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Author: John ONeill

Vintage Treasures: The Amazing Space Race

Vintage Treasures: The Amazing Space Race

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Amazing Stories January 1969A few weeks back, I purchased a lot of 27 Amazing Stories digests from the mid-60s and early 70s in great condition, for $35 (including shipping) — or about a buck an issue.

This was simultaneously delightful and dismaying. Delightful, of course, to get a fine set of SF magazines for not much more than they cost on the newsstand 45 years ago; dismaying to find that pristine vintage copies of one of the most important SF magazines command such little interest in the market.

Seriously, this doesn’t bode well for the thousands of SF magazines I’ve been gradually accumulating in my basement for the last 35 years. I  consider them treasures, but it seems the number of people who share my interest is shrinking every year. I just hope they don’t all end up getting recycled when I shuffle off this mortal coil.

Well, all collectors can really do is delight in those treasures we find, and share our enthusiasm with those around us. To that end, here I am, talking about a handful of issues of Amazing Stories, starting with the January 1969 issue, at left.

The late sixties was a bumpy time for the Granddaddy of Science Fiction magazines. Perhaps its finest editor, the talented Cele Goldsmith, left when the magazine was sold to Sol Cohen’s Ultimate Publishing Company in March 1965. At the time, Ultimate was simultaneously publishing Great Science Fiction, Science Fiction Classics, and other profitable reprint magazines — profitable chiefly because they didn’t pay for any of the reprints. Cohen wanted to pursue a similar strategy with Amazing.

Cohen hired Joseph Wrzos to edit both Amazing and Fantastic magazines, and indeed for several years Amazing offered almost exclusively reprints — although Wrzos reportedly did get Cohen to cough up funds for one new piece of fiction per issue. Wrzos left in 1967, and Harry Harrison was briefly editor from September 1967 to February 1968, when the talented Barry Malzberg stepped into his shoes.

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Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Worst Was Yet to Come” by Michael Penkas

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Worst Was Yet to Come” by Michael Penkas

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Mike PenkasIn which Moses learns the next 10 terrible plagues the Almighty had in store for the Pharaoh of Egypt.

And the Lord, sounding a little giddy, said unto Moses, “For the twelfth plague, I’d send rats.”

And Moses nodded, saying, “Yes, to grow fat on the grain of the Egyptians, to spread disease and gnaw at the foundations of Pharaoh’s kingdom.”

“Oh, not just regular rats. Winged rats. Here, I’ve got some concept drawings.” And the Lord produced his concept sketches of a winged and feathered rat.

“And then, after a week of that, the thirteenth plague… this would have been great. All the cats in Egypt would grow thumbs.”

And there was a silence as Moses tried to envision such an act. And he said unto the Lord, “I don’t get it, Lord. Why is that bad?”

“Because cats hate you. The only thing that prevents them from picking up daggers and stabbing you in your sleep is that they don’t have opposable thumbs.”

And Moses nodded, seeing no point in questioning the Lord’s reasons, for they were mysterious… and kind of crazy.

Michael Penkas has been the website editor for Black Gate since August of 2012. He’s had over a dozen stories published since 2007. While he tends to stay near to those things that go bump in the night, he’s occasionally delved into mystery, science fiction, and the odd humor piece. Long-time readers of Black Gate will know that he has more than a few opinions concerning a certain crazy redhead with a sword.

His acclaimed first collection, Dead Boys, was released this month.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Vera Nazarian, Robert Rhodes, Jason E. Thummel, Ryan Harvey, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, Harry Connolly, and many others, is here.

“The Worst Was Yet to Come” is a complete 2,000-word tale of humorous fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

2012 Nebula Award Winners Announced

2012 Nebula Award Winners Announced

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After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the FallMajor award-granting institutions continue to heap accolades on books I haven’t read.

This is a chronic problem. I think the guidelines should be changed to allow voters to select a specific title, “No Award,” or “Wait, wait, I haven’t read any of the nominees yet!”

Until that happy day, we continue to report on tantalizing books and short stories that we haven’t personally enjoyed yet. It’s a curse.

