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Retro Review: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Edmond Hamilton’s Galaxy

Retro Review: A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Edmond Hamilton’s Galaxy

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SFBC edition (1977)
… square jawed heroes… solutions worked out through — mostly — superior guts backed up by awesome Harrington-grade firepower

He remembered his father, the Valkar of years ago, teaching him from a great star-chart on the wall of the ruined palace.

“The yellow sun that neighbors the triple-star just beyond the last rim of the Darkness only to be approached from zenith or the drift will riddle you –”

THE SUN SMASHER: A PULP MAGAZINE SPACE OPERA CLASSIC (sic)

Yes, as an escape from the current sadness-of-the-canines, I’ve been reading Edmond Hamilton. Ironic really, since Hamilton’s an author with rockets on the cover, square jawed heroes within, and solutions worked out through — mostly — superior guts backed up by awesome Harrington-grade firepower.

Actually, Hamilton’s politics evolved with the century.

His early books are all about paternalistic bureaucracies and mighty empires. His later books are more questioning, with bureaucrats as antagonists, and Imperialism something one might sensibly turn one’s back on.

(I’m torn here, because I want to say more, cite examples, but I don’t want to spoiler the books for you. If you like vintage SF, and haven’t read Hamilton, then you’re in for a treat. Imagine if EE Doc Smith could actually write. )

All that said, reading Hamilton for politics is like listening to Hendrix for theme and variation — it’s there if you insist on looking for it, but the visceral impact is much greater.

I think of Edmond Hamilton as Hubble Telescope fanfiction.

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Future Treasures: The Watcher at the Door: The Early Kuttner, Volume Two, edited by Stephen Haffner

Future Treasures: The Watcher at the Door: The Early Kuttner, Volume Two, edited by Stephen Haffner

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The Watcher at the Door-smallWe’ve given a lot of space over to Stephen Haffner’s books here at Black Gate, and it’s for a very simple reason: no one else is doing the kind of superb work he is, bringing pulp authors back into print in gorgeous archival-quality hardcovers that are also within reach of the average collector.

Terror in the House, the first volume in The Early Kuttner, focusing on his weird-menace stories, was released in 2010. I dropped by Stephen’s booth at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show here in Chicago last week, hoping to find early copies of the highly anticipated second volume, The Watcher at the Door. No luck — but Stephen assures me it’s coming soon.

Henry Kuttner, alone and in collaboration with his wife, C.L. Moore, was one of the most talented and prolific writers of pulp SF and fantasy. The Early Kuttner gathers many of Kuttner’s earliest stories, most of which have never been reprinted. The series will run to three volumes.

The Watcher at the Door collects thirty stories published in a three year period between April 1937 and August 1940, in pulps such as Weird Tales, Thrilling Mystery, Strange Stories, Unknown, Thrilling Wonder Stories, and many others. The cover art is by Jon Arfstrom.

It was during this period that Kuttner married C.L. Moore, on June 7, 1940. They met in 1936, when Kuttner wrote her a fan letter. After their wedding, they wrote almost everything in collaboration, under their own names and under the joint pseudonyms C. H. Liddell, Lawrence O’Donnell, and (especially) Lewis Padgett, a combination of their mothers’ maiden names.

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One Picture = One Thousand Words . . .?

One Picture = One Thousand Words . . .?

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Huff price 1About a month ago Gabe Dybing wrote an excellent post in which he, among other things, praised my Dhulyn and Parno Novels (thanks again, Gabe). I obviously don’t quarrel with anything he had to say, but there was one observation that made me raise my eyebrows, and that was his take on the cover art. The whole post is worth reading (not just the part about my books) but what Dying has to say about my covers is important not just for me, but for any of us involved in the writing and reading of books. Looking at the art from the sales perspective, what it is about the cover that encourages a reader to buy a book, Dybing has two caveats. First, he feels the characters are too “posed,” in that they’re “battle-ready” when nothing is in fact happening. Second, he objects to the photo-realism, since it could restrain the readers in imagining the characters for themselves. As it happens, he feels the artist, Steve Stone, did capture Dhulyn pretty well, except for her skin colour, and her “wolf smile.”

