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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Man Called Spade

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: A Man Called Spade

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Spade_FalconbookIn last week’s column, I mentioned The Maltese Falcon, starring Humphrey Bogart. (Did you follow instructions and watch it for the first time?) Over eighty years after its publication, Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon stands supreme today as the finest private eye novel ever written. Bogie’s 1941 film proved that the third time is a charm, prior attempts in 1931 and 1936 having failed.

Sam Spade, the quintessential tough guy shamus, appeared in a five-part serial of The Maltese Falcon in Black Mask in 1929. Hammett carefully reworked the pieces into novel form for publication by Alfred E. Knopf in 1930 and detective fiction would have a benchmark that has yet to be surpassed.

Hammett, who wrote over two dozen stories featuring a detective known as The Continental Op (well worth reading), never intended to write more about Samuel Spade, saying he was “done with him” after completing the book-length tale.

But the public wanted more and his agent cajoled him into cranking out three more short stories featuring Spade. The first two appeared in American Magazine and the third in Collier’s in 1932 and they were collected into book form later that year as The Adventures of Sam Spade and Other Stories. In 1999, Vintage Crime published Nightmare Town, a compilation of twenty Hammett stories, including all three Spade short stories.

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Spring 2014 Subterranean Magazine now Available

Spring 2014 Subterranean Magazine now Available

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Subterranean Spring 2014-smallNo other magazine makes me wish I was still editing the way Subterranean does. I think it’s the way they showcase a combination of top names mixed with exciting newcomers, an attractive website, and great covers. I don’t miss the non-stop busywork that comes with editing, publishing, and distributing a fantasy magazine… but boy, I do miss shopping for cover art.

The Spring 2014 issue of Subterranean is packed with great names:

“The Screams of Dragons” by Kelley Armstrong
“Bus Fare” by Caitlín R. Kiernan
“The Traveller and the Book” by Ian R MacLeod
“Hath No Fury” by Kat Howard
“One Dove” by Stephen Gallagher
“The Burial Of Sir John Mawe At Cassini” by Chaz Brenchley
“The Days of the War, as Red as Blood, as Dark as Bile” by Aliette de Bodard

I’m pleased to see something new from Stephen Gallagher, who wrote several Doctor Who novels (under the name John Lydecker) in the early 80s. His later books include The Kingdom of Bones (2007) and The Bedlam Detective (2012), and the 2004 collection Out of His Mind, winner of the British Fantasy Award. Rich Horton reviewed Ian R MacLeod’s Song of Time for us back in 2011, and Emily Mah reported on Caitlin R. Kiernan being a co-recipient of the 2012 Tiptree Award last March. And we told you about Aliette de Bodard’s fabulous Obsidian & Blood omnibus in 2012.

Subterranean is edited by William Schafer and published quarterly. The Spring 2014 issue is completely free and available here; see their complete back issue catalog here. We last covered Subterranean magazine with their previous issue, Winter 2014.

New Treasures: Fantasy Scroll Magazine #1

New Treasures: Fantasy Scroll Magazine #1

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Fantasy Scroll 1-smallWell, here’s some exciting news. April 15th saw the release of a brand new, professionally produced digital fantasy magazine: Fantasy Scroll.

Here’s the description, from their website:

Fantasy Scroll Magazine is an online, quarterly publication featuring science fiction, fantasy, horror, and paranormal short-fiction. The magazine’s mission is to publish high-quality, entertaining, and thought-provoking speculative fiction. With a mixture of short stories, flash fiction, and micro-fiction, Fantasy Scroll Magazine aims to appeal to a wide audience.

Issue #1 brings you twelve short stories from authors such as Ken Liu, Seth Chambers, KJ Kabza, Alex Shvartsman, Hank Quense, and more. The magazine contains a well-balanced mix of original stories and reprints from new authors, bestsellers, and award-winning writers, plus a variety of nonfiction features, such as author and editor interviews, book reviews, and movie reviews.

The magazine is open to most sub-genres of science fiction, including hard SF, military, apocalyptic & post-apocalyptic, space opera, time travel, cyberpunk, steampunk, and humorous. Similarly for fantasy, we accept most sub-genres, including alternate world, dark fantasy, heroic, high or epic, historical, medieval, mythic, sword & sorcery, urban fantasy, and humorous. The magazine also publishes horror and paranormal short fiction.