The 2012 Nebula Awards were presented Saturday, May 18, 2013 at SFWA’s 48th Annual Nebula Awards Weekend San Jose, California. The winners were:

Novel

2312, Kim Stanley Robinson (Orbit)

Novella

After the Fall, Before the Fall, During the Fall, Nancy Kress (Tachyon)

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Dreams of Conquest in a Four Color Universe: Kaput and Zösky

Dreams of Conquest in a Four Color Universe: Kaput and Zösky

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kaput-and-zoskyI’ve been a fan of French cartoonist Lewis Trondheim since I first read the marvelous Dungeon (co-created with Joann Sfar) over a decade ago. His comics are bizarre, funny, and fabulously creative.

So I didn’t mind taking a chance on a new Trondheim comic collection: Kaput and Zösky, an 80-page graphic novel collecting over a dozen tales (especially since I found it remaindered on Amazon for $5.58).

Kaput and Zösky are two determined galactic conquerors, traveling from planet to planet in a tiny spaceship, constantly dreaming of ways to bring the next planet to its knees. Their abilities don’t quite match their dreams, however, and most strips end with them hightailing it off-planet, usually escaping death by inches.

The art in Kaput and Zösky is by Eric Cartier, and it was the high point of the comic for me. Cartier’s cartoony aliens are expressive and frequently very funny, and he captures Kaput and Zösky’s goofy schemes brilliantly. I suspect the strips may work better standalone than bundled together, as they got a little repetitive after a while.

Fortunately, the adventures of Kaput and Zösky aren’t limited to the page. Kaput and Zösky: The Ultimate Obliterators, a Nicktoons cartoon broadcast in 2003, captures the charm of Cartier’s artwork, and the Canadian voice cast does an excellent job of bringing the two bloodthirsty aliens to life. A total of 26 half-hour episodes (78 shorts) were produced, many of which have found their way to YouTube. Check out Kaput & Zosky in “The Planet Pax,” a complete 8-minute episode:

Kaput & Zosky – The Planet Pax

Kaput and Zösky was published in April 2008 by First Second. It is 80 pages in color, with text translated from the French by Edward Gauvin.

Vintage Treasures: Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors

Vintage Treasures: Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors

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Robert E Howard Cthulhu The Mythos and Kindred HorrorsOn April 27, I wrote a Vintage Treasures article about Robert E. Howard’s The People of the Black Circle, one of the first fantasy books I ever owned.

The Comments section quickly became a discussion of REH collecting, with readers swapping photos of their favorite Howard books. Joe H. shared a LibrayThing catalog of his Howard collection, noting the hardest title to find had been Cthluhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors. “It took me years to track down a copy,” he said.

Well, that’s exactly the kind of thing that perks up a collector’s ears. Intrigued,  I went on a quest to find my own copy of Cthluhu: The Mythos and Kindred Horrors, a collection of Robert E. Howard’s Cthulhu stories.

I finally succeeded this week, after a two-week search. I settled in with my new copy today. First thing I noticed is that the cover, by Stephen Hickman, depicts a treasured artifact from my own collection: the Hickman-designed Cthulhu statute by Bowen Designs — a prized collectible these days. Now that it’s worth something, maybe my wife will let me bring it up out of the basement.

The other thing I noticed is that this is a sizable collection: 250 pages. While I knew Howard had made some minor contributions to Lovecraft’s famous milieu before his death, I had no idea he’d written so many stories that could be categorized as part of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Perhaps editor David Drake has been fairly liberal with his selections. I note that “Pigeons from Hell” is included, and that’s only peripherally a Cthulhu story — but it’s a damn good tale, so I’m not complaining.

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New Treasures: Dead Boys by Michael Penkas

New Treasures: Dead Boys by Michael Penkas

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Dead Boys Michael PenkasI first met Michael Penkas in 2010 at the Top Shelf Open Mic in Palatine, Illinois, a friendly local reading event hosted by C.S.E. Cooney.

The Top Shelf Open Mic has attracted some extraordinary talent over the years. Gene Wolfe read chapters of his upcoming novel The Land Across, Joe Bonnadonna shared early drafts of Waters of Darkness, David C. Smith read from his supernatural thriller Call of Shadows, and of course C.S.E. Cooney regularly entertained us with boundless energy, reading from The Big Ba-Ha, Jack o’ the Hills, and other acclaimed publications.

