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Year: 2016

Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March 1960: A Retro-Review

Amazing Science Fiction Stories, March 1960: A Retro-Review

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Amazing Science Fiction Stories March 1960-smallThe cover of this issue gives Robert Silverberg’s byline as “Bob Silverberg,” though the Table of Contents shows “Robert Silverberg.” Bob Silverberg seems to have been given as his byline on a few stories (including his first publication), as well as some letters.

The cover is by Albert Nuetzell, showing a spaceship and some people investigating an archaeological site, presumably on another planet, complete with strange writing and an enormous stone humanoid head (click on the image at left for a bigger version). It doesn’t go with any of the stories in the magazine. Interior illustrations are by Mel Varga and by Virgil Finlay.

Norman Lobsenz’ very brief editorial is about Project Ozma, Frank Drake’s pioneering attempt to detect signals from intelligent extraterrestrials using radio. S. E. Cotts’ brief book review column, The Spectroscope, covers Benjamin Appel’s The Funhouse, Murray Leinster’s The Pirates of Zan, and Adam Lukens’ The Sea People.

The letters in “Or So You Say …” come from Jacqueline Brice, Jess Nash, Bob Adolfsen, Paul H. Taylor, Frank H. Terrell, and Dr. Raymond Wallace, none of those names familiar to me. The biggest common theme is praise for Alan Nourse’s novel Star Surgeon.

The stories are:

Novel:

Seven from the Stars, by Marion Zimmer Bradley (42,800 words)

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New Treasures: The Midnight Games by David Neil Lee

New Treasures: The Midnight Games by David Neil Lee

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The MIdnight Games David Neil Lee-small David Neil Lee wrote about “the most terrifying of all labor-saving devices” in Chainsaws: A History; his first novel was Commander Zero. With The Midnight Games, he offers us something very interesting indeed: a young adult novel of an adventurous lad in southern Ontario who stumbles on a cult trying to summon the Great Old Ones to Earth in the unused stadium near his home.

In the hardscrabble east end of Hamilton Ontario, young Nate Silva has grown up with the reassuring racket of football games from nearby Ivor Wynne Stadium. But now strange noises and music boom from the stadium late at night, and the air throbs with the chanting of excited crowds. When Nate sneaks into one of these “midnight games,” he is thrown headlong into a movement spearheaded by the secret Resurrection Church of the Ancient Gods, who are summoning to Earth the monstrous Great Old Ones who ruled the planet long ago.

In this thrilling young adult novel, David Neil Lee captures the “Cthulhu Mythos” of horror author H. P. Lovecraft (1890-1937), and unleashes it in gritty, post-industrial Hamilton. Pitted against the worshippers of the mind-bending extraterrestrial Yog-Sothoth, Nate finds unexpected allies as he is pursued by savage alien creatures, the murderous Hounds of Tindalos, and the desperate minions of the Great Old Ones.

This is precisely what the world needs: an action-packed Young Adult Cthulhu Mythos novel. You know it’s true.

The Midnight Games was published by Wolsak and Wynn on October 27, 2015. It is 200 pages, priced at $12 in paperback. Learn more at David Neil Lee’s website.

Larache: An Old Spanish Colony in Morocco

Larache: An Old Spanish Colony in Morocco

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The towers on the old Spanish fort overlooking the entrance to the harbor.
The artillery towers of the 17th century Spanish fort overlooking the entrance to the harbor.

Morocco is a country of many parts. While most visitors go down the the Atlas Mountains and the important cities in the interior like Fez and Marrakesh, or strike out into the southern desert, the Moroccan coast is well worth a visit. The Atlantic coast in particular has some interesting historic ports.

Larache is an hour and a half drive along the coast from the Strait of Gibraltar and makes for a good day trip from Tangier. Nearby is the Roman city of Lixus, the main reason we went. Lixus used to be a harbor until the Oued Loukos estuary silted up, marooning it inland and forcing the residents to build the newer city of Larache around the 15th century AD.

For many years it was an important fishing port and was the main shipbuilding center for the Barbary corsairs. Local artisans used wood from the nearby Forest of Mamora, which still stands today and makes a good place for a peaceful stroll.

