Search Results for: Orbit Damon

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

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Orbit 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…

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Vintage Treasures: Orbit 3, edited by Damon Knight

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I enjoy reading vintage anthologies for pretty much the same reason I enjoy reading modern anthologies: they’re a great way to discover terrific new writers. Or in this case, terrific old writers. Plus, they’re cheap. In any decent used bookstore, you can usually find at least one or two old SF anthologies priced less than a buck. (If you’re not sure what a “used book store” is, exactly, never mind. It’s even easier to find cheap anthologies on eBay, if…

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A World Built on Atrocity: Damon Knight’s “Down There”

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New Dimensions III, edited by Robert Silverberg (Signet/New American Library, February 1974). Cover by Charles Moll One of the writers who strongly influenced me when I was learning to write fiction was Damon Knight. Although he founded the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, co-founded the Milford Writers’ Workshop, made the Clarion Writers’ Workshop the force that it is in the development of speculative fiction, edited the influential anthology series Orbit, and wrote one of the first significant critical…

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The Lonely Hardcover: The Golden Road, edited by Damon Knight

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I’ve heard it said many a time that online shopping will never replace a good bookstore, because you can’t make those delicious unexpected discoveries online. Well, that certainly hasn’t been my experience. My most recent example? Damon Knight’s 1974 fantasy reprint anthology The Golden Road: Great Tales of Fantasy and the Supernatural, which I found on eBay while bidding on a small collection of British fantasy paperbacks from the same seller. Now, I’ve never even heard of The Golden Road,…

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Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction of the 30’s edited by Damon Knight

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Windy City Pulp and Paper is a fabulous convention and, as its name implies, it’s focused mostly on vintage magazines and paperbacks. Wandering the vast Dealer’s Room is like stepping into a Cave of Wonders for fans of pulp science fiction and fantasy. But it’s also a den of surprises and a pleasant one awaited me while browsing a table piled high with pulps and digest magazines. A hand-written sign proclaimed all items were “3 For $10,” so I decided…

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Vintage Treasures: A Science Fiction Argosy, edited by Damon Knight

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Damon Knight’s massive anthology A Science Fiction Argosy was published in 1972, when I was eight years old. It’s over 800 pages, packed with 24 novellas and short stories plus two complete novels, Theodore Sturgeon’s More Than Human and The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester. It’s one of those big, heavy books I’d often glance at on my bookshelf, thinking “I should really read that. As soon as I finish this game of Solitaire.” I know Damon Knight mostly as…

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No More Stories — The Capstone to Joanna Russ’s Alyx Sequence: “The Second Inquisition”

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Orbit 6, edited by Damon Knight (Berkley Medallion, June 1970). Cover by Paul Lehr “No more stories.” So ends Joanna Russ’s great novelette “The Second Inquisition.” But in many ways the story is about stories — about how we use them to define ourselves, protect ourselves, understand ourselves. It’s also, in a curious way, about Joanna Russ’s stories, particularly those about Alyx, a woman rescued from drowning in classical times by the future Trans-Temporal Authority. “The Second Inquisition” first appeared…

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Retro Review: Two F&SFs from Robert P. Mills’ Editorship

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The November 1958 and May 1961 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Covers by John Pederson and Ed Emshwiller I’ve recently looked at a few issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from the early to mid-50s, when Anthony Boucher (at first in collaboration with J. Francis McComas) was the editor. Boucher left that post with the August 1958 issue, and Robert P. Mills took over. (Mills had been the editor of F&SF’s sister magazine…

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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…

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If, December 1957, A Retro-Review

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IF, December 1957. Cover by Mel Hunter If was a classic digest magazine of what might be called the “second tier” of SF magazines. (The term second tier might be a bit dismissive — there were a number of quality magazines that for a time surpassed one or more of the so-called “Big Three” (Astounding/Analog, Galaxy, and F&SF.) That said, those three magazines, via comparative longevity, consistent quality, and simply tradition were considered “the big three” by the SF community…

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