Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Astounding: Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 1980
WEBSITE:
CITY: Oak Park
STATE: IL
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY: American
https://nevalalee.wordpress.com/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
LC control no.: no2012037329
LCCN Permalink: https://lccn.loc.gov/no2012037329
HEADING: Nevala-Lee, Alec
000 00358nz a2200133n 450
001 8935190
005 20120315074542.0
008 120314n| acannaabn |a aaa c
010 __ |a no2012037329
035 __ |a (OCoLC)oca09143598
040 __ |a IlMpPL |b eng |c IlMpPL
100 1_ |a Nevala-Lee, Alec
400 1_ |a Lee, Alec Nevala-
670 __ |a The icon thief, c2012: |b t.p. (Alec Nevala-Lee)
PERSONAL
Born 1980; married Wailin Wong (a newspaper journalist); children: Beatrix.
EDUCATION:Harvard University, B.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. Formerly worked at an investment firm in New York, NY.
WRITINGS
Work represented in anthologies, including Lightspeed and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. Contributor of stories, articles, and essays to periodicals, including Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Daily Beast, Longreads, Los Angeles Times, Rumpus, Salon, and San Francisco Bay Guardian.
SIDELIGHTS
Alec Nevala-Lee grew up in northern California, reading books and watching movies of all kinds. He moved to New England to attend Harvard University. There he worked on the college literary magazine, where some of his earliest short stories were published. With his classics degree in hand, Nevala-Lee moved to Manhattan. He took a job with a hedge fund, hoping to continue writing in his spare time, but leisure time was hard to find in the investment industry, especially in the years leading up to the Great Recession of 2008. Eventually Nevala-Lee relocated to the Chicago area with his family and the seeds of his first novel.
The Icon Thief
In an interview by Casey Cora for the Oak Park Patch, Nevala-Lee described The Icon Thief as “a mystery thriller centered on Maddy Blume, an art buyer for a Manhattan hedge fund who finds herself immersed in the international art trade.” The art in question is a mysterious painting of a headless nude created by surrealist artist Marcel Duchamp. Maddy can’t understand how the painting could possibly be worth the 11-million dollars that a Russian bidder was willing to pay for it. Her curiosity leads Maddy to visiting Londoner Alan Powell of the Serious Organised Crime Agency just in time to provide the amateur sleuth with the support she needs to stay out of danger, or so she thinks.
Powell is investigating the case of a headless body dumped beneath the boardwalk at Brighton Beach. Clues point to the Mafia and a connection to the Duchamp nude. The body count continues to grow, along with the persons of interest who seek to unravel the painting’s secrets. One of them is the ruthless Russian assassin known as the Scythian.
Arcane clues allude to secret societies such as the Rosicrucians, macabre references to the Black Dahlia mutilation murder of 1947, and the notorious British occultist Aleister Crowley. There are enough “twists and turns to keep any fan of suspense intrigued,” observed Katherine Petersen at Fresh Fiction. She also noted the author’s knowledge of secret societies and the dark underside of the international art market. A Publishers Weekly contributor called The Icon Thief a “cerebral, exciting debut” worthy of a starred review.
City of Exiles and Eternal Empire
The standalone novel that Nevala-Lee envisioned grew into a trilogy at the request of his publisher. Alan Powell returns in City of Exiles, back home in London to investigate the grisly death of a local arms dealer. The victim was found in a bathtub with a fatal gunshot wound to the head and a body virtually incinerated by a chemical concoction linked to the Russian mob. Powell is joined by American agent Rachel Wolfe. Together they apprehend and imprison Powell’s old adversary, the Scythian, but the criminal activity continues unabated. New characters emerge: Russian chess champion Victor Chigorin, shady police officer Maya Asthana, and Finnish assassin Lasse Karvonen.
The plot pits survivors of the Cheka, Lenin’s secret police agency, against the modern-day military intelligence organization and its civilian counterpart. It is Rachel whose interrogation of the imprisoned Scythian connects the recent killings to the mysterious, violent, and unsolved deaths of the historical Dyatlov Pass mountain climbers, who perished in the Ural Mountains in 1959. The “stylish follow-up” left a Publishers Weekly commentator looking forward to the finale of the trilogy.
