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Vintage Treasures: Henry Kuttner’s “The Graveyard Rats”

Vintage Treasures: Henry Kuttner’s “The Graveyard Rats”

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weird-tales-march-1936-coverThis is the latest of my short fiction reviews, following my recent reports on Howard Waldrop’s “The Ugly Chickens,” George R.R. Martin’s “Nightflyers,” and others.

In honor of the recent release of the massive Henry Kuttner collection, Thunder in the Void, I thought I’d talk about Kuttner’s first published story, “The Graveyard Rats,” which appeared in the March 1936 Weird Tales — alongside The Hour of the Dragon by Robert E. Howard, Edmond Hamilton’s “In the World’s Dusk,” Clark Ashton Smith’s “The Black Abbot of Puthuum,” and “The Crystal Curse” by Eando Binder.

Quite auspicious company! I found echoes of both Howard and Lovecraft in the opening paragraphs. Here, see what you think:

Masson… recalled certain vaguely disturbing legends he had heard since coming to ancient, witch-haunted Salem — tales of a moribund, inhuman life that was said to exist in forgotten burrows in the earth. The old days, when Cotton Mather had hunted down the evil cults that worshipped Hecate and the dark Magna Mater in frightful orgies, had passed; but dark gabled houses still leaned perilously towards each other over narrow cobbled streets, and blasphemous secrets and mysteries were said to be hidden in subterranean cellars and caverns, where forgotten pagan rites were still celebrated in defiance of law and sanity. Wagging their grey heads wisely, the elders declared that there were worse things than rats and maggots crawling in the unhallowed earth of the ancient Salem cemeteries.

And then, too, there was this curious dread of the rats. Masson… had heard vague rumours of ghoulish beings that dwelt far underground, and that had the power of commanding the rats, marshalling them like horrible armies. The rats, the old men whispered, were messengers between this world and the grim and ancient caverns far below Salem. Bodies had been stolen from graves for nocturnal subterranean feasts, they said.

What a great opening. I especially enjoyed the promise of a tale of eldritch and powerful subterranean evils… although truthfully, he had me at “frightful orgies.”

…

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Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 7: A Fighting Man of Mars

Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Mars, Part 7: A Fighting Man of Mars

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fighting-man-of-mars-1st-editionBack on Mars already?

I’ve now crossed the equator of the eleven-book Martian series, and A Fighting Man of Mars is the first volume of “Phase #3” of Barsoom. Phase #1 is the original John Carter trilogy of the early ‘teens. Phase #2 comprises the three books where Burroughs tried new heroes. Phase #3, which covers the three books published in the 1930s, has John Carter return as the protagonist, and shows ERB spreading out the time between the books until he eventually quits writing them altogether. (Synthetic Men of Mars is the last actual novel of the series; the two following books are compilations of novellas.) Even though the first book of the new phase still features a hero other than John Carter, a new decade has arrived, and with this book it seems that ERB is seeking to re-capture the excitement of the first trilogy.

Our Saga: The adventures of Earthman John Carter, his progeny, and sundry other natives and visitors, on the planet Mars, known to its inhabitants as Barsoom. A dry and slowly dying world, Barsoom contains four different human civilizations, one non-human one, a scattering of science among swashbuckling, and a plethora of religions, mystery cities, and strange beasts. The series spans 1912 to 1964 with nine novels, one volume of linked novellas, and two unrelated novellas.

Today’s Installment: A Fighting Man of Mars (1930)

Previous Installments: A Princess of Mars (1912), The Gods of Mars (1913), The Warlord of Mars (1913–14), Thuvia, Maid of Mars (1916), The Chessmen of Mars (1922), The Master Mind of Mars (1927)

The Backstory

Burroughs started writing A Fighting Man of Mars in February 1929. Most of it he dictated onto Ediphone cylinders for his secretary to type later, a practice the author used for the rest of his career. The new book sold faster than The Master Mind of Mars, although All-Story still rejected it before Blue Book picked it up for $8,000 — seven times what Hugo Gernsback paid for Master Mind. The sale must have come as a great relief to ERB, since between writing the book and its appearance in six parts in Blue Book (April–September 1930), two major events occurred that shook up the author’s life. …

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Vintage Treasures: Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg

Vintage Treasures: Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry N. Malzberg

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bug-eyed-monsters2Last week I posted a brief article on Damon Knight’s landmark SF anthology, A Science Fiction Argosy (and I mean that in the literal sense — it’s so large that for years I used it as a visual landmark when scanning my bookshelves.) The first response in the Comments Section was from the esteemed John C. Hocking, who wrote:

Some years back I read the anthology Bug-Eyed Monsters, edited by Bill Pronzini and Barry Malzberg, which leads off with Knight’s story “Stranger Station.”

