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last updated 18th June, 2007

Latest Releases from Immanion Press

The Four Powers

by Nicholas Graham

The Four Powers is the book that Nicholas Graham wishes he'd had when he was just discovering magic as a teenager. It's a unique introduction to magic; rather than relying on the same rehashed Wicca 101, Graham goes into a variety of topics--the different areas of magic (Neopaganism, Ceremonial magic, Chaos magic, etc.), the various models of magic (spiritual, energetic, psychological, cybernetic), and applications of magic (evocation, invocation, divination), among many other areas of interest.

He also includes exceptionally useful exercises to help the reader apply what s/he has read and further determine where to put hir focus of study. The recommended reading is varied, and lacks the fluff that can mislead seekers for years.

Graham goes into realistic looks at real-world situations, too, such as coming out of the broom closet, deciding whether magic really IS dangerous or not, and deciding what your personal morals will be. What is presented here is a no-fluff, common sense look at being new to magic that shows the many avenues available while giving practical advice for figuring out where to start one's own journey. This is an excellent book to give to someone just getting started on their magical journey, but it's also ideal for someone who's been studying and practicing one paradigm for a while and is feeling stuck in a rut.

All the most important basic techniques are presented in plain language, along with an overview and suggested reading for many more advanced ideas and numerous different systems and traditions of magic. All concepts and experiments are presented without any of the moral preaching or vague theory common to similar guides.

The Paradigmal Pirate

by Joshua Wetzel

A grimoire of practical magical training with ritual work and exercises. It includes techniques for working magic through lucid dreaming; details the use of altered states of consciousness in magic; the construction of magical tools; the designing of rituals in the eight colors of magic and the occult metamorphosis of the self. This book provide a set of useful methodologies and rituals for effecting change with the techniques of chaos magic.

Alien Embassy

by Ian Watson

Lila Makindi grows up in East Africa in a peaceful and harmonious 22nd century world, which has succeeded our own age of extravagance, environmental damage, and warfare.

Its citizens know that the Space Communications Administration, better known as Bardo, is guiding the planet benevolently, thanks to contact with wise aliens by means, not of grandiose spaceships, but of psychic travel powered by the sexual techniques of tantric yoga.

Wonderfully, Lila is chosen for psychic starflight. But she discovers that in reality mental starflight is spinning a web of protection around the world to safeguard the human race from a malign alien energy force, the Starbeast.

Yet is this the true reality? Only when Lila travels to Tibet does she discover the actual, unexpected purpose behind Bardo…

When this vivid and innovative novel first appeared, the Times Literary Supplement described it as "exhilerating," the Birmingham Post wrote, "The complexities unroll to reveal a fascinating and unnerving vision." and The Times said "It hums with notions as a hive of bees."

Very probably Alien Embassy was the first SF novel ever with a black female narrator. For this revised edition, Ian Watson provides a fascinating afterword

Tourniquet

by Kim Lakin-Smith

Renegade City: futurist gothika; Mecca of the damned; where über rock-band, Origin, is deified and the world's dark sub-cultures coexist under the umbrella faith of 'Belief'. Roses, the great gothic messiah is dead; the tribes are in turmoil; and home-bred rebels, the drifters, are quickly becoming a law unto themselves.

The last thing Druid, Origin's drummer and reclusive high lord of the Drathcor, wants to do is hunt his brother's killer, especially since he's not so sure of foul play, or even the purity of his motives. Against all of his expectations, however, he is soon embroiled with the underbelly of dissension, dirty politics, and a non-believer as jaded with Renegade's great and secret show as he is….street punk, Jezebel, who is also on a quest - to track her brother, a Skinwalker. Trouble is, they're a violent breed…

In league with a strawberry switchblade assortment of freaks, geeks, and greebos, this living god and living dead girl find their paths interlinked for a series of cataclysmic events that will tear at mutual bonds, unmask a fresh face of hate, and forge new breeds of magick...

