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Two Great Books by Poul Anderson: The High Crusade and The Golden Slave

Two Great Books by Poul Anderson: The High Crusade and The Golden Slave

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The High Crusade Poul Anderson-smallIf Three Hearts and Three Lions owes something to A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, then so does The High Crusade. But The High Crusade inverts Mark Twain’s concept. This book isn’t written by a modern who time traveled to Arthur’s court, but rather is written by a medieval scribe who witnessed Sir Roger Baron de Tourneville and his knights and court invade an alien spaceship and end up using it to conquer a major portion of interstellar Space. The bookends are provided by a space captain of Earth’s future space age, who hardly can believe, by reading the contained epistle, that humans from the Middle Ages have been in space for some time now and even have established a Holy Galactic Empire. Add to this, at the plot’s center, a courtly betrayal through a love triangle much like that of Arthur’s, Guinevere’s and Lancelot’s.

This book is really good. It’s a fast, enjoyable read. It was serialized originally in Astounding magazine as that publication was changing its name to Analog. When the book was published as a novel, it lost out on a 1961 Hugo to Walter M. Miller, Jr.’s A Canticle for Leibowitz. I find it interesting that Miller’s work, along with Anderson’s The High Crusade, limned medieval perspectives on futuristic landscapes. Perhaps this was the zeitgeist of the time. I read Baen’s edition of The High Crusade, which begins with a number of appreciations. This edition also contains a coda in the form of a short story called “Quest”, which takes place in the universe of The High Crusade. If the novel is a take on the Arthurian love triangle, then this story is a take on Galahad’s quest for the holy grail.

Also really good is what Wikipedia calls a historical novel and what Zebra, one publisher, calls heroic fantasy, though I certainly see no reason to quibble about terms of genre, and I’m guessing that terms were not so rigid in 1960 (or even in 1980, which is the date of the revised Zebra edition). I am talking about Poul Anderson’s The Golden Slave.

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New Treasures: Clarkesworld: Year Seven, edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace

New Treasures: Clarkesworld: Year Seven, edited by Neil Clarke and Sean Wallace

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Clarkesworld Year Seven-smallThese annual Clarkesworld anthologies are a tremendous bargain. The individual magazines are $3.99 each, but these volumes collect all the original fiction for a full 12 months in a handsome package for just $16.99.

If you haven’t tried Clarkesworld, you’re missing out on one of the most vibrant and celebrated SF and fantasy magazines on the market. It is a three-time winner of the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine, and in 2013 it received more Hugo nominations for short fiction than all the leading print magazines (Asimov’s, Analog, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction) combined. Last November the magazine was awarded a World Fantasy Award.

Clarkesworld Year Seven collects original fiction from many of the most exciting writers on the market, including Genevieve Valentine, Aliette de Bodard, James Patrick Kelly, E. Catherine Tobler, E. Lily Yu, and many others.

The book also serves as a fund-raiser for the magazine, and every purchase helps support one of the finest magazines out there.

This year’s edition contains a whopping 36 stories. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Join Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward in a Swords Against Death Re-Read

Join Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward in a Swords Against Death Re-Read

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Swords Against Death-smallI’ve been enjoying the re-read of Fritz Leiber’s famous Lankhmar stories over at Howard Andrew Jones’ website. Howard and Bill Ward have taken a break from their entertaining examination of Lord Dunsany, and have turned their keen eye towards one of the most famous sword and sorcery series of all time, Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser books. They open the series with an overview of the second volume, Swords Against Death, a collection of short stories. Here’s Howard.

Once I got past the short, storyless opening (“The Circle Curse”) I was engrossed. Every short story was approximately the same length, and a few were tangentially connected. It was a little like episodic television.

More importantly, it was exciting, fast-paced, brimming with magic and sword-play and horror and mystery — and beautiful women, a subject that was becoming increasingly interesting to teenaged Howard. I loved Swords Against Death so much that I read it at least six times in the next few years (oh, to have so much spare time and energy).

Swords Against Death was not only one of the first fantasy books I read, it was my introduction to true sword-and-sorcery. These days the line between sword-and-sorcery is a lot more blurred than it was in the mid ’70s. Back then you pretty much had high fantasy, or sword-and-sorcery, and I definitely preferred the latter for the grit and the kind of protagonists, not to mention the pacing.

Swords Against Death was published in July 1970 by Ace Books. It is 251 pages, originally priced at $0.75. The gorgeous cover is by the one-and-only Jeff Jones.

Read the complete overview here, and part one (a look at “The Circle Curse”) here.

Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction: The Great Years edited by Carol & Frederik Pohl

Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction: The Great Years edited by Carol & Frederik Pohl

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Science Fiction The Great Years Pohl-small Science Fiction The Great Years Sphere-small

Science Fiction From the Great YearsOne of my favorite pulp reprint anthologies is Science Fiction: The Great Years, edited by Carol & Frederik Pohl and released by Ace Books in 1973 (cover artist unknown), and by Sphere in the UK in 1977 (cover by Peter Jones).

Part of the reason I like it is because it’s part of a series I remember very fondly. The second volume, Science Fiction: The Great Years, Volume II, was released in 1976. It was also part of an Ace imprint, Science Fiction From the Great Years, a line of 17 pulp classics edited and selected by Fred Pohl and published in paperback between 1972 and 1976. All bore the colophon at left. I first discovered pulps in the mid-70s, in Jacques Sadoul’s marvelous art book 2000 A.D: Illustrations From the Golden Age of Science Fiction Pulps, and finding these paperbacks on the shelves proudly proclaiming their pulp roots at around the same time was an exciting discovery.

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See the Table of Contents for The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2015 Edition, edited by Paula Guran

See the Table of Contents for The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror: 2015 Edition, edited by Paula Guran

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The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror 2015-smallPaula Guran’s Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror is one of the better Years’ Best anthologies on the market. It’s been published since 2010, and each and every volume somehow manages to introduce me to terrific new voices in dark fantasy.

This year looks no different. Paula Guran recently announced the table of contents for the 2015 volume on her website, including fiction from Laird Barron, Dale Bailey, Gemma Files, John Langan, Helen Marshall, Brandon Sanderson, Simon Strantzas, Jeff VanderMeer, and Ken Liu. Plus plenty of names I don’t recognize…. yet. I’m looking forward to another great collection.

Here’s the complete TOC (alphabetical by author).

Kelley Armstrong, “The Screams of Dragons” (Subterranean Press Magazine, Spring 2014)
Dale Bailey, “The End of the End of Everything” (Tor.com, 23 Apr 2014)
Laird Barron, “(Little Miss) Queen of Darkness” (Dark Discoveries #29)
Elizabeth Bear “Madam Damnable’s Sewing Circle” (Dead Man’s Hand)
Richard Bowes, “Sleep Walking Now and Then” (Tor.com, 9 July 2014)
Nadia Bulkin, “Only Unity Saves the Damned” (Letters to Lovecraft)

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Future Treasures: Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly

Future Treasures: Seriously Wicked by Tina Connolly

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Seriously Wicked Tina Connolly-smallI met Tina Connolly at the World Fantasy Convention a few years ago, and had the good fortune to hear her read. She knows how to spin a tale, and has a gift for smooth, easy prose. If I could only bring a handful of books with me to a desert island, Tina Connolly would make the cut.

Her latest novel, Seriously Wicked, will be released this May and it sounds like a lot of fun. Keep an eye out for it — you’ll thank me later.

Camellia’s adopted mother wants Cam to grow up to be just like her. Problem is, Mom’s a seriously wicked witch.

Cam’s used to stopping the witch’s crazy schemes for world domination. But when the witch summons a demon, he gets loose — and into Devon, the cute new boy at school.

Suddenly Cam’s got bigger problems than passing Algebra. Her friends are getting zombiefied. Their dragon is tired of hiding in the RV garage. For being a shy boy-band boy, Devon is sure kissing a bunch of girls. And a phoenix hidden in the school is going to explode on the night of the Halloween Dance.

To stop the demon before he destroys Devon’s soul, Cam might have to try a spell of her own. But if she’s willing to work spells like the witch… will that mean she’s wicked too?

We previously covered Tina with her Nebula-nominated debut novel Ironskin, and its sequel, Copperhead.

Seriously Wicked will be published by Tor on May 5, 2015. It is 208 pages, priced at $17.99 in hardcover and $9.99 for the digital edition.

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Asimov’s The Caves of Steel

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Asimov’s The Caves of Steel

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caves of steelIn 1953, Isaac Asimov combined the science fiction and mystery genres with a three-part serial. In The Caves of Steel, Asimov painted a bleak future for humanity that served as more than just the background of a murder investigation.

Earth became overpopulated and civilization had to adapt to the massive resource needs. Cities became densely populated collectives. Efficiency drove everything. Section units (one, two and three room apartments) rather than houses. Group eating areas, rather than individual kitchens. Common shower and bath units instead of one (or more) per family. Hundreds of miles of high-speed conveyer belts, rather than roads and cars. The ancient, underground roadways were used by official forces to fight fires, to move about to quell riots and such.

Towns and cities were absorbed by ever-growing CITIES. The huge Cities were roofed in by domes until “Outside” became a terrible place that city dwellers never went to: they stayed in their caves of steel, eating mass produced yeast and hydroponics. Direct sunlight was not experienced. As Asimov says, “There was no doubt about it: The City was the culmination of man’s mastery over the environment.”

