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Vintage Treasures: City Under the Sea by Kenneth Bulmer

Vintage Treasures: City Under the Sea by Kenneth Bulmer

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City Under the Sea Kenneth Bulmer Ace-small City Under the Sea Kenneth Bulmer UK-small City Under the Sea Kenneth Bulmer Avon

As you may have noticed if you’ve been following my Vintage Treasures posts since I returned from the Windy City Pulp & Paper show, I’ve been time-traveling back to the early 1980s in my big green chair, courtesy of some newly acquired vintage magazines, paperbacks, and fanzines.

Al those ads, editorials, and reviews have rekindled an interest in the forgotten books of the era. I find myself browsing my library, shopping for titles from the early 80s. Last night, I picked up a handsome Avon paperback from January 1980, the very threshold of the decade, and settled back into my chair to try it out.

Of course, when I finally bothered to look at the copyright, I discovered that City Under the Sea wasn’t written in the 80s. It first appeared three decades earlier in 1957 as an Ace Double, back-to-back with Poul Anderson’s Star Ways, and it was reprinted multiple times in the intervening years.

Above is a sample of some of the various editions over the years (click for bigger versions). If I owned these editions, I wouldn’t be the clueless reader you see before you. This is why a huge paperback collection is so essential.

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Lord Dunsany and the Billiards Club

Lord Dunsany and the Billiards Club

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Jorkins1I’ve always thought that “Lord Dunsany” has to be one of the more perfect names for a fantasy author. You might argue that this isn’t his name, merely his title, and that Edward Plunkett might not sound quite so perfect, fantasy-wise. But on the other hand, it’s really Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, and growing up I always believed that the “Drax” must somehow derive from “draco.” While I’ve never been able to confirm that, I still feel that it should be so, and that in a perfect world, someone in his lordship’s family was named for a dragon – which really would make it the perfect name for a fantasy author.

All of which would work out quite well, not just for his lordship, but for us, since Dunsany is one of the leading figures in 20th-century fantasy, whose work predates that of Lewis and Tolkien. The quality that I’ve always associated with Dunsany’s writing is an air of sublimity. There’s always the feeling in his work of great immensity, of something just outside of our reach, that we’re only being shown a part of a much greater whole. A couple of posts ago, I was talking about types of magic, and in those terms, Dunsany’s falls into the category of the mysterious, rather than the quantifiable.

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A Must for Sax Rohmer Fans – A Rohmer Miscellany

A Must for Sax Rohmer Fans – A Rohmer Miscellany

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Rohmer Miscellanysumuru-cover-final+flapsJohn Robert Colombo is a Canadian author and poet with over 200 titles to his credit. Apart from the acclaim his creative work has brought him, he is also a lifelong Sax Rohmer fan and collector, who has distinguished himself in this rarefied circle. A charter member of the now-defunct Sax Rohmer Society and early contributor to the society’s official publication, The Rohmer Review, Colombo never lost his passion for the weird fiction of this former bestselling thriller author. Rather late in his prestigious literary career, Colombo decided to contribute to Rohmerania by expanding the author’s catalogue in conjunction with Dr. George Vanderburgh’s Battered Silicon Dispatch Box imprint.

Colombo edited the definitive collection of Rohmer’s female variation on Fu Manchu with The Sumuru Omnibus, a massive tome which brought together all five Sumuru novels, penned during the author’s last decade, and preserved them in their original unexpurgated text. Colombo also compiled a monograph of Sumuru’s aphorisms direct from Rohmer’s original text with Tears of Our Lady. The unique feature of the monograph being that this same title exists within the fictional universe of the books and is referred to and quoted from frequently. Now, thanks to Colombo’s efforts, Sumuru’s fictional monograph exists as a real world collectible. Colombo and Vanderburgh also competed (unknowingly at first) with Will Murray and Altus Press in publishing the first book to collect all of Rohmer’s tales of The Crime Magnet. Still later, they teamed to produce the first anthology of Rohmer’s non-fiction articles and autobiographical essays, Pipe Dreams, spanning the author’s entire career.

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Goth Chick News: Adam Nevill Knows What Scares Us: The House of Small Shadows

Goth Chick News: Adam Nevill Knows What Scares Us: The House of Small Shadows

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Anne Rice and her DollsSome years ago, when Anne Rice was still in residence in New Orleans, I had the opportunity to tour one of her Garden District properties. St. Elizabeth’s was a 47,000 square foot Catholic orphanage built in the 1860’s and after it was purchased by Rice in 1993, one of its many uses was to house Rice’s extensive doll collection. A devotee for nearly twenty years, Rice had dolls from all over the world, including one-of-a-kind antiques and commissioned works, numbering over 2,000 individual pieces.

