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Invading Aliens and Self-Aware Submarines: The Human Zero, Edited by Sam Moskowitz & Roger Elwood

Invading Aliens and Self-Aware Submarines: The Human Zero, Edited by Sam Moskowitz & Roger Elwood

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The Human Zero and Other Science Fiction Masterpieces
Edited by Sam Moskowitz & Roger Elwood
Tower Books (224 pages, $0.60, 1967)
Cover artist unknown

Most of the names in The Human Zero are well-known SF writers, with a few notable exceptions. Perhaps Chad Oliver is well-known to more avid SF fans than I, but I didn’t recognize the name. Then there’s the odd man out here — Erle Stanley Gardner. Who wrote a great deal of fiction in his day but is best known for introducing the character Perry Mason to the world.

Not much to see in this collection of eight stories, at least by my reckoning. Two of the stories managed an Okay rating and the rest of them didn’t cut it.

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Vintage Treasures: Soulstring by Midori Snyder

Vintage Treasures: Soulstring by Midori Snyder

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Soulstring-smallMidori Snyder is the author of eight fantasy novels, including the Oran Trilogy (New Moon, Sadar’s Keep, and Beldan’s Fire), and The Innamorati, which won the Mythopoeic Award in 1999.

Her first novel was Soulstring, a fairytale fantasy based on the Scottish legend of Tam Lin. It was one of many American fantasy novels to draw on that source in the 80s and 90s, but it had the good fortune to have a great cover by Segrelles (click the image at right for a bigger version), and get solid notices. It launched her career, but sadly has remained out of print since its original paperback appearance in 1987.

Her power could ruin her family, the might de’Stains, whose magic has passed from firstborn son to firstborn son for thirteen generations.

Her power could defy her vicious father, who rules like a shadow over the land of Moravia… and whose only use for his daughter is that she produce a suitable heir.

Her power could defeat his evil enchantments, free her from his grasp and rock the walls of Moravia Castle itself…

If only she can learn how to use it.

Soulstring was published by Ace Books in November 1987. It is 182 pages, priced at $2.95. The cover is by Segrelles. It has never been reprinted, and there is no digital edition. Copies in good condition are available online starting at around $1.

See all our recent Vintage Treasures here

Cover Reveal: Dark Run by Mike Brooks

Cover Reveal: Dark Run by Mike Brooks

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Dark Run Mike Brooks-small

Saga Press had hands-down the most impressive launch of 2015, kicking off their new line of fantasy and SF titles with four popular launch titles early this year, including Ken Liu’s The Grace of Kings and Genevieve Valentine’s Persona. I caught up with editor Navah Wolfe at the Nebula Awards this year, and she assured me I hadn’t seen anything yet.

That wasn’t hyperpole… Saga has released over two dozen books in 2015, and their 2016 line up promises to be even more stellar, with titles from Kat Howard, A. Lee Martinez, Genevieve Valentine, and Black Gate author Frederic S. Durbin, with a novel that editorial director Joe Monti calls “a lyrical fantasy — his first in seventeen years! — which made me think of Peter Beagle and Patricia McKillip.”

At Black Gate, we like to go where the action is. So I’ve been pestering the good folks at Saga for a peek at their upcoming titles, and earlier this month they delivered in style, with a look at some of their 2016 releases, and exclusive comments from the authors on the cover art. We’ll be sharing it all with you over the next few weeks, and we start with Mike Brooks’ debut novel, the space opera Dark Run, which Stephen Baxter calls “Great fun … Golden Age chic!” and about which SFFWorld said “If you’re looking for a Firefly-like tale… you won’t be disappointed with this one. A quick read, but an immensely entertaining one.” It goes on sale June 7, 2016.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Wrath of Fu Manchu, Part One

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Wrath of Fu Manchu, Part One

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Wrathdaw_fu_manchuThe Wrath of Fu Manchu was a 50-page short story serialized in five installments in The Toronto Star weekly supplement from January 26 to February 23, 1952 under the unlikely title Green Devil Mask. It was given its current title when Rohmer scholar, Dr. Robert E. Briney made it the centerpiece of a posthumous hardcover collection of previously uncollected short fiction, The Wrath of Fu Manchu and Other New Stories first published in the U.K. in 1973 by Tom Stacey. A U.S. mass market paperback edition from DAW Books followed in 1976. It was subsequently reprinted in Allison & Busby’s Fu Manchu Omnibus – Volume 5 in 2001. Titan Books will reprint the original collection as a trade paperback in March 2016.