But I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that Michael Penkas has become the unexpected true star of our local reading group. His creepy and electrifying short stories have mesmerized us month after month.

Michael has an uncanny ability to pry open your heart with sparkling prose, humor, and warm and genuine characters… and then drive a cold spike through it with relentless and diabolical twists. All with some of the most compact and economical prose I have ever encountered.

Michael has published over a dozen stories since 2007. While he’s best known for his extremely effective horror and dark fantasy, he’s equally at home with mystery, science fiction, and gonzo humor — as his upcoming story for Black Gate illustrates. “The Worst Was Yet to Come,” a chilling retelling of Moses’s unexpected conversation with God immediately after the Ten Plagues of Egypt, will appear here this Sunday. It’s sure to win him many more fans, or possibly get him strung up — or both.

Michael has just released his first — and long awaited — collection, assembling four of his earliest published stories. It’s a delightful sampling of some of the best work of a fast-rising dark fantasy and horror author.

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Get a Random SF or Fantasy Book Cover from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Get a Random SF or Fantasy Book Cover from The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

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Into the Slave NebulaOh, Internet. Will you ever cease to come up with new ways for me to waste time?

So the latest thing I’ve been doing is hitting the Lucky Dip button in the Picture Gallery section of the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. It generates a random book cover from their massive archives:

So far, I’ve seen a few hundred vintage hardcovers and paperbacks, from a 1951 Lord Dunsany hardcover I never knew existed (The Last Revolution) to Samuel R. Delaney’s 1977 collection of critical essays on science fiction (The Jewel-Hinged Jaw); from John Brunner’s 1968 Lancer paperback Into the Slave Nebula to the 1954 Gnome Press edition of C. L. Moore’s Northwest of Earth. And many hundreds in between.

It’s a fascinating kaleidoscope (I can’t really call it a tour) of our genre — and a great launching point to ignite your interest. I ended up reading about UK author M. John Harrison after seeing the cover to his 1975 Panther paperback collection The Machine in Shaft Ten and Other Stories. Plus, doing about a dozen Google searches on the words “Slave Nebula.”

Of course, there’s a powerful search function as well, in case you want to leap directly to a specific book or author. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, the new online incarnation and third edition of the classic reference book edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls, indexes some 54,000 individual titles, with 113,500 internal hyperlinks and over 4,000,000 words. It builds massively on the text of the (already massive) 1995 CD-ROM edition, and is produced in collaboration with British SF publisher Gollancz and the SF Gateway. And it is, as the introduction points out, still a work in progress.

The only thing that’s missing? The back button. I tried to scroll back to some of the earlier samples, but no dice. Looks like the Lucky Dip is powered by a Javascript app of some kind that doesn’t allow you to page back through prior selections — so if you see something interesting, be sure to write it down!

Read “Martyr’s Gem,” a new Novella from C.S.E. Cooney, at GigaNotoSaurus

Read “Martyr’s Gem,” a new Novella from C.S.E. Cooney, at GigaNotoSaurus

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GigaNotoSaurus logoIt seems so long ago now that our first website editor, the ridiculously gifted C.S.E. Cooney, packed up her bags and headed East to Rhode Island. There she found a small but comfy aerie to do her writing, and began turning out ridiculously wonderful short stories.

We’ve published a few here. Her novella “Godmother Lizard,” which Tangent Online called “a delightful fantasy… [it] entranced me from the beginning,” appeared here in November, and we published the sequel “Life on the Sun” — which Tangent called “bold and powerful… this one captured a piece of my soul. Brilliant” — on February 10.

But even Black Gate isn’t big enough to contain C.S.E. Cooney’s talent, and on May 1st her 19,000-word novella “Martyr’s Gem” was published online at GigaNotoSaurus. Here’s a taste from the intro, just to let you know what you’re in for:

“They remember the days before the Nine Cities drowned and the Nine Islands with them. Before our people forsook us to live below the waters, and we were stranded here on the Last Isle. Before we changed our name to Glennemgarra, the Unchosen.” Sharrar sighed. “In those days, names were more than mere proxy for, Hey, you!”