Kindle Magazines are fully downloaded onto your Kindle so you can read them even when you’re not wirelessly connected.

Fantasy Scroll Magazine is edited by Iulian Ionescu, Frederick Doot, and Alexandra Zamorski. Copies are $2.99, for roughly 134 pages. I quite like the cover art, “The Dragon Rider,” by Jonathan Gragg, which speaks to me of an adventure fantasy mindset (click on the image at right for a larger version). See the complete contents of issue #1 here. Check it out.

See all of our recent New Treasures here. And thanks to John DeNardo at SF Signal for the tip!

1939 Retro Hugo Award Nominees Announced

1939 Retro Hugo Award Nominees Announced

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Astounding Science Fiction May 1938-smallThe Hugos have become science fiction’s more recognizable award, ever since they were first presented in 1953 at the 11th World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia. In the decades since though, there’s been plenty of speculation in fan circles about classic SF published before 1953.

“Oh, Jack Vance’s The Dying Earth would have win the Hugo Award hands down back in 1951.”
“Are you kidding? The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was published that same year — it would have been the easy victor.”
“You’re both crazy. The most popular SF release in 1951  was E.E. “Doc” Smith’s First Lensman, no question.”
“Wait a minute — what about Asimov’s Pebble in the Sky? It came out that same year!”

If there’s one thing fans like to do more than argue, it’s to prove they’re right. So in 1996, the First Retro Hugo Awards were given out, for SF first published in 1946. Retro Hugos have only been awarded twice since: in 2001 (for 1951) and in 2004 (for 1954). And for the record, the winner of the Retro Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1951 was Robert A. Heinlein’s Farmer in the Sky.

Loncon 3 has announced that it will present Retro Hugos this year, for work first published 75 years ago. Here’s part of the introduction to the award from the Loncon 3 Hugo Award Administrator:

1939 was an auspicious year among science fiction enthusiasts. On  2 July roughly 200 of them got together in New York City to hold the World  Science Fiction Convention… As host of the 2014 Worldcon, Loncon 3 will be hosting the Hugo Awards for the best work in 2013. As Loncon 3 marks  the 75th anniversary of that first convention in 1939, we will also be hosting  a Retrospective Hugo Award process for the best work of 1938.

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Tales From Windy City Pulp and Paper

Tales From Windy City Pulp and Paper

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The Weapon Shops of IsherThis coming weekend, Friday April 25th through Sunday April 27th, is Doug Ellis’s magnificent celebration of all things pulp, the Windy City Pulp and Paperback Convention here in Chicago, in nearby Lombard, Illinois.

Windy City is one of my favorite local cons. I’ve written about it before, and in fact I’ve been attending the show for around 10 years. 2012 was perhaps the most successful show in some years, considering I returned with a fabulous assortment of mint-condition fantasy and science fiction paperbacks from the collection of Martin H. Greenberg. See the article and photos from that show in my 2012 post, “Thank You, Martin H. Greenberg (and Doug Ellis).”

The show has been growing steadily over the years. Doug and his cohorts have added a film program, an Art Show, panels, an auction, readings, and more programming, but the real draw continues to be the massive Dealer’s Room, a wall-to-wall market crammed with pulps, paperbacks, rare DVDs, posters, artwork, comics, and much more.

I jotted down a few notes last year, and promised myself I’d write them up before the 2014 convention, to let folks who may be on the fence about attending (or those sad and lonely souls who, like me, just enjoy reading far-off convention reports), know what they’re missing.

In 2013, the list of Dealers was the longest I’ve ever seen, boasting some 80 vendors. They had to add more space, and it took even longer to walk the floor. Doug reported that he sold more tables than at any previous convention, and in record time.

If there’s a drawback to the show, it’s that the Dealer’s room closes at 5:00 pm. That made it impossible for me to make it there after work on Friday. My weekly D&D game with my kids kept me tied up until after 3:00 pm Saturday, which meant that by the time I made the show on Saturday, I had less than half an hour to walk the floor before it closed.

I put the time to good use. After a few years, you tend to find a few favorite sellers and I searched them out immediately.

