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Vintage Treasures: Strange Eons by Robert Bloch

Vintage Treasures: Strange Eons by Robert Bloch

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Strange Eons Robert Bloch-smallBack in July, I did a Vintage Treasures article on The Best of Robert Bloch, the second in my series on Lester Del Rey’s Classics of Science Fiction. In doing the research for that article, I came across references to Bloch’s book of Lovecraftian fiction, Strange Eons, first published in 1979.

My curiosity was piqued. It took a while to track down a copy, but this is the age of the Internet, when all things are possible. I settled in to read it this morning and I was surprised to find it’s a novel, not a collection, as I assumed. Given the big Doctor Who news today, I was also amused to find the last page given over to a house ad for Pinnacle’s Doctor Who novelizations, with a banner quote from Harlan Ellison: “Incomparable… extraordinary… my hero, Doctor Who!”

The book is dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft — at least that wasn’t a surprise. As the publisher notes on the back of Strange Eons, Bloch was a protégé of Lovecraft and, at the age of fifteen, the youngest member of the “Lovecraft Circle” of writers. The novel builds unabashedly on the work of the master, starting with the premise that the creatures he wrote of are real, and his books form a dire warning for mankind:

What men know is called science; what they have not yet learned they call magic. But both are real….

In the world of today and the near future, three people inexorably linked by a common interest in the work of H. P. Lovecraft, discover: that the legendary creatures he created in his fantasies have hideous counterparts in reality… that his fiction is incredible fact… that his message is a warning…

Spooky stuff. I’ll see if the execution lives up to the promise. Strange Eons was published by Pinnacle Books in June 1979, with cover art by David Hada. It is 249 pages, priced at $1.95 in paperback. I paid $5.50 for a fine condition copy on eBay.

See all of our recent Vintage Treasure articles here.

Nine Long-Lost Doctor Who Episodes Found in Nigeria

Nine Long-Lost Doctor Who Episodes Found in Nigeria

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The Web of Fear DVD-smallThanks to the BBC’s notorious policy of erasing and re-using video tape, there are still 106 missing classic Doctor Who episodes — and the only reason that number isn’t a lot larger is due to the tireless efforts of fans who have, over decades, tracked down individual episodes in the hands of private collectors or sitting on dusty shelves in overseas television stations.

If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you’re aware of the rumors that have been flying around for months about a new trove of lost episodes found in Ecuador, or Africa, or some such place. If you’re a true fan, you’re probably aware that rumors like this tend to pop up from time to time and most of them aren’t true.

Well, it appears there was more than a grain of truth to this one. On Thursday, the BBC released nine previously lost episodes found in a television station in the Nigerian city of Jos — reducing the number of lost episodes to 97.

The BBC says it believes this is “the largest haul of missing episodes recovered in the last three decades.” It includes the complete six-part serial The Enemy of the World from 1967-68 (only episode 3 had previously been found), and most of the six-part The Web of Fear from 1968 (episode 3 is still missing, and episode 1 was already in archive). Both black-and-white serials star Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor.

The BBC has announced that newly-remastered versions of both serials will be released on DVD, with The Enemy of the World coming on November 25, 2013, followed by The Web of Fear on February 24, 2014. See the provisional artwork and details for both here. Both have also been released online as iTunes exclusives for $9.99 each — see the trailers at EnGadget.

“An Absolute Joy to Read”: James Reasoner on “Vestments of Pestilence”

“An Absolute Joy to Read”: James Reasoner on “Vestments of Pestilence”

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river-thru-dark-277James Reasoner, author of Draw: The Greatest Gunfights of the American West and The Civil War Battle Series, weighs in on John C. Hocking’s newest Archivist tale, published here September 29:

“Vestments of Pestilence” is a new sword-and-sorcery story by John C. Hocking, author of Conan and the Emerald Lotus, and what an absolute joy it is to read… The Archivist and Lucella have returned to civilization only to find themselves immediately drawn into a clash between two members of the royal family, a brother and sister who are bitter rivals and who have tried to kill each other in the recent past. The princess coerces The Archivist and Lucella into helping her get her hands on an artifact from the old Southron civilization that may contain sorcerous power.