Then the Spacers came. Man had colonized other planets but those inhabitants eventually rebelled and broke free. They then returned and easily defeated Earth’s defenses.

The Spacers lived on other planets in wide-open spaces, with many robot servants. Asimov essentially paints a picture of the rich, upper class, living indolently, and the poor, lower class, packed together like sardines.

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New Treasures: Tales from the Nightside by Simon R. Green

New Treasures: Tales from the Nightside by Simon R. Green

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Tales From the Nightside-smallSimon R. Green’s first Nightside book, Something from the Nightside, was published a dozen years ago. Since then there have been eleven more; the most recent was The Bride Wore Black Leather (2012).

I always thought Nightside was a fascinating setting, but I’ve never had time to try one of the novels. But Tales from the Nightside, the first collection in the series, offers a chance to take a short trip to Nightside — just what I’ve been looking for. It includes ten stories, including “The Big Game,” a novella that has never before been published.

Welcome to the Nightside. It’s the secret heart of London, beating to its own rhythm, pumping lifeblood through the veins of its streets and alleys hidden in eternal darkness, where creatures of the night congregate and where the sun is afraid to shine. It’s the place to go if you’re looking to indulge the darker side of your nature — and to hell with the consequences.

Tales from the Nightside presents ten macabre mysteries that shine a dim beam into the neighborhood’s darkest corners to reveal things that should never come to light. Take a walk with such deadly and dangerous denizens of the Nightside as Razor Eddie, Dead Boy, and Larry Oblivion as they encounter things even more inhuman and inhumane than they are. And join John Taylor, the PI with a knack for finding lost things, as he confronts Sir Francis Varney, King of the Vampires, in a never-before-published novella-length adventure.

There may be nothing to be afraid of in the dark, but there’s plenty to be afraid of in the Nightside…

Tales from the Nightside includes the following stories.

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Vintage Treasures: Not Without Sorcery by Theodore Sturgeon

Vintage Treasures: Not Without Sorcery by Theodore Sturgeon

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Not Without Sorcery 1961-small Not Without Sorcery-small

Theodore Sturgeon’s first short story collection was Without Sorcery, a handsome hardcover published in 1948 with an introduction by Ray Bradbury. As you can imagine, it’s a tough book to find these days, even for collectors.

The paperback edition, released 13 long years later, dropped five stories and the introduction, and was re-titled Not Without Sorcery. It became Sturgeon’s tenth collection and was released in two editions, from Ballantine (in 1961, with a rather drab cover by an unknown artist) and Del Rey (in 1975, with a far more interesting cover from artist Darrell K. Sweet.) 1975 was the last time the book saw a mass market edition; it remained out of print for 35 years, until Kessinger Publishing did a facsimile reprint edition in 2010.

Sturgeon was a Campbell writer through and through, and all eight stories in Not Without Sorcery appeared in the two pulp magazines John W. Campbell edited: Astounding Science Fiction, and its sister magazine Unknown Worlds. The stories were published over a two-year period, 1939-1941. I’ve assembled some of the original covers below, because I can never resist an excuse to showcase pulp magazines.

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The History Manifesto and Sweeping Histories

The History Manifesto and Sweeping Histories

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foundation
“History is the science of Science of Science Fiction”

If History is the science of Science of Science Fiction — who said that? — then History is the bedrock  of Fantasy.

In High Fantasy the characters make new history by engaging with the old; Frodo disposes of the ring and secures Middle Earth’s future, but the Ring Wraiths are ancient kings and the politics is grounded in the past. In Low Fantasy — what we mostly call Sword and Sorcery — the characters forage like ants in the debris of history; Conan loots ancient tombs, and loses his sweetheart to an antique monster.

In between, the heroes of Heroic Fantasy delve in the past in order to remake the present; the heroes in Michael J. Sullivan’s Riyria Chronicles actually resolve the geopolitical plot with an extended stint of dungeoneering.

And if Science Fiction is about future history, then it’s also often about future ancient history. We love our alien artefacts and lost forerunner civilisations. What is Aliens if not a Dungeons and Dragons story, but with more face huggers?

So we readers of Speculative Fiction also have an appetite for history, not just the down in the dirt tales of derring-do with William Marshal or Harald Hardrada, or the Rifle Brigade, carving out their personal histories with blade or bullet, but longer thrilling stories of the rise and fall of civilisations, or the evolution of a particular strand of human experience, whether it be war or sexuallity, or gender, or commerce.

Oddly, as noted by a pair of top historians, not a lot of these books are written by card carrying academic historians anymore…

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