Browsed by
Category: Pulp

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu, Part Four

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu, Part Four

Comments 0 Comment

1858522_320The Bride of Fu ManchuSax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu was originally serialized in Collier’s from May 6 to July 8, 1933 under the variant title, Fu Manchu’s Bride. It was published in book form later that year by Cassell in the UK and Doubleday in the US. The US edition retained the original magazine title until the 1960s when the UK book title was adopted for the paperback edition published by Pyramid Books.

Sir Denis Nayland Smith and Alan Sterling lead the police raid of Mahdi Bey’s Riviera estate. Moving deep below sea level in the underground catacombs, they find themselves cut off by steel doors which descend on both sides. Fearing for their lives and plunged in darkness, they are startled to hear the voice of Fu Manchu informing them he is leaving by submarine and that Dr. Petrie and Fleurette go with him. He explains he is sparing their lives only because Sir Denis and Sterling spared his when they both encountered him in his opium trance.

Smith and Sterling manage to climb through an opening in the catacombs and descend into the underground stream and swim across until they can climb the rocks leading to the beach at St. Claire. Sir Denis notes that Petrie could never have made the journey to the submarine in his weakened condition and sees evidence of oil trails that suggest that another party has left the beach via motorboat. The question remains where the motorboat will meet up with the submarine. Smith suspects their destination would be a yacht with which to transport the party to the rendezvous.

…

Read More Read More

Last Chance to Win a Copy of The Complete John Thunstone from Haffner Press

Last Chance to Win a Copy of The Complete John Thunstone from Haffner Press

Comments 0 Comment

The Complete John Thunstone-smallIn a moment of weakness earlier this month, I decided to give away two copies of the long-awaited pulp compilation The Complete John Thunstone by Manly Wade Wellman.

Too late to back out now. How do you win one, you lucky dog? Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the title “John Thunstone” and a one-sentence review of your favorite Manly Wade Wellman novel or short story. And don’t forget to mention what story you’re reviewing!

That’s it. Two winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries, and we’ll publish the best reviews here on the Black Gate blog.

But time is running out — the contest closes March 3. Because if I have to hold these things any longer than that, there’s no way I’ll be able to part with them.

Haffner’s archival-quality hardcovers are some of the most collectible books in the genre. The Complete John Thunstone is 640 pages in hardcover, with an introduction by Ramsey Campbell and cover art by Raymond Swanland. It is edited by Stephen Haffner and illustrated by George Evans, and has a retail price of $40. Our original article on the book is here.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Terms and conditions subject to change as our lawyers sober up and get back to us. Not valid where prohibited by law. Or anywhere postage for a hefty hardcover is more than, like, 10 bucks. Good luck!

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” by Joe Bonadonna

Black Gate Online Fiction: “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” by Joe Bonadonna

Comments 4 comments

mad_shadowsWe first posted Joe Bonadonna’s sword and sorcery novelette “The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” in December 2011, and it has proven to be one of our most popular online stories. We’re proud to re-present it here as part of the new Black Gate Online Fiction library.

Long before the legendary cities of Cush and Erusabad were destroyed by war, the graveyard was old. No one knew how old the graveyard truly was, for the carvings on its headstones and markers had been long worn away by the hands of time, wind, and weather. The cemetery crouched with its dead in a hidden vale in the dark heart of Khanya-Toth, land of shadows, black magic, and creatures of the night.

A tall, slim woman sat on the opposite side of the fire, close to the entrance to her bamboo hut. She wore a black robe, her face partially hidden within its hood.

“You’ve come a long way from Valdar to see me,” she said. Her name was Zomandra Chuvai, and she was a witch, one of the Kha Jitah. She lived alone in that ancient graveyard, with only ghosts and memories to keep her company.

“We’re the Blunker boys,” Ollo said. He was all skin and bone, with a sickly yellow pallor.

“I’m well aware of who you are,” Zomandra said. “Shall we talk business?”

“The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” is part of Joe’s first published swords and sorcery collection, Mad Shadows: The Weird Tales of Dorgo the Dowser. Read more about Mad Shadows in “Dorgo the Dowser and Me,” posted on the Black Gate website here.