The Crack of Doom

by Liza Granville

Haunted by his past, hounded by creditors, dogged by failure, Lewis is forced to take on an undercover assignment investigating the notorious Doom College, a hotbed of the avant-garde from which far too many of the slicers, dicers and flagellators of modern art issue forth. Posing as a would-be artist brings new problems: his fellow students are all mad or bad, and certainly dangerous, and a certain amount of artistic output is demanded. His commercial activities are frowned upon by academia, his cover is blown, his past laid bare, the scorned women unsheathe their claws. It's time to move on again. But first, one last installation, one huge blazing effort that will ensure nobody at Doom will ever forget his name.

A Field Guide to Otherkin

by Lupa

The Otherkin community is a small but growing subculture of people who identify in some way--spiritually, metaphorically, etc.--as Other than human. Some resonate with dragons, while others believe they were elves in another life, and still others identify as wolves, great cats, and other animals.

Of course, this all may seem a little odd to those who aren't Otherkin. What do Otherkin believe? Why do we believe these things? How does being Otherkin affect how we relate to the world around us--and ourselves? A Field Guide to Otherkin offers answers straight from over 100 survey respondents, collected by Lupa, herself a wolf therianthrope, and elaborated upon by her.

A Field Guide to Otherkin is designed to inform both Otherkin and non-Otherkin about the community and the people and beliefs that create it. Rather than being a collection of statistics, it is a look into the lives of Otherkin, qualitative rather than quantitative.

Soul Purpose

by Nick Marsh

Alan Reece is a vet who hates his job. His fiancee has left him, and he fully expects that things will only get worse. He's right, of course. What he's not expecting is that one of his dreaded nocturnal farm visits will set in motion a complicated series of events involving transparent cows, aliens, zombies, and the end of all life on Earth. Alan is about to learn that there are some things worse in life than having a job that you hate.

Fang and Fur
Blood and Bone

by Lupa

This is like no other book on animal magic. While coverage the more common topics such as totemism and familiars, Lupa also delves into such controversial realms as shapeshifting, the magical and ritual use of animal parts and animal sacrifice, and includes pathworkings for matching totems with chakras. Aimed at magical practitioners both old and new, this book is a must for anyone interested in this popular paradigm.

The Panther

by Deirdre Counihan

This is an epic fantasy set in the lost kingdoms of Avalaam, hidden among the rooftops of the world. Ancient beliefs and barriers are breaking down as Doran, the young magician king of the Malluzari, known as "The Panther", cuts a swathe of devastation and terror in his quest to recreate the mythical empire of his ancestors while secretly aided by the sinister demon, Miahlu. It is the story of Allina, who, bought up in the desert fortress of Hscevona to consider herself as being merely a royal by-blow, is suddenly thrown into a maelstrom of intrigue and adventure when she discovers her true identity. Fate takes her high into the blue mountains to a new world of unimagined dangers and directly into the seething hub of The Panther's implacable battle against the arch bird-wizards of Samul. In a tale of love, magic and betrayal, Allina encounters those who jockey to share The Panther's power: Helia, his tragic mistress; Kelzin, the dashing Lord of Thieves; and Ihaid, dark genius of the sacred Estevani. Ultimately we discover the terrible choice that Allina has to make as she pits her unlooked-for destiny against the powers of evil.

The Paradigmal Pirate

by Josh Wetzel

A grimoire of practical magical training with ritual work and exercises. It includes techniques for working magic through lucid dreaming; details the use of altered states of consciousness in magic; the construction of magical tools; the designing of rituals in the eight colors of magic and the occult metamorphosis of the self. This book provide a set of useful methodologies and rituals for effecting change with the techniques of chaos magic.

Sheena

by Brian Stableford.

Sheena and Other Gothic Tales collects ten stories set in the uncertain margin of the contemporary world where the boundary between the o rdinary and the exotic is difficult to define, at least for people who find the world a discomfiting place in which to exist. They are determinedly, unashamedly, flagrantly and arrogantly odd. Readers in search of heartfelt romance, mindless violence or innocent fun would probably be better off looking elsewhere.

Wreaththu Chronicals

by storm Constantine

Omnibus edition of the revised versions of 'The Enchantments of Flesh and Spirit', 'The Bewitchments of Love and Hate' and 'The Fulfilments of Fate and Desire'.