Of course, with a street gang, an oily “astrographer,” a sinister tower, and a plague demon in the mix, things don’t really go all that smoothly…

The plot of this story is traditional sword-and-sorcery, but the prose is pure hardboiled action writing of the best sort, reminiscent of, yes, Robert E. Howard… Hocking is that good. There are touches of humor as well, and The Archivist and Lucella are very appealing characters… If you’re a fan of action-packed heroic fantasy, I guarantee you’ll be entertained.

“Vestments of Pestilence” is the second Archivist tale we’ve published, following “A River Through Darkness and Light,” in Black Gate 15, which SF Site called “a strong blend of the old sword and sorcery action and mood, but with modern attention to character development.”

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Janet Morris and Chris Morris, Michael Shea, Ryan Harvey, Peadar Ó Guilín, Vaughn Heppner, Aaron Bradford Starr, Martha Wells, Nina Kiriki Hoffman, E.E. Knight, C.S.E. Cooney, Howard Andrew Jones, and many others, is here.

“Vestments of Pestilence” is a complete 10,000-word novelette of sword & sorcery. Read the complete story here.

Read James’s complete review on his blog Rough Edges. Art for “A River Through Darkness and Light” by Storn Cook.

The Strange and Curious Tales of Carl E Reed

The Strange and Curious Tales of Carl E Reed

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"The Last Flight of Major Havoc," by Carl E Reed, from Black Gate 9. Art by Bernie Mireault.
“The Last Flight of Major Havoc,” by Carl E Reed, from Black Gate 9. Art by Bernie Mireault.

I suppose I should kick off with a disclaimer. I’ve known Carl Reed since before I was professionally published in fiction.

I met him years ago, somewhere in the crazy 90s, when the dot-coms still had mercury-winged, lavishly-financed feet. I’d plopped down in the Arlington Heights Barnes and Noble to work on my draft and I saw a bearded man, near my own age and size, but a little broader, wearing a leather biker’s hat, pen in hand, peering at some handwritten words in a spiral notebook with equal parts concentration, wonder, and grief.

Yup, I thought. Has to be a writer. So I struck up a conversation and, in ten minutes, I felt I’d found a friend. I had discovered a man who takes pleasure in good reading and wants others to experience the same, a self-taught sage who puts each and every graduate-degreed friend of mine to shame with his scope of knowledge (living proof of the Good Will Hunting thesis that all you need for an education is a library card). Carl’s a skeptical iconoclast who currently works for the Jesuits in a publishing house. The Jesuits, no intellectual couch-potatoes themselves, probably admire his disciplined and rigorously-exercised mind.

We’ve drifted in and out of Chicago-area suburban writer’s groups and events. Even though my chosen arena of the writing world is the novel and he likes the fencing piste of the short story, we each found interesting aspects in the other’s writing and shared many a profitable critique session. Carl’s been published a few times (including in the old paper Black Gate with “The Final Flight of Major Havoc” in #9 “A tiny gem” -Lisa DuMond, SF Site), and in some ways, his successes are more noteworthy than mine, just because it’s so wretchedly hard to get any recognition as a short fiction writer.

How many short fiction guys who dabble in Sword and Sorcery have been featured on NPR? Yeah. That’s the mountain Carl climbed.

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New Treasures: Deadbeat: Makes You Stronger by Guy Adams

New Treasures: Deadbeat: Makes You Stronger by Guy Adams

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Deadbeats Guy Adams-smallI first stumbled on the novels of Guy Adams with The World House and its sequel, Restoration, both modern fantasy from Angry Robot, and his novel of hidden laboratories, genetic engineering, and Sherlock Holmes, The Army of Dr. Moreau (August, 2012). But it was his gonzo fantasy-western, The Good The Bad and the Infernal, released in March, that really got my attention.

