Greyhawk Adventures: Saga of Old City (TSR, October 1985)
Greyhawk…
A cruel city.
A harsh, pitiless city for a young orphan boy with no money and no friends — but plenty of enemies!
Enter the Old City of Greyhawk, that marvelous place where dreams — and nightmares — come true. Travel through the world of Oerth along with Gord, the boy who becomes a man as he fights for his survival in a world of mysterious wizards, fearsome monsters, dour dwarves, and beautiful women. …
Galactic Empires, Volume One and Two (Orbit, October 1976). Covers by Karel Thole
My fellow Canadian James Nicoll continues to be one of my favorite SF bloggers, probably because he covers stuff I’m keenly interested in. Meaning exciting new authors, mixed with a reliable diet of vintage classics.
But my favorite of his recent reviews is his story-by-story breakdown of Brian W. Aldiss’s massive two-volume anthology Galactic Empires, which made me want to read the whole thing all over again.
Swordsmen in the Sky (Ace, 1964). Cover by Frank Frazetta
Swordsmen in the Sky, edited by Donald Wollheim
If our genre has a holy grail to find, this would be it. I read this collection as a kid. Found it in our local library. And loved every single story in there. Took me a while to find a copy as an adult but it’s one of my pride and joys.
The Hobbit first edition dust jacket (1937). Cover by JRR Tolkien
In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit.
Chapter 1, An Unexpected Party – The Hobbit
Fifty years ago, when I first read this book, I didn’t imagine I’d still be reading it so many years later. Heck, I doubt I could have even imagined being as old as I am now. But I do reread it every few years. When I revisit The Hobbit, my journey is bathed in nostalgia as much as with the simple enjoyment caused by reading a charming book that I happen to know inside out, from the opening line above on through to the very end.
In my initial article on half a century of reading Tolkien back in January, I described my dad trying to get our first color tv in time to watch the Rankin & Bass The Hobbit. Remembering that again last week left me thinking more of my dad, now gone nearly 24 years, than the book. He was ten years younger than I am now when the movie first aired, which makes me feel incredibly old at the moment. For such a conservative man, he was excited to see it — admittedly, in a restrained way. I think we liked it well enough, but leaving out Beorn irked us both. Beyond Tolkien’s books, our fantasy tastes rarely coincided (I’ve got a shelf full of David Eddings books he bought, if anyone’s interested), but with The Hobbit and LOTR, we were in complete agreement.
What’s there to say about The Hobbit here on Black Gate? Nothing, really. I imagine most visitors here have read it, many more than once, and have their own ideas on it. It’s one of the most widely read books in the world. Instead, I’m going to discuss some adaptations of the book. But first, a summary.
Cover for The Ugly Little Boy by Alan Gutierrez Cover for The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff by Carol RussoThe ninth Tor Double collects novellas by Isaac Asimov and Theodore Sturgeon, the only entries by either author. The Asimov’s story is The Ugly Little Boy and Sturgeon offers the oddly titled The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff. This volume is the first to include two stories that did not win, or even receive a nomination, for any awards. Leigh Brackett’s story in the previous volume wound up winning the 2020 Retro Hugo Award.
Theodore Sturgeon’s The [Widget], the [Wadget], and Boff was originally published in F&SF in November, 1955. The strange title is entirely fitting for the strange story Sturgeon has to tell. Just as two of the words in the title are framed by brackets, the story has a science fictional device framing it, in the form of a report by two aliens visiting Earth. In their report, which partly looks at whether or not “Synapse Beta sub Sixteen” exists in humans (and whether the species can survive without it), but also serves as an indictment of one of aliens by the other, the aliens set words in brackets when there is no exact English equivalent for what they are attempting to say.
Carbonel the King of the Cats by Barbara Sleigh (Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1957). Illustrated by V.H. Drummond
Over the past few years, I’ve started tracking down books I read as a child and still remember, to see what I think of them now. Some of them I’ve had to buy; but I live close to a university library, which still has others on its shelves. I just reread Barbara Sleigh’s Carbonel, the King of the Cats (illustrated by V.H. Drummond), originally published 1955, and enjoyed it enough to think it deserves a review.
Sleigh was clearly an aelurophile; this book is dedicated to one cat and to the shades of four others. I’m pleased that its feline hero, Carbonel, is a black cat (as his name suggests!) — a breed that doesn’t get as much love as it deserves. He has very convincing catlike manners, mixing condescension, sarcasm, and occasional affection. At the same time, he fits one of the classic story formulas, being a lost heir of royal birth, with a title that he hopes to reclaim.
