Black Gate

On Friday I wrote here about the Best of collections from Pocket Books published in the late 70s, which featured Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson, Walter M. Miller, and many others. Most had introductions by Barry Malzberg, the respected editor who’d helmed Amazing and Fantastic (and future editor of the SFWA Bulletin), and I wondered aloud if the books had been edited (or ghost-edited) by Malzberg.

Reader Alvaro Zinos-Amaro, author of Traveler of Worlds: Conversations with Robert Silverberg, leaped into action. “I asked Barry if he did the editing & teaser texts, per your speculation,” he told me. “Here’s his answer, which he said was fine to share.” Based on the comments on that post, I thought you lot might be as interested as I was, so here’s Barry’s reply.

The eight Best of collections were conceived by Robt. Gleason, the sf editor at the time [my novel] Beyond Apollo was acquired for sublicense from Random House and he remained there from 1972-1976. Those collections were acquired by him; he was fired in 1974 (went over to Playboy Press) and succeeded by his young assistant (b. 1952) Adele Leone Hull.

It was her idea to commission me for the eight Introductions (at $75 apiece!) and she wrote the cover copy; I had nothing to do with the collections beyond the Introductions. Hull was the sf editor at Pocket Books until 1978, went over very briefly to Pyramid and when Pyramid in 1979 was fully absorbed (under the Jove imprint) into Harcourt she became an agent.

That’s the first confirmation I have that there were eight volumes in the series with a Malzberg intro (I count at least 10 overall), so I’m doubly grateful to Alvaro for passing that along. Our previous coverage of Barry includes my thoughts on his collections Astounding Science Fiction in the 1950s and Bug-Eyed Monsters (both co-edited by Bill Pronzini), and his novel Underlay.

R.A Lafferty is one of my absolute favorite classic SF writers. Though I’ve never read any of his novels.

Yeah, I know that sounds weird. But Lafferty is remembered today mostly for his brilliant short fiction, collected in priceless collections like Nine Hundred Grandmothers (1970), Strange Doings (1972), and Lafferty in Orbit (1991). And his novels… well, they’re not so well remembered. There are a lot of theories about this. In his wonderful SF biography Past Masters (the title of which is an homage to Lafferty), Bud Webster quotes Mike Resnick, who was close to Lafferty:

There were a number of people… who thought he was the most brilliant short story writer in the field. But his novelettes weren’t as good, and except for Space Chanty (sic) his novellas were unexceptional, and his novels were for the most part mediocre. I blame his drinking for this. If he could grind out a story in one or two sittings, he could be brilliant. But if a novel took him 50 writing sessions, you get the feeling that each day he had to refresh his memory of what the hell he wanted to do, how he wanted to say it, etc.

Not all of Lafferty’s novels have a poor rep. His first, Past Master (1968), was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula, and today has become one of the most collectible SF paperbacks ever published by Ace Books, with good-condition copies commanding $50-85 and up on eBay.

…

Read More Read More