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Author: John ONeill

Vintage Treasures: The Bantam Spectra Élisabeth Vonarburg

Vintage Treasures: The Bantam Spectra Élisabeth Vonarburg


The Bantam Spectra Élisabeth Vonarburg: The Silent City (August 1992),
In the Mothers’ Land (December 1992), and Reluctant Voyagers (March 1995).
Covers by Oscar Chichoni, Oscar Chichoni, and Stephen Youll

I left Canada to attend grad school at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign in August 1987, and when I did I lost touch with much of the vibrant Canadian SF scene. There were a few Canadian authors celebrated in the States — folks like Charles de Lint, Donald Kingsbury, Julie Czerneda, Peter Watts, Guy Gavriel Kay, and a handful of others — but they were the exception. I had to get used to not hearing favorite Canadian acts on the radio (like The Box and Gowan), and I gradually got used to a lack of Canadian representation in bookstores as well.

That’s why it was such a delight to see French Canadian author Élisabeth Vonarburg experience a brief but marvelous period in the sun in the mid-90s, when Bantam Spectra translated three of her most famous novels into English, and brought them to the attention of grateful American readers.

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New Treasures: Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine

New Treasures: Your Shadow Half Remains by Sunny Moraine


Your Shadow Half Remains (Tor Nightfire, February 6, 2024). Cover by David Seidman

Nightfire is Tor’s new horror imprint, and it’s made quite an impact on the field in the the past two years. Some of its releases include the Locus Award-winning What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher, Cassandra Khaw’s Stoker nominee The Salt Grows Heavy, and Cassandra Khaw and Richard Kadrey’s The Dead Take the A Train.

Sunny Moraine’s novella Your Shadow Half Remains arrived from Nightfire last month, and while I was browsing Sally Kobe’s booth at Capricon it leaped enthusiastically into my hands.

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Vintage Treasures: World’s Best Science Fiction First Series edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

Vintage Treasures: World’s Best Science Fiction First Series edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr


World’s Best Science Fiction First Series (Ace Books, 1970). Cover by Jack Gaughan

If you want to understand science fiction, it’s not a bad idea to start by reading Year’s Best volumes. And if you’re going to do that, it’s not a bad idea to start with the World’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, an annual series that began in 1965 and lasted for an amazing 26 volumes. The last of which, The 1990 Annual World’s Best SF, appeared four months before Wollheim’s death at the age of 76.

The series survived both editorial changes and a switch in publishers (from Ace to DAW, in 1972), and was one of the only Year’s Best series to receive multiple paperback reprints. In fact, for collectors like me, its publication history is all rather confounding. Follow along while I try and figure it all out.

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New Treasures: The Water City Trilogy by Chris Mckinney

New Treasures: The Water City Trilogy by Chris Mckinney


Midnight, Water City; Eventide, Water City; and
Sunset, Water City (Soho Crime, 2021-2023). Covers by Vlado Krizan

I was in Barnes & Noble last week, and saw an intriguing set of books on the shelves: The Water City Trilogy. It’s not often an entire trilogy manages to sneak past me, especially one with covers this colorful. The back of the first volume had this enticing blurb from Buzzfeed.

This gritty noir set in a sci-fi landscape is a real page turner.

I’m not familiar with the publisher, Soho Crime, and I’ve never heard of the author, Chris McKinney. But I’m not known in this business as a crazy risk taker for nothing. I put down my money and brought Midnight, Water City home.

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Vintage Treasures: Memories by Mike McQuay

Vintage Treasures: Memories by Mike McQuay


Memories (Bantam Spectra Special Edition, August 1989). Cover by Will Cormier

Mike McQuay published his first SF novel, Lifekeeper, in 1980, and he died just fifteen years later, in May 1995. But in that decade and a half he enjoyed an impressive career as a science fiction and fantasy novelist.

He made his mark writing men’s adventure with a light SF twist, starting with the Mathew Swain (“The 21st Century Private Eye”) series, the covers of which unfailingly featured our hero clutching one of three essential tools of the trade: a pistol, a cigarette, or a slender young woman (frequently several at once). They began with Hot Time in Old Town (1981), which proudly bore the cover blurb “Can a hard-boiled private eye beat the odds in the back alleys of tomorrow?” That same year he was selected to write the novelization for John Carpenter’s cinematic masterpiece Escape From New York, and you can sorta see the connection.

Just six years later McQuay published Memories, which signaled a significant evolution as a writer. It was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award for distinguished science fiction paperback, and began a period when McQuay was taken much more seriously. His next book The Nexus — which Joe Bonadonna called ‘brilliant’ in his Black Gate review — was released as part of Bantam Spectra’s prestigious Spectra Special Edition line in 1989.

