Vintage Treasures: What If?, Volumes 1-3, edited by Richard A. Lupoff

Vintage Treasures: What If?, Volumes 1-3, edited by Richard A. Lupoff

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What If, Volumes 1-2 (Pocket Books, 1980 and 1981) and Volume 3
(Surinam Turtle Press, 2013). Covers by Richard Powers and Gavin L. O’Keefe

Richard Lupoff was a True Believer. By which I mean he gave his career to science fiction, and both cared about it deeply and wrote about it fairly extensively — like Isaac Asimov, Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison, Terry Carr, Sam Moskowitz, Donald A. Wollheim, Barry N. Malzberg, Gardner Dozois, and a handful of other crusty old timers.

The thing about True Believers is they have opinions. Boy, do they. They’re happy to tell you when the Golden Age of Science Fiction actually was, what they think of modern SF, and what should have won the Hugo Award last year. And the year before that. They’re especially vocal about awards, come to think of it.

Lupoff didn’t just spout off about stories that were unjustly robbed of a Hugo Award — he actually did something about it. In 1980 and ’81 he published two highly-regarded anthologies, What If? Volume One and Volume Two, which brazenly set out to “Remedy the Injustices of the Past Three Decades!” (that’s right there on the back cover copy) and collect the fiction that SHOULD have won the Hugo Award every year, starting with 1953 and working all the way up to 1965. In 2013, Surinam Turtle Press released the long-delayed third volume, presenting Lupoff’s selections for the fiction that should have been awarded SF’s highest honor in 1966-1973.

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Goth Chick News: Let Me Tell You a Story About Frankenstein

Goth Chick News: Let Me Tell You a Story About Frankenstein

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Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, illustrated by
Bernie Wrightson (Gallery Books, Illustrated edition, April 27, 2021)

Gather round horror fans, I have a dreadfully interesting tale to tell you.

We start in the year 1818, when Mary Shelley brought to life an iconic monster, touching upon many human failings and fears in the process. Frankenstein’s creation (we sometimes forget the monster did not have a name, although he does call himself, when speaking to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, the “Adam of your labors”) reminds us what can happen when we tamper with nature, and the horrors we are capable of creating. These themes have remained endlessly compelling, giving rise to roughly seventy-five Frankenstein-like movies, and more books and short stories than we can count.

Fast forward to 1983 when a 35-year-old artist named Bernie Wrightson, concluded a seven-year passion-project-tribute to his favorite monster. Originally published by Marvel Comics, Wrightson painstakingly created 50 detailed pen-and-ink illustrations to go alongside Shelley’s original Frankenstein novel. Wrightson (creator of Swamp Thing in 1971) often reminded fans that Frankenstein wasn’t a project he was being paid for, and that his illustrated version was a labor of love which he worked on in between paying gigs.

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New Treasures: Summer’s End by John Van Stry

New Treasures: Summer’s End by John Van Stry

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Summer’s End (Baen Books, December 6, 2022). Cover by Sam R. Kennedy

John Van Stry is a darling of the indie publishing world. He’s self-published dozens of science fiction novels, including eleven volumes in the Portals of Infinity series, and 18 in The Valens Legacy, written as Jan Stryvant. Summer’s End is his first book with an established publisher, and it caught my eye this week at Barnes and Noble. It’s the tale of newly graduated Ship Engineer Dave Walker, who takes a job on the Iowa Hill, described as:

An old tramp freighter running with a minimal crew and nearing the end of its useful life, plying the routes that the corporations ignore and visiting the kinds of places that the folks on Earth pretend don’t exist. Between the assassins, the criminals, and the pirates he needs to deal with, Dave is discovering that there are a lot of things out there that he still needs to learn.

That’s the paragraph that sold me, and helped move this book up near the top of my already-towering TBR pile.

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Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Avenging Women

Ellsworth’s Cinema of Swords: Avenging Women

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Lady in the Iron Mask (USA, 1952)

Much as Your Cheerful Editor loves it when it’s the women in a movie who are plying the swords, he must admit that the swashbuckling films of the 20th Century betrayed women wielding their weapons as often as they glorified them. Filmmakers kept putting swords in ladies’ hands because it’s such an attractive image, but then usually gave those sword-swingin’ women short shrift. Most of the time this was just reflexive sexism of the “Of course women don’t fight as well as men” variety, but toward the end of the century, during the backlash against the rise of feminism, the attitude was often open scorn. There are a lot of things I miss about moviemaking from Hollywood’s golden era, but endemic misogyny isn’t one o them.

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5 More Things I Think I Think: March, 2023

5 More Things I Think I Think: March, 2023

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I enjoyed last week’s 10 Things I Think I Think. And it got some comments, which is kinda the goal of blogging. So, following up with 5 More Things I Think I Think.

1) THREE PINES is a Prime Original, based on a books by Canadian author Louise Penny. The series is at 18 novels and still going! Alfred Molina is Inspector Armand Gamache, head of the Quebec Surete homicide department. It’s a French-Canadian murder mystery with a little bit of supernatural. Kinda like a splash of Weird Tales mixed in. The Three Pines area has the crime rate of a rural Agatha Christie village. Here’s the trailer.

Molina’s career has produced over 200 credits spanning thirty-five years. He’s been in a lot of stuff. He’s probably most recently recognizable as Doc Ock in Toby Maguire’s Spider Man movies. He was Hercule Poirot in a 2001 (modern-day) version of Murder on the Orient Express for TV. It’s still poorly considered by Poirot fans. I will add that in 2021, he was Poirot in LA Theater Works’ radio play of The Murder on the Links, and he was very good. I bought it with an Audible credit and listen to it regularly. Recommended.

