PUBLISHERS WEEKLY praises Nick Mamatas’ forthcoming collection THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING.

The 15 stories in Mamatas’s strong collection show impressive imaginative range, cutting across the boundaries of fantasy and science fiction and veering into territory that defies genre pigeonholing. In “Walking with a Ghost,” H.P. Lovecraft is resurrected as an AI and suitably horrified at being (like a character in his fiction) a consciousness trapped in an unnatural form. “Arbeitskraft” follows a Marxist organizer in a steampunk 19th-century England whose efforts to rally a partly mechanized working class are repeatedly undermined by capitalist mendacity.

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Mamatas (I Am Providence) writes in a witty, sassy style that invigorates all of his narratives, from the social satire “Under My Roof,” about a family that declares its household a sovereign nation armed with nuclear capabilities, to “The Phylactery,” a poignant nonspeculative tale about familial and cultural identity. This collection highlights the work of a refreshingly versatile storyteller.

Ian White at STARBURST reviews the book.

From an AI ghost of H. P. Lovecraft forged from the real-life author’s many correspondences to a Communist revolutionary who discovers the awful secret of the too-hard-grafting Steam-Workers, from the quiet revolution bubbling beneath the streets of THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING to a new baby under the dubious protection of a Greek charm, and from the perils of social networking and a reality-twisting hitman to a father and son bonding over their homemade nuclear device, Nick Mamatas’ collection of (often very) short stories is a weird and wild descent through the imagination that hits its targets more than it misses. And even better than the stories themselves are Mamatas’ story notes, fascinating biographical insights into how each episode was created and their often-convoluted route to publication.

For LIT REACTOR, Gabino Iglesias includes the collection among Summer and Beyond: Upcoming Books That Should Be On Your Radar.

Mamatas is such a great novelist that it’s easy to forget he also writes superb short stories. This collection is a testament to his short form chops, and a powerful one at that (it packs a decade’s worth of the author’s work under one cover). I’m reading this thing now and can assure you it will be on many end-of-year lists. Get on it. 

THE GROTTO podcast interviews Nick Mamatas.

This week, BQ and Larry enter the extended Nick Mamatas universe to learn about horror novels, manga, writing term papers for profit and much more. Join them as the author of the upcoming short story collection THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING shares his unique and compelling tales and talks about how he manages to produce a new book every year. Mamatas also authored the San Francisco zombie novel The Last Weekend, the Lovecraftian murder mystery I Am Providence, and the forthcoming Hexen Sabbath.

For more info on THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF EVERYTHING, visit the Tachyon page.

Cover by Elizabeth Story