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Immanion Press Announcement
added 28th January, 2006
Posted from the offical Storm Constantine message board

The past month has been a time of reorganisation at Immanion Press. We now have a new domain:

http://www.immanion-press.com

because for a while we've wanted a .com address. This obviously involves new email addresses for everyone. Here are the main three for orders, information and editorial respectively:

orders@immanion-press.com
info@immanion-press.com
editorial@immanion-press.com
Wendy and Taylor are now responsible for US sales, Wendy with fiction and Taylor with non-fiction, the latter soon to be released under the new Megalithica Books imprint.

As I mentioned in a previous mailout, this will mean much cheaper shipping costs for overseas customers. I'd advise anyone not in Europe to go through the US dept.

Taylor: fiction_us@immanion-press.com
Wendy: fiction_us@immanion-press.com

We have a new production designer working for us, who some of you may have already bumped into on the Wraeththu Yahoo group. This is Kid Charlemaine, and his address is:

kiddo@immanion-press.com

There will be a period of transition, I'm sure, so if anyone's mail or orders fall through the cracks, write to Jim at

info@immanion-press.com

and we'll endeavour to sort things out.

Also, if any of you reading this have web pages with links to the old IP web site and email addresses, please could you update your pages to have the new information?

Storm

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Jerry Cornell's Comic Capers

By
Michael Moorcock
Michael John Moorcock (born December 18, 1939) is a prolific British writer and editor. In 1956, aged 16, he became editor of Tarzan Adventures, moving on to edit various commercial magazines for IPC including Sexton Blake Library for which he co-wrote his first published novel, Caribbean Crisis, then Current Topics, the Liberal Party policy magazine. In May 1964 he edited the controversial British SF magazine New Worlds until March 1971 then as New Worlds Quarterly until 1975 and as an irregular magazine from 1976 to 1996, then as consulting editor under David Garnett. He has edited many anthologies.

Although he has written in most genres, including a collaboration with Storm Constantine called Silverheart, Moorcock's most popular works have been novels featuring the character Elric of Melniboné. From 1961 Moorcock wrote the first Elric stories as a deliberate reversal of the cliches common to heroic fantasy. Elric themes appear in other stories, including the 'post-modernist adventures' of Jerry Cornelius. His comedies have included The Dancers At The End of Time stories and the Jerry Cornell thrillers. Central to his fantasy novels is an "Eternal Champion" constantly struggling with conventional notions of good and evil and for balance between law and chaos.

Since the 1980s, Moorcock tended to write well-reviewed literary novels like Mother London, nominated for Booker and Whitbread prizes, but continued to revisit characters from earlier works, like Elric in The Dreamthief's Daughter or The Skrayling Tree. With the writing of the third and last book in this trilogy, The White Wolf's Son (due 2005), he announced his 'retirement' from writing heroic fantasy, though continuing to write Elric's adventures as graphic novels with his long-time collaborator Walter Simonson.

He has recorded two albums and many singles with his own band, The Deep Fix, and appeared as guitarist and background vocalist on various Robert Calvert albums, including Lucky Leif and the Longships. He has worked with the British prog-rock band Hawkwind on many occasions, producing the concept album Warrior on the Edge of Time (1975) and many others, also writing lyrics to three album tracks by the American band Blue Öyster Cult: "Black Blade", referring to Elric's sword Stormbringer, "Veteran Of The Psychic Wars", about the Eternal Champion, and "The Great Sun Jester", about his friend, the poet Bill Butler, who died of a drug overdose. Hawkwind's 'rock opera', Chronicle of the Black Sword, featured Elric. The single "The Brothel in Rosenstrasse' was based on his novel of the same name.

Moorcock's Wizardry and Wild Romance, recently revised and published by Monkeybrain Books, famously compares The Lord of the Rings with Winnie the Pooh, and criticises it as 'nursery fiction'. Other non-fiction includes Letters From Hollywood, about working in the movie capital. He has also written a political essay, 'The Retreat from Liberty' and his reviews appear regularly in The Guardian, The Spectator and The London Magazine.

