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An American Fantasy Master: The Pulp Art of Virgil Finlay

An American Fantasy Master: The Pulp Art of Virgil Finlay

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Virgil Finlay cover for Famous Fantastic Mysteries-smallJohn O’Neill graciously offered me a spot in Black Gate’s blogosphere. How nice of him. Silly man, now he has to put up with me.

Most of you probably don’t recognize my name, but I’ve been in the fantasy-sf-comics business for years. I’ve worked at Cinefantastique magazine (and written for it), Mayfair Games, and First Comics. In 1984, I began freelancing and have worked for a number of specialty presses as designer, consultant, guru, you name it.

A few years ago, I decided I wanted more control of the work I was doing, packaged the first US edition of Creature From the Black Lagoon for DreamHaven Books, and co-edited the Worlds of Edgar Rice Burroughs with Mike Resnick for Baen Books. Go buy them both.

So what can you expect from me in the upcoming weeks and months?

Well, I’ll be giving you sneak peeks on things I’m working on, writing retrospectives of great American Fantasists (writers and artists) you should know about, and giving you a lot of information on fantasy films from the silent era to now.

The last bit is because I’m working on a history of fantasy films and occasionally I run across bits that are cool, but just don’t fit into the book. I’ll share them here.

This time, let’s start with a book I’m working on which allows me to talk about that wonderful artist Virgil Finlay.

It’s a 192 page 9 x 12 art book Doug Ellis, Bob Weinberg, and I are putting together, with over 150 black and white Finlay illustrations from Doug’s and Bob’s personal art collections, and a 32 page color section that will include paintings from Glynn Crain’s collection as well.

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Jack Ripcord and the Evolution of Pulp

Jack Ripcord and the Evolution of Pulp

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may72013trysnakebiteMost mainstream readers who were familiar with the phrase “pulp fiction” prior to Quentin Tarantino’s critically and commercially acclaimed film associated it with hard-boiled detective fiction. While this association only captured part of the eclectic spectrum of genres represented in pulp magazines in the first half of the last century, it must be noted that the documented evolution of the western gunfighter into the hardboiled detective hero was crucial to the proliferation of twentieth century popular culture.

Dashiell Hammett’s seminal hardboiled thriller Red Harvest could just as easily have been transferred from a mining town to a western setting. This flexibility is what allowed the story to be adapted so effectively decades after the fact by Akira Kurosawa as Yojimbo and by Sergio Leone as A Fistful of Dollars with equally trendsetting results.

Most people today best understand the ethos of pulp fiction from the 1981 blockbuster hit Raiders of the Lost Ark. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg perfectly encapsulated the archetypal pulp hero in the form of Indiana Jones, an original character who revived the cheap thrills and spills of pulp magazines and Saturday matinee serials and transformed them into box office gold.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1951: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, June 1951: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction June 1951-smallThe June, 1951 edition of Galaxy Science Fiction featured several longer works: two novelets and the second part of a serial novel. That only left room for one short story.

In his editorial remarks, H. L. Gold writes of his discovery of science fiction and how his love for it helped him realize what he wanted for a career.

Unfortunately, the dream of editing as good a magazine as possible does not include production difficulties. Because buying paper these days is like being mugged on a dark street, GALAXY has been late much too often… Other headaches are distribution, newsstand display, rocketing costs, ruckuses over ads, sweating good stories into better stories, and improving art, which has been the biggest single gripe of readers.

Regardless of the hassles, Gold found a way to keep the magazine going, and the June issue is another strong showing.

“Hunt the Hunter” by Kris Neville — Ri and Mia act as scouts for humanity’s leader, Extrone, helping him to successfully hunt a farn beast. Extrone is an intimidating figure who will risk confrontations with hostile aliens for the chance at killing a farn beast, something so rare in the systems humanity controls. Ri and Mia try to hide their traitorous thoughts as they lead Extrone toward the beasts, hoping to complete their mission quickly before Extrone’s impatience leads to wrath.