The complete catalog of Black Gate Online Fiction, including stories by Mark Rigney, C.S.E. Cooney, Vaughn Heppner, E.E. Knight, Jason E. Thummel, Judith Berman, Howard Andrew Jones, Dave Gross, Harry Connolly, and others, is here.

“The Moonstones of Sor Lunarum” is a complete 15,000-word novelette of weird fantasy offered at no cost.

Read the complete story here.

Kirkus Looks at Astounding Science Fiction

Kirkus Looks at Astounding Science Fiction

Comments 4 comments

Astounding Science Fiction May 1938Andrew Liptak at Kirkus Reviews has posted a nice retrospective of one of the most influential figures in the history of our genre: John W. Campbell, editor of Astounding Science Fiction and the short-lived Unknown magazine. Here’s a snippet:

In 1938, science fiction would run into another personality who would change science fiction again: When 28-year-old author John Campbell Jr. was hired to edit Astounding Magazine. Campbell’s influence in the magazine market is commonly cited as the beginning of the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction, and represented a major shift away from the conventions of Gernsback’s pulp era…

With the release of the July 1939 issue of Astounding, the gloves came off. The issue’s table of contents contained a number of high quality stories from new and regular Astounding writers: “The Black Destroyer,” the first published story by A.E. van Vogt; “Trends,” Isaac Asimov’s first sale to the publication; “City of the Cosmic Rays,” by Nat Schachner; “Lightship, Ho!,” by Nelson S. Bond; “The Moth,” by Ross Rocklynne; Amelia Reynold’s “When the Half-Gods Go;” and “Greater than Gods,” by C.L. Moore.

Subsequent issues of Astounding featured a regular stable of authors who have become household names: Theodore Sturgeon, Robert Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard and Isaac Asimov, amongst many others. The magazine had changed the landscape…

The complete article is here. Thanks to John DeNardo at SF Signal for the tip.

…

Read More Read More

Affair of the Bear: The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Affair of the Bear: The Oakdale Affair by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Comments 2 comments

Oakdale Affair frontspiece Jack BurroughsYes, this is the 3,000th post on Black Gate. Discovered after the fact, of course. Never thought I’d be writing about a murder mystery centered on a bear for the occasion, but what the hey.

In the spring of 1917, as he was completing the last of the “New Tarzan Adventures” that would eventually fill the volume Jungle Tales of Tarzan, Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote a short novel (40,000 words) titled “Bridge and the Oskaloosa Kid.” A reader of the previous year’s The Return of the Mucker might recognize the name “Bridge” as belonging to that novel’s itinerant poet and co-hero. Burroughs liked the character so much that he spun him off into his own story: a crime drama/mystery, something different for the author.

Editor Bob Davis at All-Story found little to appreciate about ERB’s new tact when “Bridge and the Oskaloosa Kid” landed on his desk. He argued that its twist ending stretched credulity past what readers would tolerate: “Lord! Edgar, how do you expect people who love and worship you to stand up for anything like that? And the bear stuff, and the clanking of chains!” Davis may also have objected to mentions of one of the villains injecting morphine to feed an addiction. Although Davis remarked that Bridge was a “splendid character” in The Return of the Mucker and “well worth a great story,” the editor didn’t think this was it. He bounced the novel back to ERB.

Burroughs had his own doubts about “Bridge and the Oskaloosa Kid,” criticizing his performance as “rotten” even before he finished. But his name was still good for a sale in a magazine in 1917, and the novel ended up at Blue Book, printed in full in the March 1918 issue under the more economical title The Oakdale Affair. Editor Ray Long paid $600 for it, considerably less than ERB’s standard pay-rate at the time.

A year later, a movie titled The Oakdale Affair starring Evelyn Greeley premiered from World Film Company. It was the fourth film made from ERB’s work, and a rare non-Tarzan one. Somebody must have liked the book, the opinions of the author and his editor be damned!

What to make of this unofficial third novel of the “Mucker Trilogy,” a crime thriller/mystery with a vanished heiress, murderous drifters, gypsies, an enthusiastic child detective, a deadly bear, a lynch mob, a couple of dead bodies, and a chain-clanking ghost in a haunted house? Did ERB stray too far in looking for somewhere else for his poetry-loving Bridge to roam?