“So, Hyrryai means, Hey, you, Gleamy?”

“You have no soul, Shursta.”

“Nugget, when your inner poet is ascendant, you have more than enough soul for both of us. If the whitecaps of your whimsy rise any higher, we’ll have a second Drowning at hand, make no mistake.”

GigaNotoSaurus is a webzine edited by Ann Leckie. It publishes one longish fantasy or science fiction story every month, including the recent Nebula nominees “All the Flavors” by Ken Liu and “The Migratory Pattern of Dancers” by Katherine Sparrow.

Settle in to your favorite reading place, turn off your phone, and read “Martyr’s Gem” here.

Explore History Through Tiny Cardboard Counters with Against the Odds Magazine

Explore History Through Tiny Cardboard Counters with Against the Odds Magazine

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Against-the-Odds-magazine-35-smallI discovered something fascinating while I was trolling eBay for vintage fantasy board games this morning: Against the Odds, a magazine published out of Southeastern, PA, which includes a complete game in each issue.

Now, it’s true that I get a little giddy around magazines. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have published one for a decade. And I also love games. So magazines that include games? I had to go have a bit of a lie down.

Against the Odds is a quarterly periodical of history and simulation, and it looks remarkably similar to the great gaming magazines published by SPI, Strategy & Tactics and Ares, both of which included a game with each issue. Ares, published between 1980 and 1984, was one of my all-time favorite magazines. In that short span it brought over a dozen highly regarded games into the world, including Barbarian Kings, Star Trader, Nightmare House, The High Crusade (based on the Poul Anderson novel), Citadel of Blood, and many others. All 17 issues are currently available as free PDFs at Archive.org.

Against the Odds doesn’t have the same focus on fantasy and science fiction as Ares, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fascinating. The first issue I came across, #35 (December 2011), includes the game Boudicca: The Warrior Queen, featuring an historical clash between the Roman Empire and a loose collection of Celtic tribes on the barbaric island of Britannia in 61 A.D.

She meant “trouble” for the Roman occupation of Britain. After her revolt succeeded in burning three major towns and slaughtering tens of thousands of Roman citizens and allies, the Emperor Nero seriously considered whether this distant land was worth the cost to stay. Governor G.S. Paulinus’ remarkable victory – perhaps at the location later known as “Watling Street” – reaffirmed Roman domination. They would remain in Britain for over 300 more years.

But it might have been different. Can you as the leader of a various cluster of independent Celtic tribes cause enough trouble and loss to make the Romans leave your island? Can you as the commander of scattered Roman troops snuff out the rebellion more effectively than Paulinus? Will London burn or be saved? These are your challenges in ATO issue #35, Boudicca: The Warrior Queen by Richard Berg.

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New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Seven, edited by Jonathan Strahan

New Treasures: The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, Volume Seven, edited by Jonathan Strahan

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The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year Volume Seven StrahanI always look forward to the Best of the Year anthologies. It’s an annual ritual, like the arrival of spring, heralding new hope and rebirth for the land. Or something.

Over the next few months, we’ll see several of them, from Rich Horton, David Hartwell, Gardner Dozois, Stephen Jones, and Paula Guran, just to name a few. But the season kicks off every year with Jonathan Strahan’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year, certainly one of the most interesting volumes for fantasy fans.

Like the preceding six volumes, it is published by Night Shade Books, who are experiencing difficulties. Likely this will be the last one, at least in this format.

In short: if you’re at all interested in a generous collection of some of the finest SF and fantasy from the best writers in the genre, do what I did and buy it now while it’s still available.

Here’s what we know about the stories:

Four artificial intelligences struggle towards life on the icy moon of Callisto; insect love means something deeply disturbing in a world of mantis wives; an elderly woman matches wits with Death in a battle for her life; a birthday party on a spaceship is haunted by ghosts from afar; a UFO researcher finds far more than she’s looking for in the backwoods of Missouri; a grand tour of the solar system ends in an unexpected discovery; a researcher strives to make one last grand discovery before the stars wink out a final time…

And here’s the complete table of contents.

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