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Future Treasures: Swords of Steel II edited by D.M. Ritzlin

Future Treasures: Swords of Steel II edited by D.M. Ritzlin

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Swords of Steel II-smallDave Ritzlin’s Swords of Steel anthology, published last February by DMR Books, was a popular topic here at Black Gate and elsewhere. In his review, Fletcher Vredenburghw wrote:

When John O’Neill posted a few weeks ago about Swords of Steel, edited by D.M. Ritzlin, I knew I had to read it. The hook was simple: swords & sorcery stories written by members of metal bands. Tons of heavy bands — Uriah Heep, Iron Maiden, Manowar, Metallica, Megadeth, to name several — have drawn on the themes of heroism, monster-fighting, and sorcery for lyrics and look… Ritzlin set out to recreate a 1970s-style anthology akin to Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords! or Andrew Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness, and has succeeded.

I’m very pleased to report that a second volume is in the works, to be released next month. I asked Dave for a quote, and here’s what he told me:

The Swordsmen of Steel return! Attacking once more now with twice as much strength, the most epic practitioners of the heavy metal arts fill another volume with tales of terror and heroic adventure. Swords of Steel II features stories by such artists as E.C. Hellwell (MANILLA ROAD), Byron Roberts (BAL-SAGOTH), Mike Scalzi (SLOUGH FEG) and Howie Bentley (CAULDRON BORN). A total of eight stories (each accompanied by an illustration) are contained herein, as well as two poems and an essay by David C. Smith (author of the Red Sonja and Oron novels). Don’t read this book unless you have nerves of STEEL!

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January/February Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

January/February Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction now on Sale

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Fantasy and Science Fiction January February 2016-smallThe January/February issue of F&SF is all about the planet Mars — starting with a great cover, titled “Martian Vortex,” by Bob Eggleton. Here’s editor C.C. Finley:

Usually we start with a story and commission a cover for it but when Bob Eggleton sent us the Martian landscape that adorns this issue, we snatched up the illustration and went looking for stories to match. In the end, we found you not one, but three, all of them very different in tone and focus.

The Three Tales of Mars promised on the cover are by Gregory Benford, Alex Irvine, and Mary Robinette Kowal. The issue also includes stores by Alex Irvine, David Gerrold, Matthew Hughes, Terry Bisson, Albert E. Cowdrey and others.

Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

NOVELETS

  • “Number Nine Moon” – Alex Irvine
  • “The White Piano” – David Gerrold
  • “Telltale” – Matthew Hughes

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Some Vintage Genre Fiction Still Worth Reading (and Why)

Some Vintage Genre Fiction Still Worth Reading (and Why)

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Harold Lamb
Harold Lamb. Still worth reading.

We love our vintage Historical Adventure, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery/Planet/ Sandal/Wombat etc. Call it Vintage Genre Fiction. This despite the fact that most old stuff is crap.

Seriously.

Listen: We’re on a road trip and my wife — Driver’s Privilege, and bear with me — puts on a retro chart show for 1968. We bop along to The Rolling Stones and some Soul, then on comes a song called MacArthur Park.

Go on, click the link I dare you. You’ll love the maudlin delivery, the lush strings and perky keyboard arrangement. Better yet are the lyrics. Here’s the refrain:

Someone left the cake out in the rain,
I don’t think that I can take it,
‘Cause it took so long to bake it,
And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo

At this point the kids and I are howling with pain.

Now if you like 60s music, know about, then right now you’re fighting the urge to dive down to the comments and start explaining why it’s good (please don’t). And it’s true, if you have a specialist interest then your cultural pleasures aren’t always mainstream.

Everybody else is still trying to unhear that song (Someone left the cake out in the rain/ I don’t think that I can take it/ Cause it took so long to bake it…).

And that, my friends, is how most people react to Vintage Genre Fiction.

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A Horror-Movie Imagination: The Old Dark House We Lived In

A Horror-Movie Imagination: The Old Dark House We Lived In

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Introduction

house of twilightMy frame of reference is at least partly informed by years of being entertained by horror stories and films. Frame of reference shapes expectation, and expectation influences perception. In other words, if you’re a horror fan, you may feel a little twinge of nervous anticipation every time you go alone into the basement. You’re primed for it.

