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Vintage Treasures: Not Without Sorcery by Theodore Sturgeon

Vintage Treasures: Not Without Sorcery by Theodore Sturgeon

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Not Without Sorcery 1961-small Not Without Sorcery-small

Theodore Sturgeon’s first short story collection was Without Sorcery, a handsome hardcover published in 1948 with an introduction by Ray Bradbury. As you can imagine, it’s a tough book to find these days, even for collectors.

The paperback edition, released 13 long years later, dropped five stories and the introduction, and was re-titled Not Without Sorcery. It became Sturgeon’s tenth collection and was released in two editions, from Ballantine (in 1961, with a rather drab cover by an unknown artist) and Del Rey (in 1975, with a far more interesting cover from artist Darrell K. Sweet.) 1975 was the last time the book saw a mass market edition; it remained out of print for 35 years, until Kessinger Publishing did a facsimile reprint edition in 2010.

Sturgeon was a Campbell writer through and through, and all eight stories in Not Without Sorcery appeared in the two pulp magazines John W. Campbell edited: Astounding Science Fiction, and its sister magazine Unknown Worlds. The stories were published over a two-year period, 1939-1941. I’ve assembled some of the original covers below, because I can never resist an excuse to showcase pulp magazines.

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Vintage Treasures: The Boats of the Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson

Vintage Treasures: The Boats of the Glen Carrig by William Hope Hodgson

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Famous Fantastic Mysteries June 1945-small The Boats of the Glen Carrig-small The Boats of the Glen Carrig Grafton-small

The Boats of the Glen Carrig was first published in 1907, and it has been reprinted countless times over the last hundred years. It is currently in print in no less than five separate editions, including multiple digital formats. In virtually every sense it is a classic horror novel, by one of the great 20th Century horror writers.

It wasn’t always recognized as such. In fact, after its first appearance, it languished for decades, before it was showcased in Famous Fantastic Mysteries in June 1945, with a terrific cover by Lawrence. It was reprinted in the seminal omnibus volume The House on the Borderland and Other Novels the following year, one of the most important and collectible volumes Arkham House ever published.

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: REH Goes Hard Boiled

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: REH Goes Hard Boiled

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Steve Harrison's CasebookYou know how people say “No offense intended,” and then offend like it’s an Olympic sport? I’m a major Robert E. Howard fan. In fact, I think his writing in the Conan stories is the best you’ll find in the entire genre.

However, he was not much of a hardboiled writer. The pulpster did (half-heartedly) give it a try, with nine completed Steve Harrison stories, as well as one unfinished tale and a synopsis.

In February of 1934, Strange Detective Stories introduced Steve Harrison in “Fangs of Gold.” It also included another Harrison story, “Teeth of Doom:” except that it didn’t. Not wanting to include two stories from the same author in one issue, the magazine renamed the hero Brock Rollins, changed the title to “The Tomb’s Secret” and used a Howard pseudonym, Patrick Ervin!

The next month, “Lords of the Dead” (retitled “Dead Man’s Doom”) was going to appear in Strange Detective, but alas, the publication folded. That story remained unprinted until 1978. Though, oddly enough, its sequel, “Names in the Black Book,” was included in the May, 1934 issue of Super Detective Stories. Those readers were probably looking for some history on Erlik Khan, the villain in both stories.

The fourth and final story to see publication during Howard’s lifetime was “Graveyard Rats,” appearing only four months before the writer committed suicide in 1936.

“The House of Suspicion” was printed in 1976. In that one, Fred Blosser completed Howard’s “The Mystery of Tannernoe Lodge” and added Khan in to make it a trilogy with Harrison’s antagonist. “The Black Moon,” “The Silver Heel” and the untitled synopsis all saw first printings in the nineteen eighties.

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An Astounding Science Fiction Testimonial

An Astounding Science Fiction Testimonial

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Astounding Science Fiction February 1958-smallI started reading Astounding with the February 1958 issue. 1958 was the last good year under editor John W. Campbell.

Consider the short fiction:

L. Sprague de Camp’s “Aristotle and the Gun”
Charles V. de Vet and Katherine MacLean’s “Second Game”
Fritz Leiber’s “Try and Change the Past”
Jack Vance’s “The Miracle Workers”
Clifford D. Simak’s “The Big Front Yard”
Rog Phillips’s “The Yellow Pill”
Katherine MacLean’s “Unhuman Sacrifice”
J.F. Bone’s “Triggerman”

(Also Randall Garrett’s “The Queen Bee,” but we won’t think about that right now.)

The serials: two substantial ones by Poul Anderson, “The Man Who Counts” (a/k/a War of the Wing Men) and “We Have Fed Our Sea” (a/k/a The Enemy Stars), Hal Clement’s admirable if clumsy Close to Critical, and another Anderson, very lightweight but appealing to a 10-year-old, “A Bicycle Built for Brew” (The Makeshift Rocket).

