcoming publication of two collections by internationally unknown writer Steven Utley.
The books will collect Utley's acclaimed Silurian Tales.
The collections will be titled The 400-Million-Year Itch and Invisible Kingdoms, scheduled for publication in 2012 and 2013 respectively.
Steven Utley emerged as one of a group of writers from around Austin, Texas in the early 1970s. The group also included Bruce Sterling, Howard Waldrop, Lisa Tuttle and Lewis Shiner. Exclusively a short fiction specialist, Utley's work has brought him much critical acclaim but less recognition, leading Utley to proclaim himself as "Internationally unknown", and Gardner Dozois to state that he "may be the most under-rated science fiction writer alive."
Dozois has also described Utley as a writer "of strength, suppleness, and seemingly endless resource ... able to turn his hand to almost any subject matter, mood, or type of story imaginable."
In Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia, Brian Stableford describes Utley's Silurian Tales as "the most elaborate reconstruction of a past era in recent speculative fiction." These stories concern the adventures and misadventures of a scientific expedition in the Paleozoic Era and also address some implications of the many-worlds hypothesis in quantum physics.
“Steven Utley's Silurian Tales put believeable characters into a unique environment,” Ticonderoga Editor Russell B Farr said.
"It says something about the writer that Utley is; other writers send characters back to walk with dinosaurs, Utley puts people among primitive fish, trilobites and prehistoric mud and then makes it work," Russell B Farr added.
The two books will collect thirty-three stories.
Ticonderoga's first full-length publication was Steven Utley's first collection, Ghost Seas in 1997.
“He trusted me with his stories when I was a 23-year-old punk - it's great to have an opportunity to work with Steven again,” Russell added.
The 400-Million-Year Itch will be published in July 2012, with Invisible Kingdoms scheduled for 2013. The collections will be available in limited edition hardcover and trade editions.