Nevala-Lee continues to connect his understanding of the art trade and the Russian underworld with a series of unexplained historical incidents and legends in Eternal Empire. Maddy Blume is back, but she is not happy about it. A valuable painting has been vandalized, a priceless Fabergé egg is missing, and Maddy is sent undercover to work for Tarkovsky, the Russian oil mogul thought to be connected to the crimes. She learns that his criminal activity and clandestine financial support of military intelligence pale in comparison to his insane quest for the mythical, magical kingdom of Shambhala. The lost kingdom of Tibetan legend is prophesied to resurface when the world is in danger of destroying itself, but Tarkovsky has plans of his own for the world.
Astounding
Nevala-Lee has traveled far from Shambhala. Many of his short stories fall into the science fiction category, and he has been a longtime fan of the genre. He won respect for his nonfiction study, Astounding: Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction. The history revolves around John W. Campbell, the editor and publisher who navigated the magazine Astounding Science Fiction through its glory years from 1939 to 1950 and onward. For most of that seminal decade, Astounding was the preeminent magazine of the genre, and the career launch-pad for some of the greatest writers in the field.
Campbell was a generous mentor to the likes of Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard, providing them with a laboratory of sorts where they could exercise their creativity and plumb the future. Nevala-Lee focuses on these three pioneering authors and their debt to the man who enabled their genius to bear fruit. He shines a harsh light on Campbell, however, as a man of many flaws. The groundbreaking editor was an unapologetic racist and anti-Semite and, after World War II, increasingly absorbed by the search for scientific breakthroughs in the margins of conventional science–dowsing, astrology, and Hubbard’s “dianetics,” for example. As Campbell’s changing worldview affected the direction of the magazine, even his most loyal protégés became alarmed. In 1960, Campbell changed the name of the magazine from Astounding to Analog Science Fiction & Fact. Although he remained at the helm until his death in 1971, the astounding glory days were gone.
A writer in Kirkus Reviews called Nevala-Lee’s “warts-and-all” look at the Campbell years “first-rate.” The reviewer credited the author with “a solid job of situating Campbell” as “a vanguard figur” in the field. A Publishers Weekly contributor found a “fascinating appraisal” in Astounding, calling Nevala-Lee’s study “a major work of popular culture scholarship.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 2018, review of Astounding: Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction.
Publishers Weekly, January 23, 2012, review of The Icon Thief, p. 149; October 1, 2012, review of City of Exiles, p. 78; April 30, 2018, review of Astounding, p. 48.
Writer’s Digest, April 14, 2012, Chuck Sambuchino, author interview.
ONLINE
Alec Nevala-Lee website, https://nevalalee.wordpress.com (August 28, 2018).
Chicago Tribune Online, http://www.chicagotribune.com/ (August 29, 2018), Brian Kinyon, author interview.
Fresh Fiction, http://freshfiction.com/ (September 29, 2012), Katherine Petersen, review of The Icon Thief.
Oak Park Patch, https://patch.com/illinois/oakpark (April 2, 2012), Casey Cora, author interview.
Alec Nevala-Lee
Thoughts on art, creativity, and the writing life.
About me
Alec Nevala-Lee
I’m the author of the book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, which will be released by Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, on October 23, 2018. My novels include the thrillers The Icon Thief, City of Exiles, and Eternal Empire, all published by Penguin. On the short fiction side, my stories appear frequently in the magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact and have been reprinted in Lightspeed and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. My essays and nonfiction have been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Salon, Longreads, The Rumpus, and The Daily Beast.
Growing up in Castro Valley, California, I was an avid reader and moviegoer, and I wrote my first novel—of which, thankfully, only one copy survives—at the age of thirteen. My earliest influences included the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Umberto Eco, Jorge Luis Borges, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Norman Mailer, John Fowles, Robert Graves, Madeline L’Engle, Zilpha Keatley Snyder, and Stephen King; the films of Stanley Kubrick and David Lynch; the Indiana Jones trilogy; and such television shows as Twin Peaks and, above all, The X-Files.