Huff PriceInteresting bit about that. The artist chose his models from modeling/acting agency photos to match the physical descriptions I’d provided to my editor/publisher, Sheila Gilbert at DAW. It wasn’t until the models arrived for the session that Stone realized the woman was black. I know, it does make you wonder what the photos were like, but that’s not a question I can answer. The situation was explained to her, and apparently the model/actress didn’t mind being depicted as a woman from a race noted for the pallor of their skin and the redness of their hair.

As for the wolf’s smile, you don’t really want to see that. Ever. Trust me.

On the whole, I think I’ve been very lucky with my cover art, but before I go on I have to confess a couple of things. First, I have almost no visual memory (except for faces), and don’t really respond to visual cues. Off the top of my head, I couldn’t describe to you the cover of any book, not even the ones I’ve read over and over. Okay, I can recognize the Tenniel drawings from Alice in Wonderland, the original art from the Chronicles of Narnia, and the Dali illustrations from a recent edition of Don Quijote, but there I’m thinking about the artists, not the books. And even there I’m pretty sure I couldn’t tell you what was on the covers.

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Goth Chick News: Goth Chicks in Literature Rock Utterly…

Goth Chick News: Goth Chicks in Literature Rock Utterly…

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image010It’s been three years – count them because I sure have – since I crushed on author Steven Roman over his first novel Blood Feud.

Back then I was all enamored due to the fact that Roman’s main character, Pandora (Pan) Zwieback, was a zombie-shooting, werewolf booting, leather clad heroine of a goth chick.

Finally, a book I could relate to.

Never mind that Blood Feud landed in the “young adult fiction” category either. Roman doesn’t insult readers of any age, with lip-nibbling, flannel-wearing whiners. These characters were a dark fantasy cross-over all the way, with nary a “romantic” slipped in there anywhere.

If Roman’s name sounds familiar it may be because before Blood Feud he was responsible for highly successful, but mainly fan-boy facing fare such as X-Men: The Chaos Engine Trilogy and Final Destination: Dead Man’s Hand, as well as appearing in anthologies such as Untold Tales of Spider-Man and Dr. Who: Short Trips.

I’m not knocking Roman’s horror chops – no way, not now.

But when you’re a guy taking on the persona of a sixteen-year-old goth girl and aiming your story at a young adult audience, you’re taking on a whole new level of imagination.

And Roman delivered in spades.

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The Best Pulp Horror and Weird Tales: The Fantasy Catalog of Hippocampus Press

The Best Pulp Horror and Weird Tales: The Fantasy Catalog of Hippocampus Press

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Burnt Black Suns-small Ghouljaw and Other Stories-small The Wide Carnivorous Sky-small

When I returned from the World Fantasy Convention in Washington last November, the first thing I did was write about all the great discoveries I made in the Dealer’s Room.

I’m not just talking about rare and wonderful old books (although those were pretty damn cool, too.) I mean the smorgasbord of small press publishers who’d come from far and wide to display an incredible bevy of treasures, piled high on table after table after table. Seriously, it was like walking through Aladdin’s Cave of Wonders, except air conditioned and with decent carpeting.

One of the great discoveries I made was Hippocampus Press, a small publisher founded by Derrick Hussey in New York City in 1999. Their table was groaning under the weight of dozens of fabulous collections, horror anthologies, entertaining and informative journals, and stranger and more marvelous things. They specialize in classic horror and science fiction, with an “emphasis on the works of H. P. Lovecraft and other pulp writers of the 1920s and 1930s,” as well as critical studies of folks like Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and William Hope Hodgson.

I brought home a copy of their 2014 Simon Strantzas collection, Burnt Black Suns, and told you about it here. Today I’d like to take a few moments to re-create what it was like to stand in front of the Hippocampus table and take in their extraordinary output, the product of over a decade of tireless dedication to classic weird tales (and great cover design.)

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New Treasures: The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero

New Treasures: The Supernatural Enhancements by Edgar Cantero

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The Supernatural Enhancements-smallI stumbled on Edgar Cantero’s debut novel on Amazon as a bargain book, and I ordered it based on the captivating plot description (and, I must admit, because of the giant eyeball on the cover… I think it looked into my very soul.)

