Set against a brilliant panorama of European expansion into the West in the late 1800s, Moon Dance is the horrifying tale of the illegitimate son of the Count von Bachl-Wolfling, leader of a pack of Viennese werewolves, and of the boy's all-too-human governess, Speranza. The pack has decided to emigrate to America, in search of wild lands and unsuspicious human prey. But unbeknownst to them, the Dakota territory is already home to the Shungmanitu--a clan of the Lakota Sioux who become wolves by the light of the full moon.

From Publishers Weekly
When young Carrie DuPre travels from Berkeley, Calif., to the South Dakota Badlands to search out the true story of the Laramie Ripper--a mass-murderer reputed to have killed his victims by evisceration--she gets a lot more than she (and perhaps the reader) bargains for. The secrets she discovers connect Austro-Hungarian werewolf immigration and 100 years of Native American wolf-worship, and will change her life forever. In her investigation of the showdown between shaman and werewolf, Carrie is joined by Preston Bluefeather Grumiaux, her old high school flame, who now works as a part-time tribal policeman and also at the Szymanowski Institute, which happens to be the present home of the Laramie Ripper. Flashing between the present, the early 1960s and the late 1880s, its narration occasionally long-winded, Somtov's ( Vampire Nation ) novel offers a complex horror experience, rich in atmosphere and history--not to mention animal sexuality and a great deal of gore
Review
"A historical romance, a Dickensian chronicle of the American West, and a brutally violent werewolf epic...Moon Dance is simply one of the finest fantasy novels of the year." --Ed Bryant, Locus

"Somtow does for werewolves what Anne Rice has done for vampires...he makes them complex, ultimately pitiful--and very sexy....[Moon Dance is] a scary, gripping horror novel that breathes new life into the ancient, and often overworked, werewolf legend." --Baton Rouge Advocate

"If you were waiting around for someone to write the Great American Werewolf novel, the Gone With the Wind of lycanthropy, you can rest easy...S.P. Somtow has written a werewolf story like none ever written before....The result is a terrific story." --Florida Times-Union

"Moon Dance is a fiendish example of the traditional spooky genre, replete with chilling specters, rapacious werewolves and assorted nefarious creatures....this is primary horror, a book to cause sweaty palms and a reluctance to read the final chapter." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

S.P. Somtow has assembled a collection of essays, poems, and fiction, and tells all about his first published poem from 1967, which earned a lengthy shelf life when it was used as the epigraph for a best-selling autobiography by Shirley MacLaine, to his first professional fiction sale in 1977, to stories that won major awards like the World Fantasy Award. Here, also, are some of his acerbic commentaries from Thai and U.S. magazines, which rarely shied away from controversial subjects. S.P. Somtow’s fiftieth book celebrates a lifetime of achievement as the internationally acclaimed author of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry “the most wellknown expatriate Thai in the world” – International Herald Tribune

An extraordinary tale of a collaboration between a composing prodigy and a Washington politician, the story of how a Thai schoolboy came to create the entire oeuvre of an American composer is fabulous in the true sense of the world … a modern mythic journey. A true story … yet one that beggars belief … with cameo appearances by all sorts of members of the Washington “swamp” … and the odd science fiction writer dropping in for a chat.…

“It’s a story about the human need to want to break boundaries and exceed limitations. It’s about dreams and aspirations, and in the end we need to ask questions about the very nature of art and about why we as humans need art in our lives.“It is also the story of two people from vastly divergent cultures, two people who both, perhaps, felt alienated from the people and situations that surrounded them, and who came to share a strangely intimate bond.

”A never-before-told secret history, this memoir by the first Asian to be awarded the European Cultural Achievement Award is an eye-opener.

***"Once upon a time, almost half a century ago," this diary begins, "I was a college student in an elevator at an exclusive club in Washington, DC. The elevator was filled with important people — admirals and such — and I was trying to look as inconspicuous as possible, considering I was a long-haired Asian attired in quasi-hippie garb. As the elevator descended, they began discussing the Secretary of the Navy, one J. William Middendorf, the Second."One of the Very Impressive Persons said, “What do you think of Middendorf’s music?”Another snickered, “Yeah, yeah, his so-called music.”“I heard a rumor,” said the first, “that it’s all actually composed by some young oriental guy.”***Thus begins the wild story of the bizarre collaboration between a powerful American politician and a long-haired 17-year-old Thai music student that produced seven symphonies, an opera, dozens of concertos, rhapsodies, ballets, and occasional pieces, and over a hundred marches in just over a decade. In a wryly ironic voice, S.P. Somtow, who composed and conducts opera under his given name Somtow Sucharitkul, spins a tale that is like a symphonic version of "Forrest Gump" — only it's true.

