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Invasion Fleets and Rogue Stars: Rich Horton on Who Speaks of Conquest by Lan Wright & The Earth in Peril, edited by Donald A. Wollheim

Invasion Fleets and Rogue Stars: Rich Horton on Who Speaks of Conquest by Lan Wright & The Earth in Peril, edited by Donald A. Wollheim

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Who Speaks of Conquest-small The Earth in Peril-small

Over at his website Strange at Ecbatan, Rich Horton continues his survey of the Ace Double line of 50s science fiction novels with Who Speaks of Conquest by Lan Wright, paired with the anthology The Earth in Peril, edited by Donald A. Wollheim. It was originally published in 1957. Here’s Rich on the Wright novel.

The first Terran starship lands at Sirius (why they didn’t go to Alpha Centauri first is never explained — it turns out to be inhabited, so it can’t be for lack of planets). There they find a welcoming committee, from an intelligent race that has colonized these planets. They learn that the entire Galaxy is under the rule of the Rihnans, apparently a mostly benign rule, but an unquestioned one. Humans are expected to meekly accept their position. Of course, they don’t, and soon an invasion fleet is dispatched from Alpha Centauri. But to the invaders’ surprise, the plucky humans decide to fight back, and moreover they have been able to develop some surprisingly good tech, and the humans win.

The Rihnans don’t take that lying down, and begin plans for a much bigger fleet to suppress Terra. But the humans have their own ideas, and they decide to take the fight to the rest of the Galaxy…

The flip side is a little more interesting from my perspective — an anthology of tales focused on the invasion of Earth, edited by the founding editor of Ace, Donald A. Wollheim himself. The Earth in Peril contains short stories by Murray Leinster, A. E. van Vogt, C. M. Kornbluth, Edmond Hamilton, Bryce Walton, and H. G. Wells.

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Making it on the American Grub Street: Hired Pens, Professional Writers in America’s Golden Age of Print

Making it on the American Grub Street: Hired Pens, Professional Writers in America’s Golden Age of Print

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0821412043Last month I posted here about Researching the Habits of Highly Prolific Authors for a book I’m working on. Black Gate reader John Hocking kindly suggested in the comments section that I read Hired Pens: Professional Writers in America’s Golden Age of Print, by Ronald Weber. I took him up on his advice and I’m sure glad I did.

This book looks at the careers of writing and editing from the nation’s earliest days until the end of World War Two. Weber shows us a parade of successful writers and editors — many well-known to this day, many more now forgotten — who found success in the ever-changing market for American popular periodicals.

Until the middle of the 19th century, American writers were hampered by the lack of international copyright laws. Newspaper and magazine editors filched English publications for free and saw no reason to pay homegrown talent. As the population grew and both American and British writers managed to get their governments to set up legal barriers to such theft, the market for American writing blossomed.

These writers certainly didn’t waste their time moaning about their lack of inspiration and hoping the muse would visit them. As prolific and successful Western writer Zane Grey said in a letter to a friend:

This morning I had no desire to write, no call, no inspiration, no confidence, no joy. I had to force myself. But when I mastered the vacillation and dread, and had done a day’s work — what a change of feelings. I had a rush of sweet sensations.

This is a common thread throughout the book. In example after example, we are shown that writer’s block is a myth and that writers should not — indeed, must not — sit around all day twiddling their thumbs. These writers worked hard.

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Robert E. Howard Wrote a Police Procedural? With Conan?? Crom!!!

Robert E. Howard Wrote a Police Procedural? With Conan?? Crom!!!

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BG_GodBowlComicCoverReportedly, Ernest Hemingway bet Howard Hawks that the director couldn’t make a good movie out of his worst book. Hawks took the bet and we ended up with Humphrey Bogart in To Have and Have Not (it’s not Bogie’s best, but I vote Hawks the winner of the bet). Suppose I told you I could show you that one of what’s commonly considered among the worst Conan stories isn’t really that bad – and that it’s a pre-genre police procedural? Ready to take on the challenge?

In 2015, Black Gate‘s Discovering Robert E. Howard series showcased the breadth and diversity of REH’s writings. Boxing stories, westerns, science fiction, Solomon Kane, El Borak: Howard was an immensely talented author who wrote in a variety of genres. My first entry in the series was about Steve Harrison, Howard’s take on the hardboiled private eye with a weird menace twist. As you can read in that essay, Howard didn’t care for the genre and he abandoned it almost as quickly as he entered it. Today, I’m going to look at his lone police procedural. Yep – Robert E. Howard wrote a police procedural before the term was even in use. And it features Conan!

