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Martian Pirates, Brain Creatures, and Hive Minds: Rich Horton on Ray Cummings and John Brunner

Martian Pirates, Brain Creatures, and Hive Minds: Rich Horton on Ray Cummings and John Brunner

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Wandl the Invader-small I Speak For Earth-small

Brigands of the Moon-smallRich Horton’s personal blog, Strange at Ecbatan, is a great place to hang out if (like us) you love vintage paperbacks and magazines. In addition to his reviews here at Black Gate (not to mention his editing duties for The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, the 2015 Volume of which just arrived last month), Rich also reviews forgotten bestsellers, neglected classics, and obscure books by writers who later became highly regarded. This week he takes a look at an Ace Double from 1961.

This week’s Old Bestseller post is on a book that was by no means a bestseller — it’s another Ace Double review, this time a new one (for me) — the 1961 pairing of a rather dreadful 1932 pulp serial by Ray Cummings (Wandl the Invader) with one of John Brunner’s better early short novels (I Speak For Earth), written as by “Keith Woodcott.”

Wandl the Invader was serialized in Astounding in 1932. It was a sequel to Brigands of the Moon, which began its serialization in the third issue of Astounding, in 1930. It is set in a future in which space travel is well-established within the Solar System, and essentially human civilizations have been discovered on both Venus and Mars. (Interbreeding is possible, for instance.) A small planet called Wandl has appeared in the Solar System, and Gregg Haljan (hero of Brigands of the Moon) is recruited to captain a spaceship to resist the evil intentions of the planet’s inhabitants.

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Vintage Treasures: The Plantagenet Novels by Allen Andrews

Vintage Treasures: The Plantagenet Novels by Allen Andrews

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The Pig Plantagenet-small Castle Crespin-small

Allen Andrews is the author of a number of fine British histories, including Kings and Queens of England and Scotland, The Whiskey Barons, The Air Marshals, and Wonders of Victorian Engineering. But for genre fans, he’s chiefly remembered for two light fantasy novels he produced in the 1980s: The Pig Plantagenet (1980) and Castle Crespin (1982), both reprinted in paperback by Tor with a pair of fine covers by Victoria Poyser.

The Pig Plantagenet is the tale of Plantagenet, a pig on a 13th century farm in Poitou, France, who schemes to ruin a great hunt that will slaughter all the wild pigs and other creatures surrounding the farm. The sequel focuses more on Fulgent the Fox, who has “fairly traditional designs on a local farmer’s poultry,” and who is also part of the local animal aristocracy. One thing leads to another, and soon two very different societies are locked in deadly conflict.

Both books drew strong comparisons to Watership Down and Animal Farm, which was doubtless inevitable with any fantasy featuring farm animals, but more astute reviewers saw more in these books, especially the rather clever way in which the author depicts a class-based animal society with surprising complexity.

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Future Treasures: The Story of Kullervo by J. R. R. Tolkien

Future Treasures: The Story of Kullervo by J. R. R. Tolkien

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The Story of Kullervo-smallJ. R. R. Tolkien died on September 2, 1973, but nonetheless he’s been tirelessly producing fantasy novels (and bestsellers) for the past forty years — including The Silmarillion (1977), Unfinished Tales (1980), the 12-volume History of Middle-earth (1983–1996), Mr. Bliss (1982), The Children of Húrin (2007), The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún (2009), and Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary (May 2014). A partial draft of Language and Human Nature, which Tolkien began co-writing with C.S. Lewis but never completed, was discovered at the Bodleian Library in 2009, and doubtless we’ll see that for sale at some point.

Seriously, the man’s library must have been crammed floor to ceiling with unpublished manuscripts when he passed away. I could never dream of equaling that level of productivity over 40 years, and I’m not dead.

The latest newly-discovered Tolkien manuscript to go on sale is the short novel The Story of Kullervo, to be published in digital format in the US by HarperCollins on August 27. It is the tale of an orphan boy with supernatural powers, raised by the dark magician Untamo, who killed his father. Kullervo is clearly the ancestor of Túrin Turambar, hero of The Silmarillion, but this version a more standalone tale. The manuscript was unpublished for many years, but previously appeared in 2010 in Tolkien Studies: Volume 7.