Guy is not exactly sitting on his hands. The sequel to his March novel, Once Upon a Time in Hell, is scheduled to arrive in December, and his companion to the hit TV series Sherlock, The Sherlock Files, shipped in July. For those of you not keeping score, that’s four books in about 18 months. Damn.

So you can imagine my surprise when my weekly trip to the bookstore turned up Deadbeat: Makes You Stronger, a paperback by Guy Adams that was released in June, 2013. This is a pretty impressive run — all the more impressive because this one sounds like the most intriguing book yet.

Max and Tom are old, old friends, once actors. Tom now owns a jazz nightclub called Deadbeat which, as well as being their source of income, is also something of an in-joke. In a dark suburban churchyard one night they see a group of men are loading a coffin into the back of a van. But, why would you be taking a full coffin away from a graveyard and, more importantly, why is the occupant still breathing?

Tom and Max are on the case. God help us…

Deadbeat was published by Titan books in June 2013. It is 289 pages, priced at $7.99 for both the paperback and digital versions. The sequel, Deadbeat: Dogs of Waugh, is scheduled to arrive June 2014.

“Aren’t You a Little Short for a Stormtrooper?” Or, How to Describe Characters

“Aren’t You a Little Short for a Stormtrooper?” Or, How to Describe Characters

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Expecting Someone Taller-smallAs it happens, this line isn’t needed where it appears. We’re watching a movie and we can see for ourselves how tall Luke Skywalker is.

But imagine that we’re reading the screenplay or a novel. That one line tells us quite a bit. That troopers are usually tall. That Luke isn’t.

For a really brilliant example of how this works in a novel, consider Tom Holt’s Expecting Someone Taller. Without even opening the book, readers immediately know something about the main character’s appearance: he’s shorter than anyone expects.

I thought I was finished with exposition in my last post – or as finished as a writer ever is when talking about the elements of writing. But then I realized that, in a way, description is a particular form of exposition, just as necessary, and just as likely – yes, I’ll say it – to be skipped, or at least skimmed, by readers if it’s too long.

And description, like other forms of exposition, carries its own peculiar difficulties. What I’d like to talk about this week is how characters, especially main characters, are described. You know, what they look like, not their personalities.

[Aside: Is a fictional character an object? In giving them human characteristics, are we indulging in personification?]

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Drums of Fu Manchu, Part Four

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Drums of Fu Manchu, Part Four

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51GMetCspFL__SY346_1134691Sax Rohmer’s The Drums of Fu Manchu was first serialized in Collier’s from April 1 to June 3, 1939. It was published in book form later that year by Cassel in the UK and Doubleday in the US. The last quarter of the book picks up with Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Bart Kerrigan having witnessed Dr. Fu Manchu’s meeting with German dictator Rudolf Adlon. Der Fuhrer received his final warning from the Si-Fan and was given one hour to leave Venice or else he would face assassination.

Smith and Kerrigan make their way through the villa and come upon the lotus room with the trap floor once more. Inside the room is Ardatha, with a set of keys, on a mission of mercy to save them from their fates. She leads both men out of the house, giving Smith a key to lock the door behind him, but refuses to flee with them.

Sir Denis quickly raises the Venetian police to raid the villa, in the hopes of rescuing Rudolf Adlon, who disappeared the previous night and has still not returned. The raid fails, as the villa is deserted except for the steward, who denies all knowledge of any Asian visitors and informs them the villa is the property of James Brownlow Wilton, an American newspaper tycoon, munitions manufacturer, and Nazi sympathizer (and a fairly transparent analogue of William Randolph Hearst). Mr. Wilton has just left his villa for his yacht, Silver Heels.