…

Read More Read More

The Weird of Oz Recalls his First Visit to Barsoom

The Weird of Oz Recalls his First Visit to Barsoom

Comments 0 Comment

warlord of marsBy the time I was in the third grade, I was reading a little bit of everything (still do). From Zorro to The Hardy Boys to Pippi Longstocking, I gave everything a try. But already I was being drawn more strongly to works of speculative fiction, especially heroic fantasy. The year before, I’d gotten hooked on C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia.

I often did my best bouts of reading after I’d been tucked into bed and the lights were out. I’d sneak down by the door, sprawl out on the carpet, and read by the narrow band of light coming in from the bathroom down the hall (my mother would leave it on as a nightlight). On one particular night, I chose an old hardcover that I’d taken off my Granddad’s shelf. Whatever dust jacket had once adorned its fraying red cloth was long since lost, and the pages were becoming yellow and brittle. I gently opened to the first page and read these words:

In the shadows of the forest that flanks the crimson plain by the side of the Lost Sea of Korus in the Valley Dor, beneath the hurtling moons of Mars, speeding their meteoric way close above the bosom of the dying planet, I crept stealthily along the trail of a shadowy form that hugged the darker places with a persistency that proclaimed the sinister nature of its errand.

These are the first words of The Warlord of Mars  (1919) by Edgar Rice Burroughs.

This happens to be the third book in the Barsoom series, so I had no idea what was going on. But “the shadows of the forest that flanks the crimson plain,” the “Lost Sea of Korus,” the “Valley Dor,” and the “dying planet” piqued a part of my brain that wanted to explore, as the voice at the beginning of Star Trek used to announce, “strange new worlds.” And then that sudden telescoping in on the “shadowy form” on a sinister errand…I was hooked.  I was on my way to Mars — or Barsoom, as its inhabitants called it.

…

Read More Read More

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu, Part Two

Blogging Sax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu, Part Two

Comments 0 Comment

$(KGrHqJ,!p!E9dR9SnnCBPebmY)fDQ~~60_35The Bride of Fu ManchuSax Rohmer’s The Bride of Fu Manchu was originally serialized in Collier’s from May 6 to July 8, 1933 under the variant title, Fu Manchu’s Bride. It was published in book form later that year by Cassell in the UK and Doubleday in the US. The US edition retained the original magazine title until the 1960s, when the UK book title was adopted for the paperback edition published by Pyramid Books.

After Alan Sterling recovers consciousness, Sir Denis insists he dine out that evening in Monte Carlo to take his mind off the terrible situation with Dr. Petrie. Complying with his wishes, Alan drives to Monaco and spends some time at a casino trying to apply Petrie’s (really Rohmer’s) complicated system to break the bank, to no avail. While dining that night, he is startled to spy Fleurette at another table dining with a Russian nobleman and Mahdi Bey.

Observing them in public, Sterling convinces himself that Fleurette must be Mahdi Bey’s mistress. This devastates him as he has idealized her as his virginal dream girl since first glimpsing her on the beach at Ste. Claire. Sterling’s reverie is broken when he spies the Chinese agents of Dr. Fu Manchu in the restaurant. He then hears the mysterious sonic trumpet sound once more. He doesn’t understand the connection, but he is now certain that Mahdi Bey is somehow mixed up in the dangerous business and Fleurette with him.

…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Vampire, Edited by Peter Haining

Vintage Treasures: Vampire, Edited by Peter Haining

Comments 2 comments

Vampire by Peter Haining-smallI’m a fan of modern horror and dark fantasy — especially writers like Laird Barron, Dan Simmons, and Stephen King.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t also enjoy classic horror, particularly when it comes in the form of creepy and fun short stories. So when I discovered this little gem at the Starfarer’s Despatch booth — run by two of my favorite booksellers, Rich Warren and Arin Komins — at Capricon this weekend, I snatched it up immediately.

The text on the back reminded me of the monster movies I adored in my youth:

The Blood is the Life…

The distant howl of a wolf in the night… A faint but persistent tapping at your window-pane… An empty tomb… A solitary figure swathed in black, his face the colour of death but for his lips which are a deep scarlet …

Beware — for the Undead have risen from their graves. And they must feed …

Yeah, that brings me right back to 1975, when paradise was an issue of Tomb of Dracula and a ticket to the Saturday double feature of Frankenstein Conquers the World and Destroy All Monsters.