I graduated from Harvard University with a degree in Classics, although I’ve since managed to forget most of my Latin and all of my Greek. In college, I was a member of the undergraduate literary magazine, where I published my first short fiction, and wrote on a variety of topics, mostly film, for a handful of publications, including the San Francisco Bay Guardian. After graduation, I spent several years at a financial firm based in New York, but ultimately left to pursue a much less lucrative career as a novelist.
As a writer, in addition to the influences I’ve mentioned above, I’m heavily indebted to Frederick Forsyth, Thomas Harris, James M. Cain, Ian McEwan, Thomas Pynchon, Robert Anton Wilson, Pauline Kael, the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, and many other craftsmen and storytellers, including David Mamet and Walter Murch. My favorite book is The Annotated Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle and William S. Baring-Gould; my favorite movies are The Red Shoes, Blue Velvet, and Chungking Express. I currently live in Oak Park, Illinois with my wife Wailin Wong and my daughter Beatrix.
Arts & Entertainment
Oak Parker's Mystery Thriller Emerges from Art
Author Alec Nevala-Lee finds inspiration in the unlikeliest of art works.
By Casey Cora, Patch Staff | Mar 27, 2012 8:03 pm ET | Updated Apr 2, 2012 3:52 pm ET
2
Oak Parker's Mystery Thriller Emerges from Art
Like many collegiate writers, Alec Nevala-Lee thought it wouldn't be much trouble to land a full-time job and work on his big debut novel in his spare time.
But free time was sparse at the hedge fund that employed him in New York City, so he left to pursue his writing, full time.
Now 31, the Harvard grad made a new home in Oak Park with his wife, Chicago Tribune tech and business reporter Wailin Wong. His debut novel, The Icon Thief, was published earlier this month by New American Library.
While researching potential subject material for his book, Nevala-Lee said he was keeping his eyes peeled for an intriguing work of art, something to build a story around.
He found it with Étant Donnés, the sculpture Marcel Duchamp worked on secretly for 20 years, while telling fans and critics he'd left art to pursue chess. Instead, Duchamp was in Greenwich Village, creating "a tableau, visible only through a pair of peep holes (one for each eye) in a wooden door, of a nude woman lying on her back with her face hidden and legs spread holding a gas lamp in the air in one hand against a landscape backdrop." The piece, Duchamp's final installation, is housed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Nevala-Lee said it's the perfect plot device — enigmatic in its own right and compelling enough to drive a mystery through 396 pages.
"I was amazed that no one had tried it yet," he said.
The result is <>, a profession Nevala-Lee said is laced with an "incomparable cast of collectors, traders, investors, and thieves."
He's posted a plot summary of the book, along rave reviews from fellow writers, on his blog, where he writes about the arts, storytelling and publishing daily. A student of art and literature, recently penned an L.A. Times editorial celebrating the influence of Duchamp's "Nu Descendant un Escalier," or "Nude Descending a Staircase."
A sequel to the Icon Thief, titled City of Exiles, is scheduled for publication in December. A third and final installment of the trilogy is expected in 2013.
"The real theme of the book and its two sequels," he said, "is how we impose meaning on the world, especially the past, and art history struck me as a particularly rewarding area for exploring these issues in a vivid and exciting way."
Alec Nevala-Lee will appear at Chicago's After-Words book store, 23 E. Illinois St. He's also scheduled to appear on WGN-AM radio with Bill Moller and on "The Afternoon Shift with Steve Edwards" on 91.5 WBEZ-FM.
Author Interview: Alec Nevala-Lee, Author of THE ICON THIEF
By: Chuck Sambuchino | April 14, 2012
Below find a Q&A with author Alec Nevala-Lee, who is celebrating the release of his thriller, THE ICON THIEF, (Signet, March 2012). In a starred review, Publishers Weekly calls THE ICON THIEF an “cerebral, exciting debut.” It’s his first book, and I always enjoy spotlight up-and-coming authors on my GLA Blog. Read on to learn more…
GIVEAWAY: Alec is excited to give away a free copy of his novel to a random commenter. Comment within two weeks; winners must live in Canada/US to receive the book by mail. You can win a blog contest even if you’ve won before. (UPDATE: BlueZebra won.)
