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Category: Pulp

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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Announcing the Winner of the Laurence Manning Giveaway

Announcing the Winner of the Laurence Manning Giveaway

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Man Who Awoke 1st edIn my recent review of Laurence Manning’s The Man Who Awoke, I ran a giveaway for a copy of the book, in which the winner would be determined by who best answered the question “Why is pulp era science fiction and fantasy still relevant today?”

I had intended to respond to the entries to generate some discussion, as well as posting a reminder. Then Murphy stopped by for an extended visit, and none of those things happened before the deadline.

However, we had two good entries. The first was from Anthony Simeone. Here’s an excerpt from his answer:

In genre fiction above all other forms of literature, writers act as living lenses, through which we can see the world in a different way. That is one of the great blessings of the passage of time and death: we get to see the world afresh with each passing year, and through each new person that walks the Earth. Fiction, the written word, are telepathic messages sent forward in time for us to experience and enjoy. Ultimately, they are voices from the void of the past, without which the years behind us would be tragically silent.

The other entry was from Daniel J. Davis. Here’s some of what he had to say.

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Doc Savage, The Shadow and The Avenger, Together Again: The Vril Agenda by Derrick Ferguson and Josh Reynolds

Doc Savage, The Shadow and The Avenger, Together Again: The Vril Agenda by Derrick Ferguson and Josh Reynolds

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The Vril Agenda-smallOne of the first things I did when I landed at the Windy City Pulp and Paper show on Friday was make a beeline for the Airship 27 booth.

Time is finite and the Windy City Dealer’s room is vast, and to make sure you get the treasures you really want, it helps to be a little determined. The treasures I really wanted this year included B.C. Bell’s 1930’s pulp vigilante novel, Tales of the Bagman, which I wrote about enthusiastically in my report on last year’s show, and Jim Beard’s supernatural detective collection, Sgt. Janus, Spirit-Breaker — both of which are published by Airship 27. Plus, I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to look over their whole table, since it’s always piled high with a tantalizing array of new titles.

As proprietor Ron Fortier happily sold me those two volumes, I casually mentioned that I’d first heard of Sgt. Janus via Josh Reynolds’s splendid Nightmare Men column, published at the fabulous Black Gate website… which, coincidentally, I happened to run, did I mention? Without missing a beat, Ron pointed out one of the many titles on his table, saying, “Josh is a terrific guy. That’s his latest book, a new pulp adventure, right there.”

I was suitably astounded. Here I was, trying to impress Ron by name-dropping Josh Reynolds, and he was able to produce a novel I didn’t even know existed! I know when I’ve been one-upped. Besides, I’ve known Josh as a terrific writer for years, so it was a thrill to discover he’d written a pulp adventure novel.

The Vril Agenda was co-written by Derrick Ferguson, author of Dillon and the Voice of Odin. Derrick does a terrific job of relating how the book came about on his blog and I think I’ll turn it over to him:

It got into my melon of a head a particular obsession to have Dillon be trained in various disciplines by the great pulp champions of the past. Since Dillon is a spiritual son of those heroes, I always thought it would be a gas for him to seek out some of these men and women to learn what they know…  Of course I knew I couldn’t use The Big Three by name. I’m talking about Doc Savage, The Shadow and The Avenger. But I could allude to them…

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Total Pulp Victory: A Triumphant Return from Windy City Pulp & Paper

Total Pulp Victory: A Triumphant Return from Windy City Pulp & Paper

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Super Science Stories Canada December 1942-small Super Science Stories Canada February 1945-small Super Science Stories Canada August 1945-small

Doug Ellis’s Windy City Pulp and Paperback Convention has wrapped up for another year (see my report from last year here). I got to see many old friends, meet some new ones, and also connect in person with a few for the first time — including Barbara Barrett, who traveled many hundreds of miles to make it to Chicago. Barbara has been blogging for Black Gate for many years and her early article “Robert E. Howard: The Sword Collector and His Poetry” is one of the most popular pieces we’ve ever published… but we’ve never met in person, and it was an absolute delight to finally join her for dinner — and give her a big hug.

In between all the meetings, reunions, and forging of new friendships, I also picked up a treasure or two. I’ll be reporting on some of the most interesting here over the next few weeks (the most common comment I heard as I put away my purchases was, “Something new for you to blog about!”), but I can’t resist telling you about one now.

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A Review of The Man Who Awoke, Plus a Giveaway

A Review of The Man Who Awoke, Plus a Giveaway

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Man Who Awoke 1st edThe Man Who Awoke
Laurence Manning
Ballantine (170 pgs, $1.50, 1975)

Back in February, our editor John O’Neill featured Laurence Manning’s The Man Who Awoke in one of his Vintage Treasures posts. I first read the book sometime around the summer (I think it was summer) of 1981 or 1982. I was in high school and had picked up a copy at a local used book store. When I mentioned in the comments that I’d been thinking of rereading it, John graciously offered to let me do a review. I’d like to thank him for the opportunity.