The contents look just as enticing — including stories by Bram Stoker, Richard Matheson, Edith Wharton, Robert E. Howard, Robert Bloch, and Ray Bradbury. Most of the stories read like 1960s-era Creature Features too, including Curt Siodmak’s “Experiment With Evil,” in which the intrepid Professor Windford responds to an urgent summons from Count Norlasky in the remote Austrian Alps. Long ago a curse was laid on the Count’s ancestral home, and for most of his life he’s battled demons, werewolves, and vampires in an attempt to reclaim it. But one opponent has vexed him more than any other, and now he’s fallen victim to a soul-sucking thing.

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Dream Castles: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Two

New Treasures: Dream Castles: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Two

Comments 19 comments

Dream Castles-smallI spent this past weekend at Capricon 33, a local Chicago science fiction convention. The panels and readings were excellent, and perhaps the highlight was a Saturday night panel titled “Judging a Book by Page 119.” Steven Silver, Rich Horton, Kelly Strait, and Helen Montgomery read page 119 of some of their favorite novels, and the audience was left to guess the book. Someone in the back row correctly identified Poul Anderson’s The High Crusade, and I was pretty close with Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood trilogy (although I got the exact book wrong), but the panelists  managed to stump us on Iain M. Banks Consider Phlebas, Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind, Saladin Ahmed’s The Throne of the Crescent Moon, Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear, The Little Country by Charles de Lint, and many others.

I can’t spend more than an hour or two at a good convention without realizing I’m not reading enough good books. I scurried to the Dealer’s room first chance I got and spent a few bucks in an attempt to rectify the situation. I found plenty of great treasures, but the real gem of the lot was the sole copy of the out-of-print Dream Castles: The Early Jack Vance, Volume Two, which I stumbled on at Larry Smith’s table.

I’ve been looking for a copy of Dream Castles for nearly a year — ever since I bought the first volume, Hard Luck Diggings. Both were published by Subterranean Press, and both gather early pulp fiction from one of the greatest 20th Century science fiction and fantasy writers.

Dream Castles collects short stories and novellas from Astounding Science Fiction (“I’ll Build Your Dream Castle,” Sept. 1947), Marvel Science Stories (“Golden Girl,” May 1951), and many other pulps — including Fantastic Science Fiction Fantasy, Space Science Fiction, and Orbit Science Fiction. The short novel, “Son of the Tree,” originally appeared in the June 1951 issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories.

…

Read More Read More

Win a Copy of The Complete John Thunstone, by Manly Wade Wellman

Win a Copy of The Complete John Thunstone, by Manly Wade Wellman

Comments 11 comments

The Complete John Thunstone-smallHaffner Press has released the long-awaited pulp compilation The Complete John Thunstone, and we have two copies to give away.

To be completely blunt, I don’t want to give them away. You wouldn’t either, if you held this fabulous book in your hot little hands as long as I have. But that’s showbiz. If it were legal, I’d enter my own contest, like, three dozen times. (In fact, is that legal? Hmmm.)

Anyway. Yes, we’re having a contest. If no one enters, I suppose I get to keep the books. So… there’s a contest, but that’s all you get to know.

All right, fine. Bunch of complainers. Here’s the scoop: Just send an e-mail to john@blackgate.com with the title “John Thunstone” and a one-sentence review of your favorite Manly Wade Wellman novel or short story (don’t forget to mention the story). Two winners will be drawn at random from all qualifying entries, and we’ll publish the best reviews here on the Black Gate blog.

All entries become the property of New Epoch Press. No purchase necessary. Must be 12 or older. Decisions of the judges (capricious as they may be) are final. Not valid where prohibited by law. Or anywhere postage for a hefty hardcover is more than, like, 10 bucks. Seriously, this thing is huge and we’re on a budget.

Haffner’s archival-quality hardcovers  — including Henry Huttner’s Detour to Otherness, Terror in the House: The Early Kuttner, Volume One, and Thunder in the Void; Leigh Brackett’s Shannach – The Last: Farewell to Mars; and Robert Silverberg’s Tales From Super-Science Fiction — are some of the most collectible books in the genre, and The Complete John Thunstone promises to be no exception. Our original article on the book is here.

The Complete John Thunstone is edited by Stephen Haffner and was published December 22, 2012. It is 640 pages and priced at $40. Additional details at Haffner Press.