This story knocked me out of my chair.

It is not a clever punch-line kind of tale, it’s a bravura piece of serious space operatic sf with strong characters, a vivid setting, genuinely alien horror, and a plot that manages to make the outcome of a single character’s dire situation a crux of cosmic importance without pushing the whole tale into wide-eyed melodrama.

The other stories in the collection were worth reading, but Knight’s tale put them deep in the shade.

So naturally I had to dig up my copy of Bug-Eyed Monsters, a 1980 Harcourt Brace Jovanovich trade paperback, to see what all the fuss was about. First thing I noticed was the Ruby Mazur cover. Mazur, who created over 3,000 album covers, was one of the most famous rock ‘n’ roll cover artists of the 70s and 80s. His work here is serviceable but not particularly attractive, with a rather drooly BEM lording it all over a pulpy alien landscape.

But we’re here to talk about “Stranger Station,” not 70s cover art, and Mr. Hocking is right that Damon Knight’s story, which first appeared in 1956 in F&SF, is a fine piece. The editors give it pride of place as first in the anthology, calling it “a virtuoso performance — arguably, one of the two finest BEM stories ever written (the other being, of course, H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds.)”

…

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Under the Hood with Robert E. Howard

Under the Hood with Robert E. Howard

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best-of-robert-e-howard-grim-lands2When I tell people what a great writer Robert E. Howard was, a lot of them don’t seem to believe me. If they only know him through depictions of Conan or, worse, rip-offs, then they think Howard’s writing is all about a dull guy in a loin cloth fighting monsters and lots of straining bosoms. It’s not that Robert E. Howard thought himself above describing a lithesome waist or a wilting beauty, especially if he needed to make a quick buck, it’s just that there’s a lot more going on in a Conan story than his imitators took away.

It’s easy to pull some samples of great action writing from Robert E. Howard. I’ve done it before, and I could easily do it again here. Only a handful of writers can approach him in that field, and almost none are his equal.

He was also a master of headlong, driving pace. That can be hard to showcase without insisting you read an entire story, so today I want to show readers who seem unaware of his work (or those who are uninterested) a few more reasons why those of us in the know revere him so highly.

Here in one of his historical stories, ”Lord of Samarcand,” is the Scotsman, or Frank, as the easterners call any from Europe, Donald MacDeesa, riding to the court of Tamarlane the Great. See how swiftly, how easily, Howard conjures the scene in all its splendor with just a few well-chosen words, as though he’s panning a camera as MacDeesa rides.

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How I Met Your Cimmerian (and other Barbarian Swordsmen)

How I Met Your Cimmerian (and other Barbarian Swordsmen)

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the-tritonian-ring2It was the summer of 1969. Very much like the one described in the song by Bryan Adams.

I quit the rock and roll band I’d been playing with since high school, went to work with my Dad, and had just finished reading The Lord of the Rings; a year earlier, while still in high school, I’d read The Hobbit. Now, after completing my magical journey through Middle-earth, I was totally hooked. I had found a liking — no, a craving for Heroic and Epic Fantasy.

Not long after that I discovered the Ballantine Books Adult Fantasy Series, wonderfully edited and championed by Lin Carter. Novels by Mervyn Peake, Lord Dunsany, E.R. Eddison, David Lindsay, William Morris, James Branch Cabell, Poul Anderson, and others fanned the flames of my passion.

To say I was addicted would be a gross understatement. No, I had found novels that had changed my life and would continue to do so for the next 40-plus years!

Then one day, while browsing through a used book store on State Street and Congress in downtown Chicago, I came across three more novels that would further alter my life. The Tritonian Ring by L. Sprague de Camp, The Swords of Lankhmar by Fritz Leiber, and an anthology of short-stories by Lin Carter, Beyond the Gates of Dream.

What was this new and exciting genre of fantasy fiction I had discovered? Sword and sorcery, of course! I was not only caught like an unwary Hyrkanian soldier, I was taken captive — axe, mace, and broadsword.

…

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New Treasures: Tales From Super-Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg

New Treasures: Tales From Super-Science Fiction, edited by Robert Silverberg

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tales-from-super-science-fiction2You really have to admire the team at Haffner Press. These guys must work night and day. Hot on the heels of their last release just two months ago — the gorgeous Kuttner collection Thunder in the Void — they’ve now published Tales From Super-Science Fiction, a thick anthology of fourteen stories from the legendary 50s SF magazine Super-Science Fiction. I’m not sure how they do it.