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Goth Chick News: Gaining Residency in Fear City

Goth Chick News: Gaining Residency in Fear City

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image008Have you ever become a fan of something in its earliest days and watched as it got better and better over time, until you were congratulating yourself at seeing the early greatness before everyone else caught on?

Or maybe that’s just me.

Usually it’s authors or film makers I have the pleasure of meeting on their freshman outings, and you can just tell that if you keep an eye on some them, things are going to get even more amazing as they further hone their craft.

In this particular case, it’s a hybrid of all the pop culture creativity that has been so much fun to follow.

Creating a haunted attraction from the ground up takes all the effort you can imagine — doubled. There’s the space, the permits, the theme, the detailed sets – costumes, makeup, actors, and promotion. Basically, all the components (and expense) of a stage production or an indy film with the additional elements of crowd control and liability insurance.

Fear City just kicked off its third season with a “Bloody Red Carpet” event on October 4th and its evolution has been a scream to watch.

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Vintage Treasures: Ronald Welch’s Knight Crusader

Vintage Treasures: Ronald Welch’s Knight Crusader

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Knight Crusader
“The British Harold Lamb”

Try not to lick your cracked lips. Don’t think of water. Listen to the Saracen arrows buzz past. Don’t flinch! Most of all, hold the line!

Grumpy old Sir Fulk can’t stand the heat. He raises his helm and ignoring the shouts of the other crusaders, waits while his son, Sir Joscelin, shares the last of his flask.

Whirrrrrrr! Thock!

An arrow takes Sir Fulk in the throat. There’s blood, there’s thrashing, and the old knight dies in the arms of his son, the effete Sir Joscelin.

Kurtzhau – age 6 – lets out a cry, as if he too were there, riding out under the baking 12th-century sun to face the army of Saladin. This is four years ago and I’m reading aloud from Ronald Welch’s Knight Crusader.

Now, Sir Joscelin — he of the camp voice, the silk clothing, perfumed handkerchief, the tough-as-nails young warrior who enjoyed winding up his conservative father with his decadent ways – charges out solo, determined on revenge.

Another cry from Kurtzhau. He draws up the covers. It’s Sunday morning, we’re reading in bed, and only now am I remembering that Ronald Welch, though nominally writing Children’s Fiction — he won the Carnegie medal for this — is ruthless with his body count.

Like the Crusader army, I’m caught in a cleft stick. If I stop, Kurtzhau won’t have closure. If I go on… well… Sir Philip, the hero, has a “character shield.” Let’s just say that his friends don’t.

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Working with Stanley Schmidt

Working with Stanley Schmidt

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Stanley SchmidtIt’s hard for me to believe that I worked with Stan for over thirty of the thirty-four years that he spent at the helm of Analog.

When I started at Davis Publications as an assistant in the subsidiary rights department, Stan was the imposing figure down the hall. Stan shared an office with Betsy Mitchell. He was the first person I ever knew who could work from home — he only came into the office three days a week.

Later, at management’s request (because they were always after our office space), his schedule was reduced to just one day a week in the office, which suited him fine. Stan’s assistant was responsible for mailing him a big box of slush manuscripts, and whatever else he needed, each month.

As I got to know him, I became less intimidated, but no less impressed. Stan is one person who has never lost the curiosity that drove him as a child. As a young person, this inquisitiveness led to science fiction and to being what would now be called a semifinalist in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search. As an adult, this curiosity has opened up many different avenues. He and his wife, Joyce, love nature and have a profound understanding of America’s flora and fauna. They have hiked and/or backpacked all over the country.

My family and I have been fortunate to be invited on some of those hikes. Although they are both in terrific shape, the Schmidts are kind to their companions, even when we are not particularly fit or when we are accompanied by a three-year-old. Because they like to stop to look, marvel, and identify the leaves and birds and ferns and snakes around them, they set a relaxed pace. Still, we’ve all made it to the top of peaks and there is little in life more beautiful than the memory of picnicking while watching turkey vultures soar below us and listening to Stan play the recorder.

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