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Neverwhens, Where Fantasy and History Collide: Tanith Lee’s Cyrion

Neverwhens, Where Fantasy and History Collide: Tanith Lee’s Cyrion

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Cyrion (DAW, 1982, cover by Ken W. Kelly)

The Empress of Dreams

I hardly need to sing the praises of the late Tanith Lee (1947 – 2015).  A two-time World Fantasy winner, Horror Grandmaster, Hugo nominee, yadda yadda yadda, she rose out of nowhere writing sword & sorcery (generally a male-dominated field) with the Nebula-nominated The Birthgrave, and went on to pen 70 novels, 300 short stories and create a style of lush, dark fantasy perhaps best represented by her two best-known series: The Tales of the Flat Earth and The Books of Paradys.

Lee was goth before goths, and alternative before we knew that was a thing. Her style, which was lush and baroque, but not always straightforward for the reader, prose designed to read aloud. Her settings and atmospheres were strongly in the tradition of “the Weird,” owing much to the influence of writers such as Lord Dunsany and Jack Vance.

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Vintage Treasures: Heroic Fantasy edited by Gerald W. Page and Hank Reinhardt

Vintage Treasures: Heroic Fantasy edited by Gerald W. Page and Hank Reinhardt

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Heroic Fantasy (DAW, 1979). Cover by Jad

If you were a sword & sorcery fan in the 70s and 80s, there wasn’t a lot to get excited about. Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords anthologies. Andrew J. Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness, naturally. And the occasional Conan pastiche and Lancer paperback.

And there was Gerald W. Page and Hank Reinhardt’s one-shot anthology Heroic Fantasy, which came out of nowhere, never had a sequel, but was packed with terrific original stories by Charles Saunders, Andre Norton, Adrian Cole, E. C. Tubb, Tanith Lee, H. Warner Munn, Darrell Schweitzer, F. Paul Wilson, and Manly Wade Wellman — and kept readers talking for years.

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Spacefaring Nuns at the Heart of a Galactic Rebellion: Our Lady of Endless Worlds by Lina Rather

Spacefaring Nuns at the Heart of a Galactic Rebellion: Our Lady of Endless Worlds by Lina Rather

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Sisters of the Vast Black and Sisters of the Forsaken Stars
(Tor.com, 2019 and 2022). Covers by Drive Communications and Emmanuel Shiu

I’m a huge fan of the sprawling space opera sub-genre, but my love is conflicted. All the best — from Peter Hamilton to Ann Leckie, Lois McMaster Bujold to Becky Chambers — comes packaged exclusively as multi-volume epics. If you want to enjoy space opera these days, you need to schedule a 4-week sabbatical first. And a lot of caffeine.

Thank God for Tor.com, which has kept up their weekly drumbeat of top notch novella releases — including Lina Rather’s Sisters of the Forsaken Stars, sequel to her debut Sisters of the Vast Black. It’s the tale of a heroic band of space-faring nuns, hunted and on the run, and yet still bound by their calling to provide help and mercy to those in need. And best of all, you can devour both volumes in an afternoon.

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Random Reviews: “Slaves of the Magic Lamp” by Anthony R. Lewis

Random Reviews: “Slaves of the Magic Lamp” by Anthony R. Lewis

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Aladdin: Master of the Lamp, DAW 1992, Cover by Maren
Aladdin: Master of the Lamp, DAW 1992, Cover by Maren

In November 1992, Disney released the animated film Aladdin, with Scott Weinger providing the title character’s voice, Linda Larkin portraying his love, Jasmine, and the late and lamented Robin Williams voicing the Genie. About the same time, Mike Resnick and Martin H. Greenberg edited an original anthology designed to take advantage of Disney’s new film. DAW Books published Aladdin: Master of the Lamp in December 1992, containing more than forty original stories by authors ranging from Janet Kagan and George Alex Effinger to Kate Daniel and Mark Aronson.

Atypical of most original anthologies, Aladdin: Master of the Lamp contains two stories each by Jack C. Haldeman II, Anthony R. Lewis, and Barry N. Malzberg. Lewis, who is best known as the Chair of twenty-ninth Worldcon, Noreascon, in 1970, and for the work he has done with NESFA Press, has also written several short stories, including “Fair Exchange,” which opens Resnick’s anthology, and “Slaves of the Magic Lamp,” which appears about half-way through.

Lewis elects to structure his story as a tale within a tale, although it isn’t clear that such a conceit is necessary, aside from playing homage to the version of the Aladdin story told in One Thousand and One Nights. In this case, the narrator is Lady Vashti, a cat/shapeshifter who exists outside the bounds of the physical world.

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Keeping Faith With the Rules of Writing: An Interview with K.D. Edwards

Keeping Faith With the Rules of Writing: An Interview with K.D. Edwards

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The Tarot Sequence: The Last Sun, The Hanged Man, and The Hourglass Throne
(Pyr, 2018, 2019, and 2022). Covers by Micah Epstein

The last two years were pretty lousy for the world, but fairly good for reading! It was time to read some newer authors, and KD Edwards’ Tarot Sequence had been on my list for quite some time. Urban fantasy with a male protagonist, Tarot, and LGBTQ+ friendly? Published through Pyr — one of the more interesting mainstream publishers? Definitely a must-read for me. Plus, have you seen those gorgeous evocative covers?

I started reading book 1, The Last Sun, in mid-2020. Did I say reading? A more accurate statement would be devouring. Book 2, The Hanged Man swiftly followed, and then I felt bereft. The story clearly wasn’t over, but there wasn’t another book?