The world first publication of a previously unknown work of fantasy by J.R.R. Tolkien, which tells the powerful story of a doomed young man who is sold into slavery and who swears revenge on the magician who killed his father.

Kullervo son of Kalervo is perhaps the darkest and most tragic of all J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters. ‘Hapless Kullervo,’ as Tolkien called him, is a luckless orphan boy with supernatural powers and a tragic destiny.

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New Treasures: Edge of Sundown: Tales of Horror in the Wild West, edited by Kevin Ross and Brian M Sammons

New Treasures: Edge of Sundown: Tales of Horror in the Wild West, edited by Kevin Ross and Brian M Sammons

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Edge of Sundown Chaosium-smallI’m a big fan of weird westerns. But you already knew that, just based on my recent articles on R. S. Belcher’s The Shotgun Arcana, Molly Tanzer’s Vermilion, Guy Adams’s Heaven’s Gate trilogy, and the anthologies Ceaseless West, Razored Saddles, and Dead Man’s Hand.

But here’s something new — an original anthology of western horror from Kevin Ross (Dead But Dreaming) and Brian M. Sammons (Tales of Cthulhu Invictus, World War Cthulhu, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu), and published by Chaosium (Call of Cthulhu). Here’s a snippet from the guidelines.

We’re looking for stories set in the American west (west of the Mississippi River) in the latter half of the 19th century, basically from about the Civil War era until the dawn of the 20th century… This is an incredibly rich historical period, full of possibilities for good stories, from real-life heroes and villains to Indians and their legends, cryptozoology, and yes, even opportunities to use elements of the Cthulhu Mythos.

Most importantly, what we’re looking for are good, SCARY stories set in the old west. We’re not looking for tongue-in-cheek works, but ones that take the genre seriously. (Compare, for example, the old Gene Autry serial The Phantom Empire and the more recent western creature-feature The Burrowers.) There can be elements of pulp, fantasy, or adventure, but in the long run the story must have a very strong horror element to it. Other examples of the type of thing we’re looking for would include the serious western (and western horror) fiction of Robert E. Howard, films such as High Plains Drifter, Django the Bastard (AKA The Stranger’s Gundown), and the novel and film The White Buffalo…

With Edge of Sundown our target is very specific, like a bullet straight through the heart: good, serious, scary western horror tales.

Edge of Sundown was published by Chaosium on July 1, 2015. It is 306 pages, priced at $16.95 in trade paperback. There is no digital edition.

Vintage Treasures: Fantastic Stories: Tales of the Weird & Wondrous, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Patrick L. Price

Vintage Treasures: Fantastic Stories: Tales of the Weird & Wondrous, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Patrick L. Price

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Fantastic Stories Tales of the Weird & Wondrous-small Fantastic Stories Tales of the Weird & Wondrous back-small

Dungeons & Dragons publisher TSR acquired Amazing Stories, the longest running science fiction magazine in the world, in 1982, as a vehicle to help promote their family of games to SF readers around the world. By the mid-80s, TSR had their first fiction bestseller on their hands with the first Dragonlance trilogy by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, which sold well over three million copies worldwide and spawned dozens of sequels, and TSR quickly became very adept at leveraging all aspects of publishing to support their properties. If publishing D&D novels helped introduce millions of young readers to their products, why not try the same with Amazing Stories?

So TSR contracted Martin H. Greenberg to produce five mass market anthologies, mining six decades of Amazing fiction. The results weren’t particularly big sellers (and they didn’t save Amazing from eventually folding), but they were nonetheless a fabulous boon for collectors. Best of all, they included the most comprehensive survey ever done of the pulp Amazing Stories, a three-volume set containing nearly 1,000-pages, covering 1926 to 1955. I looked at all five volumes in 2012, in a Vintage Treasures article on TSR’s Amazing Science Fiction Anthologies.

