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The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction

The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction

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My copy of The Very Best of Fantasy & Science Fiction arrived from Amazon today, and I dropped everything to read it.  Probably not a good idea, since I had several conference calls and a sales meeting in a skyscraper somewhere in downtown Chicago.  But that’s why I bought a fast car.

very-best-of-fsfI’m a sucker for retrospective anthologies.  And F&SF is one of my favorite magazines — and has been since I first discovered tattered copies in the tiny library of Rockcliffe Air Force base in Ottawa, Canada, in the late 70s.  Editor Gordon van Gelder has assembled an imposing, 470-page collection spanning more than five decades, starting with Alfred Bester’s “Of Time and Third Avenue” (1951) and ending with Ted Chiang’s “The Merchant and the Alchemist’s Gate” (2007).

In between are stories famous (“Flowers for Algernon” by Daniel Keyes, “The Gunslinger” by Stephen King) and not-so-famous (“This Moment of the Storm” by Roger Zelazny, “Journey Into the Kingdom,” M. Rickett).  Gordon introduces them all in an informative and entertaining manner, occasionally providing glimpses into his editorial selection magic in the process. You can see the complete Table of Contents here.

Just as important, this is a truly handsome book — splendidly designed by the folks at Tachyon Press, with a fabulous cover by David Hardy.  It fits beautifully in my hands, and it even smells nice. 

I haven’t dipped far into the book yet.  But I was very nearly late for my meeting, and I don’t regret it one bit.  Check it out.

The Greatest Harryhausen: The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

The Greatest Harryhausen: The Golden Voyage of Sinbad

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golden-voyage-posterThe Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974)
Directed by Gordon Hessler. Starring John Philip Law, Tom Baker, Caroline Munro, Douglas Wilmer, Martin Shaw, Kurt Christian, Grégoire Aslan, Takis Emmanuel.

“Every voyage has its own flavor.”

Recently on this blog, I wrote about one of the more ignored of Ray Harryhausen’s films, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver. This inspired me to review two other films of his that don’t get enough attention—the underwhelming H. G. Wells adaptation The First Men in the Moon (1964), and the wonderful but financially unsuccessful The Valley of Gwangi (1969)—on my own blog. Now I think I owe the legendary effects animator and fantasy film producer some time with one of his most popular films.

The Golden Voyage of Sinbad is not only one of Harryhausen’s most financially successful movies, but is also, in my Harryhausen-loving fan-obsessed opinion, the greatest piece the special effects maven ever worked on. I think that it’s not only Harryhausen’s best movie, but also one of the finest heroic fantasy films ever made.

Morningside Productions, Harryhausen’s and his producing partner Charles H. Schneer’s company, had experienced a financial disappointment with 1969’s “cowboys ropin’ a dinosaur” adventure The Valley of Gwangi, and the gap between it and The Golden Voyage of Sinbad was the longest yet between their movies. The two men decided to turn the clock back and re-visit the figure who had brought them to prominence in the first place: Sinbad the sailor. The major success of 1958’s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad had allowed them to take the path of colorful fantasy and period science fiction, and the character was one who could have a variety adventures. Harryhausen had done some sketches in 1964 for a new Sinbad story, and now had the opportunity to realize the project. Both those early sketches reached the final film almost unchanged. …

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The Incredible Adventures of Algernon Blackwood

The Incredible Adventures of Algernon Blackwood

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algernon-blackwood-oldIncredible Adventures
Algernon Blackwood (Macmillan & Co., 1914)

Of all the practitioners of the classic “weird tale,” which flourished in the early twentieth century before morphing into the more easily discerned genres of fantasy and horror, none entrances me more than Algernon Blackwood. Looking at the stable of the foundational authors of horror—luminaries like Poe, James, le Fanu, Machen, Lovecraft—it is Blackwood who has the strongest effect on me. Of all his lofty company, he is the one who seems to achieve the most numinous “weird” of all.

Blackwood is often referred to as a “ghost story” writer; indeed, one current in-print volume is titled The Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood. But true ghosts rarely appear in his fiction. Blackwood liked to dance around the edge of easy classification, and as his work advanced through the 1900s and into the teens, it got even harder to pinpoint. Blackwood’s interest in spiritualism, his love of nature, and his pantheism started to overtake his more standard forays in supernatural terror. His writing turned more toward transcendentalism and away from plot. The most important precursor to this development is his 1911 novel The Centaur, which critic S. T. Joshi describes as Blackwood’s “spiritual autobiography.”

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The Call of Cthulhu Movie, 2005

The Call of Cthulhu Movie, 2005

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the_call_of_cthulhu_dvd_coverDirected by Andrew Leman; starring Matt Foyer, Chad Fifer, Noah Wagner, Ramon Allen Jr., and Ralph Lucas.