The story was initially published only in Canada due to a copyright loophole. Rohmer had recently sold the option to the television rights to the Fu Manchu characters and was prohibited from publishing new works about the characters in Britain or the United States until the courts resolved a dispute over whether the literary rights transferred with the agreement. This situation persisted for the next five years until the literary rights were eventually restored to the author. The character was an easy money-maker for Rohmer at a time when his bank account was suffering. Rohmer’s desire to fly under the radar with the Canadian publication of the story likely accounts for his original decision to avoid using the name Fu Manchu in the title of the story.

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Future Treasures: Warrior Women, edited by Paula Guran

Future Treasures: Warrior Women, edited by Paula Guran

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Editor Paula Guran has had a good year, with an impressive list of top-notch anthologies in 2015, including: New Cthulhu 2, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2015, Mermaids and Other Mysteries of the Deep, Blood Sisters, and my favorite book of the year (so far), The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy Novellas 2015. But she’s not done yet, and her next release looks like one of her most intriguing: Warrior Women, a collection of tales of courageous fighting women from Mary Gentle, George R. R. Martin, Aliette de Bodard, Nalo Hopkinson, Robert Reed, Nancy Kress, Tanith Lee, and many others. It will be released in trade paperback from Prime Books on December 17, 2015.

Here’s the Table of Contents.

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Human Enclaves and Experimental Planets: Rich Horton on The Sun Saboteurs/The Light of Lilith

Human Enclaves and Experimental Planets: Rich Horton on The Sun Saboteurs/The Light of Lilith

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The Sun Saboteurs-small The Light of Lilith-small

Over at Strange at Ecbatan, Rich Horton reviews another great old Ace Double, this one featuring Damon Knight’s The Sun Saboteurs, paired with G. McDonald Wallis’ The Light of Lilith.

Damon Knight of course was one of the great writers in SF history, a Grand Master. The Sun Saboteurs was his second of four Ace Double halves (three separate books). It is an expansion of his 1955 novella “The Earth Quarter,” and it is about 37,000 words long. G. (for Geraldine) McDonald Wallis is almost unknown in the SF field — this novel and her 1963 Ace Double half Legend of Lost Earth are her only in-genre publications. However, she had an extensive career under the name “Hope Campbell”…

I don’t really think that Don Wollheim (or whoever else selected Ace Double pairings) necessarily chose stories that were thematically or otherwise related, but every so often it happened. This is a particularly striking case. Both The Sun Saboteurs and The Light of Lilith present a strikingly anti-Campbellian theme. In both, humans are presented as evil warmongers amid a generally peaceful Galaxy. In both, humans are forced to accept their inferiority to many alien species, and in both, many or most humans simply fail to do so. In both, humans are faced with isolation in the Solar System, and eventually with extinction. That said, one novel is far better than the other.

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New Treasures: Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont

New Treasures: Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories by Charles Beaumont

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Perchance to Dream Charles Beaumont-smallCharles Beaumont authored several highly regarded short story collections, including Yonder: Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction (1958), Night Ride and Other Journeys (1960), and The Magic Man and Other Science-Fantasy Stories (1965), and was also the screenwriter for a number of classic horror films, including 7 Faces of Dr. Lao, The Intruder and The Masque of the Red Death. But he’s best remembered today as the writer of some of the most famous Twilight Zone episodes, including “The Howling Man,” “Miniature,” and and “Number Twelve Looks Just Like You.” Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories is a new collection of his classic tales, with a foreword by Ray Bradbury and an afterword by William Shatner. Shatner’s piece recalls meeting Beaumont when he was cast as the lead in The Intruder, and their misadventures on the set together.

It is only natural that Charles Beaumont would make a name for himself crafting scripts for The Twilight Zone — for his was an imagination so limitless it must have emerged from some other dimension. Perchance to Dream contains a selection of Beaumont’s finest stories, including five that he later adapted for Twilight Zone episodes.