I reached out to KD on Twitter to inquire, and he let me know that not only was there a third book on the way — The Hourglass Throne, due out May 17th, 2022 from Pyr — but that there was free extra content (novellas!) available on his website.

I caught up with KD at Worldcon 2021 in DC, and he graciously agreed to answer a few questions.

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New Treasures: Frolic on the Amaranthyn by Chase A. Folmar

New Treasures: Frolic on the Amaranthyn by Chase A. Folmar

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Frolic on the Amaranthyn (Sable Star Press,4/6/2022). Cover art by Goran Gligović

Frolic on the Amaranthyn will be published by Sable Star Press on April 6th, 2022. It is 130 pages, priced at$7.99 paperback and $2.99 in digital formats (available soon from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others).  Cover art by Goran Gligović. This post announces the release and previews excerpts.

Chase A. Folmar has been demonstrating his command of Weird Fiction, Sword & Sorcery (S&S), and the English language in various short fiction entries (primarily via Whetstone: Amateur Magazine of Sword & Sorcery & Witchhouse: Amateur Magazine of Cosmic Horror online magazines). This novella, Frolic on the Amaranthyn, seems to be his print debut. If you are not familiar with his previous work, you may misconstrue the contents from the title as being a fantasy romance (which it is not; and, you can check out his stories in Whetstone #1 #2 #4 or Witchhouse #1).
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Vintage Treasures: The Worlds of Fritz Leiber

Vintage Treasures: The Worlds of Fritz Leiber

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The Worlds of Fritz Leiber (Ace, 1976). Cover by Patrick Woodroffe

Fritz Leiber died 30 years ago, in 1992, but he’s in no real danger of being forgotten. His Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories remain poplar and are still in print, and so are many of his acclaimed novels and collections.

I wish more of his work was readily accessible to modern readers though, like his splendid 1976 collection The Worlds of Fritz Leiber. In his introduction Leiber said “I believe this collection represents me more completely… than any other,” and it’s not hard to see why. It contains both of his 60s-eras Dr. Dragonet adventures (“The Goggles of Dr. Dragonet” and “Far Reach to Cygnus”), a tale in his ambitious Change War time-war series (“When the Change-Winds Blow”), one Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story (“The Bait”), and his Hugo and Nebula-awarding winning “Catch That Zeppelin!”

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Future Treasures: Time Troopers edited by Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio

Future Treasures: Time Troopers edited by Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio

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Time Troopers (Baen, April 5, 2022). Cover by Kieran Yanner

It’s a delight to see a brand new anthology from the dynamic duo of Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio. Their previous collaborations (Space Pioneers, Overruled, and Cosmic Corsairs) were a lot of fun — and they even gave a shout out to the readers of Black Gate in the acknowledgments of Cosmic Corsairs for their help selecting the stories.

Their newest, Time Troopers, contains new and classic tales of Time Travel for military purposes, and it comes packed with stories by Robert A. Heinlein, Keith Laumer, Poul Anderson, A.E. Van Vogt, Fritz Leiber, Robert Silverberg, Gene Wolfe, Edmond Hamilton, H. Beam Piper, and many more. It arrives in two weeks from Baen, and looks like another solid addition to the fast-growing Davis-Ruocchio library.

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Taking Stock SF Ideas in New Directions: James Davis Nicoll on Alexis Gilliland’s The Rosinante Trilogy

Taking Stock SF Ideas in New Directions: James Davis Nicoll on Alexis Gilliland’s The Rosinante Trilogy

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The Revolution from Rosinante (1981), Long Shot for Rosinante (1981), and The Pirates of Rosinante
(1982), all published by Del Rey. Covers by Chris Barbieri (book 1) and Rick Sternbach (2 and 3)

It’s good to know there are other writers out there who obsess over vintage paperbacks the way I do. Well, there’s Rich Horton and James Davis Nicoll, anyway. And I enjoyed James’ thoughtful Tor.com article this week on the long-forgotten Rosinante Trilogy by Alexis Gilliland, published in the early 80s by Del Rey. Here’s his take:

Gilliland also had a lot of fun drawing on stock SF ideas and taking them in directions other authors of the time did not. Cantrell is, among other things, a deconstruction of those marvelous old-time SF engineers who never saw a cool idea sketched on a napkin that they did immediately put into effect without ever considering the ramifications… I don’t know why these books were not more popular, why they are not better known, or why there has been no new Gilliland book since the 1990s. The books’ brevity might have worked against them. Only one is more than 200 pages and the other two are closer to 185. They’re also remarkably eventful books: there is about a thousand pages of plot crammed into less than 600… they were fun and innovative in many ways. For those interested in judging for themselves, at least they are back in print.

Read the whole thing at Tor.com.

A Band of Black Hearted Bastards in a Comic Romp: Articles of Faith by David Wragg

A Band of Black Hearted Bastards in a Comic Romp: Articles of Faith by David Wragg

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The Black Hawks and The Righteous (HarperVoyager, October 2019 and September 2021).
Covers by Richard Anderson (left) and uncredited

I bought David Wragg’s debut fantasy The Black Hawks when it first appeared in 2019. It sounded right up my alley — the tale of a dysfunctional band of mercenaries drafted into a desperate conflict to protect a stranded prince.

I was delighted to see a second — and apparently, final — volume appear at the end of last year. The Righteous concludes the tales of the seasoned (and entertaining) mercenary band, and opens with them imprisoned and sentenced for execution for their part in the rebellion, alongside their employer, the knight Vedren Chel. A daring escape sends them on the run, and headlong into a brand new adventure.

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