He received the BSFA Award in 1966 for his work on New Worlds. Behold the Man won the Nebula award for best novella of 1967. Other novels won August Derleth and British Fantasy awards. He received The Guardian Fiction Prize for the Jerry Cornelius Quartet in 1977. 'Gloriana' won the John W. Campbell Award in 1978 and the World Fantasy Award in 1979. In 2002, he was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. He has received two Lifetime Achievement Awards: The World Fantasy Award in 2000 and the Prix Utopiales, in Nantes, France, in 2004.

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Terzah's Sons

By
Victoria Copus
Terzah, a wilful and fiery second generation har from the tribe of Kheops, has accompanied his Gelaming consort, Zen, to a remote area of Megalithica, where the Gelaming have set up a rough settlement for human refugees. Terzah has recently had a harling, and is far from happy with Zen's posting. Terzah despises humans and has nothing but contempt for those around him.

However, when tragedy strikes the small community, and a human who Terzah realises was actually a friend to him dies unexpectedly, Terzah is moved to take in the woman's orphaned sons. Not every human agrees with this, as they feel humans should be raised by humans. Terzah finds himself fighting prejudice as keen as his own.

Gradually, Terzah realises his attitude to humanity must change, as hara and humans are forced to work together to overcome common threats and dilemmas, so that the settlement will succeed and become a real community. Conflicts within his own family and dark secrets kept by his consort add intrigue and drama to the tale.

Terzah's Sons gives a fascinating glimpse into the daily life of hara, far from the courts of the high ranking and mighty. These are hara who get their hands dirty, coping with life's problems as best they can in primitive conditions. Author Victoria Copus has captured the character of Terzah, the customs of the shamanic Kheops and the complexities of intertribal politics with a deft hand. This story is a skilful and insightful addition to the canon of the Wraeththu Mythos.

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Pytho

By
Philip Ward
Pytho is a gifted boy child with special abilities which enable him to communicate with other species. He begins life with an interest in numbers but learns the inadequacies of their axioms and is moving towards an interest in words. His companions and associates are an elderly aunt, Clara, an intelligent well-read woman who has a somewhat didactic relationship with him; Simonides, a starling, who conveys information from and moves freely in the great airways of the world; and, finally, with Lucanus, a stag beetle, who acts persuasively with the insect orders. Their joint task is to work at maintaining balance and order among the components of the first evolutionary order - life as we know it in the world. Their story works by fable, image and symbol to enact an indictment of late 20th century life and to suggest a remedy for the disease.

The author has tried symbolically to express the disquiet which many feel about the misuse of power, about greed and the exploitation of the natural environment. He also explores the more mystical side of human experience. The narrative may be seen as engaging in fantasy, but it is a fantasy clearly and interestingly rooted in changing and improving human relationships and significant trends emerging in the late twentieth century. The environmental system is seen to work by self-control, and the prime species of the system, Homo Sapiens, is seen to be losing his adequacy, in fact to be violating the major role which his intelligence has equipped him to perform. Pytho and his companions sense and measure this failure and take positive steps towards solving the problem.

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Hinterland

By
David Barnett
What is the shadowy beast that roams the lonely moors? Why does a mass-produced painting leave its owners horribly dead? Why does no one speak of the lost girls living on a small island in the middle of the duck pond? Who sits in the sinister black cars that watch the streets?

And what secrets does the man with the violin case hold?

These are the mysteries which set a young journalist lurching away from the normal, everyday life he leads and into a night-marish world he never knew ex-isted… yet which hides in plain sight all around him.

And at the heart of it all, a nightclub where those who walk paths unknown to the rest of us party on, through day and night and towards the end of the world.

The blurred edges of this strange, mythic world are brought into sharp, horrifying focus as one man discovers that scratching the surface of normality can throw up all kinds of surprises - and not all of them pleasant.

Whether the enigmas herald a terrifying conspiracy that threatens the lives of innocent people who just happen to take too much notice of the world around them, or are simply the signposts to drug-fuelled insanity, the question remains: Once you've noticed just how weird life really is, can you ever go home again?

