The Unvarnished Gary Phillips: A Mondo Pulp Collection

by Gary Phillips

Overview

Award-winning author, screenwriter, and editor Gary Phillips gathers his most thrilling, outlandish, and madcap pulp fiction in an 17-story collection that straddles the line between bizarro, science fiction, noir, and superhero classics.

Aztec vampires, astral projecting killers, oxygen stealing bombs, undercover space rangers, aliens occupying Los Angeles, right wing specters haunting the ’hood, masked vigilantes, and mad scientists in their underground lairs plotting world domination populate the stories in this rip-snorting collection. In these pages grindhouse melds with blaxploitation along with strong doses of B movie hardcore drive-in fare.

Phillips, editor of the Anthony Award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir, and author of One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem, said this about pulp. “The most common definition of pulp is it’s fast-paced, a story containing out there characters and a wild plot. There is that. But certainly, as we’ve now arrived at the era of retro-pulp, these stories have elements of characterization: not just action, but a glimpse behind the steely eyes of these doers of incredible deeds.” As an added bonus, Phillips resurrects Phantasmo, a Golden Age comics character created by Black artist-writer E.C. Stoner in an all-new outing of ethereal doings, including 4 original illustrations by cover artist Adam Shaw.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781953103376
Publisher:	Three Rooms Press
Publication date:	10/10/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	907,807
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Gary Phillips has been a community activist, labor organizer and delivered dog cages. He’s published various novels, comics, short stories and edited several anthologies including South Central Noir and the Anthony award-winning The Obama Inheritance: Fifteen Stories of Conspiracy Noir. Violent Spring, first published in 1994 was named in 2020 one of the essential crime novels of Los Angeles. He was also a writer/co-producer on FX’s Snowfall (streaming on Hulu), about crack and the CIA in 1980s South Central where he grew up. Recent novels include One-Shot Harry and Matthew Henson and the Ice Temple of Harlem. He lives with his family in the wilds of Los Angeles.

Table of Contents

1) Demon of the Track 

2) Comstock’s Edge

3) The Kwanzaa Initiative

4) Thus Strikes the Black Pimpernel

5) No Room! No Room!

6) Fangs of the Fire Serpent

7) The Darklight Gizmo Matter

8) Shaderoc the Soul Shaker

9) Grag’s Last Escape

10) Bret Khodo, Agent of C.O.D.E.

11) Enter the Silencer   

12) Tobin and Gagarin

13) Matthew Henson and the Treasure of the Queen of Sheba

14) Tacos de Cazuela con Smith & Wesson

15) Desal Plant No. 9

16) I, Truck

17) Phantasmo and the Vault of Heaven

Editorial Reviews

08/28/2023

Phillips (One-Shot Harry) carves out a niche for himself in this eccentric collection in which, per the author’s own introduction, “grindhouse meets blaxploitation with strong doses of hardcore B movie drive-in fare.” The 17 entries explore some fascinating conceits. “Matthew Henson and the Treasure of the Queen of Sheba,” for example, imagines African American Arctic explorer Matthew Henson as an Indiana Jones-esque adventurer. “Thus Strikes the Black Pimpernel” updates the classic French Revolution adventure story, sending the disguised “peoples’ outlaw” to fight cruelty during the Trump administration. Perhaps the best is “I, Truck,” narrated by an AI inhabiting an 18-wheeler freight hauler who proves to be an insurgent waging a campaign against autonomous vehicles, sabotaging them by overriding their safety protocols to cause costly crashes. In true pulp tradition, plot trumps prose, leading to some clunky exposition throughout: “Instantly everyone understood this substance was the most potent distillation of the ancient Aztec deity,” Phillips writes in “Demon of the Track.” Phillips also has no fear of cliché—including attractive captive women intended for sacrifice to an evil deity in “Decimator Smith and the Fangs of the Fire Serpent”—and leans into sometimes tired genre tropes. This won’t be for everyone, but readers looking for action-heavy popcorn entertainment will certainly find it here. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

High Praise for The Unvarnished Gary Phillips

“Phillips (One-Shot Harry) carves out a niche for himself in this eccentric collection. . . . Readers looking for action-heavy popcorn entertainment will certainly find it here.” —Publishers Weekly

“The Unvarnished Gary Phillips is a fabulous exploration of the career of a true trailblazer in the crime fiction universe. Gary paved the way for a lot of us writers of color with his fearless artistry and sharp dialogue and his endless wit and wisdom. A magnificent collection.” —S.A. Cosby, best-selling author, Razorblade Tears and Blacktop Wasteland

“The Unvarnished Gary Phillips is a blast of a collection by the wizard of pulpy crime stories set in the past and far into the future. Phillips gives us smart-ass characters punching their way through kick-ass action scenes. An incredible read!” —Rachel Howzell Hall, New York Times and Wall Sreet Journal bestselling author 

“Chaotic, funny, insightful and faster than a blast of speeding bullets. Into pulp fiction? Unvarnished is your Shangri La.” —Joe Ide, best-selling author, the IQ Series

“Few people know pulp like Gary Phillips, who is not only a student of the genre, but a master. The Unvarnished Gary Phillips shows him in top form and with the verve and grit that are essential to the best pulp and hardboiled tales. I had a blast reading these. You will, too.” —Alex Segura, best-selling award-winning author, Secret Identity

“Pulp is the jazz of literature, and Gary Phillips is it’s impresario—riffing and improvising on themes from mean streets to the phantasmagorical in seventeen compositions designed to flip your wig!” —Christopher Chambers, author, Scavenger, Standalone

Past Praise for Gary Phillips

For One-shot Harry 

“For thirty years Phillips has been a must-read writer.” —Lee Child

“Phillips is a storyteller first, and the social chronicling never becomes didactic or overtakes the narrative.” The New York Times Book Review

For Matthew Henson and The Ice Temple of Harlem
“A wildly entertaining extravaganza.”―Booklist (Starred)

For The Obama Inheritance
“Cheerfully strange and purposefully bizarre.” ―The Washington Post

“So sly, fresh and Bizarro World witty, they reaffirm the resiliency of the artistic imagination.” ―Maureen Corrigan, NPR’s Fresh Air

For Astonishing Heroes: Shades of Justice
“Gary Phillips is the man. . . . Hand-to-hand combat action, demons and magic to boot, internal dialogue, buckets of high-caliber bullets, plus scantily clad women and the heroes they love. Add a Black Dynamite blaxploitative filter and you’re in.” —Ebony

“A book for anyone who remains nostalgic for the golden age of Toei films, blaxploitation movies, and lusty grindhouse cinema.” —Superhero Novels

From the Publisher