Beaumont dreamed up fantasies so vast and varied they burst through the walls of whatever box might contain them. Supernatural, horror, noir, science fiction, fantasy, pulp, and more: all were equally at home in his wondrous mind. These are stories where lions stalk the plains, classic cars rove the streets, and spacecraft hover just overhead. Here roam musicians, magicians, vampires, monsters, toreros, extraterrestrials, androids, and perhaps even the Devil himself. With dizzying feats of master storytelling and joyously eccentric humor, Beaumont transformed his nightmares and reveries into impeccably crafted stories that leave themselves indelibly stamped upon the walls of the mind. In Beaumont’s hands, nothing is impossible: it all seems plausible, even likely.

Perchance to Dream: Selected Stories was published by Penguin Classics on October 13, 2015. It is 336 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback, and $9.99 for the digital edition.

Clones, Deep Space Ships, and Surviving the Apocalypse on a Submarine: The Pocket Richard Cowper

Clones, Deep Space Ships, and Surviving the Apocalypse on a Submarine: The Pocket Richard Cowper

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Time Out of Mind-small Profundis-small Out There Where the Big Ships Go-small

Richard Cowper was a British SF and fantasy writer who published over a dozen novels and four short story collections between 1967 and 1986. Sadly, much of his output never made it across the Atlantic. Ballantine reprinted his first two novels in paperback, Breakthrough (1969) and Phoenix (1970), and DAW published perhaps his most famous novel, The Twilight of Briareus, in paperback in 1975. But those two ignored the rest of his work.

Fortunately, in the late 70s and early 80s Pocket Books brought six of his novels to the US, including the complete The White Bird of Kinship trilogy, and they were the sole publishers of his collection, Out There Where the Big Ships Go. It was the Pocket editions that first caught my eye on bookstore shelves in Ottawa — particularly the three gorgeous Don Maitz covers above. (You’ll note the maple leaf emblem on the top left of the Canadian editions.)

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Why Novellas? Tor.com‘s Stellar New Fantasy & SF Releases

Why Novellas? Tor.com‘s Stellar New Fantasy & SF Releases

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The-Sorcerer-of-the-Wildeeps-Tor Witches-of-Lychford-Tor Sunset-Mantle-Tor

Here’s the thing about Tor.com Publishing: I’m a total fan. Complete fanboy.  I know, I know, they pay me to tell people how wonderful the books are, but between you & me? I’d do it for free, because I’m a total sucker for the books we’re putting out. (Probably not full-time, though, so if you’re reading this, boss, keep the paychecks coming!)

In all seriousness, it really is a “dream job,” precisely what I’d hoped to be doing when I got into publishing: having opinions about books with wizards & spaceships, & making those opinions matter. I’ve picked up a bit of jack-of-all-trades over the years, & being part of a new experiment flexes those skills in ways I am still gleefully scrambling to figure out. Tor.com Publishing is proof that publishers are doing new things & evolving.

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Future Treasures: Word Puppets by Mary Robinette Kowal

Future Treasures: Word Puppets by Mary Robinette Kowal

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Word Puppets Mary Robinette Kowal-smallIn the last few years Mary Robinette Kowal has built a name for herself as a master of historical fantasy with her Glamourist series, which began with the Nebula nominee Shades of Milk and Honey in 2010. But she’s also known for her acclaimed short fiction, and in fact in 2008 she won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer based solely on the strength of her superb short stories — no easy feat in a field where most of the acclaim (and the awards) go to emerging novelists. She’s been nominated for the Hugo Award three times (for “Evil Robot Monkey,” “For Want of a Nail,” and “The Lady Astronaut of Mars”), and won twice.

In addition to writing, Mary is also an accomplished pupeteer who has performed for Jim Henson Pictures, the Center for Puppetry Arts, and other fine institutions. She brings her two careers together with her second short story collection, Word Puppets, which goes on sale from Prime Books on November 5.

Celebrated as the author of five acclaimed historical fantasy novels in the Glamourist series, Mary Robinette Kowal is also well known as an award-winning author of short science fiction and fantasy. Her stories encompass a wide range of themes, a covey of indelible characters, and settings that span from Earth’s past to its near and far futures as well as even farther futures beyond. Alternative history, fairy tales, adventure, fables, science fiction (both hard and soft), fantasy (both epic and cozy) — nothing is beyond the reach of her unique talent. Word Puppets — the first comprehensive collection of Kowal’s extraordinary fiction — includes her two Hugo-winning stories, a Hugo nominee, an original story set in the world of “The Lady Astronaut of Mars,” and fourteen other show-stopping tales.

Word Puppets features an introduction by Patrick Rothfuss

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