I loved Extrone’s character in this story. By far, it overshadows everyone else, but it works. I could picture Jeff Bridges playing the role, if this was a movie, barking out commands and delivering the slow, menacing dialogue.

I read a little about Neville, and it seems he was one who quickly vaulted into several of the big magazines. But he apparently felt that his work extended beyond the accepted boundaries of science fiction at the time. So he withdrew from science fiction and instead wrote texts in the field of epoxy resins. Yes, I’m serious.

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Insanity in Pictures

Insanity in Pictures

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culbard-coverThough I can’t be completely certain, I think the first time I encountered the name of H.P. Lovecraft was sometime during the course of 1980, not long after I’d discovered Dungeons & Dragons. The thin blue rulebook contained inside the Basic Set included a single reference to “Cthulhu” as a deity alongside Crom and Zeus (two names I already knew). Back in those days, hobby shops were ground zero for the burgeoning roleplaying hobby. Bearded wargamers, nerdy college kids, heavy metal-loving teens, and fantasy fans of all sorts rubbed shoulders in these peculiar little stores, swapping stories of their characters and campaigns, as well as holding forth on a variety of topics. To a young person such as myself, hobby shops were amazing places filled with amazing people, whose company I sought out as often as I could.

There was a strange camaraderie among the hobby shops’ patrons – or so it seemed to me anyway. We were all a little strange by the standards of the time, taking interest in things that were still many years from mainstream recognition, let alone acceptance. Consequently, the usual distinctions of age didn’t matter much and I regularly found myself chatting with people years older than myself about gaming and fantasy and science fiction. I can’t begin to convey what a big deal this was to me. I was a shy, bookish sort and didn’t make friends easily, yet here I was gabbing with teenagers and university students as if we were old comrades.

That’s when I heard someone mention Cthulhu again and, callow youth that I was, asked just who (or what) Cthulhu was. Little did I know that that innocent question would lead to a lifelong interest in the life and works of H.P. Lovecraft.

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Vintage Treasures: The Best of Fredric Brown

Vintage Treasures: The Best of Fredric Brown

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The Best of Fredric Brown-smallWelcome to the 13th installment of my ongoing examination of one of the most influential book series of my youth, Lester Del Rey’s Classics of Science Fiction line. This time, we’re looking at the 1977 release, The Best of Fredric Brown, edited by Robert Bloch (who had his own entry in the series eleven months after this one, which I discussed back in July.)

The Classics of Science Fiction line was my introduction to many of the major SF and fantasy writers of the 20th Century (well, that and The Hugo Winners, which first introduced me to Poul Anderson, Walter C. Miller, Arthur C. Clarke, and others, and of course the various volumes of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame).

All that education didn’t teach me much about Fredric Brown, however. A week ago, I probably could have named only one Fredric Brown short story from memory, “Arena” — which, admittedly, I dearly loved. I first read it in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame, Volume One, where it was selected as one of the finest short stories ever written, but even before that, I knew it as the Star Trek episode of the same name.

You probably think of it as, “Isn’t that the one where Kirk throws styrofoam rocks at the Gorn?”

Yes. Yes it is. And even though it has been much-parodied (including a brilliant video game commercial starring an 80-year old William Shatner and an aged Gorn in a re-match), it’s still one of the finest episodes of the original series.

So before I sat down to assemble my notes for this article, I took my paperback copy of The Best of Fredric Brown with me on a business trip, to a banking show in Las Vegas, and used the opportunity to reacquaint myself with the author. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting all that much. Not every installment in the Classics of Science Fiction could be a winner.

My mistake.

The Best of Fredric Brown is one of the best short story collections I’ve read in years. Brown is frequently compared to O. Henry for his gift for twist endings and the comparison is apt. Even when you’re on the alert, Brown manages to constantly surprise and delight you in a way that very few authors — in the genre or out — can pull off.

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In Defense of Fantasy Heroes

In Defense of Fantasy Heroes

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Osprey Bosworth
                 People really did this stuff.

