Black Gate

Over at his website Strange at Ecbatan, Rich Horton continues to do excellent work highlighting books old and new. Check out his review of John Crowley’s new novel Ka earlier this week to see what I mean. Rich calls it “Wonderful… I feel humbled by my inability to truly capture the wonder of this book.”

Of course, for crusty old vintage paperback fans like myself, the real joy of Rich’s blog is in his almost whimsical selections of older titles. While he makes a focused effort to read the major new novels each year in preparation for Hugo voting (see his detailed thoughts on the 2018 Hugos here), when it comes to older books he seems perfectly content to review whatever library discard falls into his hands each week.

That gives his blog a delightfully unpredictable quality. No one in their right mind, for example, would review Raymond Z. Gallun’s The Planet Strappers, an undistinguished novel that was hurriedly forgotten a few short weeks after it appeared in 1961. But Rich would. You have to salute that kind of undaunted faith in the genre.

The truly marvelous thing about Rich’s exploration into the dimmest recesses of science fiction is how he manages to find so much genuine enjoyment in it all. And it ain’t generally due to the books. Rich has an almost unique ability to make fascinating connections between writers, pick up the nearly invisible threads of evolving tropes, and find enjoyment in the echoes of great ideas lost in muddled plot lines. A ridiculous plot, Rich has taught me, needn’t trouble you so much when it’s paired with a fascinating setting or a clever idea — especially when you can see how that idea was harvested and put to use years later by the writers that follow.

…

Read More Read More

The Ace Doubles were published between 1952 and 1978, though it’s chiefly the early D-series, with their delightfully vintage covers by Emsh, Valigursky, and others, that have become truly collectible. Budgets were cut after Ace was sold in 1968, and founder Donald Wollheim left in 1971 to found DAW Books. Occasionally, however, the later Ace Doubles still published authors of quality after Wollheim’s departure, including novels by Jack Vance, Samuel R. Delany, Doris Piserchia, Neal Barrett Jr, and Philip K. Dick.

At his website Strange at Ecbatan Rich Horton looks at one example from May 1972: Susan K. Putney’s Against Arcturus, paired with an early novel by Dean R. Koontz, Time Thieves.

This is one of the latest Ace Doubles, appearing about a year before the program ended. Don Wollheim and Terry Carr had both left Ace a year earlier. Fred Pohl was editor until June 1972, about when Time Thieves/Against Arcturus appeared, so presumably he acquired these novels.

Note that Rich dates the end of the Ace Double era as 1973, when the publisher stopped releasing back-to-back novels in the classic format. But the imprint officially died in five years later (see the complete list of Ace Doubles here.)

…

Read More Read More

Black Gate has some very prolific reviewers. Ryan Harvey has produced 290 articles for us, Matthew David Surridge 330, and Sue Granqust has written exactly 400. But the most prolific reviewer in our small community is doubtless Rich Horton who, in addition to his duties here, writes a regular monthly column for Locus, contributes short fiction reviews to places like Tangent Online, and maintains his own blog, Strange at Ecbatan. Not long ago Rich posted his 100th Ace Double Review at his blog, covering the forgotten novels Alien Sea by John Rackham and C.O.D. Mars by E. C. Tubb, published in 1968.

I started these on the wonderful old Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.written back in the early 2000s. I retain an interest in Ace Doubles for an intersection of reasons… the feeling that they give room for an awkward story length (25,000 to 45,000 words, say); the fact that they provided space for new writers to get published; the sometimes goofy subject matter; the fact that they could be a home for unpretentious adventure SF; and their uncommon format. But it must also be said that a lot of the stories published as Ace Doubles were downright crappy. And indeed this review, the 100th, perhaps appropriately features a couple of awfully weak short novels.

Even though the novels sucked, Rich gives it his all, as always. Here’s his thoughts on two bad science fiction novels by John Rackham and E.C. Tubb.

…

Read More Read More