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Author: John ONeill

New Treasures: The Last Blade Priest by W.P. Wiles

New Treasures: The Last Blade Priest by W.P. Wiles

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The Last Blade Priest (Angry Robot, July 2022). Cover design by Alice Claire Coleman

I’m a little late out of the gate with this one. The Last Blade Priest came out last summer and I ignored it, despite the warm reviews from most of the usual sources (GrimDark Magazine called it “a brilliant epic… one of my favorite new releases of this year,” and Publishers Weekly said it’s “gripping… demonstrates the value of thoughtful, well-planned worldbuilding.”)

But it wasn’t until I stumbled across Ian Mond’s review at Locus Online last fall (“The Last Blade Priest… unashamedly embraces the tropes of epic fan­tasy – the political shenanigans, complex magic systems, and ancient, enigmatic Gods – that make the genre so much fun to read”) that my interest was finally piqued, and I bought a copy.

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Vintage Treasures: Space Opera and Space Odysseys edited by Brian Aldiss

Vintage Treasures: Space Opera and Space Odysseys edited by Brian Aldiss

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Space Opera and Space Odysseys (Futura, July and December 1974). Covers by Eddie Jones

Brian Aldiss had a long and enviable career at the top of the science fiction field, with dozens of novels to his credit, and nearly three dozen collections.

But in his long career he also produced some excellent anthologies. In partnership with Harry Harrison he released nine annual volumes of Best SF (1967-1975), three retrospective titles looking at SF of the 1940s to the 1960s (Decade: The 1940s and its sequels), and fine standalone titles such as The Astounding-Analog Reader and Farewell Fantastic Venus! But on his own he also assembled several terrific volumes, including a few we’ve looked at in the past, including Galactic Empires, Volumes One & Two and Perilous Planets.

Today I want to examine two wonderful paperback anthologies he released in 1974 with Futura in the UK (and later reprinted in the US in incomplete editions): Space Opera and Space Odysseys, which contain stories by Robert Sheckley, Donald Wandrei, Daniel F. Galouye, Edmond Hamilton, James E. Gunn, Philip K. Dick, Leigh Brackett, Ray Bradbury, Jack Vance, A. E. van Vogt, Charles Harness, Randall Garrett, Isaac Asimov, Fredric Brown, Arthur C. Clarke, Edward E. Smith, Alfred Bester, Frank Belknap Long, James Tiptree, Jr. Ross Rocklynne, F. M. Busby, Poul Anderson, Walter M. Miller, Jr., and many others.

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400 pages of the Best of the Modern Weird: Weird Fiction Review #12 from Centipede Press

400 pages of the Best of the Modern Weird: Weird Fiction Review #12 from Centipede Press

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Weird Fiction Review #12 (Centipede Press, October 2022). Front and back covers by Stephen Fabian

Weird Fiction Review, edited by John Pelan and published annually by Centipede Press, has gradually established itself as the premier magazine of modern dark fantasy. It’s published a dozen issues so far and has included fiction by Simon Strantzas, Steve Rasnic Tem, Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Victor LaValle, Stephen Graham Jones, Marc Laidlaw, Joseph S. Pulver, Brian Stableford, Darrell Schweitzer, John Shirley, and many, many more.

But I think the reason I love this mag — aside from its incredible production values and huge size (issues typically run around 400 pages) — is the excellent non-fiction. It brings genuine scholarship to fascinating topics, with lengthy and entertaining articles on things like a history of the legendary Gnome Press by Stefan Dziemianowicz, a brief history of Mexican Horror Comic Books by Silvia Moreno-Garcia, a survey of The Horror Pulps 1933-1940 by Robert Weinberg, an essay on EC Comics by E. B. Boatner, Collecting Karl Edward Wagner’s Carcosa by Ron Clinton, 90 Years of Amazing Stories by Joseph Wrzos, and a regular column on Forgotten Masters of the Weird Tale by editor John Pelan that has covered Nictzin Dyalhis, Paul Ernst, Arthur Leo Zagat, Sax Rohmer, C. Hall Thompson, Walter Owen, Edmund Snell, and Wyatt Blassingame.

The latest issue features fiction by Caitlin R. Kiernan, Laird Barron, Victor LaValle, Stephen Graham Jones, Scott Bradfield and others, plus a full-color Stephen Fabian Art Gallery, an appreciation of the film Let’s Scare Jessica to Death by John Llewellyn Probert, an interview with Weirdbook publisher W. Paul Ganley by Darrell Schweitzer, an article on William F. Nolan by Jason V. Brock, an interview with Graham Masterton by Dave Roberts — and a celebration of the life and work of Weird Fiction Review’s editor John Pelan, who tragically past away on April 11, 2021.