It’s often said that Fantasy abounds with unrealistically heroic heroes and that it overstates the capacity for the individual to shape History.

If that were true, I’m not sure it would be a Bad Thing, as long as victory is properly earned, since you can read the stories as allegory for more mundane real life and since the main function of most speculative fiction is escapism, anyway.

However, I would argue that the Fantasy heroes are in fact realistic, both in their powers and their influence, as long as we bear in mind that the protagonists of Fiction, like Biography, do not have to be statistically representative and that narrative favors the survivors.

For a start, it is very easy to underestimate the disproportionate capacity for violence shared by some individuals.

Studies suggest that something like 95% of pre-modern combatants have a sort of safety catch preventing them from specifically setting out to kill an individual. Something biological seems to translate war into primal dominance displays. We feel happy blazing away in the general direction of the enemy, or shouting and shoving in a phalanx fight — the equivalent of monkeys throwing poo — but not walking up to a person and putting a blade through their face.

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Vintage Treasures: The Pirates of Zan by Murray Leinster

Vintage Treasures: The Pirates of Zan by Murray Leinster

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Astounding Science Fiction February 1959-small The Pirates of Zan Ace Double-small The Pirates of Zan Ace Double2-small The Pirates of Zan-small

[Click on any of the images above for bigger versions.]

Murray Leinster is one of my favorite pulp writers. I reprinted one of his earliest tales, “The Fifth-Dimension Catapult,” which first appeared in the January 1931 Astounding Stories of Super-Science, way back in Black Gate 9. Fittingly enough, when I kicked off my investigation of the Classics of Science Fiction line, I started with one of the finest volumes, The Best of Murray Leinster. More recently, I looked at his creepy pulp SF tale “Proxima Centauri” on August 15th.

But none of those is nearly as well known as his classic space fantasy The Pirates of Zan. Because, hello, space pirates. Also, it was blessed with a terrific series of covers over the three decades it was in print. So here we are with another fond look at the work of Murray Leinster.

(While we’re on the topic, why aren’t there more novels of space pirates? The only other ones I can think of are H. Beam Piper’s Space Viking, CJ Cherryh’s Merchanter’s Luck, Piers Anthony’s Bio of a Space Tyrant, and maybe A. Bertram Chandler’s John Grimes novels, at least the ones featuring his recurring adversary Drongo Kane. That’s pretty sad. Seriously, if there are two things that go great together, it’s unexplored space and pirates. Get with it, science fiction.)

The Pirates of Zan was originally serialized (as “The Pirates of Ersatz”) in three parts in Astounding Science Fiction, starting with the February 1959 issue. The famous Kelly Freas cover, featuring a pirate with a slide rule between his teeth, is one of the most beloved Astounding covers of the era. It’s shown at left above.

Don’t ask what a slide rule is, you damn punk kids.

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The Cleric and the Crucifix

The Cleric and the Crucifix

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vanhelsing

“Come to me, Arthur. Leave these others and come to me. My arms are hungry for you. Come, and we can rest together. Come, my husband, come!”

There was something diabolically sweet in her tones — something of the tingling of glass when struck — which rang through the brains even of us who heard the words addressed to another. As for Arthur, he seemed under a spell; moving his hands from his face, he opened wide his arms. She was leaping for them, when Van Helsing sprang forward and held between them his little golden crucifix. She recoiled from it, and, with a suddenly distorted face, full of rage, dashed past him as if to enter the tomb.

So does Dr. John Seward describe the encounter between Abraham Van Helsing and newly-risen Lucy Westenra in Chapter 16 of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I’m not knowledgeable enough in literary vampire lore to be able to say with any certainty that the 1897 novel is the first time we see a bloodsucker recoil from a crucifix, but, even if it’s not, I have little doubt that it was probably the most widely-read and influential example of it. Not only has the novel itself sold untold copies in the English-speaking world alone, but motion picture adaptations, starting with F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized 1922 film, Nosferatu, have added much to the popular conception of “the undead” (to borrow Stoker’s own coinage) – and how to combat them.

