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Twenty Years of Smart Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Tachyon Publications Catalog

Twenty Years of Smart Science Fiction and Fantasy: The Tachyon Publications Catalog

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THE TREASURY OF THE FANTASTIC-small The Uncertain Places-small The Best of Michael Moorcock-small

While I was at the World Fantasy Convention last November, I kept being irresistibly sucked into the Dealers Room. Seriously, the place was like a giant supermarket for fantasy fans. There were thousands of new and used books on display from dozens of vendors — books piled high on tables, books crammed into bookshelves, books being pressed into your hands by enthusiastic sellers.

When I came home I moped around for a few days, and then mocked up some HTML pages with dozens of thumbnail jpegs of books so I could pretend I was still at the convention. I waved a crisp twenty dollar bill in front of my computer screen and said things like, “I’ll take the new Moorcock collection, my good man.” I even haggled over the price of The Treasury of the Fantastic. Truly, it felt like I was there.

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The Omnibus Volumes of C.J. Cherryh, Part III

The Omnibus Volumes of C.J. Cherryh, Part III

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The Dreaming Tree-small At the Edge of Space-small The Deep Beyond-small

We’ve come to the end of our three-part series on DAW’s omnibus reprint volumes of C.J. Cherryh’s early fantasy and space opera novels. Part I examined The Faded Sun Trilogy, The Morgaine Saga, and The Chanur Saga, all published in the year 2000, and Part II continued with Chanur’s Endgame, Alternate Realities, and Alliance Space. In Part III, we’ll take a look at The Dreaming Tree, At the Edge of Space, and The Deep Beyond., each of which collects a pair of novels.

With The Dreaming Tree, we’re back to fantasy again. Cherryh dabbles in fantasy only occasionally — she’s had the greatest success with space opera over her long career, especially her long-running Foreigner and Chanur series, which together encompass some 20 novels. But The Dreaming Tree, which collects the two Ealdwood novels, The Dreamstone and The Tree of Swords and Jewels, has proved to be one of her most enduring works. The omnibus volume was published in 1997 and is still in print, eighteen years later.

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Vintage Treasures: Somewhere a Voice by Eric Frank Russell

Vintage Treasures: Somewhere a Voice by Eric Frank Russell

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Somewhere a Voice Eric Frank Russell-smallI cover a lot of different writers with these Vintage Treasures posts. Some are authors I’ve long cherished, and some are folks I’ve never read. Frequently they’re books I’ve been curious about for a long time, and sometimes they’re simply odd discoveries from recent collections I’ve acquired.

But I think the most rewarding are those where I take a look at writers I’ve long overlooked. That’s the case with Eric Frank Russell, whom I really knew for a single story, “Dear Devil,” which I read in Terry Carr’s great anthology Creatures From Beyond many years ago — a great story, true, but a single story nonetheless. So I’m discovering him for the first time now by reading collections of his pulp science fiction, such as Men, Martians, and Machines and Six Worlds Yonder, and they are delightful.

I went searching for more in my library and found Somewhere a Voice, a 1966 Ace paperback that has now been out of print for nearly five decades. A great pity, I think, since Russell’s stories still speak to a modern audience and I’m convinced he would easily find readers today.

In the meantime, I can do my part to fight against the cruel modern neglect of Eric Frank Russell by spending a few moments talking about him here, and that’s what I’m going to do. Plus, I’m going to throw in a few pulp magazine covers, because it’s Saturday morning and I have nothing better to do.

Let’s start with the text from the back of the book, because that saves me the effort of describing it myself.

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Vintage Treasures: Pamela Dean’s Secret Country Trilogy

Vintage Treasures: Pamela Dean’s Secret Country Trilogy

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The Secret Country-small Pamela Dean Hidden Land-small Pamela Dean The Whim of the Dragon-small

We’ve been talking a lot about the early days of Dungeons and Dragons recently, and that put me in mind of the early novels directly inspired by fantasy role playing. The most famous examples are probably Andre Norton’s Quag Keep (1979) and Joel Rosenberg’s long-running Guardians of the Flame series, starting with The Sleeping Dragon (1983).

Pamela Dean’s Secret Country Trilogy is another early example, although it’s not as well remembered today. It began with The Secret Country (1985), featuring a group of friends who become stranded in the fantasy realm they thought they had created.

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Vintage Treasures: Starshine by Theodore Sturgeon

Vintage Treasures: Starshine by Theodore Sturgeon

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Theodore Sturgeon Starshine Pyramid-small Theodore Sturgeon Starshine Pyramid 2-small Theodore Sturgeon Starshine Pyramid 3-small

For this installment of Vintage Treasures, we’re going to set the Wayback Machine for that far distant era of American publishing, when it wasn’t at all unusual for a midlist science fiction writer to publish a paperback collection clocking in at a slender 174 pages… and have it go through nearly a dozen printings in as many years. Ah, for the days when the American public had a greater appetite for short stories!