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The Spoils of Capricon: Rooks and Ruin by Melissa Caruso

The Spoils of Capricon: Rooks and Ruin by Melissa Caruso

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The Rooks and Ruin trilogy: The Obsidian Tower, The Quicksilver Court, and The Ivory Tomb
(Orbit, 2020, 2021, and 2022). Covers by Peter Bollinger, Mike Heath, and Peter Bollinger

On Saturday I was wandering through the well-stocked Dealer’s Room at Capricon 43 in Chicago with Rich Horton, looking for new books of all kinds. (And if there’s a guy you want at your side as you struggle to find quality books, believe me, it’s Rich Horton. He has great taste and a well informed opinion on everything — and I do mean everything.) I stumbled on the newly-released The Ivory Tomb, the concluding novel in Melissa Caruso’s Rooks and Ruin, and read the first paragraph of the back cover.

The Dark Days have returned. The Demon of Carnage mercilessly cuts through villagers and armies. The Demon of Corruption rots the land. The Serene Empire and the Witch Lords race towards war. And in the middle of it all stands Rxyander, the Warden of Gloamingard.

That’s a lot of demons. Do I really want to read a trilogy about Dark Days, demons, Witch Lords, and a gloom-shrouded castle called ‘Gloamingard’??

Ha! You know me so well. Of course I do. I bought that book so fast Rich didn’t even know what happened.

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Vintage Treasures: The Bantam John Crowley

Vintage Treasures: The Bantam John Crowley

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Four John Crowley paperbacks published in rapid succession by Bantam: Little, Big, Beasts,
Engine Summer, The Deep (October, November, December 1983, and January 1984). Covers by Yvonne Gilbert

In 1981 Bantam Books published John Crowley’s masterwork Little, Big, which Matthew David Surridge calls “the best post-Tolkien novel of the fantastic.” It was an unexpected hit, receiving nominations for every major fantasy prize, including the Hugo, Balrog, BSFA, Locus, and Nebula awards, and winning both the Mythopoeic Award and the World Fantasy Award. Six years later, when Locus surveyed its readers on the All-Time Best Fantasy Novel, it placed 10th. When Locus repeated the poll eleven years later, it moved up two slots into 8th place.

It’s fair to say the book’s popularity took its publisher by surprise. Bantam Books hadn’t bothered with a hardcover release — or cover art — for Little, Big; instead they published it in a nondescript trade paperback edition and snuck the book into stores under the cover of night in September 1981. They hadn’t even planned a mass market edition. It was rave reviews and word of mouth that did the rest.

Bantam made up for it two years later, after the thunderous accolades for the book made the magnitude of their mistake obvious. They released Little, Big in a handsome paperback edition in October 1983 (two years and one month after the the trade edition) with a fine cover by Yvonne Gilbert, and in rapid-fire sequence they re-released Crowley’s entire back catalog, one novel every month: Beasts, Engine Summer, and The Deep, all with covers by Gilbert. It was the first time Crowley had ever been given any real attention by a publisher, and it helped thousands of new readers discover him for the first time.

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New Treasures: Worlds Long Lost edited by Christopher Ruocchio and Sean CW Korsgaard

New Treasures: Worlds Long Lost edited by Christopher Ruocchio and Sean CW Korsgaard

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Worlds Long Lost (Baen Books, December 6, 2022). Cover by Bob Eggleton

Baen Books has published some terrific anthologies recently.

Christopher Ruocchio (The Sun Eater series) has had a particularly fine run, with over half a dozen to his credit, most with Baen senior editor Hank Davis — including Space Pioneers, Cosmic Corsairs, and Time Troopers — or Tony Daniel (Star Destroyers and World Breakers). Which is why I was dismayed to learn that Worlds Long Lost, a collection of all-new stories of ancient alien artifacts, is his last. Here’s the announcement on his blog, SollanEmpire.com

Worlds Long Lost is my final short story anthology with Baen Books, co-edited with my successor, Sean C.W. Korsgaard. Featuring stories of ancient aliens and their ruins, it includes my short story “Mother of Monsters.” “Mother of Monsters” is set on the Cielcin worldship codenamed Echidna, the very moon captured by Lord Cassian Powers at the Second Battle of Cressgard. It is the tale of Tor Mencius, the scholiast in charge of excavating the tombs of the Aetane who ruled Echidna…and of what he discovered there.