The long-running companion magazine to Amazing, Fantastic — which published some of the finest early sword & sorcery in the field, including stories by Fritz Leiber, John Jakes, Poul Anderson, Avram Davidson, James Tiptree, Jr., John Brunner, George R. R. Martin, Philip K. Dick, Roger Zelazny, Michael Moorock, and Dean Koontz — merged with Amazing in 1980, and the rights fell to TSR. As part of their initiative to promote their magazine properties, TSR also commissioned Greenberg and new Amazing Stories editor Patrick L. Price to compile a deluxe anthology collecting 30 years of Fantastic fiction, with new artwork and an 8-page color section reproducing some of their most famous covers. The result was a fine collection, and one of the only anthologies dedicated to one of the all-time great S&S magazines.

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Just Launched: Rising Tide by T.L. Zalecki

Just Launched: Rising Tide by T.L. Zalecki

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SirensT.L. Zalecki is one of the first speculative fiction authors to be published by Amazon’s Kindle Scout program. In order to receive an offer of publication, she had to post an excerpt of her book on their site and garner positive votes from browsing readers. Rising Tide: SIRENS Book 1 launched yesterday to strong sales rankings and a five star review average (nine reviews posted).

Forget whatever you think you know. History has been rewritten, and the future is in peril.

In a world where rising ocean levels swallow coastal cities and people scramble for resources on an overpopulated earth, the survival of the human race depends on biogenetic research to develop aquatic abilities. The year is 2098, and it has never been more dangerous for the elusive Sirens to be discovered.

Until now, the Sirens have remained hidden from the human world, inhabiting an obscure, undiscovered island in the Indian Ocean. Amid growing discontent among their youth, the Sirens, led by headstrong Mello Seaford, decide to test the waters of open society by striking a deal with the all-powerful megacorporation, DiviniGen Inc.

And they risk everything to do it.

Will the risk prove worth it, or will the Sirens be subjected to the diabolical whims of humanity?

I will interview this author in the near future to learn more about the Kindle Scout program and her experience with it, so watch this space!

Emily Mah is a writer and the owner of E.M. Tippetts Book Designs, a company that provides formatting, cover design, and editing services for independent authors and publishers.

Future Treasures: Last Song Before Night by Ilana C. Myer

Future Treasures: Last Song Before Night by Ilana C. Myer

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Last Song Before Night-smallJust two days ago, in my Monday post on the fantasy debut The Sorcerer of the Wildeeps, I noted that Tor has brought us some strong debuts over the past 18 months. And now here’s another promising fantasy debut from Ilana C. Myer, a high fantasy that tells the tale of a young woman who dares to defy a culture that says that only men can be poets and set their work to music, and who undertakes a dangerous quest to restore her world’s lost magic.

Her name was Kimbralin Amaristoth: sister to a cruel brother, daughter of a hateful family. But that name she has forsworn, and now she is simply Lin, a musician and lyricist of uncommon ability in a land where women are forbidden to answer such callings — a fugitive who must conceal her identity or risk imprisonment and even death.

On the eve of a great festival, Lin learns that an ancient scourge has returned to the land of Eivar, a pandemic both deadly and unnatural. Its resurgence brings with it the memory of an apocalypse that transformed half a continent. Long ago, magic was everywhere, rising from artistic expression — from song, from verse, from stories. But in Eivar, where poets once wove enchantments from their words and harps, the power was lost. Forbidden experiments in blood divination unleashed the plague that is remembered as the Red Death, killing thousands before it was stopped, and Eivar’s connection to the Otherworld from which all enchantment flowed, broken.

The Red Death’s return can mean only one thing: someone is spilling innocent blood in order to master dark magic. Now poets who thought only to gain fame for their songs face a challenge much greater: galvanized by Valanir Ocune, greatest Seer of the age, Lin and several others set out to reclaim their legacy and reopen the way to the Otherworld — a quest that will test their deepest desires, imperil their lives, and decide the future.

Last Song Before Night will be published by Tor Books on September 29, 2015. It is 416 pages, priced at $26.99 in hardcover, and $12.99 for the digital version. The cover is by Stephan Martiniere. Read more at Myer’s website here.