This is a memoir with cameo appearances by the Queen of Holland, Isaac Asimov, the Grateful Dead, Oliver North, and the Governor of Bangkok. All-night orgies of playing C major scales, evenings of eating corned beef hash under a real Rembrandt in an ambassador's living room, taking notes on the Secretary of the Navy's humming while top brass waited for their marching orders, dashing off marches while wolfing down American sitcoms … fifty years later, it's time now for this story to emerge.S.P. Somtow says of the autobiographical fragment: " It was the union of Mantovani with Schoenberg, and it should have been a marriage made in hell, but somehow, it came off."I started to write this book because I am afraid that one day someone will take the bones of this story and add to it a different kind of flesh. It could easily be made into a hatchet job, but that would be missing the whole point of it all."

By popular request, World Fantasy Award winning novelist and opera composer S.P. Somtow delivers nine years’ worth of his dreams, meticulously recorded in a dream journal. A glimpse into the inner world of one of today’s Renaissance men, The Maestro’s Noctuary contains images both inspiring and disturbing. From bright blue coelocanths encircling the globe to mediaeval spaceships to Paleolithic Venuses that unzip their skin to reveal hidden cameras to vomit that splits into emeralds, Somtow’s dream diary is like an anthology of symbolist prose poems, reminiscent of the fevered mind of Rimbaud. Then there are dreams that seem to contain entire plots of novels unwritten, perhaps a treasure trove to be mined for future works. And finally there are encounters with archetypes that seem to have messages to deliver, or instructions from a higher place. Intriguingly illustrated by the author’s adopted son Mikey Jiraros, this is a book to be savored.

It’s a daring adventure, a breathtaking leap of ambition, an amazing “gift to the world” from a small country that may seem to some to be far from the world’s operatic center.It’s a new way to bring to news audiences the most iconic stories of Theravada Buddhism, told and retold for thousands of years, in the language of music, singing, drama, and dance, a language that belongs to every culture in the world — yet the particular dialect of this language is equal parts Asia and Europe.Halfway through this journey, let’s take a moment to look at all that has already been achieved.Five linked works of music drama — from the oratorio-like Mahajanaka to the intimate chamber opera The Silent Prince, from the childlike simplicity of The Faithful Son to the convoluted machinations of The Dragon Lord, to the cosmic allegory of Chariot of Heaven.There has been a hiatus for almost two years, but now it’s time for final five music dramas to emerge, and 2019 will see premieres of two of them: the short ballet Chandakumar and the magically complex Architect of Dreams. This is a colorful book of photographs from the first five works, including from productions in Bangkok, Houston, Rangsit, Brno, Bayreuth, and Prague.

After forty years, S.P. Somtow has produced a fifth novel in the Chronicles of the High Inquest, one of the most lauded galactic empire epics of the 1980s. Critically acclaimed yet never previously in print as a complete set, the series has passionate adherents — and they have finally persuaded the author to enrich the universe with more novels. Homeworld of the Heart is the first of a trilogy within a trilogy.

The songs of Sajit were known and loved through the million worlds of the Dispersal of Man. He was the favorite of Elloran, most powerful, most compassionate of the godlike Inquestors — even, it was rumored, his lover. In his old age, Ton Elloran visits a backwater planet that purports to contain the tomb of Sajit. A nostalgic visit to his childhood companion birth planet, however, reveals that everything he thought he knew about his closest friend was wrong — and that there were at least two Sajits, their stories bifurcating and melding in an ever more complex skein of memory, desire, and loss. Homeworld of the Heart begins in a small village in a backworld — where a microscopic glitch in Inquestral management has caused two contradictory games of makrúgh to be played out. People bins are raining from the sky, a city is devouring another city, and a goddess must learn to become a whore as cultures and worlds clash.

Kelver is leading a revolution to bring about the end of the twenty-thousand-year hegemony of the godlike Inquestors, who have presided over the million-planet Dispersal of Man in a reign of staggering cruelty and stunning beauty. Conflicted in their love for him are the two young Inquestors who trained with him — Siriss, the White Inquestrix, who has joined his army and yet is compelled to betray him, and violet-eyed Arryk, who was his lover and is now his nemesis. War is inevitable and no world will be left unscathed.