I cannot say I’ve ever been impressed with any film I’ve seen purporting to be based on a story by H.P. Lovecraft, as they have all tended to stray pretty far from what makes Lovecraft’s stories interesting in the first place. And they generally show the limits of their budget as well as being both poorly shot and acted. But then I heard about this little gem, distributed by the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society, that adapts Lovecraft’s foundational short ‘The Call of Cthulhu’ in as loyal and accurate a way as possible. Not only that — and here’s the really interesting bit — the movie itself is a black and white silent film, as if it had been filmed at the time of the story’s publication in the 1920s.

The choice to make this a silent film was a smart one. Firstly, it does help evoke the period of Lovecraft in a way no film before it ever has (all of the ones I’ve ever seen where contemporary pieces, for a start), and also makes it feel like a world apart from our own. In leaving some things unseen and unsaid, and in creating an at times stylized environment, this film activates the viewer’s imagination to fill in the blanks — and speeches or effects which would seem silly or dreadful when laid bare in a modern film are instead left in the shadows. In surmounting the very limited budget for this project, the choice could not have been better.

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The “Other” Harryhausen: The 3 Worlds of Gulliver

The “Other” Harryhausen: The 3 Worlds of Gulliver

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3_worlds_of_gulliver_posterThe 3 Worlds of Gulliver (1960)
Directed by Jack Sher. Starring Kerwin Mathews, June Thorburn, Grégoire Aslan, Basil Sydney, Jo Morrow, Sherri Alberoni, Peter Bull.

First there was the Dynamation spectacle of The 7th Voyage of Sinbad. Then there was Mysterious Island. Then the miracle of Jason and the Argonauts, and… wait, I seem to have skipped one. Oh yes, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver, made right after Sinbad. Now how did that one slip away?

Among the “Core Ten” Harryhausen films, the ten color fantasy and period science-fiction pictures he made between 1958 and his retirement in 1981 (all but one produced with Charles H. Schneer), The 3 Worlds of Gulliver gets the least amount of love now. For most of the 1980s, it was probably the unfortunate The Valley of Gwangi that suffered the most neglect, but that was because of its unavailability on video. (The weird name wasn’t helping it either; it certainly wasn’t the filmmakers’ first choice for the title.) Today, The 3 Worlds of Gulliver has turned into something of “the other movie” in the list of Harryhausen classics, even though it came out in 1960 fresh after the smash global success of The 7th Voyage Sinbad and featured that movie’s star, Kerwin Mathews, and its composer, Bernard Herrmann. In fact, Herrmann’s score is well-loved and appreciated among music fans through multiple re-recordings, but those same music lovers often haven’t watched the movie that inspired the music.

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My Favorite Robert E. Howard story: “Pigeons from Hell”

My Favorite Robert E. Howard story: “Pigeons from Hell”

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pigeon-from-hellWhen other genre-lovers find out I’m a fan of Robert E. Howard, they often ask me what my favorite of his stories is. They probably expect I’ll name one of the Conan yarns, or perhaps a Solomon Kane or Kull story. (Kull is, indeed, my favorite Howard character.) If they already know something of my background in history, they may think I’ll name one of the Crusader stories that appeared in Magic Carpet Magazine.

But instead I say, without hesitation, “Pigeons from Hell.” And, after an inevitable moment of surprise, they always answer back: “Oh, that’s a great story! I had almost forgotten about that one!”

The irony of my love for “Pigeons from Hell” isn’t lost on me: I praise Howard for his foundational contribution to sword-and-sorcery and historical action tales, and yet my personal favorite story he wrote is a contemporary America-set horror story. But “Pigeons from Hell” is quintessentially Robert E. Howard from first word to last; Howard was an author who knew how to transform naturalism into the “weird tale,” and who also took great inspiration from the folklore of his small world of rural central Texas.

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Hercules vs. the Giant Robots

Hercules vs. the Giant Robots

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herculesposter1983Hercules (1983)Last week I reviewed a silly Conan pastiche novel. Today, I offer a sequel of sorts: a review of a very silly Hercules movie. The 1983 Hercules, sporting former mean, green, grunting machine Lou “Hulk” Ferrigno and the best special effects the Italian film industry can sort of buy, is one of the grandly awful pieces of entertaining oddness ever to come from a Roman studio. And Rome has given us some odd stuff. Aside from sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system, and public health, of course.

I encountered this Hercules when I was eleven years old. I adored Greek mythology since I was in second grade and was well-read in the topic, for which I can thank Clash of the Titans for the initial push. One Friday night, a friend and I watched Hercules when it premiered on cable. It sounded like a sure-winner for kids still not old enough to go out on weekend nights: Greek mythology, monsters, and that guy who played the Hulk. (Plus girls in skimpy outfits, but at eleven we weren’t willing to admit that was already a motivation.)