The general consensus is that Howard hit the mark with his fourth Conan story, “The Tower of the Elephant,” published in March of 1933. His first was “The Phoenix on the Sword,” which appeared in Weird Tales in December of 1932 and was a rewrite of an unpublished Kull story, “By This Axe I Rule.” Farnsworth Wright, editor of Weird Tales, rejected the second, “The Frost Giant’s Daughter,” which to me, reads more like a chapter in a longer work than a self-contained story.

“The God in the Bowl” was probably written in early 1932 and was Howard’s third Conan story. Wright rejected this one as well and it did not see print in any form until an edited version by L. Sprague de Camp was published in 1952’s Space Science Fiction, Volume 1, Number 2 (the story has nothing to do with either space or science fiction…). De Camp did less chopping on this one than most of his Conan edits, but fans could finally read Howard’s original text in Donald Grant’s The Tower of the Elephant in 1975.

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Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast: The Golden Age of Science Fiction, Part II

Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast: The Golden Age of Science Fiction, Part II

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Literary Wonder and Adventure Show The Golden Age of Science Fiction Part 2 Rich Horton

Part II of II; read a review of Part I here.

Host Robert Zoltan has returned with his second installment of a look back at the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Zoltan and (Edgar the Raven’s) guest for Part II is Rich Horton, editor of The Year’s Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (Prime Books), reprint editor for Light Speed, and columnist for Locus and Black Gate.

Horton endorses the standard narrative of the start and finish of science fiction’s “golden age,” which begins with editor John Campbell fully assuming the reigns of Astounding Stories around 1938, and ends when the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and Galaxy began publishing in 1949 and 1950, respectively. These latter two magazines moved the genre in new directions, though not necessarily worse ones: Horton in fact argues that the fiction published in the silver age of the 1950s was often higher in quality, which seems to undercut the Golden Age moniker affixed to the Campellian era. But the golden age had the benefit of the “shock of the new”; it was a time when new ideas sprang from the pages of Astounding Stories with each new issue. It saw the emergence of some of science fiction’s greatest ideas and lasting tropes, if not consistently high execution or literary sophistication.

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A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 3: A Vintage from Atlantis

A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 3: A Vintage from Atlantis

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the-collected-fantasies-of-clark-ashton-smith-a-vintage-from-atlantis-9781597803649_hrHorrible it was, if there had been aught to apprehend the horror; and loathsome, if there had been any to feel loathing. —“Ubbo Sathla”

Clark Ashton Smith was approaching his writing peak and fortunate to have multiple markets open to his best work during the period of the stories in this volume (1931–32). Three magazines were publishing him on the regular: Weird Tales, Wonder Stories, and Strange Tales. The situation didn’t last; Smith suffered a slowdown when Strange Tales folded at the start of 1933. Without the Clayton Magazine, Smith lost a reliable alternative for whenever editor Farnsworth Wright at Weird Tales turned something down for being too outré or sexual. The deepening effects of the Great Depression pinched the surviving magazines and delayed payments. Wonder Stories, like any Gernsback mag, was dilatory enough with payments already. Although we’re approaching the CAS apex in this and Vol. 4, the omens of the end of his fiction-writing days are already clouding the cerulean skies.

Boilerplate recommendation for The Collected Fantasies: If you’re new to Clark Ashton Smith, these Night Shade editions aren’t the best starting point. I recommend the Penguin Classics collection The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies for readers who want to get started with a collection of some of Smith’s key short stories and poems.

Contents

Vol. 3 contains stories written over a little more than a year: April 1931 to June 1932. Each is listed with its original date and place of publication, sometimes in a modified form different from the corrected text the editors include here. Unlike previous volumes, every story reached professional magazine publication within a few years of composition, with the exception of “The Double Shadow,” which Smith self-published.

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Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast: The Golden Age of Science Fiction, Part 1

Literary Wonder & Adventure Podcast: The Golden Age of Science Fiction, Part 1

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Literary Wonder & Adventure Show Episode 6 The Golden Age of Science Fiction Part 1 A Conversation with Author Allen Steele-small

New podcast on the block Literary Wonder & Adventure Show is a welcome addition for fans of the fantasy and science fiction genres. I became a listener after stumbling upon Robert E. Howard: Master of Sword & Sorcery, featuring an interview with Black Gate contributor and author Howard Andrew Jones. Host Robert Zoltan has created a fun program that balances entertainment and informative, thoughtful interviews with interesting guests, as well as the occasional audio drama.

The Literary Wonder & Adventure Show is not a simple interview format with the standard bumper music typical of most podcasts, but a spin on Doctor Who with a time and space travelling stone tower. It has an air of nostalgia as if one were listening to an old-time radio broadcast, and incorporates some extensive production including sound effects and Zoltan’s dramatized voice work. If at first you find the experience slightly unexpected and jarring (as I did) I recommend giving at least one full episode a shot, as you quickly get used to the playful format and the amusing intrusions of Edgar the Raven, as skillfully voiced by Zoltan (who somehow manages to carry on a conversation with himself)!