The revolution comes to the planet Essondras, where Zalo, author of necrodramas, plays performed entirely by animated corpses, seeks the mythic truth behind the horrific reality, and where his lover, the darkweaver Ir Jenjen, is reinventing the art of darkness. Will Zalo continue to create stories for the dead, or will he learn the art of astrogating, guiding star whales through the light-mad overcosm to find humanity a new home?S.P. Somtow paints on a vast canvas: in the words of Theodore Sturgeon, “a shattering storm that whirls away, leaving your world full of brilliance and cacophonies of color … few have even attempted the description of a universe so vast.…”

Of his work, Analog said “He may yet give us the greatest science fiction novel of all time.”This classic, the towering epic of a galactic empire's collapse, comes in a new edition including for the first time the introduction written by Theodore Sturgeon.

“His multicultural viewpoint may yet give us the best SF novel of all time” — AnalogFor twenty thousand years, the godlike Inquestors have held sway over the one million worlds of the Dispersal of Man. S.P. Somtow’s limitless imagination has created a universe of breathtaking majesty, amazing beauty, and shattering cruelty. In games of makrugh played in elegant floating palaces, planets are destroyed or saved to preserve the balance of the galaxy. Exotic languages and customs, servocorpses, tachyon bubbles, childsolders with implanted laser-irises, people bins that hold populations of entire planets, delphinoid ships that sail the overcosm, utopias that must be hunted down and destroyed in the name of the High Compassion, thinkhives that connect the galaxy via the space between spaces … All this must end. And end it does, in what Theodore Sturgeon has described as “the greatest magnitude of color and spectacle since Stapledon.”For the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the first Inquestor story in Analog, Diplodocus Press is bringing back revised editions of all four of the original Chronicles of the High Inquest — and releasing a fifth volume, Homeworld of the Heart.

“he can create a world with less apparent effort than some writers devote to creating a small room … yet these tales are intricately wrought as those handcarved oriental balls within balls”— The Washington Post

“his dense, poetic prose is as unique as his name”— Los Angeles Times“One of SF’s formidable talents!”—Publishers Weekly

Kelver had been chosen by a heretic to be the chosen one who would bring down a galactic empire that had lasted twenty thousand years and controlled a million worlds. He was sent to Uran s’Varek, the vast artificial sphere build around the black hole at the heart of the galaxy, to be trained in the ways of the High Inquest, the godlike elite who ruled the known universe.Instead, he fell in love with the beautiful, cruel White Inquestrix Siriss, and the violet-eyed boy Arryk — was entranced by the singing city of Shentrazjit — wept at the sepulcher of worlds — made love in a desert of powdered chocolate — and was finally possessed by the Throne of Madness, whose unimaginable power came from the deaths of stars.The Inquestor Series, a dazzling future history of a galactic empire of shattering beauty and brutality, was iconic science fiction of the 1980s by World Fantasy Award and Campbell Award winner S.P. Somtow, who created worlds, languages, cultures and spectacle. In the words of Analog magazine, “He may yet give us the greatest science fiction novel of all time.”Forty years on, the series has come to life again, with additional novels, revised editions and new introductions and ancillary materials. Somtow’s far-flung galactic civilization is a creation to rival Silverberg’s Majipoor or Herbert’s Dune. It is a universe with its own language and exotic customs, vividly etched characters and rich history that spans thousands of worlds and tens of thousands of years.The godlike Inquestors of the High Inquest had forsaken all that made them human. But one young Inquestor rediscovered the power of compassion and hastened the end of their ancient, starflung empire....

“In a prose that evokes the spirited imagination of thesymbolist painters and poets, Somtow postulates a complex universe of immense scope ... upholds the author’s place as one of SF’s formidable talents.”– Publishers Weekly

The Inquestor Series was a classic science fiction series of the 1980s — and has now been reincarnated for the 21st century, with more adventures, more spectacle, and more extras. Tachyon bubbles, people bins and galactic empires — and profound family conflicts — Greek tragedy writ large. Light on the Sound, the book that started it all, begins with one lonely planet and three lost souls, and ends with galactic revolution.

For twenty thousand years, the godlike Inquestors have held sway over the one million worlds of the Dispersal of Man. S.P. Somtow’s limitless imagination has created a universe of breathtaking majesty, amazing beauty, and shattering cruelty. In games of makrugh played in elegant floating palaces, planets are destroyed or saved to preserve the balance of the galaxy. Exotic languages and customs, servocorpses, tachyon bubbles, childsolders with implanted laser-irises, people bins that hold populations of entire planets, delphinoid ships that sail the overcosm, utopias that must be hunted down and destroyed in the name of the High Compassion, thinkhives that connect the galaxy via the space between spaces …

All this must end. And end it does, in what Theodore Sturgeon has described as “the greatest magnitude of color and spectacle since Stapledon.” For the fortieth anniversary of the publication of the first Inquestor story in Analog, Diplodocus Press is bringing back revised editions of all four of the original Chronicles of the High Inquest — and releasing a fifth volume, Homeworld of the Heart with a sixth, Stillness in Starlight, already in preparation.