It had been on my mind recently when I read an ARC of Michael J. Sullivan’s Hollow World. Then I attended ConDFW this past February, where the charity book swap had dozens of paperbacks from the late 70s and early 80s in excellent condition. Among the titles I picked up was a first edition of The Man Who Awoke.

The novel was originally serialized in five parts in Hugo Gernsback’s Wonder Stories in 1933. The first part was included in Isaac Asimov’s anthology Before the Golden Age, another book I need to reread. I had enjoyed the first installment, so when I came across the paperback of the whole novel, I snatched it up and dashed home with it, after properly paying for it of course.

The story concerns Norman Winters. He’s a wealthy scientist who develops a method of putting himself to sleep through a process very much like hibernation. I don’t know if this is the first use of what would later come to be called suspended animation, but it had to be one of the earliest. I’ve not read H. G. Wells’s When the Sleeper Wakes, so I don’t know the mechanism Wells used. Manning has his protagonist use this device to search for meaning and happiness in the future.

In the first story, “The Forest People,” Winters places his apparatus in a chamber deep underground, and with the aid of a timer, sleeps for a few millennia, waking in 5000 A.D. When Winters comes out of his chamber, he discovers that the world has reached a state in which humans live in small villages, using trees to supply almost all their needs. Most of the world is covered by forest, and open grasslands are anathema. The time Winters comes from (our present age) is known as the Age of Waste.

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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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Vintage Treasures: The Shores of Space by Richard Matheson

Vintage Treasures: The Shores of Space by Richard Matheson

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The Shores of Space-smallI’ve told you about a few really excellent single author collections recently, including Eric Frank Russell’s Men, Martians, and Machines, Michael Shea’s Polyphemus, and H.P. Lovecraft’s The Dunwich Horror and Others. As long as I’m on a roll, I figure I should continue in the same vein. So this week, I want to talk about Richard Matheson’s 1957 collection The Shores of Space.

Matheson is rightly revered by both SF and horror fans as a genius, especially at short length. He passed away in June, at the age of 87, and was productive right up to the end — with new novels (Other Kingdoms, 2011, and Generations, 2012), collections (Bakteria and Other Improbable Tales, 2011), and even a new movie (Real Steel, staring Hugh Jackman, based on his short story “Steel” from the May 1956 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction.) That’s damned impressive… the closer I get to 55, the harder I find it just to summon the energy to change channels.

The Shores of Space was Matheson’s second collection (after his groundbreaking Born of Man and Woman, 1954) and it proved very successful, with half a dozen reprintings and new editions over the next 20 years. The last one was in 1979, with an intriguing (and rather purple) cover by Murray Tinkelman. But overall, I prefer the 1969 Bantam paperback (shown at right), with a defiant spaceman standing on a harsh alien landscape, ready to shake his fist at the first person who suggests he put pants on. You show ’em, naked spaceman.

Here’s the back cover copy (it helps if you imagine Rod Serling reading it in a slow, urgent monotone).

A Shattering Journey into the Supernatural

Thirteen extraordinary stories that explore the slippery edge of madness — and beyond — into a chilling nightmare of bizarre and unexplainable occurrences… into a world where unspeakable horror becomes normal — where murky darkness from space works on the minds of men — in a time when creatures of dreadful, unearthy powers can control human beings… and humans create beings beyond their control. Weird fantasy and eerie imagination inspire stories of unforgettable force and unpredictable conclusions!

There’s some pretty good stuff in The Shores of Space. It includes, among many other fine tales, the short story “Steel” that was the basis for Real Steel.

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The Best One-Sentence Reviews of Edmond Hamilton: The Winner of The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Four

The Best One-Sentence Reviews of Edmond Hamilton: The Winner of The Collected Edmond Hamilton, Volume Four

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The Collected Edmond Hamilton Volume Four-smallLast month, we invited Black Gate readers to send us a one-sentence review of their favorite Edmond Hamilton novel or short story.

In return, we offered to award a copy of the long-awaited fourth volume of The Collected Edmond Hamilton from Haffner Press to one lucky winner. The winner was randomly drawn from the list of all qualified entrants.

Before we announce the winner, let’s have a look at some of the entries. We can’t reprint all of them, but we can hit the highlights. (But fret not — all qualifying entries received before April 20 were included in the drawing.)

We left the choice of what novel or story to review up to you and we weren’t too surprised to find the most popular topic was Edmond Hamilton’s The Star Kings series. Robert James Parker kicked things off with this review:

John Gordon, suffering from an existential crisis, agrees to travel through time and space to the far future where he gets caught up in a sweeping space opera full of cosmic space battles, beautiful princesses, and bizarre monsters.