Even if you don’t for one second think that anything is actually lurking down there more frightening than a basket of laundry or a bit of black mold (which actually can be pretty scary, health-wise: not good to breathe that stuff), it’s just that you’ve seen so many artful and artless portrayals of What. Might. Be. Down. There… You get that twinge, a frisson that can be quite delightful, given that you know there’s no real bogeyman waiting to pounce from behind the furnace, just the thrill of imagining there is one. Which is why you’re a horror fan.

I am a storyteller, yes. Sometimes I write horror stories, and I am an aficionado of the genre: guilty as charged. But everything I recount in the following pages really happened. I have restrained myself from the storyteller’s natural tendency to exaggerate for the sake of effect. In this case, the facts are arresting enough without embellishment. My aim is simply to reconstruct some of the thoughts and impressions that went through my head at the time, thoughts and impressions colored by a horror-movie imagination. This may thereby serve to illustrate how one’s perspective can shape perception.

Some of what follows may seem a bit strange. But if you doubt any of it, just ask my ex: it might have gotten weird at times, but to the best of my memory it all happened. (Except for the part where she claims I screamed like a little girl. Take that with a grain of salt. When I am startled, I tend to think of my vocalization as a deep, throaty, manly yell.)

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Bradley W. Schenck Shows Us Grace Keaton on Her Aeroflite Flying Scooter

Bradley W. Schenck Shows Us Grace Keaton on Her Aeroflite Flying Scooter

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Grace Keaton on her Aeroflite

Over on his Webomator blog, artist Bradley W. Schenck has posted a work-in-progress I like a lot, part of his ongoing Retropolis art series. He tells this brief story to go along with the painting.

Here’s Grace Keaton on her aged but serviceable Aeroflite flying scooter; it’s a work vehicle, standard issue for couriers in the Retropolis Courier Service. Grace makes her deliveries on the notoriously dangerous Route X and she’s the longest-lasting (in fact, the only surviving) courier on that route.

Route X couriers make four times the wages of normal couriers and Grace works half days. That’s a comfortable living for a graduate student. Unless you weaken. But somebody has to deliver along Route X. How else would the denizens of Retropolis’ Experimental Research District get their ‘mildly’ toxic chemicals, their suspiciously glowing minerals, or their generally illegal biological specimens?

See all the details here.

I Don’t Mean to Alarm Anyone, But We’ve Discovered Giant Insects on Monster Island

I Don’t Mean to Alarm Anyone, But We’ve Discovered Giant Insects on Monster Island

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Balls Pyramid is Monster Island-small

Seriously. Monster Island. Scientists at the Melbourne Zoo have now started breeding these giant insects, because apparently no one at the Melbourne Zoo has ever watched a single monster movie.

Four years ago, NPR’s Robert Krulwich’s wrote an in-depth feature on the astounding discovery made by a determined group of Australian scientists who scaled Ball’s Pyramid, the fragment of an ancient volcano that juts out of the South Pacific off the coast of Australia (that’s it above. What did I tell you? Monster Island). Climbing that crag of rock in the middle of the night, the scientists discovered a tiny colony of Lord Howe stick insects, Dryococelus australis, or “tree lobsters,” the heaviest flightless stick insect in the world. Tree lobsters were native to Lord Howe Island, and were long thought extinct.

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Mutants, Burger Creatures, and Genetically Engineered Sharks: Orbit 12, edited by Damon Knight

Mutants, Burger Creatures, and Genetically Engineered Sharks: Orbit 12, edited by Damon Knight

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Orbit 12-smallOrbit 12
Edited by Damon Knight
Berkley Medallion (240 pages, $0.95, March 1974)
Cover by Paul Lehr

If I’ve got my story straight, there were 21 volumes of Damon Knight’s Orbit anthology series in all — and The Best of Orbit. The first of these saw the light of day in 1966.

Obviously, that puts this volume somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as the chronology goes. Reviewing is a subjective thing and we all like what like, but I’ve got to say that I wasn’t very impressed. I’ll start with a look at the two stories I liked, and move on to the many more that I liked less.

PICKS

“What’s the Matter with Herbie?,” by Mel Gilden

Nine stories into this volume and this is the first story that appealed to me. It’s a tale of two very alien aliens in a universe where strange aliens seem to be the norm. There’s not much to the plot but Gilden’s imaginative take and whimsical touch made it worth reading.

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