Browsed by
Author: John ONeill

New Treasures: Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

New Treasures: Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez

Comments 4 comments


Our Share of Night (Hogarth, February 7, 2023)

I first heard of Mariana Enriquez in Adam Nevill’s 2022 Black Gate article, Five Great International Horror Collections, in which he celebrates “a sense of encountering original, innately weird creative visions for the first time” in the work of Luigi Musolino, Anders Fager, Attila Veres, and two collections from Enriquez, Things We Lost in the Fire and The Dangers of Smoking in Bed. Here’s the paragraph that grabbed my attention.

Argentinian Mariana Enriquez has been celebrated the world over, and I can see why from the quality of her writing. But I am surprised because her work is weird, not at all mainstream. How often does that kind of success come to a writer of quality weird? Almost never (because how many traditional publishers ever get excited about it?). I am heartened that it is possible. “Adela’s House” from Things We Lost in the Fire became an immediate favourite. Disturbing, sensory, unpredictable stories.

Enriquez’s fourth novel, her first to be translated into English, Our Share of Night, was published in hardcover by Hogarth this year, and I think the time is finally right for me to jump on board this train.

…

Read More Read More

A Smalltown Horror Masterclass: Paul Finch on Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest

A Smalltown Horror Masterclass: Paul Finch on Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest

Comments 3 comments


Dark Harvest (Tor Books, September 4, 2007, cover by Jon Foster)
and the film adaptation (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, October 11, 2023)

Paul Finch’s “The Carrion Call” appeared in the eighth issue of the print version of Black Gate, and over the last decade he’s produced over a dozen Terror Tales anthologies (most recently Terror Tales of the West Country, which Mario Guslandi reviewed for us back in January). But he also maintains Walking in the Dark, one of the more entertaining and informative genre blogs, where he discusses horror new and old.

Last month he reviewed Norman Partridge’s modern Halloween classic Dark Harvest, originally published in 2006 — when it received many of the year’s major awards, including the Stoker, International Horror Guild Award, and a nomination for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. It was adapted into a feature film of the same name, and released for a brief theatrical run this month.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: The Med Series by Murray Leinster

Vintage Treasures: The Med Series by Murray Leinster

Comments 2 comments


The Med Series (Ace, May 1983). Cover by James Warhola

For most of its life John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction was the most important SF magazine on the stands. It was the beating heart of the genre in a way that’s tough to comprehend today, in a market that’s grown far beyond print.

Campbell made his mark by discovering, nurturing, and publishing the most important writers of his day. But — quite cleverly, I think — he also cultivated lifetime readers by making Astounding home to exciting and highly readable series, many of which were later successfully packaged as bestselling books. Readers of Astounding knew they were getting an early look at the titles everyone would eventually be talking about.

A study of the major SF series launched in Astounding would fill several volumes, but they include Frank Herbert’s Dune, Asimov’s Foundation and Robot tales, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, H. Beam Piper’s Paratime and Federation/Empire sagas, Gordon R. Dickson’s Dorsai!, Poul Anderson’s Psychotechnic League, James Schmitz’s Telzey Amberdon and The Hub tales, and countless others.

One of my favorite story cycles from the Campbell era of Astounding was Murray Leinster’s The Med Series, the tales of the intrepid doctors of the Interplanetary Medical Service “roving through the uncharted vastness of deep space.” They were eventually repackaged in a handful of paperbacks that are long out of print, but still fondly remembered by a few of us old timers.

…

Read More Read More

A Fantasy City That Feels Alive: The Burnished City by Davinia Evans

A Fantasy City That Feels Alive: The Burnished City by Davinia Evans

Comments 0 Comment


Notorious Sorcerer and Shadow Baron (Orbit, September 13, 2022,
and November 14, 2023). Cover Design by Lisa Marie Pompilio

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a groundswell of interest like I’ve witnessed for Notorious Sorcerer, Davinia Evans’ debut novel and the opening book in her Burnished City series. It didn’t get a lot of attention when it was released in trade paperback last year, but over the last twelve months I’ve seen a lot of discussion. Everyone is talking about this book.

The Book Nook says it’s “compelling… a remarkable and ambitious debut,” and Every Book a Doorway calls it “Dazzling… badass and honestly wondrous… the story never has a dull page.” Publishers Weekly labels it an “energetic epic… This is a charmer,” and Book Page doesn’t rein in their enthusiasm, saying it “deploys genre tropes with delirious glee and builds a rich and fascinating world.”

All this recent buzz is good timing, since the sequel, Shadow Baron, arrives next month, and that gives me just enough time to finish the first volume and get some hot cocoa ready in time for Book Two.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: This Immortal by Roger Zelazny

Vintage Treasures: This Immortal by Roger Zelazny

Comments 17 comments


This Immortal (Ace Books, September 1980). Cover by Rowena Morrill

Two weeks ago I dashed off a Vintage Treasures piece on Larry Niven’s first collection Neutron Star, the first I’d ever done on Niven, and it helped me realize that there are several other major writers sorely underrepresented in these pages. Near the top of that list is Roger Zelazny, one of the most important fantasists of the 20th Century, and the man behind much of the work that turned me into a lifelong science fiction reader.