The Forever War (Ballantine Books, 1976). Cover by Murray Tinkelman
Rich Horton continues to review classic science fiction novels at his blog, Strange at Ecbatan. Last month he turned his attention to Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, on the 50th anniversary of its release.
It’s definitely worth reading — a bitter and cynical look at war, some cool ideas including the effect of time dilation and lots of physics, a somewhat transcendent but pretty creepy conclusion. And, also, some very ’70s things, including pretty questionable — at times downright offensive — “sexual revolution” era sexual politics, and oddly 70s-ish notions of dystopia. My impression… I liked it then and I endorsed its Hugo and Nebula wins.
The Forever War is one of the most honored science fiction novels of all time. First published by St. Martin’s Press in 1975, it swept every major SF Award, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. In 1987 it placed 18th on Locus’ list of All-Time Best SF Novels, beating out The Martian Chronicles, Starship Troopers, and Rendezvous with Rama. It’s been in print nearly continuously for the last four and a half decades. Here’s some of the most noteworthy editions.
Cover for The Nemesis from Terra by Tony Roberts Cover for Battle for the Stars by Bryn Barnard
This volume includes the story Nemesis from Terra by Leigh Brackett and Battle for the Stars, byt Edmond Hamilton. There are two significant distinctions for this volumes. The two authors represented were married to each other and one of the stories was previously included in the Ace Double series. The Tor Double was originally published in May 1989.
The Nemesis from Terra was originally published as “Shadow Over Mars” in Startling Stories in Fall, 1944. It was previously published as part of an Ace Double (F-123, with Robert Silverberg’s Collision Course) in 1961. The Nemesis from Terra is the first of three Brackett stories to be published in the Tor Doubles series.
Although set on Mars in the far future, as with many of Brackett’s Martian stories, The Nemesis fromTerra feels more like a fantasy novel than a science fiction novel. It is a descendant of the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs and could easily be classified with the stories of Robert E. Howard, neither of which is a surprise.
Jason M. Waltz has published 16 Books under Rogue Blades Entertainment (RBE), another 3 under Rogue Blades Foundation (RBF), having lured in authors Such as Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card, C.L. Werner, Glen Cook, Steven Erikson, Ian C. Esslemont, William King, Andy Offutt, and spurred the writing careers of dozens. Not all are Sword and Sorcery (S&S), with weird western and pirate anthologies appearing, but most are. Two of my favorite introductions to anthologies cap the ends of the RBE series: Return of the Sword (2008) and Neither Beg Nor Yield (2024 BG reviewed by Vredenburgh and Mele), the latter JMW refers to as his Swan Song marking a shift toward focusing on his own writing. Coincident with that, he has recently sunsetted the related RBF. We’ll discuss some of his works to date, but note that he has three stories seeing publication in July 2025!
He’s mingled with the Black Gate crew in many ways over the years, invited John O’Neill to pen the introductions, published many contributors here, and now he is interviewing them. Yes, you will be glad to know that even as he steers from publishing to writing more, he is still actively building the community through his 24 in 42 podcast [broadcasted via the Rogue Blades Presents YouTube channel]. Heck he is even hand in the game by guest editing Raconteur Press’ first Sword & Sorcery anthology. He never tires.
As we salute his heroic efforts, let’s learn more about his journey!
“Heroes are those who continue to do the ordinary in extraordinary times, and to do the extraordinary in ordinary times.” – JMW 2008
Okay — close your eyes and visualize Middle-earth. I can’t be certain what you’re seeing behind your eyelids, but I think I have a good chance of guessing; five will get you ten that whatever you’re conjuring bears a strong resemblance to the Alan Lee Lord of the Rings book illustrations and to Tolkien’s world as envisioned in Peter Jackson’s films (on which Lee and John Howe did much of the production design).
The austere, rather chilly (once you’re out of the Shire, anyway) Lee/Howe template has become the default picture of Middle-earth for many — if not most — people, but there are other ways to view Tolkien’s realms and their inhabitants. I have already sworn my fealty to the first such visualization that I ever encountered: the beautiful Tim Kirk paintings that were featured in the 1975 Tolkien Calendar.
I am also partial to another version that’s not nearly well enough known, the gorgeous illustrations done by Michael Kaluta for the 1994 Tolkien Calendar. (Kaluta is probably best known for his comic book work, especially on the 1970’s Shadow for DC.)
One thing that makes both Kirk’s and Kaluta’s art so attractive to me is that its depiction of Middle-earth is just different from the one that has become the current standard. (Kaluta’s work is especially striking because it is so extravagantly colorful compared to Lee’s and Howe’s bleached-out work.)