The Supernatural Enhancements begins as a gothic ghost story, and soon evolves into a twisted treasure hunt and modern-day adventure. Author Justin Taylor (Flings) calls it “Eerie… Cantero pays homage to Bram Stoker and H.P. Lovecraft and The Shining, but he’s no less enamored of The X-Files, fax machines, and punk girls with dreads.” Definitely worth a look, I think.

When twentysomething A., the European relative of the Wells family, inherits a beautiful, yet eerie, estate set deep in the woods of Point Bless, Virginia, it comes as a surprise to everyone — including A. himself. After all, he never knew he had a “second cousin, twice removed” in America, much less that his eccentric relative had recently committed suicide by jumping out of the third floor bedroom window — at the same age and in the same way as his father had before him . . .

Together with A.’s companion, Niamh, a mute teenage punk girl from Ireland, they arrive in Virginia and quickly come to feel as if they have inherited much more than just a rambling home and an opulent lifestyle. Axton House is haunted… they know it… but the presence of a ghost is just the first of a series of disturbing secrets they slowly uncover. What led to the suicides? What became of the Axton House butler who fled shortly after his master died? What lurks in the garden maze – and what does the basement vault keep? Even more troubling, what of the rumors in town about a mysterious yearly gathering at Axton House on the night of the winter solstice?

Told vividly through a series of journal entries, cryptic ciphers, recovered security footage, and letters to a distant Aunt Liza, Edgar Cantero has written an absorbing, kinetic and highly original supernatural adventure with classic horror elements that introduces readers to a deviously sly and powerful new voice.

The Supernatural Enhancements was published by Doubleday on August 12, 2014. It is 353 pages, priced at $26.95 in hardcover and $12.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Michael J. Windsor. A trade paperback edition is scheduled for release on July 21; I bought the hardcover new at a bargain price on Amazon.com.

Vintage Treasures: Razored Saddles, edited by Joe R. Lansdale

Vintage Treasures: Razored Saddles, edited by Joe R. Lansdale

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Razored Saddles-smallI was at the Windy City Pulp and Paperback convention here in Chicago over the weekend — hands down one of my favorite shows, and absolutely the place where I make my best finds, year after year — and I stumbled across a paperback I’d never seen before.

Now, this really isn’t all that unusual. Last year I found Carl Jacobi’s Revelations in Black, The Bumper Book of Ghost Stories, Stephen E. Fabian’s luscious art book Ladies & Legends, and a bunch more things, just as examples. But I expect to be surprised by odd British books and small print run paperbacks from the 1970s. I don’t expect to discover that a major anthology from the 1990s — from one of the biggest paperback publishers in the country, and edited by no less a personage than Joe R. Lansdale — has completely slipped my radar.

Razored Saddles was originally released in a limited edition hardcover by Dark Harvest in September 1989, and nominated for a World Fantasy Award for Best Anthology. The hardcover is relatively easy to come by, and in fact I’ve seen plenty of them over the years. But the paperback must have come and gone in a flash, because I’ve never come across a copy in over 25 years.

The dealer who was offering it for sale was well aware of its scarcity — he wanted more than I would expect to pay for the limited edition hardcover. Well, I’m loathe to pay more than the cover price of a modern paperback for any vintage paperback, and I didn’t in this case. But I admit I was tempted… Razored Saddles looks like a stellar collection of weird western tales from a Who’s Who of early 90s horror writers, including Neal Barrett, Jr., Robert R. McCammon, David J. Schow, Lewis Shiner, Howard Waldrop, Richard Christian Matheson, F. Paul Wilson, Richard Laymon, and many others. And let’s face it. That cover, with a gun-toting skeletal cowboy mounted against a stark blue sky, very nearly seals the deal.

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The Omnibus Volumes of H. Beam Piper

The Omnibus Volumes of H. Beam Piper

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The Complete Fuzzy The Complete Paratime-small

H. Beam Piper is one of my favorite Twentieth Century writers. He died a few months after I was born, on November 4, 1964, but his books are still in print today in handsome omnibus collections from his long-time publisher, Ace Books.  And if you’re willing to hunt for a few vintage paperbacks (and why wouldn’t you?), you can also find some terrific collections of his earlier novels and stories.