Christopher’s story is a brand new tale set in his popular Sun Eater series. The book also contains original fiction from Orson Scott Card, Adam Oyebanji, M.A. Rothman and D.J. Butler, Les Johnson, and many more.

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Future Treasures: High Noon on Proxima B edited by David Boop

Future Treasures: High Noon on Proxima B edited by David Boop

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High Noon on Proxima B (Baen, February 7, 2023). Cover by Dominic Harman

Nobody out there is doing anthologies like David Boop.

He started in 2017 with the Weird Western Straight Outta Tombstone (2017), which proved popular enough that he followed up with two more, Straight Outta Deadwood (2019) and Straight Outta Dodge City (2020). Last year he packed up his six-shooters and headed into outer space with Gunfight on Europa Station, the first…. uh… Weird Science Fiction Western anthology? I dunno, but I like it.

It’s a new year, and I’m delighted to see a new Boop anthology headed our way. High Noon on Proxima B contains brand new stories by Walter Jon Williams, Susan R. Matthews, Brenda Cooper, Milton Davis, and many others. It arrives in trade paperback from Baen next week.

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Vintage Treasures: The New Hugo Winners, Volume III and IV, presented by Connie Willis and Gregory Benford

Vintage Treasures: The New Hugo Winners, Volume III and IV, presented by Connie Willis and Gregory Benford

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The New Hugo Winners, Volume III and Volume IV (Baen, and May 1994 and November 1997). Covers by Bob Eggleton

The Hugo Winners, Volume I and Volume II, edited by Isaac Asimov and collected in one big omnibus by the Science Fiction Book Club in 1972, was one of the top-selling science fiction books of the 70s, and Volume III (1977) was gladly received by readers. But by the time Volume IV and V were released in the mid-80s, sales had fallen off so significantly that neither one was ever reprinted in paperback, and Doubleday ceased publishing them entirely after the fifth book.

It was Martin H. Greenberg who talked Asimov into picking up the tradition with The New Hugo Winners in 1989. The two of them brought the series to Baen, and produced two volumes before Asimov’s death in 1992. Although Asimov had openly championed having Greenberg pick up the baton after his death, that didn’t happen. Instead it was Connie Willis and Gregory Benford who edited (excuse me, “Presented”) The New Hugo Winners, Volume III and Volume IV, as paperback originals from Baen Books in 1994 and 1997.

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From the Library of Terry Carr: Here’s Your Chance to Own a Piece of Science Fiction History

From the Library of Terry Carr: Here’s Your Chance to Own a Piece of Science Fiction History

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A few of the (mostly new) Terry Carr anthologies you can buy on eBay for $3 each

Terry Carr is widely respected today, nearly four decades after his death, for his legendary work as a science fiction editor. He assembled some 70 anthologies in a career spanning over twenty years, including the highly respected Universe series (17 volumes), Fantasy Annual (five volumes), and the career-defining Best Science Fiction of the Year (16 volumes), which may well be the finest Year’s Best anthology series ever printed.

But he also edited an impressive number of standalone anthologies, both original and reprint, most of which are long out of print and long-forgotten. I’ve gradually taken an interest in them, starting with Creatures From Beyond, which I read in junior high, and I recently started collecting them more seriously

Last month I stumbled on a bookseller offering a fabulous collection — and I do mean fabulous — at ridiculously low prices on eBay. After I purchased a few dozen, we struck up a conversation. Just where on Earth, I humbled asked, did he find such a vast collection of virtually brand new 50-year-old anthologies by Carr, Robert Silverberg, Damon Knight, Michael Bishop, Groff Conklin, and others? Simple enough, he said. They had all originally belonged to Terry Carr.

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New Treasures: HellSans by Ever Dundas

New Treasures: HellSans by Ever Dundas

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HellSans by Ever Dundas (Angry Robot, October 11, 2022). Covers by Kate Cromwell

One thing I’ll say about science fiction and fantasy: there’s always room for an audacious idea. And that pretty much describes HellSans, the science fiction debut by Scottish writer Ever Dundas, about a font that triggers euphoria — or agony.

Publishers Weekly calls it “Wildly imaginative… [a] stand out,” and Library Journal proclaims it “A smart and unique dystopian thriller.” And Lisa Tuttle at The Guardian selected it as one of The Best Recent Science Fiction and Fantasy novels, calling it “a violent and compelling thriller, with far more psychological and moral complexity than the general run of dystopian fiction.”

I don’t know about all that. But I do know that when I picked up a copy at the bookstore last week, I was taken immediately by the originality of the idea — and the premise of a scientist on the run as she tries to find a cure for a ubiquitous font. I brought it home with me, and I’m looking forward to reading it.

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