Andy Sheets gets bonus points for a completely à propos Alan Rickman reference.

How can you not be enticed by a story about an out of step WWII veteran getting mind-swapped into the body of a prince 200,000 years in the future, hooking up with a foxy future princess, and battling The League of Dark Worlds, lead by a guy who should totally be played by Alan Rickman in the movie, with a super-weapon called the Disruptor, all tightly packed into a fast-moving novel not even 200 pages long?!

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Vintage Treasures: Men, Martians, and Machines by Eric Frank Russell

Vintage Treasures: Men, Martians, and Machines by Eric Frank Russell

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Men Martians and Machines-smallLast Sunday, I posted the latest article in my Ace Double series, this time focusing on Sentinels of Space by Eric Frank Russell and Don Wollheim’s The Ultimate Invader.

It made me realize that I’ve given precious little coverage to Eric Frank Russell over the years — really, a pretty serious oversight, considering what a fine writer he was. So I thought I’d remedy that here, starting with his 1955 volume Men, Martians, and Machines.

Men, Martians, and Machines is something of a problem child for catalogers. Wikipedia lists it as a novel, but it’s really not — it’s a collection of four linked stories, three published in Astounding during World War II, and one original. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database entry for Russell lists it as neither a collection nor a novel, creating a separate category for it.

In some ways the book is an early precursor to Star Trek. The stories follow the exploits of the rough-and-tumble crew of the solar freighter Upskadaska City, known more commonly as the Upsydaisy, who follow their Captain as he takes charge of one of the first faster-than-light starships, the Marathon. Captain McNulty leads his mixed crew of humans, jovial tentacled Martians, and one robot on voyages of discovery to far stars and strange alien planets.

Star Trek fans will certainly enjoy these proto-Trek stories and see how they influenced that seminal series two decades later. For me, these tales represent something even more primal. When I think of Golden Age robot stories, I think of Asimov; when I think of military science fiction, I think Heinlein. When I think of tales of brave exploration and camaraderie in the face of the vast mystery and terror of deep space, I think of Eric Frank Russell.

It’s his unique voice, I think, and the poetry and humanity of his prose, mixed with all the marvelous ray-gun trappings of pulp science fiction, that makes him such a joy to read. Here’s a snippet from the first story, “Jay Score,” as our unnamed narrator meets with the imposing new emergency pilot shortly after blast off.

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The Mind and Soul of an Honest Creator: Paul Di Filippo on Robert Moore Williams

The Mind and Soul of an Honest Creator: Paul Di Filippo on Robert Moore Williams

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Time Tolls for Toro-smallOver at Locus Online, author Paul Di Filippo reviews the latest in the Masters of Science Fiction line from Armchair Fiction, Time Tolls For Toro and Other Stories by Robert Moore Williams, which collects a nice assortment of pulp fiction from Super Science Stories, Amazing Stories, Fantastic Universe, Planet Stories, and Imaginative Tales from 1950 – 1959.

Like a combination of Asimov’s robot stories and Simak’s robot stories, “The Soul Makers” (Super Science Stories, 1950) takes us to the far-off year of 1987, in the middle of an atomic war. Humanity’s sentient robots are going AWOL, and the two men sent to discover the reason uncover more than they anticipated. Williams extracts a fair measure of pathos from the noble actions of the robots, and the inevitable doom and rebirth of humanity… “The Diamond Images” (Fantastic Universe, 1959) is one of those “Old Venus” tales so common in the consensus future history of this era. A butterfly collector named Wolder has made friends with the seemingly unsophisticated Venusians after eight years among them. But then his son arrives, unwittingly leading pirates to the treasure of the natives…

There’s an almost Ballardian feel to the opening of “To the End of Time” (Super Science Stories, 1950). A Venusian song, brought back to Earth, is literally driving people insane. Into the jungle wastelands of Venus, our psychologist hero Thorndyke sets out to find a cure, encountering a strange race of Venusians and the human missionary and his beautiful daughter who minister to them…

Reading this volume is no chore or dull swotting up of past history for academic purposes. The stories, however creaky at times, remain very entertaining and illustrative of the mind and soul of one honest creator, doing the best he could to enrich the soil of the genre.

Read the complete article here. We covered the launch of Armchair Fiction back in January 2012 and Paul’s review of Masters of Science Fiction Vol. #8, Milton Lesser’s A is for Android, last May.

Masters of Science Fiction, Volume Ten: Time Tolls For Toro and Other Stories by Robert Moore Williams was published by Armchair Fiction on January 22, 2014. It is 320 pages, priced at $16.95 in trade paperback. There is no digital edition. No word on who did the cover… Emsh, maybe?