About David Barnett...

David Barnett was born in Wigan in 1970. He is an award-winning journalist and has worked in newspapers in the North of England since 1989 as a reporter, a specialist correspondent, a news editor, a columnist and a features editor.

He has reported from Bosnia and Kosovo; once made a pilgrimage to Jack Kerouac's grave in Massachusetts; counts taking part in the "running of the bulls" at Pamplona's St Fermin fiesta as his most frightening experience ever; and spent most of the Nineties lying in a field at the Glastonbury Festival wondering if it was time to go home yet.

He is the lead singer with charismatic pop combo Choppersquad, who remain available for all festivals and functions.

David lives in West Yorkshire with his wife Claire, their son Charlie and two cats, Kali and Shiva.

Hinterland is his first novel.

Visit David's website at david barnett

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Oliphan Oracus

By
Neil Robinson
Everyone is curious about the future. It would be a nice place to visit - but would you want to live there?...

In 2257 Keef is a television, a dishevelled, shamanic figure roaming a vast autumnal forest where big cats hunt, squirrels and monkeys teem in the canopy, and boar root in centuries of leaf litter.

In 1995 Kate Wallis is a junior research assistant at a leading pharmaceutical company's laboratory complex, and she has no idea that she will soon find herself living the plot of a science fiction soap opera.

Kate is accidentally exposed to an experimental longevity virus that causes a 262-year coma. She wakes in Keef's world and they begin a love affair that has profound repercussions for his community.

…Be warned: the resourceful heroes of science fiction stories are mythological figures, and technology might as well be magic.

From the Author:

Just a quick note to say that I have foreseen (remembered?) the future, and not to worry. There was (will be) no collapse of civilisation; no devastating plague. No nuclear holocausts or environmental disasters, for that matter. Absolutely no invasion by space aliens. And no techno-nightmares, such as a take-over by sophisticated neural-net computers. In fact, everyone was carrying on quite normally. Science fiction got things wrong.

But if your present is my future, you already know this. Unless, of course, you live in one of those alternative universes...

Visit Neil's website at imagespinning.com

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The Shades of Time and Memory

By
Storm Constantine
A young harling comes of age in the ruined City of Ghosts, unaware of his heritage and the secrets his father has kept for so long. In the city of Immanion, Calanthe has ousted Thiede from power and a new age has dawned for Wraeththukind; the reverberations of its arrival shake every corner of the earth. In the wake of this event, a remarkable child is conceived, affected by weird energies to become something more than the sum of his parents.

The Tigron, Pellaz, is faced with the dilemma that something huge and terrifying threatens the new race of Wraeththu, just as it is trying to establish itself in the ruins of human civilisation. It is a threat from beyond earthly reality, and it is searching for avatars to work in its name. The Forest of Gebaddon is about to spew forth its captives, the disempowered Varrs. Their leader, Ponclast, is about to be transformed into a foe worthy of taking on the Tigron himself. The warring factions of Wraeththu must unite to protect their world, and Pellaz must venture into unimaginable new territories.

Will he make the ultimate sacrifice to protect his people?

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Whores of Babylon

By Ian Watson
Alex Winter and Deborah Tate arrive by hovercraft at the city of Babylon, lying on the river Euphrates in the Arizona desert. He is a sociology drop-out from the University of Oregon at Eugene who wants to become a Babylonian. She has a much stranger ambition.

Their minds are babbling in the Greek that has been pumped into them via computer interface at the University of Heuristics. To them, English has yet to be invented and the young king Alexander lies dying in his palace. The city is dominated by the tower of Babel, its spiral roadway curling up towards the heavens and wide enough for several donkey carts. And women sit outside the Temple of Ishtar, waiting for some stranger to drop a coin in their laps. The prospect seems to fascinate Deborah. She wants to become one of the Whores of Babylon.

Whores of Babylon was first published in 1988 and won the British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Novel. Ian Watson has revised and updated the Immanion Press edition for a new century.