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Researching the Habits of Highly Prolific Authors (and I could use your help!)

Researching the Habits of Highly Prolific Authors (and I could use your help!)

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Maxwell Grant writes the Shadow-small

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote an article here on Black Gate about the habits of prolific authors. The research I did for that post sparked an interest in me that’s only grown. Now I’m working on a book-length study of how some of the great writers of the 20th century managed to write hundreds of books, most of them while hammering away on manual typewriters. There are lots of books on increasing your word count, but none, as far as I know, focus on the actual methods of the most productive writers.

I’ve set myself some limitations. First, to be given a chapter in the book, the writer must have written at least 300 books. They must also have enough biographical material that I can gain insights into their work methods. Also, they must be dead so that I can look at their careers as a whole, they must have been active in the 20th century so their work is more applicable to the modern era, and they must have written in either of the two languages I am comfortable reading — English or Spanish.

At the moment I have the following list: Isaac Asimov, Walter Brown Gibson, Corín Tellado, Marcial Lafuente Estefanía, Lauran Bosworth Paine, Ursula Bloom, Enid Mary Blyton, Barbara Cartland, and John Creasey. Some writers who don’t quite fit the bill but who have something worth quoting are given passing mention. Frank Gruber is a good example. His book The Pulp Jungle is essential reading for anyone who wants to know the inner workings of a true wordsmith.

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Vintage Treasures: A Sense of Wonder, edited by Sam Moskowitz

Vintage Treasures: A Sense of Wonder, edited by Sam Moskowitz

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A Sense of Wonder John Wyndham-small A Sense of Wonder John Wyndham-back-small

Here’s a great example of the kind of book I miss most in today’s market: A Sense of Wonder, a three-novella anthology published in 1967, and reprinted in paperback multiple times in the UK by New English Library.

Why do I miss it? Because it collects three classic pulp tales from three famous pulp authors, and it introduced new readers to the great writers of the pulps in a handsome and inexpensive format. It’s exactly the kind of impulse purchase I would have snatched off the racks in 1987, the year the edition above was released.

Mass market anthologies are virtually gone from today’s shelves — and especially anthologies that showcase authors like John Wyndham, Murray Leinster, and Jack Williamson.

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Why isn’t Conan a Mary Sue?

Why isn’t Conan a Mary Sue?

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Conan Rogues in the House-smallHow is Conan not a Mary Sue?

The barbarian is pretty obviously Robert E Howard’s authorial self-projection into the Hyborian Age. Big, bellicose and amoral, but honourable and never mean. He’s mighty-thewed death on two legs, women fall into his arms, kingdoms fall at his feet. He male bonds when he falls into good company, and despite being a barbarian fish out of civilised water, he commands the loyalty of his men and the respect of those nobles worthy of respect.

He’s everything Robert E Howard was and wasn’t and might have been had the big Texan lived long enough to fight in WWII. (Imagine Howard as a veteran of Iwo Jima, and the great literature he would have written…)

Really, how is he not a Mary Sue? (He certainly fails a Mary Sue test)

And yet, Conan survived the oh-so-ironic later 20th century. One whiff of Thrud should consigned him to the company of Captain Future and Doc Savage: The emperor barbarian has no clothes on! He even weathered Terry Pratchett’s slash and burn through the genre.

Was it just that Howard invented Sword and Sorcery?

No. Conan’s literary longevity is more than just about being first with sandals on the ground.

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New Treasures: Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction, edited by Lisa Yaszek and Patrick B. Sharp

New Treasures: Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction, edited by Lisa Yaszek and Patrick B. Sharp

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Sisters of Tomorrow-small Sisters of Tomorrow-back-small

While I was at Wiscon in May, I didn’t just attend readings (although it probably seemed like it). I also hung out in the Dealer’s Room, where I bought a whole bunch of vintage paperbacks, most of which remain unpacked on the floor of my library. With luck, I can steal some time this weekend to photograph them for upcoming Vintage Treasures columns.

I haven’t unpacked them because all the time I would normally be spending with them, I’ve been spending instead with a fabulous anthology I bought from Greg Ketter: Sisters of Tomorrow: The First Women of Science Fiction. It’s packaged as a scholarly tome (and is even published by Wesleyan University Press), but don’t be fooled — this is a top-notch collection of pulp-era SF by women, which also doubles as a very compelling argument that “women have always been part of the genre” (to quote the back cover copy.) One of the great things about this volume — in addition to the fabulous (and rarely reprinted) pulp tales by Clare Winger Harris, Leslie F. Stone, C. L. Moore, and others — is that it also includes poetry, articles by women, editorials, and even a gorgeous selection of pulp covers in color.

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