Let’s start with the classic series for which Piper is most remembered today: The Fuzzy novels (also published as The Fuzzy Papers), collected in the omnibus volume The Complete Fuzzy. An enduring favorite among Golden Age SF fans, the series began with Little Fuzzy (1962) and The Other Human Race (1964; also called Fuzzy Sapiens), and continued in Fuzzies and Other People, which was found among Piper’s papers and published two decades after his death, in 1984.

The Fuzzy novels have inspired several writers to pen new adventures featuring the titular aliens, notably William Tuning, Ardath Mayhar, Wolfgang Diehr, and most recently John Scalzi, who published Fuzzy Nation in 2011.

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New Treasures: Werewolves: A Hunter’s Guide by Graeme Davis

New Treasures: Werewolves: A Hunter’s Guide by Graeme Davis

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Werewolves A Hunter's Guide-smallGraeme Davis is the co-author of the classic Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game, and he’s written adventures and supplements for most of the major RPG lines, including AD&D, Pathfinder, GURPS, Freeport, Vampire: The Masquerade, Colonial Gothic, and many others. He’s no stranger to Osprey’s Myths and Legends line either, with both Thor: The Viking God of Thunder and Theseus and the Minotaur to his credit.

His latest book for Osprey, Werewolves: A Hunter’s Guide, reveals the shocking role that werewolves have played in some of history’s most significant events.

Fear the full moon; for on that day of lunacy the terrible wrath of the werewolves is unleashed. For thousands of years, from ancient Greek chronicles to modern news reports, from the depths of the darkest forests to dimly lit city streets, these dread beasts have stalked us in the realms of shadow and nightmare. Now, they are awakening. This book is the only thing standing between humanity and an overwhelming horde of snarling, ferocious lycanthropes. It reveals the secret societies devoted to studying their condition, providing information on where werewolves live, and what they do to survive. It illustrates the startling variety of werewolf subspecies, as diverse as humanity itself, collecting reports of skinwalkers, hengeyokai, and other shapeshifters from across the world.

Werewolves offers the dearly bought information from those that have hunted them down through the centuries – the best techniques to find and slay these creatures of the night.

Werewolves: A Hunter’s Guide was published by Osprey Publishing on March 24, 2015. It is 80 pages in full color, priced at $18.95 in trade paperback, and $12.99 for the digital edition.

Get Ready For Six More Best-of-the-Year Volumes

Get Ready For Six More Best-of-the-Year Volumes

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Imaginarium 3 The Best Canadian Speculative Writing-smallLast week I wrote a brief Future Treasures piece on the upcoming crop of Year’s Best anthologies, Get Ready For 11 Best-of-the-Year Volumes, scheduled to be released in the next six months. I covered the big books in the pipeline, including ones from Rich Horton, Paula Guran, Jonathan Strahan, Gardner Dozois, John Joseph Adams, and others.

As comprehensive as that list was, since it went live I’ve been contacted by several folks in the know who’ve pointed out that I missed a number of volumes. Without further ado, here are six additional Best of the Year volumes scheduled to be released this year.

Wilde Stories: The Year’s Best Gay Speculative Fiction, ed. Steve Berman (Lethe)
Heiresses of Russ: The Year’s Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction, ed. Steve Berman (Lethe)
Imaginarium: The Best Canadian Speculative Fiction, edired by Sandra Kasturi (ChiZine)
The Year’s Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, edited by Liz Grzyb & Talie Helene (Ticonderoga)
The Year’s Illustrious Feminist Science Fiction and Fantasy, edited by Nisi Shawl (Aqueduct Press)
Year’s Best YA Speculative Fiction 2013, edited by Julia Rios and Alisa Krasnostein (Kaleidoscope)

This brings the total to 17… and it still doesn’t include several announced titles, such as the new Night Shade series edited by Neil Clarke, The Best Science Fiction of the Year (first volume to be released in 2016), and Steve Haynes’ Best British Fantasy (no word on a 2015 volume.) If you’re a fan of short genre fiction, the next six months will be very good to you indeed.