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Science is Sorcery

Science is Sorcery

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Bloodstone (Warner, March 1975). Cover by Frank Frazetta

“Kane’s power is that of science, not sorcery — although with elder-world science, the distinction becomes blurred. But then, to the untutored minds the distinction is difficult to grasp, for this lies in understanding the forces at work, and in the laws they obey. For example, to produce a deadly sword to wield in battle, a master smith will use secrets of his craft to smelt choice iron into steel, forge steel into tempered blade, then balance, hone and haft the blade to the best of his art. Similarly, a wizard may utilize the secrets of his craft to forge a sword of starfire and incantations. Both swords seem magic to some club-swinging apeman, such as legend places on lands unknown to our civilization, but clearly one is born of science, the other spawned by sorcery…”

—Karl Edward Wagner, Bloodstone

In the hobby of tabletop role-playing games, the influence of J.R.R. Tolkien looms prominently, and the reason for this makes perfect sense: By the mid- to late 1960s, Tolkien fever (i.e., fervent esteem for The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings) was reaching epic proportions, fueled by the mass market release of affordable paperbacks published by Ballantine Books. “Frodo Lives!” became a counterculture slogan on buttons, bumper stickers, and T-shirts. In the form of graffiti, it was spray-painted in subways and under bridges. Wargaming enthusiasts of the American Midwest were not immune to the hypnotic effect of The Ring, and in one wargame, called Chainmail (Gygax and Perren, 1971), a 15-page “Fantasy Supplement” in the back of the rules proved to be a primary progenitor of the world’s most popular tabletop role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons.

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Vintage Treasures: Fantasy Annual III edited by Terry Carr

Vintage Treasures: Fantasy Annual III edited by Terry Carr

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Fantasy Annual III (Timescape/Pocket Books, May 1981). Cover by Lisa Falkenstern

Today we’re jumping back four decades to Fantasy Annual III, the third volume of Terry Carr’s companion series to his legendary and long-running Best Science Fiction of the Year, which ran from 1972 to the year he died, 1987. Fantasy Annual, which underwent a name change (and a change in publisher) lasted only five volumes, 1978-1982. But it was lauded in its day, and I still miss it.

Fantasy Annual III was one of the stronger installments. It’s anchored by a long story by Stephen King, “The Crate,” originally published in a men’s magazine in 1979, and which has never been reprinted in any of King’s many collections. It’s a terrific tale, one of King’s best works of unapologetic monster fiction, and was filmed as part of George A. Romero’s 1982 anthology film of King tales Creepshow, in a segment staring Adrienne Barbeau and Hal Holbrook.

The remainder of the book also makes excellent reading, with stories by Michael Bishop, Russell Kirk, Harlan Ellison, Walter Tevis, Fritz Leiber, Joanna Russ, Orson Scott Card, and Greg Bear, plus a Traveller in Black novelette by John Brunner, a John the Balladeer tale by Manly Wade Wellman, and The Vampire Tapestry story by Suzy McKee Charnas.

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“not really now not any more” Red Shift by Alan Garner

“not really now not any more” Red Shift by Alan Garner

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He began  to  climb  the  inside  of  the  castle, the folly, the empty stone.
“Tom?”
He climbed.
“Don’t be so bloody dramatic!”
At the top he stood upright, jerkily, balancing against the air above the wall and the cliff.
“You’ll not frighten me!”
He spread his arms and lifted his head to the sky.
“Through the sharp hawthorn blow the winds,” he shouted. “Who gives anything to poor Tom? Tom’s a-cold! Bless thee from whirlwinds, starblasting, and taking!”
“Stop it! You’re all quote! Every bit! Any you call me second hand!”
“Pillicock sat on Pillicock-hill. Halloo, halloo, loo, loo!”
“You can’t put two words of your own together! Always someone else’s feeling! Other people have to hell to find words for you! You’re fire-proof!”

Red Shift (1973) by Alan Garner, is a complex book that weaves together three distinct but related stories. The main story, set in 1970s England, is about Tom and Jan, teenagers struggling to maintain their love in the face of Tom’s disapproving parents, looming separation as Jan prepares to enter nursing school in London, and Tom’s unsettled mental state. Jan is constantly expressing her love for Tom, but he seems incapable of really accepting that.

