John Shirley is the author of numerous books and many, many short stories. His novels include Bleak History, Crawlers, Demons, In Darkness Waiting, and seminal cyberpunk works City Come A-Walkin', and the A Song Called Youth trilogy of Eclipse, Eclipse Penumbra, and Eclipse Corona. His collections include the Bram Stoker and International Horror Guild award-winning Black Butterflies and Living Shadows: Stories: New & Pre-owned. He also writes for screen (The Crow) and television. As a musician Shirley has fronted his own bands and written lyrics for Blue Öyster Cult and others.


NEWS & EVENTS

• 06.01.10: Collection In Extremis: The Most Extreme Stories of John Shirley has been turned in to Underland Press.

• 12.17.09: Diet Soap Podcast #36: The Mechanism that I Am: Podcast in which JS discusses his novel Bleak History along with the teaching of the mystic Gurdjieff, Situationalist ideas (whatever those are), and our Star Trek future.

• 09.27.09: John Shirley on KUSF 90.3 FM. Give it a listen!

• 08.03.09: Electronica/blues/hip-hop crossover "Why Is Your Heart So Black?" featuring Gabriel Lambrith, a well-known young blues prodigy in the bay area, on guitar. Lyrics/vocals by John Shirley, music by Julian Shirley, Jay Russio production/engineering. Downloadable free at http://www.myspace.com/johnnyparanoid.

• 07.25.09: Library Journal review of Bleak History by John Shirley: "Shirley has a gift for storytelling that emphasizes both depth of character and immediacy of vision. VERDICT This gritty and fast-moving horror urban fantasy will appeal to readers who enjoy dark supernatural thrillers."

• 07.06.09: Serialization of Sky Pirates begins. An orginal space opera written by John Shirley in homage to Jack Vance, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Rafael Sabatini's Captain Blood. (Now complete.)

• 04.01.09: H+ Magazine article: "Through Black Glass: John Shirley on Reanimating Lost Cyberpunk for the 21st Century"

• 12.26.08: Hear Shirley's Screamin' Geezers EP with four new songs: "Broken Mirror Glass", "You Deserve Me, Baby", "Pain in the Shade" and "They're Makin' Money"

• 03.19.08: New Regency Productions (Mr And Mrs Smith) has optioned John Shirley's forthcoming dark urban fantasy novel Bleak History (Simon and Schuster) for development as the basis of a movie.

• 03.19.08: The option on John Shirley's novel Demons by The Weinstein Company (The Lord of the Rings) has just been renewed. A director, Jim Sonzero (Pulse) has been attached, and a script has been written and is now being revised.

• 03.18.08: John Shirley's "alternative apocalypse" novel The Other End has been optioned by producer Jeffrey Kinart.

• 01.27.08: Stellar review of Living Shadows: New & Pre-owned by Terry Rafferty in the NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW calling the collection "a greatest-hits album spanning a few decades of astonishingly consistent and rigorously horrifying work....all his stories...give off the chill of top-grade horror. It's a moral chill, because Shirley's great subject is the terrible ease with which we modern Americans have learned to look away from pain and suffering.... And while the matter of his stories is often shocking, his manner is calm, restrained. The prose is attitude-free and precise, its characteristic sound a minor chord of sorrow and banked anger. He writes about sensation unsensationally, with a particular tenderness toward those who manage, against the odds and by whatever means, to feel something....[quoting Coleridge:] "My endeavours should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic; yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." That's exactly what good horror writers like Joe Hill and John Shirley do with the shadows of their imagination. And there's an explanation here, too, of the hope that can keep even the most skeptical, fed-up reader coming back to horror fiction. Watching vampires having sex may not strike you as an adequate reward for suspending disbelief. But the poetry of fear and mortality is worth all the belief you can muster." [Shirley section] [Full Review].

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