Starshine was Sturgeon’s thirteenth collection (thirteen short story collections! It boggles the mind). It included three novelettes and three short stories, spanning just over two decades of his career: 1940 to 1961. I’ve captured the covers of all the paperback editions in this article — if you’re an old-timer like me, maybe one of them will jog your memory.

The first edition of Starshine was the December 1966 Pyramid paperback (above left, cover by Jack Gaughan.) It was back in print less than two years later, in March 1969, with a new cover by Gaughan again (above middle). Why it needed a new cover, I dunno – I much prefer the original one.

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The Recent Best: The Fantasy Catalog of Prime Books

The Recent Best: The Fantasy Catalog of Prime Books

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Time Travel Recent Trips-small Magic City Recent Spells-small Aliens Recent Encounters-small

In November of last year I attended the World Fantasy Convention in Washington, D.C. I’d never been to the city, and there was a tremendous amount to do and see — including the National Mall, the Washington Monument, the White House, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and the Lincoln Memorial.

All very impressive, even for a Canadian like me. But three months later, the place that’s lingered longest in my mind is the convention Dealer’s Room. It was packed with dozens of tables from the finest publishers in the genre, all showing their latest wares. Since I pay attention to the market every day, I naturally assumed there wouldn’t be a lot of surprises, even in a target-rich environment like that.

I was dead wrong. Walking from table to table, and seeing the dazzling display of novels, anthologies and collections piled in dense stacks before all the smiling vendors, drove home just how marvelously rich and diverse our industry is. Since returning from the convention I’ve tried hard to replicate that experience here, in a series of posts showcasing the catalogs of several of the most impressive publishers. So far I’ve covered Valancourt Books and ChiZine Publications; today we turn our attention to the gorgeous catalog of Prime Books.

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Vintage Treasures: Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick/ The Skynappers by John Brunner

Vintage Treasures: Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick/ The Skynappers by John Brunner

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Vulcan's Hammer-small The Skynappers-small

One of the things I love about the early Ace Doubles is that they frequently paired young writers who later became superstars. It’s like finding a movie starring Scarlett Johansson and Elijah Wood when they were both 10 years old (that move exists, by the way. It’s called North. Don’t see it.)

The 1960 Ace Double Vulcan’s Hammer/The Skynappers is a fine example. It paired the 32-year old Philip K. Dick — well established by that point, with seven novels under his belt — with an up-and coming British author, the 26-year old John Brunner, whose first novel Threshold of Eternity had appeared as an Ace Double the previous year. Both went on to stellar careers. Indeed, they’re two of the most highly regarded SF writers of the 20th Century.

Neither of these two books is particularly well remembered, however. In fact, if you’re a Brunner fan and interested in reading The Skynappers, this 55-year old paperback is pretty much the only way to get it.

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Vintage Treasures: The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream by G.C. Edmondson

Vintage Treasures: The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream by G.C. Edmondson

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The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream 1965-small The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream 1970-small The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream-small

G.C. Edmondson was not a prolific fantasy author. He wrote barely half a dozen novels between 1965 and 1981. But at least one, The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream, became an acknowledged classic, kept in print by Ace Books for nearly two decades after it first appeared in 1965.

Edmondson wrote Westerns under at least three pseudonyms. The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream was his first fantasy novel; it first appeared as part of an Ace Double (cover by Jack Gaughan, above left), paired with Stranger Than You Think, a collection of Edmondson’s short stories.

The book, the tale of a military research ship cast back in time to the Bronze Age while testing experimental submarine detection gear, was an immediate critical success. It was nominated for the Nebula Award (it lost to Frank Herbert’s Dune), and Jerry Pournelle, co-author of The Mote in God’s Eye and Lucifer’s Hammer, called it “One of the best time travel novels I have ever read.”

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Vintage Treasures: Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin

Vintage Treasures: Fevre Dream by George R.R. Martin

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Fevre Dream hardcover-small Fevre Dream Fantasy Masterworks-small Fevre Dream-small

George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire is the biggest series in fantasy right now — indeed, the biggest literary series of any kind — but I’ve never read it. I prefer not diving into a series until it’s complete (or at least very close to complete), and based on the news that it probably won’t wrap up until after 2020, I’m likely years away from working up enough motivation to pick up the first volume in the series, A Game of Thrones.

But there are other Martin books I’m very interested in. For instance, I just bought a copy of his steamboat vampire novel Fevre Dream, originally released in 1982. It’s one of the most acclaimed horror novels of the last 30 years and, even better, it’s a standalone novel. I don’t have to wait for the sequel, which is kind of refreshing.

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An Ancient Egyptian Temple in Madrid

An Ancient Egyptian Temple in Madrid

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Templo de Debod in Madrid by flickr user jiuguangw
Templo de Debod in Madrid by flickr user jiuguangw

When the Egypt government began its massive Aswan Dam project in 1960, it realized that a large number of temples and archaeological sites would be submerged forever. Teaming up with UNESCO, it started an ambitious project of survey and excavation, as well as the relocation of several key monuments.

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