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March Short Story Roundup

March Short Story Roundup

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oie_1551226jPhPhKow (1)This is really the March and first week of April short story roundup. While Swords and Sorcery Magazine came through with two new tales, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly did not come out in a timely enough fashion to suit my schedule. Then Beneath Ceaseless Skies spent all of March publishing science fantasy issues. It’s all right if you’re inclined to read that sort of stuff, but I’m here to write about fantasy, preferably of the heroic kind.  Actually, most of those stories in BCS really do look all right, but the arrival of a new story by Raphael Ordoñez in the April 3rd issue made me include it in this week’s post.

I joke about Beneath Ceaseless Skies’s neglect of heroic fantasy in favor of steam punk or sci-fi, but don’t ever make the mistake of thinking I don’t love the folks over there and everything they’re doing for speculative short fiction. Every two weeks, they publish a very well-polished magazine with stories by great writers from all over the sci-fi/fantasy spectrum. There are few platforms getting as much new material out in front of the public (and for as little money). And if, like me, you don’t like what’s in one issue, there’s a great chance you’ll find something in the very next one.

So, after all that praise, let me start off with a story from BCS #144 I didn’t love: “Golden Daughter, Stone Wife” by Benjanun Sriduangkaew, a writer unfamiliar to me. In a world peopled by exiles from some unknown calamity, in a country ruled by the Institute of Ormodon, a woman mourns the loss of her golem-daughter.

Hall-Warden Ysoreen Zarre has been sent to retrieve the remains of a golem from Erhensa, an exiled sorceress. All golems, whomever makes them, belong to the Institute. Having learned of the thing’s existence when it “died,” the Warden was dispatched to collect it. For the Institute, it is something to be studied and understood. Erhensa, though, considered the golem a daughter and is reluctant to submit to the Institute’s demands. Her maneuvers around the Warden comprise the rest of the story.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1951: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1951: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951-smallGalaxy began its second year of publication with the October 1951 issue. With contributions from both Asimov and Heinlein, it continued to show the strength of its fiction content.

“The C-Chute” by Isaac Asimov — A disparate group of space travelers become prisoners when their ship is stormed by enemy aliens. The Kloro secure the men in a room and leave only two of their own to pilot the ship back to their territory, where it can be prepared for battle.

Not content to sit idly by and become prisoners of war for an indeterminate amount of time, the men formulate a plan. Someone could suit up and go outside the ship, walking the hull to the steam tubes, in order to re-enter the ship at the control room, hopefully surprising the enemy pilots. The only dilemma is figuring out which of the men has the wherewithal and courage to succeed.

There was a lot of point-of-view shifting throughout the story, allowing the reader to enter the mind of each character. I thought this was done well and honestly there was greater variety in these characters than what Asimov produced in his novel The Stars, Like Dust.

“Pleasant Dreams” by Ralph Robin — Chief Watcher Gniss invites a childhood friend to witness how his group uses technology to spy on criminal suspects. Through the telepathic instrument, they can witness the suspects’ dreams, allowing them to learn of co-conspirators without the need for interrogation.

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John W. Campbell on Tolkien, Conan, and Sword & Sorcery

John W. Campbell on Tolkien, Conan, and Sword & Sorcery

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The August 1968 issue of Analog Science Fiction, with Sword & Sorcery creeping up on Science Fiction
The August 1968 issue of Analog Science Fiction, showing Sword & Sorcery creeping up on Science Fiction

Gordon van Gelder, the editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, has posted a fascinating excerpt from The John W. Campbell Letters, Volume 1. The excerpt is from a September 7, 1967 letter to Analog author and Hugo Award winning writer Gordon R. Dickson, author of Dorsai! and Soldier, Ask Not, and it captures the frustrations of the top SF editor in the country as he senses his audience being lured away by the growing popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien.

The swords-and-sorcery and Tolkien have displaced science fiction almost completely. Why? Well, partly — but I think a small part — is the current leaning to escape-from-reality, LSD etc. to the undisciplined world of my opinion is as good as any other, and don’t tell me there’s a Universe’s Opinion I’ve got to accept, willy nilly.

But the larger item, I suspect, is *human beings want heroes.* Real heroes. Not common-men-who-proved-under-stress-they-could-struggle-through. The swords-and-sorcery yarns are all based on superhuman heroes — and it’s clearly obvious the readers love ’em.