What’s the book about?
An ambitious young art analyst, a British investigator, and a Russian thief are caught in a murderous race to solve the mystery behind an enigmatic masterpiece by the artist Marcel Duchamp. It’s a conspiracy thriller set in the New York art world.
Where do you write from?
My wife and I just bought our first house in Oak Park, Illinois, and I work mostly at home. However, The Icon Thief was primarily researched and written in New York.
What were you writing (and getting published, if applicable) before breaking out with this book?
I spent several years as an associate at an investment firm in Manhattan before leaving to focus on writing. My first novel was a 225,000-word epic set in India, still unpublished, which I’m hoping to rework one day in a somewhat more manageable form. Before the release of The Icon Thief, I’d also published a fair amount of short fiction, mostly in the magazine Analog Science Fiction and Fact.
What was the time frame for writing this book?
I’d wanted to write a novel about the New York art world for a long time, and I had done the first round of research several years earlier, while still working at my old job. After I began writing The Icon Thief in earnest, the first draft took about a year to finish, followed by another year of revisions. Halfway through the process, the stock market crashed, forcing me to rethink much of my research on art investing—and ultimately to revise the novel to take place in the summer before the financial crisis.
How did you find your agent?
When I first came to New York, I roomed for a year in Queens with two fellow members of my college literary magazine, one of whom was working with my future agent, David Halpern at the Robbins Office, although I didn’t query David until much later. (By then, I had actually spent a year revising my first novel with another agent, but we parted ways without going out to publishers—and rightly so, I might add.)
500x500_maychuck-1
If you’re interested in a variety of my resources on your
journey to securing an agent, don’t forget to check
out my personal Instructor of the Month Kit, created by
Writer’s Digest Books. It’s got books & webinars packaged
together at a 73% discount. Available while supplies last.
What were your 1-2 biggest learning experience(s) or surprise(s) throughout the publishing process?
I was interested to discover that much of the editorial process has largely been outsourced to agents, with the publishing houses themselves more concerned with the business of packaging and selling books. In my own case, I spent more than a year revising the novel with my agent, while the subsequent rewrites with my editor—a very smart and capable guy—took only a few weeks.
I was also surprised when my editor asked if I could turn the novel into a series. Originally, I’d conceived The Icon Thief as a self-contained story, but I ended up signing a deal for a sequel as well, and I’m currently writing a third and final installment. In retrospect, I can see that it makes a lot of sense from a publisher’s perspective—it allows you to build an audience—and I’ve been grateful for the chance to spend more time with these characters. But it has definitely taken my work in some unexpected directions.
Looking back, what did you do right that helped you break in?
Although my first novel was never published, it taught me a lot of important things: how to outline, how to crank out the necessary number of pages each day, and especially how to cut. As a result, I’d like to think that I’ve acquired some good habits, and I’m very disciplined when it comes to deadlines and revisions. This came in handy when I ended up with nine months to deliver a sequel to The Icon Thief, which had taken more than two years to write.
On that note, what would you have done differently if you could do it again?
I wouldn’t have gone out with a draft of a debut novel that was 225,000 words long. I would have made sure that I saw eye to eye with my first agent before spending a year on rewrites. And I would have started much sooner.
Did you have a platform in place? On this topic, what are you doing the build a platform and gain readership?
I blog every day at http://www.nevalalee.com. I write mostly about the creative process, with occasional excursions into movies, literature, and pop culture, and I was recently surprised to discover that I’ve produced well over a book’s worth of material over the past year and a half.
Website(s)?
http://www.nevalalee.com
http://twitter.com/nevalalee
http://facebook.com/nevalaleebooks
What’s next?
My second novel, City of Exiles, will be released on December 4. I’m about halfway through the third book, currently titled The Scythian, which I’m scheduled to deliver in six months for publication in 2013.