The second story is about Macey is part of a band of deserters from the Roman IX Legion named Macey and a tribal priestess raped and held prisoner by his comrades following the slaughter of her entire village. He is given to berserker rages where he fights like ten men and experiences visions of the other two stories.

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Goth Chick News: ‘Tis the Season for Scary Stories

Goth Chick News: ‘Tis the Season for Scary Stories

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The Scary Book of Christmas Lore: 50 Terrifying Yuletide Tales from
Around the World by Tim Rayborn (Cider Mill Press, November 14, 2023)

Anyone who has ever read, or watched a screen-version of, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) knows that the tradition of telling ghost stories during the holidays goes back to the early Victorian era. In the 19th century, the celebration of Christmas underwent a transformation, influenced in part by the works of writers such as Charles Dickens and Washington Irving. These authors, among others, painted romantic visions of the season as a time for festive gatherings, family reunions, and acts of kindness, playing a large role in the Christmas images we have today.

However, alongside the cheerful and heartwarming aspects of Christmas, the Victorians had a lingering fascination with the supernatural. This interest in ghost stories and the macabre was likely influenced by earlier traditions and folklore associated with the winter season, particularly the ancient pagan celebrations of the winter solstice, when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead were thin.

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Vintage Treasures: A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski

Vintage Treasures: A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski

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A Door Into Ocean (Avon, February 1987). Cover by Line

Joan Slonczewski’s first novel, Still Forms on Foxfield, was published in 1980, but it was their second novel, A Door Into Ocean, which made a real splash, winning the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (not to be confused with the old Campbell Award for Best New Writer, now called the Astounding Award, on account of Campbell being a racist goofball.)

Slonczewski is referred to as ‘she’ and ‘her’ on virtually every bio and interview I’ve found on the web — including the Kenyon College faculty page where Slonczewski is a Chair of Biology — but their website and Wikipedia page give their pronouns as they, them, theirs, so that’s what I’ll use here.

A Door Into Ocean was the book that made readers sit up and take notice of Slonczewski. They followed it with three more books in what became known as the Elysium Cycle: Daughter of Elysium (1993), The Children Star (1998), and Brain Plague (2000). Often compared to Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness, A Door into Ocean explores a colony planet covered entirely by water, occupied by an all-female offshoot of humanity who have become skilled genetic engineers.

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Units of Conviction: Being Michael Swanwick

Units of Conviction: Being Michael Swanwick

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Being Michael Swanwick (Fairwood Press, November 21, 2023)

Prolificity is in the DNA of science fiction. H. G. Wells, whose most famous works date back to the 1890s, wrote some fifty novels, seventy non-fiction books, and one hundred short stories. Pick almost any SFWA Grand Master and you’ll encounter a bibliography that will engulf your life for many months, if not years. How many shelves to house the hundreds of books published, for instance, by Andre Norton, or Poul Anderson, or Michael Moorcock, or Jane Yolen?

A great many of the field’s best-known writers were, and in some cases still are, not just highly productive, but visibly so. The running tally of Isaac Asimov’s books was widely publicized and known — David Letterman, for instance, said on national television in 1980, “My next guest’s most recent published work is his two hundred and twenty-first book” — and many notable genre names remained in the spotlight because they always seemed to have a new book in the offing, frequently writing across genres or penning long-running series.

Within the cadre of esteemed, award-winning authors, there’s a subset that I tend to think of as covertly prolific. Oftentimes, they publish somewhere between a handful and a dozen novels throughout their careers, which by the standards of mainstream literature would be commendable but within science fiction doesn’t quicken anyone’s pulse.

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Mission to the Mesozoic: The Shores of Kansas by Robert Chilson

Mission to the Mesozoic: The Shores of Kansas by Robert Chilson

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The Shores of Kansas (Popular Library, March 1976). Cover by Mariano

Here’s another in my series of reviews of fairly obscure books from the ’70s and ’80s. Like some others, this review is of a book I bought at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention in Lombard, IL, earlier this year.

Rob Chilson is a Kansas City based writer (though born in Oklahoma) whose first story appeared in Analog in 1968. (Likely he is one of the few John W. Campbell discoveries still alive, though I think Donald Kingsbury, who is 94 and whose first story was in Astounding in 1952, remains the senior among that group.) His first stories and novels, including this one, were published as by Robert Chilson, though by the mid-80s he was using Rob.