In the world of gaming, it’s well-known that the medieval miniatures rules, Chainmail, written by Gary Gygax and Jeff Perren, was the immediate predecessor to Dungeons & Dragons, especially its “Fantasy Supplement,” which introduces the option of including magic and monsters so as to “refight the epic struggles related by J.R.R. Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, and other fantasy writers.” Even a cursory examination of Chainmail reveals that there’s nary a mention of religion in its pages, including in the Fantasy Supplement. This shouldn’t really come as a surprise, since the priest isn’t a distinct literary archetype in the pulp fantasy literature that inspired Gygax (as revealed in innumerable posts about his Appendix N bibliography on this site and elsewhere). Consequently, Chainmail includes only “heroes” and “wizards” as individual units.

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Vintage Treasures: Strange Eons by Robert Bloch

Vintage Treasures: Strange Eons by Robert Bloch

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Strange Eons Robert Bloch-smallBack in July, I did a Vintage Treasures article on The Best of Robert Bloch, the second in my series on Lester Del Rey’s Classics of Science Fiction. In doing the research for that article, I came across references to Bloch’s book of Lovecraftian fiction, Strange Eons, first published in 1979.

My curiosity was piqued. It took a while to track down a copy, but this is the age of the Internet, when all things are possible. I settled in to read it this morning and I was surprised to find it’s a novel, not a collection, as I assumed. Given the big Doctor Who news today, I was also amused to find the last page given over to a house ad for Pinnacle’s Doctor Who novelizations, with a banner quote from Harlan Ellison: “Incomparable… extraordinary… my hero, Doctor Who!”

The book is dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft — at least that wasn’t a surprise. As the publisher notes on the back of Strange Eons, Bloch was a protégé of Lovecraft and, at the age of fifteen, the youngest member of the “Lovecraft Circle” of writers. The novel builds unabashedly on the work of the master, starting with the premise that the creatures he wrote of are real, and his books form a dire warning for mankind:

What men know is called science; what they have not yet learned they call magic. But both are real….

In the world of today and the near future, three people inexorably linked by a common interest in the work of H. P. Lovecraft, discover: that the legendary creatures he created in his fantasies have hideous counterparts in reality… that his fiction is incredible fact… that his message is a warning…

Spooky stuff. I’ll see if the execution lives up to the promise. Strange Eons was published by Pinnacle Books in June 1979, with cover art by David Hada. It is 249 pages, priced at $1.95 in paperback. I paid $5.50 for a fine condition copy on eBay.

See all of our recent Vintage Treasure articles here.

Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1951: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1951: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction May 1951-smallThe May, 1951 issue of Galaxy featured the first installment of a new novel, two novelets and two short stories.

By this point, I would think readers would be thrilled by this magazine. It’s amazing to consider how many of its stories were later reprinted, and how so many authors became legendary in the field (if they were not already so).

“Bridge Crossing” by Dave Dryfoos — Roddie grew up among androids and is the only human left within the city of San Francisco. There are other humans who live outside the city and raid it for supplies; Roddie views them as enemies. One night, he finds one and decides to act friendly to the woman to learn more about his enemies. Despite their commonality, he is determined to remain allied with his android friends.

Dave Dryfoos had over 20 published stories between 1950 and 1955. And that was it. He didn’t die until 2003, but I can’t find information on why he seemed to stop writing in 1955 (if that’s in fact what happened).

At any rate, “Bridge Crossing” is an interesting tale and I only had a feel for where it was going, not a definite sense (which kept it tense). And it had a great last line.

“Mars Child” (Part 1) by Cyril Judd — Mars is colonized by pioneering humans, some of whom feel like Mars is a second chance to populate a planet without all of the pollution on Earth. The Sun Lake colony depends on trade with Earth to thrive, but the colonists hope to one day sever ties with Earth — to be completely independent. Dr. Tony Hellman, one of the colony’s council members, delivers a newborn to eager parents, but his main duties include assessing the radioactive levels of their exports.

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