GIVEAWAY: Alec is excited to give away a free copy of his novel to a random commenter. Comment within two weeks; winners must live in Canada/US to receive the book by mail. You can win a blog contest even if you’ve won before. (UPDATE: BlueZebra won.)
Other writing/publishing articles & links for you:
NEW Literary Agent Seeking Clients: Paul Lucas of Janklow & Nesbit.
What Are Beta Readers? (And Do You Need Them?)
Sell More Books by Building Your Writer Platform.
If Your Manuscript Doesn’t Sell, Set It Aside and Start Another.
Follow Chuck Sambuchino on Twitter or find him on Facebook. Learn all about his writing guides on how to get published, how to find a literary agent, and how to write a query letter.
Alec Nevala-Lee
Alec Nevala-Lee
Brian Kinyon
Who is an author you'd like to meet, dead or alive?
I'd love to spend a day with John Updike in his prime, when he was cranking out poems, essays, short stories, and wonderful novels like Rabbit is Rich, just to see how he did it. (When I mentioned this question to my wife, she asked if I'd want to meet Nabokov, to which I replied without thinking: "Oh God, no.")
Do you listen to music while you write? What music?
For most of my novels, I'll put together a playlist of songs that capture something of the mood I'm trying to evoke, although it varies a lot from one book to the next. Eternal Empire was intimately shaped by the British trance song "If I Survive" by Hybrid and Julee Cruise, and I've been writing much of my current project while listening to "Layla" by Derek and the Dominos.
How do you celebrate after you've finished a book?
These days, my novels are written on a fairly tight deadline without a lot of downtime, so when I'm done, I celebrate by writing something for my own pleasure, usually a short story. (Yes, I celebrate the end of one story by writing another. It's a sickness.)
What book do you read over and over again?
The Annotated Sherlock Holmes, as much for the notes by William S. Baring-Gould as for the original stories themselves. It's the best book in the world.
Alec Nevala-Lee
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to navigationJump to search
This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages)
The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies. (July 2017)
This biography of a living person relies too much on references to primary sources. (July 2017)
Alec Nevala-Lee
Born Castro Valley, California
Occupation Writer
Nationality American
Genre Science fiction, Biography, Thriller
Website
www.nevalalee.com
Alec Nevala-Lee is an American novelist, biographer, and science fiction writer.
Contents
1 Biography
2 Work
3 Bibliography
3.1 Novels
3.2 Short fiction
3.3 Non-fiction
3.4 Other media
4 References
5 External links
Biography
Nevala-Lee was born in Castro Valley, California, and graduated from Harvard College with a bachelor's degree in Classics.[1] His novels include The Icon Thief, City of Exiles, and Eternal Empire, all published by Penguin Books, and his short fiction has appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Lightspeed Magazine, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction.[2] He has written for such publications as the Los Angeles Times, Salon, The Daily Beast, and Longreads.[3] His nonfiction book Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction will be released by Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, on October 23, 2018.[4]
Work
Nevala-Lee’s debut novel, The Icon Thief, is a conspiracy thriller inspired by the work of artist Marcel Duchamp.[5] A sequel, City of Exiles, is partially based on the Dyatlov Pass incident.[6] On the science fiction side, Locus critic Rich Horton has called Nevala-Lee “one of [Analog editor Stanley Schmidt’s] best recent discoveries...One of Nevala-Lee’s idea engines is to present a situation which suggests a fantastical or science-fictional premise, and then to turn the idea on its head, not so much by debunking the central premise, or explaining it away in mundane terms, but by giving it a different, perhaps more scientifically rigorous, science-fictional explanation.”[7] Analog has referred to him as "a master of…tale[s] set in an atypical location, with science fiction that arrives from an unexpected direction,”[8] while Locus reviews editor Jonathan Strahan has said that Nevala-Lee's fiction "has been some of the best stuff in Analog in the last ten years."[9]
The science fiction writer Barry N. Malzberg has called Nevala-Lee's nonfiction book Astounding "the most important historical and critical work my field has ever seen."[10] In a starred review, Publishers Weekly described the book—a group biography of the editor John W. Campbell and the science fiction writers Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard—as "a major work of popular culture scholarship,"[11] while Kirkus Reviews referred to it as "first-rate...a welcome contribution to the study of popular literature."[12]
Bibliography
This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
Novels
Nevala-Lee, Alec (2012). The Icon Thief. New York: Signet / New American Library.