“he can create a world with less apparent effort than some writers devote to creating a small room … yet these tales are intricately wrought as those handcarved oriental balls within balls” — The Washington Post

“his dense, poetic prose is as unique as his name”

— Los Angeles Times

“One of SF’s formidable talents!”

—Publishers Weekly

“His multicultural viewpoint may yet give us the best SF novel of all time” — Analog

Short Description

The Inquestor Series, the classic science fiction series is back with more epic spectacle and more extras. Tachyon bubbles, people bins and galactic empires - and profound family conflicts. Light on the Sound, the book that started it all, begins with one lonely planet and three lost souls, and ends with galactic revolution.

Review Quotes

“he can create a world with less apparent effort than some writers devote to creating a small room … yet these tales are intricately wrought as those handcarved oriental balls within balls” — The Washington Post

“His multicultural viewpoint may yet give us the best SF novel of all time” — Analog

A retrospective collection of S.P, Somtow’s science fiction stories, from Sunsteps which first appeared in Unearth magazine in 1977 to An Alien Heresy from 2007, this book covers thirty years of the wide-ranging author-composer’s career, including numerous award-nominated stories.

From comedic zombie protest marches to alien roller coaster cults, from ambiguous utopias to enjoyable dystopias, from a mediaeval inquisitor confronting an alien to an alien inquestor confronting a planet, these are bizarre and wondrous tales, both serious and satiric.

The shopping center as big as a planet is back - this time with over 80 pages of new material including the first new Mallworld story in thirty years - the jaw-dropping Mallworld Becomes Elektra which takes the premise of the entire satirical universe and turns it on its ear.

A pungent satire of the rampant commercialism of the 1980s, S.P, Somtow's Mallworld stories first appeared in Isaac Asimov's during the post-Star Wars age of science fiction.

Many things predicted in the Mallworld stories are happening today‚ from roller coasters inside shopping malls to cloning your filet mignon.

Other things haven't happened yet but who knows? From suicide parlors to dining on the larvae of super-intelligent alliens, from baby showrooms to child repo agents ... everything is possible in Mallworld, the comic yet chilling dystopia of a future gone wild.

Join the cult-of-the-month club, Insert your suppository vaculax, and shop for a nice second- hand body, preferably with compound eyes ... and if you are very lucky, party with the barJulians, who own simply everything ... including your soul.

BEYOND MALLWORLD is the newest, most complete collection of Mallworld stories including the complete illustrations of Karl Kofoed and a brand new novella about a Mallworld in which people have ceased to shop!

★★★★★ "A well-written memoir that uplifts while it teaches through story. And funny too. Worthwhile!" - Reader review
___

Memoir meets self-help in this true account about the meaning of buddhism, meditations, and living a spiritually abundant life!

Novelist, composer and conductor Somtow Sucharitkul (who writes books under the name S.P. Somtow) had an extraordinary epiphany while driving downthe California coast.

At almost 50 years of age, having spent very little time in his native Thailand, Somtow was seized by an overwhelming desire to enter a Buddhist monastery.

This is the story of that journey, full of surprises, culture shock, discoveries, humor and spirituality!

Visions, dreams, comedy, philosophy, wisdom and superstition mingle in an unforgettable fusion.

Join the journey and discover your inner spirituality, by ordering your copy of Nirvana Express, today!

Somtow’s very popular Club X series is consistently on Vella’s “Top Faved” lists. Season Two, “Club X: Zombie in the Fridge” is now available as a book. The first book has been made into a web TV series which will be released in 2023.
Join Kim, Fluke, Polo, Danger, and Donut as they embark on a wild journey in S.P. Somtow’s second book in the “Club X” series! Set in a mysterious Thai boarding school, these five friends cross into alternate universes, fight zombies and quirky nuns, and team up with their vampire English teacher to uncover the secrets of the universe. With a unique and LGBTQ+ twist on the classic “kids uncovering their school’s dark secrets” storyline, you won’t want to miss this thrilling adventure.
You’ll love Somtow’s story telling mastery as he leads you through this spine tingling journey behind the walls of a very unusual school.