I’ve known Rob for a number of years, seeing him most often at the KC convention ConQuesT. I saw him most recently at the World Fantasy Convention, which was in Kansas City this year, where he was kind enough to sign this very book for me. He’s a fine writer, and I’ve enjoyed his short fiction for a long time, with notable stories including “This Side of Independence,” “Farmers in the Sky,” “The Conquest of the Air,” and a series of stories set 60,000,000 years in the future, called collectively “Prime Mondeign.” (The most recent of these is “The Tarn,” from Analog in 2015.)

I had not read any of his novels until I recently tried his first, As the Curtain Falls, also set in the very distant future. It had interesting aspects, but ultimately I felt it didn’t quite work, and it was clearly a first novel that probably could have used another revision. I’m happy to report that The Shores of Kansas, his third novel, from 1976, is much better.

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Vintage Treasures: The Bard Series by Keith Taylor

Vintage Treasures: The Bard Series by Keith Taylor

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Bard, Volumes I-IV (Ace Books, 1981-97). Covers by Don Maitz

In October 1975 an unknown author named Dennis More made his debut in Fantastic magazine with “Fugitives in Winter,” the rousing tale of Felimid mac Fal of Eire, a bard whose tools are his ancient harp Golden Singer, and his magic sword, Kincaid. Eight more tales of Felimid followed, in places like Fantastic, Weird Tales, and Andrew Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness.

‘Dennis More,’ as it turned out, was Australian writer Keith Taylor, who began writing under his own name with the story “Hungry Grass” in Swords Against Darkness V (1979). In 1981 Taylor collected four of his early Felimid stories  — along with a brand new novella — in the fix up novel Bard, which Fletcher Vredenburgh called “a perfect artifact from the glory days of 1970s swords & sorcery.” It spawned a long-running series that lasted five volumes (with rumors of a sixth in the pipeline).

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Superior Sword-and-Planet: The Bane of Kanthos by Alex Dain

Superior Sword-and-Planet: The Bane of Kanthos by Alex Dain

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The Bane of Kanthos (Ace Books, October 1969). Cover by Gray Morrow

I read The Bane of Kanthos by Alex Dain in the original 1969 edition, which was part of an Ace Double with Kalin by E. C. Tubb. The cover uses the phrase sword-and-sorcery, but The Bane of Kanthos is a sword & planet novel. An earthman is transported to an alternate world via passage through a black gate. He discovers that the world is at risk from a great, reawakened evil, and that he is the only one who can save it.

There are staunch allies, nasty villains, and a beautiful warrior-princess. All these tropes are familiar, but I enjoy them. What raised this book above the standard level for me was the fine writing. I thought the author’s word usage and prose choices were excellent.

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Dread Monsters and Sinister Menaces: The Worlds of James H. Schmitz

Dread Monsters and Sinister Menaces: The Worlds of James H. Schmitz

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Telzey Amberdon-small Agent of Vega & Other Stories-small Eternal Frontier-small


Three Bean omnibus reprint volumes featuring James H. Schmitz:
Telzey Amberdon, Agent of Vega and Other Stories, and Eternal Frontier
(March 2000, November 2001, September 2002). Covers by Bob Eggleton

Two years ago I created a Facebook post about a Black Gate Vintage Treasures article on James H. Schmitz’s 1979 novel Legacy. One of the interesting things about Facebook is that you’ll occasionally get comments years later, and that’s what happened this time. On November 3rd of this year Allan T. Grohe Jr. responded to that ancient post with two intriguing questions for me.

John: do you know of any 1/ interviews with Schmitz? — other than the one in Moebius Trip #15 from 1972, which I’m aware of but seems pretty difficult to find, or 2/ literary studies of Schmitz’s works?

I first read Schmitz about 15 years ago, via Eric Flint’s Baen collections, and he ranks up there with Herbert as a worlds-builder, in my estimation! 🙂

Unfortunately I don’t know of any interviews with, or studies of, James Schmitz. But that comment did lead to a broader and very rewarding conversation with Allan, in which I learned about his own writing on Schmitz.

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