Nevala-Lee, Alec (2012). City of Exiles. New York: Signet / New American Library.
Nevala-Lee, Alec (2013). Eternal Empire. New York: Signet / New American Library.
Short fiction
Title Year First published Reprinted/collected Notes
Inversus 2004 "Inversus". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 124 (1, 2): 200–227. January 2004.
The Last Resort 2009 "The Last Resort". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 129 (9): 54–71. September 2009. Finalist for the Analytical Laboratory Award
Kawataro 2011 "Kawataro". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 131 (6): 90–103. June 2011.
The Boneless One 2011 "The Boneless One". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 131 (11): 86–103. November 2011. The Year’s Best Science Fiction, 29th Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois. Locus Recommended Reading List[13]
Ernesto 2012 "Ernesto". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 132 (3): 42–49. March 2012. "Ernesto". Lightspeed Magazine (76). September 2016.
The Voices 2012 "The Voices". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 132 (9): 56–67. September 2012.
The Whale God 2013 "The Whale God". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 133 (9): 8–22. September 2013. Cover story; Locus Recommended Reading List[14]
Cryptids 2014 "Cryptids". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 134 (5): 8–21. May 2014. Cover story; finalist for the Analytical Laboratory Award
Stonebrood 2015 "Stonebrood". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 135 (10): 8–25. October 2015. Lead story
The Proving Ground 2017 "The Proving Ground". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 137 (1, 2): 8–30. January 2017. "The Proving Ground". Lightspeed Magazine (94). March 2018. The Year's Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Fifth Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois. Cover story; Locus Recommended Reading List;[15] finalist for the Analytical Laboratory Award
The Spires 2018 "The Spires". Analog Science Fiction and Fact. 138 (3, 4): 8–24. March 2018. Lead story
Non-fiction
"Marcel Duchamp’s Turning Point." Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2012.
"Karl Rove’s Labyrinth." The Daily Beast, November 20, 2012.
"Lessons from The X-Files." Salon, September 17, 2013.
"Xenu’s Paradox: The Fiction of L. Ron Hubbard and the Making of Scientology." Longreads, February 1, 2017.
"The Campbell Machine." Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August 2018.
Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Dey Street Books / HarperCollins. Forthcoming in October 2018.
Other media
“Retention.” Episode of the audio science fiction series The Outer Reach. Released on December 21, 2016. Featuring the voices of Aparna Nancherla and Echo Kellum.
Alec Nevala-Lee was born in Castro Valley, California, and graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree in classics. He is the author of three novels, including The Icon Thief, and his stories have been published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Lightspeed, and The Year’s Best Science Fiction. His nonfiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Daily Beast, Salon, Longreads, the Rumpus, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He lives with his wife and daughter in Oak Park, Illinois.
8/11/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1534014908223 1/4
Print Marked Items
Nevala-Lee, Alec: ASTOUNDING
Kirkus Reviews.
(June 1, 2018):
COPYRIGHT 2018 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Nevala-Lee, Alec ASTOUNDING Dey Street/HarperCollins (Adult Nonfiction) $28.99 10, 23 ISBN: 978-
0-06-257194-6
A laser-sharp study of science fiction's golden age, the product of a small circle of writers and their guiding
editor.
Many classic-era science-fiction biographies and memoirs, such as Isaac Asimov's three-volume memoir
and William H. Patterson Jr.'s two-volume life of Robert Heinlein, make generous mention of the
pioneering editor and publisher John W. Campbell, whose Astounding Science Fiction was the flagship
magazine of the genre for decades. Sci-fi practitioner Nevala-Lee (Eternal Empire, 2013, etc.) does<< a solid
job of situating Campbel>>l at the head of modern science fiction,<< a vanguard figure>> who, though himself a
spinner of robots-and-aliens stories, "never became as famous as many of the writers he published."
