Peter Graham is often quoted as saying that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12. I was reminded of this quote last year while reading Jo Walton’s An Informal History of the Hugo Awards (Tor Books) when Rich Horton commented that based on Graham’s statement, for him, the Golden Age of Science Fiction was 1972. It got me thinking about what science fiction (and fantasy) looked like the year I turned twelve and so this year, I’ll be looking…
Earlier this month I was very pleased to report that one of the greatest of all weird fiction magazines, W. Paul Ganley’s Weirdbook, is relaunching, with David A. Riley as Senior Editor and Publisher, and Douglas Draa, former Online Editor for Weird Tales, as Managing Editor and Fiction editor. Last week on his blog David Riley revealed the cover for the upcoming Weirdbook 31, with art by none other than the great Stephen Fabian (at right; click for bigger version)….
I brought home two boxes of treasures from the 2014 Windy City Pulp & Paper show in April. I’ve been very happy with my various finds, which included a rich assortment of eye-catching pulps, vintage paperbacks, classic anthologies, and hard-to-find fanzines and magazines. I’ve covered some of the more interesting items here in the past few months. But I’ve saved the best for the last: a luscious collection of black and white artwork from one of my all-time favorite artists, Stephen E. Fabian….
I’ve defined Heroic Fantasy (HF) as a type of fiction in which a heroic (bigger than life) figures use a combination of physical strength and edged weapons (Swords, Axes, Spears) to face bigger than life foes. The hero may be either male or female, but the focus is primarily on personal conflict between the hero and various villains. I divide Heroic Fantasy into four categories: Sword and Sorcery, Sword and Planet, High Fantasy, and Heroic Historical. I’ve previously discussed S&S,…
When Titan and Heroic Signatures announced they were bringing back Robert E. Howard pastiche, not just of Conan, but of many others of his rich panoply of heroes, I sacrificed many a reading night to take a deep-dive into the first year’s worth of stories, and chronicled the results at Black Gate. You can read about that descent into Cosmic Pastiche Horror here. The truth was that, like most pastiche — assuming one excepts the value of pastiche at all…
Sometime Lofty Towers (Brackenbury Books, December 2025). Cover by Saša Đurđević I’ve just finished reading what may be David C. Smith’s best work — Sometime Lofty Towers. My first contact with Smith was from the Robert E. Howard related pastiche work he did earlier in his career. He wrote an excellent Black Vulmea story, The Witch of the Indies (Zebra, 1977, cover by Stephen Fabian), and a Bran Mak Morn tale, Witch of the Mists with Richard Tierney (Zebra, 1978,…
The Year’s Best Horror Stories XVI (DAW Books, October 1988). Cover by J.K. Potter The Year’s Best Horror Stories: XVI was the sixteenth in the lineup and the eighth volume edited by the great Karl Edward Wagner (d. 1994). This book was copyrighted and printed in 1988 and represents the best short horror in the field for 1987. After twelve straight covers with Michael Whelan’s art, we now have a new cover artist, American illustrator J. K. Potter (b. 1956)….
I consider David C. Smith (1952) a friend. We’ve never met face to face but we’ve corresponded and have spoken on the phone. As with writers such as Karl Edward Wagner and Andy Offutt, I first became aware of David as an author through a connection to Robert E. Howard. While in REHupa, the Robert E. Howard United Press Association, I routinely did reviews of Howard pastiches. And so I came upon The Witch of the Indies (Zebra, 1977, cover…
It’s been a while since I’ve taken a look at a ’70s science fiction novel in this space, and this seems a good book to feature. It’s rather better than some of the books I’ve written about, though it has, as far as I can tell, never been reprinted. And it’s a very 1970s book. Jack Dann was born in upstate New York some 80 years ago, and after spending some time in New York City moved back to Binghamton,…
The Alien Critic Number Seven, November 1973. Published and edited by Richard E. Geis. I subscribed to TAC the following year after reading Geis’s column in IF. Geis really had the juice back then — this issue includes Frederik Pohl, John Brunner, Roger Zelazny, Damon Knight, Poul Anderson, Robert Bloch, Miriam Allen de Ford, Ross Rocklynne, “James Tiptree, Jr.,” and others — including a letter from Harlan Ellison that lists the then-current contents of The Last Dangerous Visions. Seriously.