Then the bottom dropped out. The only short fiction in 1959 on a level with the 1958 items cited were Ralph Williams’ “Cat and Mouse,” Chad Oliver’s “Transfusion,” A. Bertram Chandler’s “Familiar Pattern” (undeservedly obscure), and Theodore L. Thomas’s “Day of Succession” — and that’s being generous.

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New Treasures: Old Venus, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

New Treasures: Old Venus, edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois

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Old Venus-smallI think my favorite book of the year (so far) is George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois’s new anthology, Old Venus, which imagines Venus just as the pulp writers of old: a steamy, swampy jungle planet with strange creatures lurking amidst the dripping vegetation.

Old Venus is a follow-up to Old Mars, a tribute to “the Golden Age of Science Fiction, an era filled with tales of interplanetary colonization and derring-do.” It includes brand new fiction from Lavie Tidhar, Paul McAuley, Joe Haldeman, Eleanor Arnason, David Brin, Garth Nix, Joe R. Lansdale, Ian McDonald and many others. Russell Letson at Locus Online offers an enthusiastic review, saying:

In the introduction, co-editor Gardner Dozois writes that he and George R.R. Martin were looking for a return to the ‘‘heyday of the Planetary Romance,’’ when ‘‘the solar system swarmed with alien races and civilizations, as crowded and chummy as an Elks picnic…’’ These 16 stories, mostly of novelette length, aspire to resuscitate not only the obsolete, imaginary planetology of Old Venus, but the iconography and tropes that filled the pulp adventure stories once set there: the rain-soaked frontier outback where questionable characters meet in roughneck saloons before setting out to find abandoned temples or lost cities, guided or preyed upon by aquatic or amphibious natives, pursued by hungry local fauna, and perhaps tempted by exotic-erotic possibilities…

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Vintage Treasures: Horrors in Hiding edited by Sam Moskowitz with Alden H. Norton

Vintage Treasures: Horrors in Hiding edited by Sam Moskowitz with Alden H. Norton

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Horrors in Hiding-smallHorrors in Hiding is the second in the trilogy of anthologies Sam Moskowitz edited for Berkely in the early 70s, and the only one we haven’t covered. The first was Horrors Unknown (1971), and the last (and the final anthology Moskowitz ever produced) was Horrors Unseen (1974).

It’s also the only one co-edited with Alden H. Norton, a noted anthologist in his own right, who co-edited four books with Moskowitz, including The Space Magicians and Ghostly By Gaslight (both in 1971).

I like Vincent Di Fate’s cover, which is moody and very striking. Although it’s awfully purple, and a little puzzling if you stare at it too long. (Is that dude eating a rock?)

The blurb on the back is short and to the point:

WARNING: Lock your doors before unleashing Horrors In Hiding. Ten grim and gruesome tales of the macabre guaranteed to chill your blood and shatter your nerves.

I count only nine stories, but let’s not be picky. They are grim and gruesome, and that’s what matters.

Moskowitz was a die-hard pulp fan, and half the stories within — those by Seabury Quinn, Robert Bloch, Henry Kuttner, August Derleth and Ray Bradbury — are culled from pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Strange Stories. The rest — by Arthur Conan Doyle, O. Henry, John Kendrick Bangs and Nathaniel P. Babcock — are much older.

As usual, Sam wrote fascinating and detailed introductions — author appreciations, really — for each story, and his love and knowledge of the field shine through. Sometimes I think Moskowitz produced these anthologies just so he’d have an excuse to talk about his favorite writers.

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Vintage Treasures: Echoes of Valor III, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Vintage Treasures: Echoes of Valor III, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

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Echoes of Valor III-smallAnd so we come to the end of our all-too-brief series on Karl Edward Wagner’s ambitious and highly regarded sword & sorcery anthologies. Echoes of Valor III was published in paperback by Tor Books in September 1991, just three years before poor Karl drank himself to death in 1994.

The three Echoes of Valor books are perplexing in some regards, especially for collectors. Wagner had taken a huge step towards literary respectability for Robert E. Howard in 1977, by compiling and editing the definitive three-volume hardcover collection of the unexpurgated Conan for Berkley: The People of the Black Circle, Red Nails, and The Hour of the Dragon. It’s clear that he intended Echoes of Valor to accomplish the same feat for a wider rage of his favorite writers, by assembling the defining collection of their best heroic fantasy in hardcover — and with non-fiction commentary that treated them to genuine scholarship.

It didn’t quite work out that way. The first volume of Echoes of Valor appeared only in paperback in 1987, and it had no non-fiction content at all. It was also burdened with a Ken Kelly cover that pretty obviously had originally been intended for Tor’s Conan line — I wouldn’t be surprised if most book shoppers in 1987 mistook it for just another Conan pastiche, and didn’t give it another glance.