Now, I have been to some decidedly creepy places in my travels. I’ve spent an embarrassing number of hours hunkered down in dilapidated buildings or picking my way through damp, dark places clutching one ectoplasmic sensing device or another.

But in the rooms of Rice’s 19th century New Orleans monolith, crowded wall-to-wall with black-eyed, porcelain-faced dolls, was by far the most skeeved out I have ever felt.

Dolls rank right up there with clowns, which is probably why the movie Poltergeist featured a clown doll.

It knew what scared us, all right.

And so apparently does UK bestselling horror novelist, Adam Nevill.

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz

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Deryni RisingDeryni Rising
Katherine Kurtz
August 1970
271 p., $0.95
Cover art by Bob Pepper

When Lin Carter started the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, he began by reprinting works that were obscure and/or considered classic in the field at that time, but as he wrote in the introduction to Deryni Rising, he had hoped from the very beginning to be able to publish high quality new works as well. The first original fiction he published was Deryni Rising, the first novel by Katherine Kurtz.

I think he hit the ball out of the park when he selected this one.

The story takes place in a pseudo-Welsh land called Gwynedd,. The book opens with the murder of King Brion Haldane by the sorceress Charissa. Brion and his closest friend Alaric Morgan defeated and killed her father some years ago. Brion’s murder is part of her plan for revenge.

Brion has, or rather had, the ability to practice Deryni magic. The Deryni are a long-lived race with inherent magical abilities. A few generations ago, humans and Deryni lived together in peace until a group of Deryni rose to power and severely oppressed the humans in Gwynedd. They were overthrown by a Deryni priest named Camber, who discovered a way to impart the Deryni’s magical powers to ordinary humans. At first, Camber was considered a saint, but later the Church declared him a heretic. Now some humans tolerate the Deryni, while others seek to exterminate them. Most Deryni keep a low profile. Morgan is part Deryni and doesn’t hide that fact.

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Writing a Fantasy Series

Writing a Fantasy Series

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Shadows Son Jon Sprunk-smallThe fantasy genre loves series (especially trilogies.) As a fantasy reader, I love them, too.

However, my first published novel, Shadow’s Son, was originally written as a stand-alone. I suppose I had an idea that publishers would be more inclined to take a chance on a single book from an unknown writer, so I was shocked when my agent came back with a deal for a three-book series that would become the Shadow Saga. I’m not ashamed to admit I was also a wee bit terrified.

How in the seven hells was I going to write a trilogy? I had never written anything longer than a single book before.

And each of the sequels has a contractually-agreed deadline? AND they want outlines for books two and three right away? Gulp.

Despite my trepidations, the adventure of reaching out into unknown territory was also thrilling, so I dove in head-first. What was the big deal, right? Writing a series is probably just like writing three separate books, isn’t it?

Well, yes and no.

My personal philosophy is that every novel must contain a complete story. That means my books each have their own plot that begins and ends within those pages. However, with a series there is also a series arc in play, another plot (super plot?) that starts in the first book and continues to develop through each subsequent novel to the very end.

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New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection

New Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection

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The Year's Best Science Fiction 31-smallIt’s that time of year again. I’ve been reporting here on the annual crop of Year’s Best SF and Fantasy anthologies as they’ve arrived over the summer — including Rich Horton’s sixth (published in June), the eighth volume from Jonathan Strahan (May), and David Hartwell’s eighteenth volume (December 2013).

And now at last the great granddaddy of them all arrives: Gardner Dozois’s The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection. Arguably the most essential of the lot, it is certainly the most comprehensive and the most irreplaceable. Gardner, the Hugo Award-winning editor of Asimov’s SF for two decades, has been compiling and editing this volume every year without fail since 1984, and his richly detailed annual summation is required reading for anyone who expects to really understand science fiction.

In the new millennium, what secrets lay beyond the far reaches of the universe? What mysteries belie the truths we once held to be self evident? The world of science fiction has long been a porthole into the realities of tomorrow, blurring the line between life and art. Now, in The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection the very best SF authors explore ideas of a new world in the year’s best short stories.

This venerable collection brings together award winning authors and masters of the field such as Robert Reed, Alastair Reynolds, Damien Broderick, Elizabeth Bear, Paul McAuley and John Barnes. And with an extensive recommended reading guide and a summation of the year in science fiction, this annual compilation has become the definitive must-read anthology for all science fiction fans and readers interested in breaking into the genre.

The Year’s Best Science Fiction: Thirty-First Annual Collection was published by St. Martin’s Press on July 15. It is 750 pages, priced at $40 in hardcover, $22.99 in trade paperback, and $10.99 for the digital edition. The cover is by Jim Burns.