So today I’d like to talk about This Immortal, Zelazny’s first novel, published as a paperback original in July 1966 by Ace Books. It was the work that cemented Zelazny’s reputation as one of the finest genre writers of his generation, and it tied with perhaps the most famous science novel of all time — Frank Herbert’s Dune — for SF’s highest honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
…

Read More Read More

Future Treasures: The Queen of Days by Greta Kelly

Future Treasures: The Queen of Days by Greta Kelly

Comments 0 Comment

The Queen of Days (Harper Voyager, October 24, 2023). Cover design by Richard L. Aquan

Greta Kelly is the author of the Warrior Witch duology (The Frozen Crown and The Seventh Queen, both from Harper Voyager). I’m hearing a lot of pre-release buzz about her latest, The Queen of Days, a fantasy heist tale released in hardcover in two weeks.

The Queen of Days is the tale of a lovable band of thieves hired to steal a statue during a religious celebration. Like all tales of great heists, this one goes very wrong — in this case, accidentally ripping open a portal that allows warring gods into the world, threatening the entire city.

Publishers Weekly calls it “A high-stakes heist in a secondary world populated by gods, demigods, and plenty of wily rogues,” and Library Journal says it’s packed full of “”Incredible worldbuilding [and] fast-paced action… a fantasy heist novel filled with interesting characters, a vivid world, and protagonists trying to find their way through.”

…

Read More Read More

Alien Devil Trees, Deadly Cargo, and the Blob: September-October 2023 Print SF Magazines

Alien Devil Trees, Deadly Cargo, and the Blob: September-October 2023 Print SF Magazines

Comments 0 Comment


September-October 2023 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact,
Asimov’s Science Fiction, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction.
Cover art by Shutterstock, Tomislav Tikulin, and Marianne Plumridge

There’s plenty of great stuff in this month’s print magazines, including a new Diving Universe novella by Kristine Kathryn Rusch, an homage to the 1958 classic The Blob by Eric Choi, a chilling story of the Dead Letter Office by David Erik Nelson, the gruesome secret of the alien Deviltree by Monalisa Foster, a truck driver who discovers the dreadful truth of his unknown cargo during the “Night Haul” by Andrew Crowley, and the twelfth and final installment of Gregory Feeley’s distributed novel Neptune’s Reach.

The big SF magazines are packed with brand new fiction from Lavie Tidhar, Lisa Goldstein, Derek Künsken, Dean Whitlock, Howard V. Hendrix, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, Phoebe Wood, Christopher Mark Rose, Tessa Yang, and lots more. See all the details below.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales, Part II

Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales, Part II

Comments 1 comment

Table of Contents for Weird Tales 1, edited by Lin Carter (Zebra Books, December 1980)

For yesterday’s Vintage Treasures post, I finally had the chance to discuss Lin Carter’s early-80s attempt to resuscitate the Magazine that Never Dies, the long-running weird fiction pulp Weird Tales.

Since I examined all four paperbacks, there wasn’t room in that article to look back at some of the fascinating discussions they’ve triggered over the last four decades, including lengthy commentary from Carter himself — especially his (largely unfulfilled) plans for the future volumes — or reviews of the stories within from modern readers. So I took the time to do that today.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales

Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales

Comments 14 comments


Weird Tales , Volumes 1 -4 (Zebra Books, December 1980
– August 1983). Covers by Tom Barber (#1-3) and Doug Beekman (#4)

Lin Carter was one of the finest genre editors of the 20th Century, and Weird Tales magazine was the most important fantasy magazine of the last century, publishing the career-defining work of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and hundreds of other writers. In December 1980 Zebra Books published the equivalent of a genre superhero Team-Up, the first two volumes of a paperback relaunch of Weird Tales helmed by Lin Carter.

The ambitious effort had several things in common with the original pulp incarnation. Namely, it was criminally underfunded, published sporadically, and doomed.

But it also had a hugely talented and hardworking editor, and in three short years it published a total of four volumes containing ‘lost’ stories by Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, an original John the Balladeer story by Manly Wade Wellman, reprints of classic tales from the pages of Weird Tales, and original fiction by Ramsey Campbell, Carl Jacobi, Tanith Lee, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Steve Rasnic Tem, Hannes Bok, Joseph Payne Brennan, Evangeline Walton, Charles Sheffield, Frank Belknap Long, Lin Carter, and a lot more.

…

Read More Read More

The Mystery of Steven Klaper, Agent of Insight

The Mystery of Steven Klaper, Agent of Insight

Comments 5 comments


Agents of Insight (Tor, October 1986). Cover by Barclay Shaw

Back in 2017 I bought a copy of Agents of Insight, and thought it would be interesting to do a brief write up of the genre-blending science fiction-P.I. novel for Black Gate. But I immediately ran into a problem. The author, Steven Klaper, was a complete mystery. This was the only work of any kind I can find published under that name. No other novels, short stories, comics, nothing. When that happens, I automatically assume the name is a pseudonym — and I’m usually right. But even after 30 years, I couldn’t find any record of the name “Steven Klaper” used by a more well-known writer.

I made a plea on for information on Facebook, and Gordon van Gelder, publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, immediately offered a useful suggestion.

Thirty-one years isn’t that long ago and there are plenty of Tor Books employees with long memories like Beth Meacham and Claire Eddy who probably know if Klaper was a pen name for, say, the guy who published as Samuel Holt or if in fact Klaper was just a guy who only ever published one book.

Tor Editor extraordinaire Beth Meacham did indeed remember Steven, and this is where things got interesting.

…

Read More Read More