Now in as much as it’s the readers who pay for the magazines, it damn well behooves us to give ’em what they want — and they obviously want super-heroes on the Conan order. They want for Frank Herbert’s Dune, with his super-hero. They used to go with all-out enthusiasm for Jack Williamson’s really-not-very-good “Legion” stories.

Now if the fans want — and they evidently do! — swords-and-sorcery type yarns, then we had damn well better give ’em the type of thing they want, or get out of the way for someone who will.

Campbell never published much fantasy in Analog, but he did champion adventure-oriented science fantasy in the late 60s, like Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern stories (the first of which, the Hugo Award-winning “Weyr Search,” appeared in Analog in October 1967). It would be interesting to take a closer look to see if there was any noticeable editorial shift in this period.

Read the complete excerpt in Gordon’s Facebook post.

The Future of the Magazine of the Future: On the Return of the SFWA Bulletin

The Future of the Magazine of the Future: On the Return of the SFWA Bulletin

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SFWA Bulletin 203-smallRight about now, the new SFWA Bulletin should be starting to hit mailboxes. The first SFWA electronic Bulletin won’t be far behind. It’s a new era for the Bulletin and one I’m really excited about.

The Bulletin is one of those magazines that’s a particular challenge to edit. The SFWA membership is relatively small, but wildly varied in its needs and interests. Our members range in experience from a couple of years of sales to 50+ years of publishing, in markets from small magazines to Big Six publishers. We could probably put out ten different versions of the magazine and still miss a few needs.

Finding the balance so that everyone gets something, but a cohesive product is still put out, is a hearty challenge. The pool of potential authors is one of the richest in the industry, as we are also able to reach into the scientific, entertainment, and artistic communities for relevant content, but that has to be balanced against highlighting what the membership has to offer.

The revamped Bulletin will, we hope, be a force in the modern market, offering benefits and information for authors at every stage of the business. Content will range from SFWA-oriented information to in-depth journalism on a variety of subjects.

Issue 204 is chock-full of information about SFWA and the writing business, from interviews to budget breakdowns, and even a honey badger cartoon. Tansy Rayner Roberts and I edited this special issue, with significant groundwork from long-time editor Jean Rabe. It will be our go-to handout for the next few years, offering a concentrated look at what SFWA has to offer, as well as remaining a useful resource for years to come.

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Tom Reamy, the Iron Throne, and George R.R. Martin’s Plan to Stay Ahead of HBO: The Game of Thrones Issue of Vanity Fair

Tom Reamy, the Iron Throne, and George R.R. Martin’s Plan to Stay Ahead of HBO: The Game of Thrones Issue of Vanity Fair

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Vanity Fair Game of Tthrones-smallYou know your HBO fantasy series has hit it big when it makes the cover of culture and fashion magazine Vanity Fair.

The April issue, on sale now, features a cast photoshoot by star photographer Annie Leibovitz and a feature on the making of the show written by Jim Windolf. But more interesting is a wide-ranging interview with author George R.R. Martin which covers, among other things, the true scale of the Iron Throne and Martin’s plan to stay ahead of the rapidly-progressing show.

The season that’s about to debut covers the second half of the third book… But there are two more books beyond that… A Dance with Dragons is itself a book that’s as big as A Storm of Swords. So there’s potentially three more seasons there, between [A Feast for Crows] and Dance, if they split into two the way they did [with Storms]. Now, Feast and Dance take place simultaneously… You can combine them and do it chronologically. And it’s my hope that they’ll do it that way and then, long before they catch up with me, I’ll have published The Winds of Winter, which’ll give me another couple years. It might be tight on the last book, A Dream of Spring, as they juggernaut forward.

I was also fascinated by his comments on the death of the brilliant Tom Reamy, whom we profiled in Black Gate 15:

Tom died of a heart attack just a few months after winning the award for best new writer in his field. He was found slumped over his typewriter, seven pages into a new story. Instant. Boom. Killed him… Tom’s death had a profound effect on me, because I was in my early thirties then. I’d been thinking, as I taught, well, I have all these stories that I want to write… and I have all the time in the world… and then Tom’s death happened, and I said, Boy. Maybe I don’t…

After Tom’s death, I said, “You know, I gotta try this. I don’t know if I can make a living as a full-time writer or not, but who knows how much time I have left?…” So I decided I would sell my house in Iowa and move to New Mexico. And I’ve never looked back.

Read the complete interview here.