The Series Series: Sword of the Bright Lady by M.C. Planck

The Series Series: Sword of the Bright Lady by M.C. Planck

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sword-of-the-bright-lady-mc-planck-smallIf you liked Eric Flint’s 1634 books, if you liked The Chronicles of Narnia, if you liked… Well let’s just start with those two, because Sword of the Bright Lady deals in surprising juxtapositions of familiar tropes.

At times I wondered whether it dealt in anything deeper. I’ve concluded that it does. This is a fun book and it feels like it was fun to write. The author’s acknowledgments note that it took three months to write and ten years to revise. Am I churlish to wish the revision had gone one step further?

What works here works beautifully. Less than a day after I finished reading, I had to go back and prove to myself that the narration was in the third person, because I remembered Christopher’s adventures with first-person clarity, as if they had happened to me.

Christopher went out to walk his dogs one Arizona night and woke up in the snowy hinterlands of another world. His rescuers, an earthy old churchman and his orphaned servant girl, nurse him back to health, though they have no common language with him. When he’s well enough to pick up some of the household work, he tries practicing kata from his martial arts practice back home. Before he knows it, he’s challenged to a duel by a local nobleman, blessed by a language spell that allows him to understand exactly how much danger he’s in, and claimed by the local war god.

At first, Christopher insists that he’s an everyman, not famous back home nor expected to be famous by anyone who knew him there. But as he begins to see how he can help the people who have saved him, he accepts the identity the villagers thrust on him: “Crazy Pater Christopher, who never means what everyone else means.” He sets about industrializing his feudal neighbors — who all have lively personalities and complex lives — preparing them for the spring’s military campaign, because the war god Marcius has promised to return Christopher home to his beloved wife… um… what was her name again?

And that brings us to a sticking point I have to talk about. It’s not that M.C. Planck has done anything uncommonly wrong here, but rather that he’s fallen into a classic blunder that I see committed all over the place, but that nobody seems to talk about.

Let’s call it the Precious Ming Vase Problem.

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Take Advantage of a 40% Off Sale at Haffner Press

Take Advantage of a 40% Off Sale at Haffner Press

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Haffner Press Sale

Haffner Press, as we’ve mentioned once or twice before, produces top-notch archival press hardcovers collecting hard-to-find work by some of the most acclaimed writers in the genre, including Jack Williamson, Edmond Hamilton, Henry Kuttner, C.L. Moore, Leigh Brackett, and many more. On Sunday, Stephen Haffner, Grand Poopah at Haffner Press, announced a sale on several of his most popular titles.

This is an unusual occurrence. In fact, in all the years I’ve been collecting Haffner Press books, I’ve never seen them conduct a sale. If you’re interested in adding a few Haffner volumes to your collection, now is definitely the time! The books on sale — including Tales From Super-Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg, Leigh Brackett’s Shannach – The Last: Farewell to Mars, Henry Kuttner’s Thunder in the Void, the massive Detour to Otherness, and the four others shown above — are all 40% off.

To get the discount, you must order at least four books. But hurry — the sale runs only three days and expires on August 6th. Get complete details at the Haffner Press website.

Vintage Treasures: Tower of Dreams by Jamil Nasir

Vintage Treasures: Tower of Dreams by Jamil Nasir

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Tower of Dreams-smallEarlier this year, I was delighted to write a new New Treasures piece on the latest novel by Jamil Nasir. Tunnel Out of Death, as I noted at the time, had “one of the most original plot synopses I’ve read in the last year.”

That sent me on the hunt for his earlier novels, and over the last six months I’ve managed to track down most of them — including the highly regarded Tower of Dreams, which Jack Dann called “A powerful hallucinatory nightmare obsession from a writer who loves words and can turn them into the vital stuff of experience.”

In Advertising, Image is Everything.

Blaine Ramsey has an unusual occupation. He travels to foreign countries and lives like a native. He drinks in the culture with his mind, body, and soul. And he does it all in the name of American capitalism. For Blaine is an Image digger, one of an elite few blessed with the power to “dream” authentic images from the deep unconscious of foreign lands that are turned into alluring, computer-animated packages used by advertisers to sell their products.

But in a dusty Middle Eastern villa, something goes terribly wrong. Blaine is haunted by the recurring Image of a young Arab beauty suffering a brutal attack. For Blaine, her Image becomes the seductive source of romantic obsession–and a nightmare from which he cannot escape. And as Blaine is about to discover, her appearance in his dreams foretells tragedy — a disaster the likes of which the world has never seen….

Tower of Dreams was published in January 1999 by Bantam Spectra Books. It is 231 pages, originally priced at $5.99. That version is now out of print, but in 2009 the author self-published a trade paperback edition through iUniverse; that one is still in print. There is no digital edition.