However, Nevala-Lee adds, "he influenced the dreamlife of millions." Generous with dollars and advice--
Asimov worriedly informed him that he'd paid too much for an early story, but Campbell had awarded him
a bonus--Campbell also was an early champion of Heinlein, Frederik Pohl, and L. Ron Hubbard, becoming
involved in Dianetics, the forerunner of Hubbard's Scientology. Nevala-Lee shrewdly writes that after a
long absence, Hubbard returned to sci-fi in the 1970s after the release of Star Wars, "even if it owed more to
Joseph Campbell than to John." The author's history of science fiction as it developed under Campbell's
aegis is <
Delany's early work, with its African-American lead characters, and who said of Harlan Ellison, who was
Jewish, "he's one of the type that earned the appellation 'kike.' " Those views, as Nevala-Lee observes,
eventually "began to infect the magazine," worrying even the far-right leaning of his authors, especially
Heinlein. That politics caused a schism in the community as profound as the magazine's transition from
Astounding to Analog, of which Asimov wrote, "I have never quite managed to forgive Campbell for the
change."
Nevala-Lee's <
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Nevala-Lee, Alec: ASTOUNDING." Kirkus Reviews, 1 June 2018. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A540723316/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e7928f34.
Accessed 11 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A540723316
8/11/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1534014908223 2/4
Astounding: Isaac Asimov, Robert A.
Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the
Golden Age of Science Fiction
Publishers Weekly.
265.18 (Apr. 30, 2018): p48+.
COPYRIGHT 2018 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* Astounding: Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction
Alec Nevala-Lee. Dey Street, $28.99 (320p)
ISBN 978-0-06-257194-6
The golden age of science fiction, spanning the years 1939 to 1950, gets an authoritative examination in this
<
Science Fiction magazine, and the three very different writers who served him best: Isaac Asimov, Robert
A. Heinlein, and L. Ron Hubbard. The author credits Campbell with turning science fiction "from a
literature of escapism into a machine for generating analogies" and using his magazine as "a laboratory in
which his writers could work out scenarios for the future." That helped to conjure countless works of
groundbreaking fiction, but after the dropping of the atomic bomb seemed to validate science fiction as
prophecy, it drove Campbell into embracing dubious fringe beliefs, including dowsing and astrology, in his
search for new intellectual breakthroughs. Nevala-Lee gives abundant insight into the authors' careers,
revealing how Asimov first acquired his love of fiction as a lonely child working at his family's Brooklyn
candy store, while Heinlein chanced into writing as a fallback career after a period of passionate
involvement in Upton Sinclair's failed 1934 California gubernatorial campaign. This book is <> that science fiction fans will devour. (Aug.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"Astounding: Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction."
Publishers Weekly, 30 Apr. 2018, p. 48+. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A537852279/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=b76155bd.
Accessed 11 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A537852279
8/11/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1534014908223 3/4
City of Exiles
Publishers Weekly.
259.40 (Oct. 1, 2012): p78.
COPYRIGHT 2012 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
City of Exiles
Alec Nevala-Lee. Signet, $9.99 mass market (416p) ISBN 978-0-451-23878-8
Nevala-Lee's <
who's come to London to work with the British police at the request of Alan Powell of the Serious
Organized Crime Agency, who appeared in the first book. At a crime scene in Stoke Newington, a garage
flat where a local gunrunner lies in a bathtub shot in the head and burned to a crisp by an unusual
combination of chemicals, Rachel reconnects with Alan, who guides her in this case and subsequent related
killings. Another party interested in the gunrunner's murder is Rachel and Alan's former nemesis, Ilya
Severin (aka the Scythian), whom they capture and imprison. Rachel's questioning of the Scythian a la
Clarice Starling brings them to the very heart of the case, the real-life mysterious deaths of nine
mountaineers in Russia's Dyatlov Pass in 1959. Readers will look forward to seeing more of the intrepid
Rachel in the trilogy's third volume. Agent: David Halpern, the Robbins Office. (Dec.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"City of Exiles." Publishers Weekly, 1 Oct. 2012, p. 78. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A304307316/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=d766f89a.