Book Riot Suggests 9 Books That Will Challenge Your Idea of Fantasy

Book Riot Suggests 9 Books That Will Challenge Your Idea of Fantasy

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Imaro-smallOver at book site Book Riot, Troy L. Wiggins has posted an excellent list of fantasy books that venture outside the ordinary.

Fantasy recommendation lists are characterized by their safety. Curious newcomers to the genre, having enjoyed their sample of escapist literature, request more stories, more worlds to lose themselves in. More often than not, though, the recommendations that they receive are the same few critically acclaimed authors… My belief is that Fantasy literature is the perfect lens for readers to challenge our ideas of humanity, violence, society, and power. My recommendations in this list (yes, another list!) will reflect that belief. Buckle up.

His list includes The Worldbreaker Saga by Kameron Hurley, A Stranger in Olondria by Sofia Samatar, Aliette De Bodard’s Obsidian & Blood, and the too-often overlooked Imaro series by Charles Saunders.

On the other side of the “often gets compared to Conan the Barbarian” coin we have Charles Saunders’ Imaro series, a groundbreaking series of sword and sorcery novels and short stories set on the fictional continent of Nyumbani, which serves as an alternate world representation of the African continent. Imaro is the very first representative work of a genre called “Sword and Soul,” which takes fantasy out of Medieval Europe and places it in Africa. Imaro is a one of a kind type of book series, and finishing it can lead you down a rabbit hole of Sword and Soul titles – the genre itself is experiencing something of a resurgence.

Read the complete list here.

Sarah Avery Wins the 2015 Mythopoeic Award for Tales from Rugosa Coven

Sarah Avery Wins the 2015 Mythopoeic Award for Tales from Rugosa Coven

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tales-from-rugosa-coven-Avery-smallBlack Gate blogger Sarah Avery has been awarded the 2015 Mythopoeic Award for her novel Tales from Rugosa Coven, published in 2013 by Dark Quest. (As she put in in her e-mail to us, “Don’t look now, but there’s a very small lion in my suitcase.”)

The Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature is given to the fantasy novel, series, or collection for adults published during the previous year that best exemplifies “the spirit of the Inklings,” the Oxford literary discussion group that included J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis. The winners were announced at Mythcon 46, held July 31 – August 3, 2015, in Colorado Springs, Colorado. The complete list of winners follows.

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Adult Literature

  • Sarah Avery, Tales from Rugosa Coven (Dark Quest)

Mythopoeic Fantasy Award for Children’s Literature

  • Natalie Lloyd, A Snicker of Magic (Scholastic)

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New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois

New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection edited by Gardner Dozois

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The Year's Best Science Fiction Thirty-Second Annual Collection-smallIt’s always a mini-celebration in the O’Neill household when Dozois’ annual Year’s Best collection arrives.

This year’s volume comes packed with the best short fiction of the year by Nancy Kress, James Patrick Kelly, Adam Roberts, Ken Liu, Robert Reed, Gareth L. Powell, Karl Schroeder, Rachel Swirsky, Alastair Reynolds, Ellen Klages, Michael Swanwick, Lauren Beukes, Peter Watts, Lavie Tidhar, Paolo Bachigalupi, Aliette de Bodard, and many others — over 600 pages of fiction, plus Gardner’s detailed summary of the very best of the year in books, magazines, movies, anthologies, collections, websites, and much more.

Gardner is usually a pretty fair predictor of the Hugo Awards, and I when the Hugo ballot arrived every year I could usually just open up his volume and read most of the nominees. Not this year. As most folks know, this year the Hugo ballot was hijacked by the Rabid Puppies campaign (and, to a much lesser extent, the much smaller Sad Puppy campaign).

None of the stories on the Hugo ballot this year was selected by Gardner for his Year’s Best (or for any other Best of the Year anthology that I’m aware of).

But fret not. Here’s your chance to see what magnificent tales could have been on the Hugo ballot this year — all assembled for you in one handsome package.

The complete table of contents for The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-Second Annual Collection follows.

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