At twelve years old, Little Frog has a richly fantastic and sustaining innerlife. It is 1963, his parents have disappeared, and he lives with his maiden aunts, known affectionately as the Three Fates, on the family estate in Bangkok. But, fed by a stream ofbooks and accompanied by his pet chameleon, Little Frog refuses to accept thathe is Thai, eats English food, speaks only English, and answers to the name of Justin.Into Justin’s eclectically fashioned, whirlingfantasy world steps Virgil, a black American boy, and together they embark on a glorious spree of magic and growing up – in which sex, adult confusions, comedy, farce, politics and the voices of East and West are fused into a voyage of astonishing discovery.

“Fragrant and very funny … like childhood, one finds that Jasmine Nights is hard to leave behind” – The Guardian“Charming, elegant and funny … a novel like no other and a joy to read” – Cosmopolitan

“A vibrant coming of age novel” – Sunday Times“A funny and memorable book, light-heartedly taking on big themes” – Daily Telegraph

Now acknowledged as one of the most important classics of twentieth-century gothic literarture, S.P. Somtow's tale of a twelve-year-old rock star vampire, his Jungian analyst, and the Wagnerian conductor who is his nemesis turned the entire genre upside down in the 1980s and is considered the ancestor of the "splatterpunk" movement. Vampire Junction has been voted one of the top forty horror books of all time. Timmy Valentine: "He'll steal your heart - and have it for breakfast!" 21st anniversary edition of this unforgettable classic of high-intensity horror.

Captured by pirates and sold to a Roman aristocrat as a sex slave, Sporus attracted the attention of no less a personage than the Emperor Nero, ruler of the known world. Would-be poet, patron of the arts, aesthete, and brutal autocrat, the Divine Nero saw in the boy a startling resemblance to the Empress Poppaea - and made him an empress as well. Suetonius, Tacitus, and other Roman historians have given tantalizing glimpses into the incredible life story of the boy who became twice an empress to two emperors, and was condemned to die in the arena by a third. In this meticulously researched trilogy, World Fantasy Award winning author lays bare the darkest secrets of Imperial Rome - its triumphs and its nadirs, its beauty and its cruelty. If Gore Vidal had written Quo Vadis this could well have been the result. Through this chaos, a contorted mirror of our contemporary world, this figure of Sporus moves, all too knowing yet all too innocent, providing a worm's eye view of one of the wildest periods in ancient history.

Imperatrix, the second volume of the tale, takes us into the heart of the Imperial palace with all its intrigue, depravity, and splendor.

"Somtow's pen knows no boundaries. From outrageous sex scandals to fascinating detail-rich elements of history that draw you right into the machinations of Ancient Rome ..." - from Proof Positive

"This is compulsive reading and all the more remarkable for being broadly speaking a true story. All the key players in this story are genuine and the story follows real events in their lives. The book feels very well researched but the research is used to fuel the story rather than slow it down. Somtow's writing has rarely been more compulsive than this. It's a fast, and incredibly easy read despite the complexities of the politics woven into the narrative." - Marc Lyth in Marc's World of Books

It is A.D. 69 and the Emperor Nero will soon be declared "Damnatio Memoriae" — his memory is to be erased from the world. But what will happen to Sporus, once a slave boy, then the emasculated Empress of the mad Caesar?

The third instalment of the saga provides a brief respite to the drama as Nero takes Sporus on a Greek tour ... where the dream becomes a nightmare.

The third book of the award-nominated series by S.P. Somtow, this work continues a tale of magnificence, corruption and decadence seen from a unique worm's eye view of a character who is usually relegated to a footnote in history.

The author sustained a serious arm injury this year and has only been able to write slowly. However, he does not wish to disappoint the many readers who have been waiting for the third volume. So he has decided to split the volume and make part one available on the advertised publication date at a lower cost. The second part will follow in about two months.

The decadence of Imperial Rome comes to life in S.P. Somtow's Literary Titan Award-winning novel about one of ancient history's wildest characters.

The historian Suetonius tells us that the Emperor Nero emasculated and married his slave Sporus, the spitting image of murdered Empress Poppaea. But history has more tidbits about Sporus, who went from "puer delicatus" to Empress to one Emperor and concubine to another, and ended up being sentenced to play the Earth-Goddess in the arena.

World Fantasy Award winner S.P. Somtow weaves a vivid adventure about one of the most colorful personalities in ancient Rome. Delicatus, the first volume in a trilogy, speaks of Sporus, from his enslavement by pirates in a remote corner of the Empire to his meeting with the great satirist Petronius and the woman to whom he bears a striking resemblance, the beautiful Poppaea with her manipulative plans to seduce the Emperor Nero and become Divine Empress.