Accessed 11 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A304307316
8/11/2018 General OneFile - Saved Articles
http://go.galegroup.com/ps/marklist.do?actionCmd=GET_MARK_LIST&userGroupName=schlager&inPS=true&prodId=ITOF&ts=1534014908223 4/4
The Icon Thief
Publishers Weekly.
259.4 (Jan. 23, 2012): p149.
COPYRIGHT 2012 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Full Text:
* The Icon Thief
Alec Nevala-Lee. Signet, $9.99 mass market (416p) ISSN 978-0-451-23620-3
Nevala-Lee's<< cerebral, exciting debut>> proves there's plenty of life left in the Da Vinci Code-style thriller as
long as fresh venues and original characters enhance the familiar plot elements and genre tropes. When a
small painting of a headless woman by surrealist painter Marcel Duchamp comes up for auction at
Sotheby's in New York, Maddy Blume, who works for an art investment company called the Reynard Art
Fund, bids on the painting, but she loses out at $11 million to a bidder representing a Russian oligarch. A
number of disparate elements--the Rosicrucians, composer Eric Satie, the Black Dahlia murder, occultist
Aleister Crowley, chess, the Soviet secret service, Lenin, and several obscure secret societies--involve a
conspiracy that Maddy and Englishman Alan Powell of the Serious Organized Crime Agency must unravel
as they investigate a series of mysterious killings. Nevala-Lee leaves a few loose ends to be resolved in
what is sure to be the eagerly awaited sequel. Agent: David Halpern, the Robbins Office. (Mar.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th
Edition)
"The Icon Thief." Publishers Weekly, 23 Jan. 2012, p. 149. General OneFile,
http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A278169864/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=813e60bd.
Accessed 11 Aug. 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A278169864
"The Mafia, the art world and a secret society Tangle over a controversial picture in this rollicking"
Fresh Fiction Review
The Icon Thief
Alec Nevala-Lee
Reviewed by Katherine Petersen
Posted September 29, 2012
Suspense | Thriller Arcane
The painting of a headless nude sells for $10 million at auction, and Maddy Blume, an ambitious art buyer for a hedge fund, wants to know why. Maddy's curiosity leads her into the middle of an investigation way over her head though, and we all know that curiosity often kills the cat. The problem is there are others who want the same painting, and they will stop at nothing to achieve their goals. Among Maddy's competitors for this masterpiece is a Mafia assassin who needs this success to restore his reputation and likely preserve his own life. At the same time, criminal investigator Alan Powell works with the FBI and local police to investigate a headless corpse found under the Brighton Beach boardwalk. Powell suspects the Mafia but proving it won't be easy.
THE ICON THIEF is Alec Nevala-Lee's debut and the first in a series of the same name, and it's a thriller with the <
THE ICON THIEF bogs down a few times when it comes to the history of secret societies but not enough to detract from the story. It's fast-paced and filled with action: everyone watching out for everyone else. Anyone who can't handle a bit of a body count should avoid this one. Any time the Mafia is involved, the corpses tend to pile up. What's nice is that it's hard to distinguish the bad guys from the good guys at all times since so many of the characters have gray areas and interesting histories. Nevala-Lee is definitely a writer to watch. I'm looking forward to City of Exiles, the next in this series.
Learn more about The Icon Thief
SUMMARY
A controversial masterpiece resurfaces in Budapest. A ballerina's headless corpse is found beneath the boardwalk at Brighton Beach. And New York's Russian mafia is about to collide with the equally ruthless art world....
Maddy Blume, an ambitious young art buyer for a Manhattan hedge fund, is desperate to track down a priceless painting by Marcel Duchamp, the most influential artist of the twentieth century.
The discovery of a woman's decapitated body thrusts criminal investigator Alan Powell into a search for the same painting, with its enigmatic image of a headless nude.
And a Russian thief and assassin known as the Scythian must steal the painting to save his reputation--and his life.
The murderous race is on. And in the lead is an insidious secret society intent on reclaiming the painting for reasons of its own--and by any means necessary....