He is terrific in Three Pines. I think he makes the show. The supporting cast (including Donald Sutherland’s son, Rossif) is solid but the for me, Molina is the centerpiece. He’s very human. I get a strong Maigret vibe, and I would like to see him play Georges Simenon’s French inspector.

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Infinity, June 1956: A Retro Review

Infinity, June 1956: A Retro Review

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Infinity Science Fiction, June 1956. Cover by Ed Emsh

In my previous Retro Review I covered If, which I called a “classic digest magazine of what might be called the “second tier” of SF magazines.” Infinity was another, though it lasted for a much shorter time — 19 issues from 1955 through 1958. (I note for the record that the magazines of the so-called “first tier” – that is, the Big Three of Astounding/Analog, Galaxy, and F&SF – all went through ups and downs in quality and sometimes other magazines surpassed them – notably Venture in the late ‘50s, If in the mid-60s, Thrilling Wonder and Startling in the early ‘50s, and others, including, as John O’Neill reminds me, Amazing and Fantastic in the early ’60s under Cele Goldsmith Lalli. I’ll also note that there was surely a third tier, magazines of lesser quality than the likes of If and Infinity.)

The editor of Infinity was the greatly respected Larry T. Shaw. The original anthology series Infinity, from the early 1970s, edited by Robert Hoskins, was published by Lancer Books, which was the successor company to Royal Publications, the firm responsible for the magazine. Indeed Robert Hoskins was the immediate successor to Larry Shaw as editor of the Lancer SF line. Hoskins did reprint the most famous story the magazine published, Arthur C. Clarke’s Hugo winner “The Star,” in the first volume of the original anthology, and therein he called the anthology the “lineal descendant” of the magazine.

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Vintage Treasures: Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin

Vintage Treasures: Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin

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Tuf Voyaging (Baen, February 1986). Cover by David Willson

George R.R. Martin is the most successful living American science fiction and fantasy writer. He mostly gets attention for his novels these days, but early in his career he was chiefly known for his wonderfully moody and imaginative short stories, most of which were set in his sprawling Thousand Worlds universe, including the novel Dying of the Light and the famous stories “Sandkings,” “Nightflyers,” “A Song for Lya,” and “The Way of Cross and Dragon.”

Many of Martin’s most ardent fans are unaware of his Thousand Worlds series featuring Haviland Tuf, a small time merchant who inadvertently comes into possession of one of the greatest weapons in the galaxy, a 30-kilometer long seedship known as the Ark. Inspired by the work of the great Jack Vance (and written in a style that sometimes imitates Vance), the tales garnered a number of major award nominations, and were collected in Tuf Voyaging by Baen in 1986.

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Nonstop SF Adventure: The Mickey7 Novels by Edward Ashton

Nonstop SF Adventure: The Mickey7 Novels by Edward Ashton

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Mickey7 and Antimatter Blues (St. Martin’s Press, February 15, 2022 and March 14, 2023). Cover design by Ervin Serrano

Truth to tell, I missed Edward Ashton’s novel Mickey7 last year, despite all the breathless praise heaped on it (NPR listed it as one of the Best Books of 2022, calling it “A wildly entertaining mix of action and big ideas peppered with humor and a bizarre love story”). It was our very own Brandon Crilly who tuned me in to the coolness of Mickey7 with his mid-2022 Roundup, in which he wrote:

Gods this was a fun read. Ashton begins with protagonist Mickey stuck at the bottom of a pit and certain he’s going to die, since he’s the Expendable and his colony will just regenerate him. Except things take various turns from there, due to the threat of alien attack, the idiosyncrasies of the colonists, or the bizarre experience of being the seventh iteration of yourself. If you’ve ever spent nights thinking Okay, but the transporter really kills folks and then duplicates them, right, this is most definitely a book for you.

And now the sequel Antimatter Blues, which arrived this week from St. Martin’s Press, is being called “A nonstop SF adventure from beginning to end” (Library Journal).

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Goth Chick News: We’re Definitely Tuned to TPub’s Latest Twisted Tale

Goth Chick News: We’re Definitely Tuned to TPub’s Latest Twisted Tale

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It was way back at the 2014 Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo when we were first introduced to a fine British lad Neil Gibson and his fledgling comic company TPub. Gibson was there to promote volume one of TPubs inaugural graphic novel, Twisted Dark. At the time Gibson described the comic as a psychological thriller which contained horror with dark (at times demented) twists, incorporating every human emotion, illegal activity, and brutal social commentary.

Nine years and twenty-two publications later, including a total of seven volumes of Twisted Dark, Gibson’s original description of TPub’s first offering seems to have transformed into a mission statement. Often exploring the darkest depths of human nature within their storylines, I have devoured each and every TPub comic since the first. But frankly, no matter how intriguing the story, we all know the visuals make or break a comic. TPub also excels on this front by employing incredible artists to augment every frame with rich detail and cinematic viewpoints.

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New Treasures: Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

New Treasures: Dead Silence by S.A. Barnes

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Dead Silence (Tor Nightfire, January 24, 2023). Cover by Timo Noack

Nightfire is Tor’s new horror imprint. Launched in 2019, it’s published books by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, Catriona Ward, Cassandra Khaw, Ellen Datlow, T. Kingfisher, and lots more.

That’s all well and good, but has it given us a haunted house story in space that’s a successful cross between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Alien? No. No it has not.

Well, at least it hadn’t until the arrival of S.A. Barnes’ Dead Silence, which Library Journal calls “a compelling haunted-house-in-space frame [with] excellent worldbuilding and sustained tension,” and Locus says is a “great, immersive, atmospheric space horror that proves that, despite rumors to the contrary, horror belongs in space.” (And yeah, for the record, Mur Lafferty tells us Dead Silence offers “the suffocating claustrophobia of 2001: A Space Odyssey mixed with the horrors of Alien.” That’s just not a blend you see every day.)

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