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Vintage Treasures: The Augmented Agent by Jack Vance

Vintage Treasures: The Augmented Agent by Jack Vance


The Augmented Agent (Ace Books, September 1988). Cover by Terry Oakes

I need to read more Jack Vance.

It’s not hard to do. Virtually all of his short fiction has been collected over the years, in places like the five-volume The Early Jack Vance, edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan, and the massive The Jack Vance Treasury.

Of course, those are small press collections, and if you’re looking for a more affordable way to dip your toe into the fast-moving waters of Jack Vance, then I recommend one of his fine paperback collections, like The Worlds of Jack Vance, The Best of Jack Vance, or today’s Vintage Treasure, The Augmented Agent, which collects eight Vance rarities, chiefly pulp adventures tales from very early in his career.

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Future Treasures: Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard

Future Treasures: Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard


Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg
(Stark House, March 8, 2024). Cover by Jeff Jordan

Barry N. Malzberg has had an enormously prolific career. He published his first science fiction story the August 1967 issue of Galaxy magazine, and over the next six decades has produced an astounding 500+ short stories, dozens of novels, eleven anthologies, and nearly two dozen collections. These days he’s well known as a genre historian and critic. That’s him on the back cover above, looking suitably curmudgeonly.

He’s currently enjoying something of a career renaissance, courtesy of editor Robert Friedman and publisher Gregory Shepard at Stark House Press, who together have returned some thirty-five Malzberg books to print. To mark that accomplishment, their latest Malzberg volume is something special. Not a reprint at all, but a brand new volume gathering thirty-five uncollected short stories. Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg will be available on March 8.

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Make Room For Harry Harrison: Anthony Aycock on a Forgotten SF Master

Make Room For Harry Harrison: Anthony Aycock on a Forgotten SF Master


Make Room! Make Room! (Berkley Medallion, July 1967). Cover by Richard Powers

Harry Harrison was a true believer. Like Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr, Donald Wollheim, Gardner Dozois, Lin Carter, Damon Knight and a handful of others, he dedicated his life to science fiction, and in a multitude of roles, as writer, editor, critic, and scholar.

His fiction, however, has been largely — and unjustly — forgotten, and in the dozen years since his death in August 2012, all his books have gradually gone out of print, including once-popular novels like Make Room! Make Room! (filmed as Soylent Green in 1973) and The Stainless Steel Rat, one of the top-selling SF novels of the 60s, which spawned a hugely popular series that ran for twelve volumes.

So I was delighted to see Reactor (still known by fans under its secret identity, Tor.com) shine a long-overdue spotlight on our boy Harrison late last year. In “Make Room! Make Room! For Harry Harrison!” Anthony Aycock provides a brief overview of Harrison’s career, and introduces modern readers to his best work.

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Vintage Treasures: The Night Watch by Sean Stewart

Vintage Treasures: The Night Watch by Sean Stewart


The Night Watch (Ace, September 1998). Cover by Tara McGovern-Benson

Sean Stewart has had a fascinating career. He was Creative Director at Microsoft’s Xbox Studios until the studio closed in 2014, then spent five years at Magic Leap. Today he’s a Managing Partner at Cathy’s Book, LLC, publisher of his alternative reality game/novel series Cathy’s Book, and since 2020 he’s been working at a Generative AI stealth start-up as an Interactive Storyteller.

But he began his career the old fashioned way — writing fantasy novels. His debut book Passion Play (1992) won the Prix Aurora Award for Best Canadian Science Fiction novel, and his follow-up Nobody’s Son won the Aurora Award in 1994. His real success came in in 1995 with the appearance of the magic realist fantasy Resurrection Man, The New York Times Best Science Fiction Book of the Year, and the two books set in the same world, The Night Watch (1997) and Galveston (2000), winner of the World Fantasy Award.

The Night Watch is the one I want to talk about today.

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Vintage Treasures: The Last Man on Earth edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

Vintage Treasures: The Last Man on Earth edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh


The Last Man on Earth (Fawcett Crest / Ballantine, August 1982). Cover by Wayne Barlowe

I continue to dip into the (seemingly endless) supply of anthologies from the three amigos of science fiction, Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. I’m not sure how many they actually produced together, but I’ve managed to track down around 80. They began collaborating in the 80s, and averaged over half a dozen books a year, until Asimov’s death in 1992.

This time I’ve set aside their popular series in favor of a fine standalone book: The Last Man on Earth, a collection of post-apocalyptic tales that present a wide range of imaginative scenarios built around a popular SF trope. They include William F. Nolan’s “The Underdweller,” the tale of a man living in the sewers of San Francisco, trying desperately to salvage mankind’s most important texts while avoiding the new rulers of the city; Gordon Eklund’s “Continuous Performance,” which sees a man struggling to survive by putting on magic shows for androids; Roger Zelazny’s “Lucifer,” the haunting story of the world’s last man and his visit to the mysterious ruins of a long-dead city, and many others.

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