As usual the team at Haffner is firing on all cylinders, and both the marketing team and the production staff deserve kudos for a top-notch production. The Art Director and Book Designer have hit it out of the park, and —

What’s that? There is no “team” at Haffner Press? It’s just one guy, Stephen Haffner?

Ha. Like I’m going to believe that. Just take a look at their schedule of upcoming titles. There’s nearly a dozen. Maybe Stephen is the front man, but nothing can convince me he doesn’t have two dozen gnomes in a sweatshop in his basement. There’s no other explanation.

However he does it, I hope he keeps it up. Tales From Super-Science Fiction contains fiction by A. Bertram Chandler, Robert Bloch, Jack Vance, Robert Moore Williams, Daniel L. Galouye, Alan E. Nourse, Tom Godwin, Robert Silverberg, and others. Here’s the book description:

Super-Science Fiction was launched during the sf boom of the mid-1950s. Paying a princely rate of 2 cents a word the magazine attracted fiction by Isaac Asimov, Robert Bloch, Harlan Ellison. James Gunn, Jack Vance, and Donald Westlake, and featured cover art by Frank Kelly Freas and Ed Emshwiller. Running for 18 bi-monthly issues (Dec ‘55 to Oct ‘59), the magazine eventually devolved into a publication capitalizing on the then-current craze of “monster” stories. Editor Silverberg traces the genesis of Super-Science Fiction from its beginnings as an outlet for numerous colonization/expedition stories to its conclusion with such stories as “Creatures of the Green Slime,” “Beasts of Nightmare Horror” and “Vampires from Outer Space.”

Tales From Super-Science Fiction is 400 pages, with a cover price of $32. It is illustrated by Ed Emshwiller and Frank Kelly Freas, with cover art by Freas. You can find the complete Table of Contents at the Haffner website.

See the complete list of recent New Treasures here.

The Spectre Library Brings Rare Pulp Fantasy Back to Life

The Spectre Library Brings Rare Pulp Fantasy Back to Life

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the-living-deadWhen I originally wrote the title above, it was “The Spectre Library Brings Rare Pulp Fantasy Back to Print.” I had to change it when I realized it wasn’t true. Damn digital books… I have to change the way I speak now.

Let me start over.

The Spectre Library, a small press outfit known primarily for reprinting the works of Victor Rousseau, has produced Kindle versions of all four of Michael Waugh’s rare short novelettes:

The Living Dead
Back From the Dead
Fangs of the Vampire
The Mystery of the Abominable Snowman

All four were originally produced by Cleveland Publishing Co., an Australian publisher, in pamphlet format between 1954 – 55. They are quite short, between 45 and 48 print pages.

The Kindle versions feature the original cover art, and are priced at $9.99 each (click on the image at right for bigger version).

On their website The Spectre Library says they “issue lost, rare works of fiction, with a focus upon publishing jacketed limited edition smythe-sewn hardcovers of Weird, Adventure, Detective, Crime, Oriental and Fantastic Content.” Sounds like an enlightened calling to me.

They also have an excellent gallery of cover art of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Weird & Occult publications — including paperbacks, digests, pamphlets, pulps, and magazines — from Britain, Australia and Canada between 1930-1966. It is curated by Morgan A. Wallace.

New Treasures: Necropolis by Michael Dempsey

New Treasures: Necropolis by Michael Dempsey

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necropolis-by-michael-dempseyBack in April I told you about this sale at Night Shade Books (now expired). I took advantage of it myself, and ordered roughly a dozen titles.

I finally found time to put them away this week. They look terrific, and I hope to tell you about some of them over the next few weeks.

Let’s start with Michael Dempsey’s Necropolis, a delicious-looking cross of science fantasy and pulp detective novel:

Paul Donner is a NYPD detective struggling with a drinking problem and a marriage on the rocks. Then he and his wife get dead — shot to death in a “random” crime. Fifty years later, Donner is back — revived courtesy of the Shift, a process whereby inanimate DNA is re-activated.

This new “reborn” underclass is not only alive again, they’re growing younger, destined for a second childhood. The freakish side-effect of a retroviral attack on New York, the Shift has turned the world upside down. Beneath the protective geodesic Blister, clocks run backwards, technology is hidden behind a noir facade, and you can see Elvis and Radio City Music Hall ever night. In this unfamiliar retro-futurist world of flying Studebakers and plasma tommy guns, Donner must search for those responsible for the destruction of his life. His quest for retribution, aided by Maggie, his holographic Girl Friday, leads him to the heart of the mystery surrounding the Shift’s origin and up against those who would use it to control a terrified nation.

