Today, just 104 years ago, Jack Vance was born in San Francisco. Or, actually, John Holbrook Vance. He grew up to live on a farm, suddenly become almost destitute and have to leave junior college, work in a cannery, as a bellhop and on a gold dredge. Later, at UC Berkeley, he studied mining engineering, physics, journalism and English, and wrote his first science fiction stories. Still later, he worked as an electrician in the naval yards at Pearl Harbor,…
Covers by Charlie Bowater Brandon Sanderson is one of the most ambitious fantasy authors at work today. (To give you some idea what I mean, he’s already 3,424 pages into his projected 10-volume Stormlight Archive series — and that just the first three books.) He has multiple series on the go at the moment, including Skyward, projected to reach four books. Skyward is being marketed as Young Adult (unless you’re in the UK, where it’s being marketing as adult fiction…
Back in April, Ryan Murphy announced the title / theme for the ninth season of American Horror Story, “1984.” Since then, no less than a dozen teaser trailers have dropped, making it abundantly clear (if the title already didn’t) the latest season is dedicated to classic 80’s slasher films. However, this week Murphy pulled out something a bit different. In homage to the birthday of the master of cinema suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, who would have turned 120 on August 13th…
Violet Van der Elst on the west stairs at Harlaxton Manor A look at a minor horror author. Violet Van der Elst was born on January 4, 1882. Her parents were a coal porter and a washerwoman and she worked as a scullery maid. In 1903, she married a civil engineer and eventually she developed the first brush-less shaving cream, which made her fortune. Following her first husband’s death, she married Jean Julien Van der Elst, a Belgian painter. Her…
The final Birthday Review Index. And so the journey begun on January 1 with a review of E.M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” has come to an end, 367 reviews and approximately 166,183 words later, plus a few extra guest reviews and words by Rich Horton and Bob Byrne. There was one date I couldn’t find someone to review (we need authors born on March 8) and I goofed on a couple of authors and wound up writing replacement…
Connie Willis was born on December 31, 1945. Willis has won the Hugo Award eleven times and the Nebula Award seven times. Her joint winners include the short story “Even the Queen,” the novelette “Fire Watch,” the novella “The Last of the Winnebagos,” and the novel Doomsday Book and the two-part novel Blackout/All Clear. Her Nebula only wins were the short story “A Letter from the Clearys” and the novelette “At the Rialto.” Her Hugo wins were for the short…
Somtow Sucharitkul was born on December 30, 1952. He also writes using the pseudonym S.P. Somtow. In addition to writing science fiction, Sucharitkul is a successful composer and conductor, including the opera The Snow Dragon, which debuted in Milwaukee in 2015, and five symphonies. In 1981 Sucharitkul won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He has published as both Somtow Sucharitkul and S.P. Somtow and won the World Fantasy Award for his novella “The Bird Catcher” in…
Charles L. Harness was born on December 29, 1915 and died on September 20, 2005. Harness’s novelettes “An Ornament to His Profession” and “The Alchemist” were both nominated for the Nebula and Hugo Awards. His novella “Probably Cause” was nominated for a Nebula and the novella “Summer Solstice” was nominated for a Hugo. He was also nominated for a retro-Hugo for the novella “The Rose.” Harness’s novel The Ring of Ritornel was nominated for the Ditmar Award in 1969. “Child…
Cover by Bob Eggleton George Zebrowski was born in Austria on December 28, 1945. He is married to author Pamela Sargent. In 1999 Zebrowski’s novel Brute Orbits won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award. In 2000 he and Sargent were presented with the Service to SFWA Award by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. He has also been nominated for the Nebula Award for Short Story three times, for “Heathen God,” “The Eichmann Variations,” and for “Wound the…
Fred Lerner was born on December 27, 1945. Most of Lerner’s writing is non-fiction. In fact, “Rosetta Stone” seems to be his only fictional credit. He has published the fanzine Lofgeornost since 1979 and many of his articles have been collected in the A Bookman’s Fantasy. His scholarly work includes The Story of Libraries, A Silverlock Companion, and Modern Science Fiction and the American Literary Community. “Rosetta Stone” appeared as the first story in the debut issue of Artemis: Science…