I’m not certain what I expected from Hercules back then, but it certainly wasn’t what I ended up getting. I had this strange illusion, which only an eleven-year-old can sustain, that a mystical law forced filmmakers to adhere to their source material as closely as they could. When I saw this oddball Hercules film on television, my young boy’s illusions died forever. Which is safer for my sanity, although I still feel the pains from the 1998 Roland Emmerich Godzilla and Jan de Bont’s 1999 demolishing of The Haunting [of Hill House]. The 1983 Hercules has only the most tenuous connection to Greek mythology, and appears like a mishmash of tiny bits and pieces of Hellenic legendary in a goopy stew of trendy science-fiction clichés from the SF-explosion of the late-‘70s. Welcome to Battlestar Hercules. Or perhaps Krull is the most appropriate comparison.

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Pastiches ‘R’ Us: Conan the Free Lance

Pastiches ‘R’ Us: Conan the Free Lance

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conan-free-lanceConan the Free Lance

Steve Perry (Tor, 1990)

Let’s see … I’ve reviewed a Conan pastiche novel each from Leonard Carpenter and John Maddox Roberts. So next up, Steve Perry.

If there’s one word I would used to describe Steve Perry’s Conan novels, it’s goofy. Perry has a reputation among Conan fandom for overkill and general silliness. He apparently loves high fantasy. Perhaps he loves it too much. His Conan books burst at the seams with fantastic monsters, strange races, and weird magic … and not in an ideal way. Although Perry has an enormous imagination, it gets away from him and creates a world that has almost no resemblance to Robert E. Howard’s Hyborian Age. It’s not so much that these elements are silly, but that they seem so when placed in Howard’s setting. They would work fine in the Star Wars universe — and Perry has written some good Star Wars novels to prove it; I’ll admit I enjoyed his Shadows of the Empire, even if LucasFilm tried shoving it down my throat first. But in the grittier, more-historically centered Hyborian Age, where magic is rare and sinister, Perry’s style feels like someone trying to write a Forbidden Realms novel who accidentally wandered into Robert E. Howard-land.

Conan the Free Lance (yes, two words, not one, according to the actual title page — Conan isn’t picking up occasional assignments for the New Yorker) won’t change anyone’s mind about Perry’s style. The story occurs in an overt wonderland akin to high fantasy. Its villain and the instigator of our plot, Dimma the Mist Mage, lives in fortress on a bed of sargasso weeds in a Karpash Mountains lake. He needs a talisman to restore his body to its solid form, and so he sends his shapeshifting servants the selkies to fetch it from the Tree Folk. Conan, while on his way to Shadizar, rescues Cheen, a medicine woman of the Tree Folk, from the draconian hunting beasts of the reptilian-descended Pili. (Okay, we already have far too many demi-human races running around.) Conan helps the Tree Folk repulse the selkie attack, but the selkie leader Kleg escapes with the talisman—the ‘Seed’ which the Tree Folk need to make their tree homes grow. He also kidnaps Cheen’s young brother, Hok. Conan joins the Tree Folk in the quest to save Hok and recapture the Seed.

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Short Fiction Review #18: Paradox-Final Issue

Short Fiction Review #18: Paradox-Final Issue

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paradox-cover043It’s nothing new to hear that yet another print publication has gone the way of the dinosaurs.  Still, for those of us who retain affection for inked dead trees, it’s always a cheerless day to learn of yet another comet strike.

The latest victim is Paradox, Editor/Publisher Christopher Cevasco’s biannual magazine of  historical speculative fiction, which is now, well, history. After thirteen issues (read into the significance of the number what you will), Cevasco has retired the magazine effective with the Spring 2009 edition. Although he hints that an on-line version may arise from the ashes at some point, or that there may be a future Paradox-themed anthology, it would appear this is not going to be a Lance Armstrong/Bret Favre kind of retirement – Cevasco seems pretty adamant that this is it for the magazine.

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Charles R. Saunders’ ‘Luendi’

Charles R. Saunders’ ‘Luendi’

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0_61_100906_diamondCharles Saunders has posted a terrific short story over at the blog section of his website — the sort of story that would not have been out of place in a classic issue of Weird Tales. ‘Luendi’ is in four, rather short, parts, and gives us the fate of one Piet van Brug, a man that embodies all the vilest characteristics of imperialism. Colonial Africa in 1890 is the setting, or more precisely an unexplored section of the interior beyond the British and Boer possessions of South Africa dubbed ‘Azungaland’ by its conqueror. It is an area rich in diamonds — rich enough to bring the yoke down around the heads of the peaceful and previously unknown people that live there.

The Azunga rescued van Brug from disease and death in the wake of a disastrous expedition sponsored by Cecil Rhodes to explore the land “between the Zambezi River and the upper reaches of the Kalahari Desert.” Peaceful, living in a fabulous stone kraal akin to the ruins of Zimbabwe, the Azunga welcome van Brug with kindness and are repaid with treachery. When van Brug discovers they posses a rich seam of diamonds in a cave nearby, he returns to Johannesburg, raises an expeditionary army with the diamonds he managed to steal, and returns to enslave the people that had saved his life.

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