With the second volume, Echoes of Valor II, Wagner finally got the book he’d aspired to. It appeared in hardcover in 1989 with an original cover by Rick Berry, and no less than eight non-fiction pieces (autobiographical sketches, forwards, and author appreciations) from four distinguished writers: C.L. Moore, Forrest J. Ackerman, Sam Moskowitz and Wagner himself.

Echoes of Valor II was one of the first books to treat sword & sorcery as serious fiction, and the hardcover format meant that Tor was able to sell it into libraries and schools across the country. It was a groundbreaking book for the genre. So it was a bit puzzling when Echoes of Valor III appeared three years later — exclusively in paperback, and with only one brief essay from Sam Moskowitz.

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Take a Visual Tour of the Early SF and Fantasy Pulps in Futures Past #1

Take a Visual Tour of the Early SF and Fantasy Pulps in Futures Past #1

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Futures Past 1926-smallI have a great curiosity about the beginnings of science fiction and fantasy in the United States — particularly what’s known as the Gernsback Era, beginning when Hugo Gernsback founded Amazing Stories in 1926, and virtually created modern science fiction. Nearly simultaneously, Weird Tales (founded in 1923) was publishing the first stories of the greatest fantasists of the 20th Century: Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith.

So I was delighted to discover a brand new magazine devoted to covering the birth of modern science fiction: Futures Past: A Visual History of Science Fiction, edited by Jim Emerson. The first issue of this 64-page, full color magazine, subtitled 1926: The Birth of Modern Science Fiction, appeared in July 2014, and is now available in e-book PDF format. Future issues will cover the whole field of science fiction — including magazines, books, movies and conventions — year by year, in an attractive and easy-to-read format.

Here’s the description of the entire undertaking from the publisher:

Welcome to one of the largest and most ambitious projects ever attempted in the field of science fiction.  In the pages of Futures Past we will be covering, in detail, the birth and development of modern science fiction over its first 50 years – from 1926 to 1975. Designed in a yearbook format, each issue of Futures Past will cover all the works, people, organizations and events in detailed chronological order.

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A Neglected Classic from the Golden Age of Sword & Sorcery: H. Warner Munn’s Merlin Cycle

A Neglected Classic from the Golden Age of Sword & Sorcery: H. Warner Munn’s Merlin Cycle

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Merlins Godson H Warner Munn-smallI first encountered H. Warner Munn by chance. Or maybe he encountered me, and it was more than pure chance.

I started reading fantasy and science fiction in high school, when a friend recommended Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight books. I dutifully took the first one out of the public library and soldiered through it. I was impressed enough to decide to start broadening my narrow literary horizons. The problem was that, in South Africa in the 1980’s, the big book sellers stocked a pretty limited selection of genre titles, and the more specialized sellers were few and far between.

The solution was for my friend Graham and I to take a bus to the city center after school, and explore some of the independent and more specialized shops. One in particular has a vast array of genre books, and to this day I lament its eventual closure.

I encountered a myriad of unknown authors and works on that shop’s shelves. One that particularly intrigued me – although not enough to part with my pitifully small amount of cash – was The Misplaced Legion, by Harry Turtledove. I never saw that book on the shelves again.

Fast forward a decade and a bit and, lo and behold, the internet was here and much exploring was done. I dredged my memory — while whittling away at my employer’s internet bandwidth — looking for bits and pieces to fill out my book and RPG collections. Memory failed me somewhat, however, and when I attempted to recall that vague, impressive book from the ‘80s, I remembered it as… The Lost Legion. I no longer had a clue to the author’s name, either.

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Vintage Treasures: Somewhere a Voice by Eric Frank Russell

Vintage Treasures: Somewhere a Voice by Eric Frank Russell

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Somewhere a Voice Eric Frank Russell-smallI cover a lot of different writers with these Vintage Treasures posts. Some are authors I’ve long cherished, and some are folks I’ve never read. Frequently they’re books I’ve been curious about for a long time, and sometimes they’re simply odd discoveries from recent collections I’ve acquired.

But I think the most rewarding are those where I take a look at writers I’ve long overlooked. That’s the case with Eric Frank Russell, whom I really knew for a single story, “Dear Devil,” which I read in Terry Carr’s great anthology Creatures From Beyond many years ago — a great story, true, but a single story nonetheless. So I’m discovering him for the first time now by reading collections of his pulp science fiction, such as Men, Martians, and Machines and Six Worlds Yonder, and they are delightful.

I went searching for more in my library and found Somewhere a Voice, a 1966 Ace paperback that has now been out of print for nearly five decades. A great pity, I think, since Russell’s stories still speak to a modern audience and I’m convinced he would easily find readers today.

In the meantime, I can do my part to fight against the cruel modern neglect of Eric Frank Russell by spending a few moments talking about him here, and that’s what I’m going to do. Plus, I’m going to throw in a few pulp magazine covers, because it’s Saturday morning and I have nothing better to do.

Let’s start with the text from the back of the book, because that saves me the effort of describing it myself.

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