Night Shade is discovering and promoting a lot of new talent, and Necropolis is a fine example. It’s Dempsey’s first novel, although he wrote for network TV in the mid-90s.

Necropolis is 361 pages in trade paperback, with a $14.99 cover price. It was released in October 2011. The cover art is by E.M. Gist. You can order it directly from Night Shade here.

See the complete list of New Treasures features here.

New Treasures: The Fantasy Fan

New Treasures: The Fantasy Fan

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the-fantasy-fanLast month, I got a great e-mail from Black Gate blogger Barbara Barrett. In between her entertaining comments on The Avengers, Arthur Machen, and re-discovering comic books, was this fascinating tidbit:

I’ve started reading The Fantasy Fan — a fan’s tribute to Hornig.  It’s a book containing a compilation of all the Fantasy Fan magazines… I’m only on the first zine but I’m amazed how closely the format matches that of Black Gate. Is this a *coincidence*? The first zine was published in September 1933 and it’s chilling because I keep in mind Robert E.Howard was still alive at that point… the breadth and depth of authors, articles and stories are wonderful. It’s definitely a page out of Living History.

Among fantasy collectors The Fantasy Fan is legendary. The world’s first fanzine dedicated to weird fiction, it lasted for 18 issues, from September 1933 to February 1935. Its contributors included some of the most famous names in the genre — H.P Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Robert E. Howard, Bob Tucker, Julius Schwartz, Forry Ackerman, Robert Bloch, August Derleth, Eando Binder, and many others — and its young editor Charles Horning so impressed Hugo Gernsback that he hired him to edit Wonder Stories in 1933, at the age of 17. While at Wonder Stories he published Stanley G. Weinbaum’s “A Martian Odyssey” and many other famous pulp stories.

Barbara’s reference to a compilation of The Fantasy Fan was so intriguing I had to track down a copy for myself, and it finally arrived last week. Copies of the original fanzine are so rare that I’ve never even seen one, so to hold a facsimile reprint of all 18 issues in my hands was rather breathtaking. The man behind the book is Lance Thingmaker, and here’s what he says in his introduction:

These fragile gems were so unique. They were simple little fanzines, but were filled with stories, articles and comments by history’s most important weird fiction writers and fans. I felt like I was looking back in time… Since they are extremely hard to find, it seemed many others probably never had the chance to check out the world’s first weird fiction zine. I wanted to make it happen.

The end product is a top-notch piece of work. The magazines are presented in facsimile format, with painstaking restoration of the original barely legible pages, hand printed and hand-bound in hardcover by Thingmaker. The book is over 300 pages, including the complete text of H.P. Lovecraft’s famous essay “Supernatural Horror in Literature,” which was being serialized when the magazine folded. It is limited to 100 copies and sold for $50. Thingmaker’s next project, due to ship later this month, is a facsimile reprint of all four issues of the ultra-rare pulp Marvel Tales.

You can find a detailed breakdown of the contents of The Fantasy Fan here. My thanks again to Barbara for alerting me to this before it sold out!

Vintage Treasures: Poul Anderson’s After Doomsday

Vintage Treasures: Poul Anderson’s After Doomsday

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after-doomsdayI’m putting away all the paperbacks that arrived with my two Philip K. Dick lots, and I stumbled across the fabulous artifact at right.

After Doomsday was published by Ballantine Books in 1962, two years before I was born. It was originally serialized in Galaxy magazine (as The Day after Doomsday) between December 1961 and February 1962.

What truly makes it fabulous isn’t just the great cover art by Ralph Brillhart, with a bug-eyed alien stumbling on some guy surveying a road during his evening constitutional. No no no. It’s this wonderful description on the back cover:

CARL DONNAN was a space engineer — a man of action who did his job well and didn’t think much beyond that — but now his home planet was destroyed and he found himself with two burning ambitions:

– FIND the beings who blew up the Earth.

– SEARCH the galaxies until they located another Starship with female humans aboard.

BOTH PROJECTS were vital to the survival of the human race — and both were monumental tasks.

THIS was the time when the galaxies discovered how grim and purposeful a handful of homo sapiens could be.

A starship with “female humans” aboard. I think the first task for this guy Carl should be to look up “female humans,” find out they’re called “women,” and then put an ad on Craig’s List. The survival of the species is on your shoulders, dude. Time to put down that survey equipment and pick up a clean shirt. And maybe some mouthwash.

There’s a lengthy plot synopsis of After Doomsday here. Don’t expect it to be as entertaining as that back cover copy, though.