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Category: Vintage Treasures

A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 1: The End of the Story

A Jaunt Through Clark Ashton Smith’s Collected Fantasies—Vol. 1: The End of the Story

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Clark-ashton-smith-end-of-the-story-wildside-press-coverI’ve read the complete works of Clark Ashton Smith. And I’ve been known to write at length about them, or to chat with journalists on the topic. There’s nothing unusual about this, since Smith ranks among my favorite five or so authors of all time.

But only recently did I decide to undertake reading his fantasy stories in the original order he wrote them. I can thank Night Shade Books’ five volume series, The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, for making this an easier task than it would’ve been only a few years ago. When the series started to appear in 2007, the hardcover volumes went out of print rapidly. Even a hardcore fan like myself couldn’t justify a purchase of one of the high-priced used copies.

However, as of 2016, all five of The Collected Fantasies are now available in inexpensive trade paperbacks that can be purchased through online retailers with a few clicks. The texts for these volumes have been meticulously prepared (no simple feat considering the revisions and alternate versions published in the past) and offered in the chronological order of composition.

I’m taking a stroll through these editions to read the stories as they were imagined and committed to paper. Instead of regaling you with further long essays, I’m going to take on the role of sightseer, bringing back notes and a slideshow presentation about the best — and the rest — of each volume.

By the way, if you are new to Clark Ashton Smith, the Night Shade editions aren’t the best way to start out. They’re aimed at the collector and long-time connoisseur. I recommend the Penguin Classics collection The Dark Eidolon and Other Fantasies as a better Smith introduction. If you like the heady journey, there’s much more to explore in the dark fathoms below…

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Galaxy Science Fiction, September 1953: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, September 1953: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction September 1953-small Galaxy Science Fiction September 1953-back-small

The September, 1953 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction opens with Editor H. L. Gold weighing in on vocabulary guessing for future science fiction. He writes that

Objects and methods must be named so the reader will recognize them. All the author can do is apply logic, which sometimes works, as in the case of several commonly used terms invented by science fiction, but more often does not, as in terms that are born naturally, not synthesized.

He describes how some words, like nylon and Kleenex, are trade names. The word jeep came from how soldiers abbreviated “General Purpose Car” (listed as “G.P.” in stock lists). He concludes his remarks by writing:

If we were trying to predict instead of entertain, you’d be right in objecting to our inevitable bloopers (origin unknown). But would you rather wait for the correct lingo (lingua, tongue) or enjoy our guessing right now?

My answer: bring on the bloopers!

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The End of the Matter: Viriconium Nights by M. John Harrison

The End of the Matter: Viriconium Nights by M. John Harrison

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Viriconium Nights-smallThe three novels of the Viriconium sequence, The Pastel City, A Storm of Wings,  and In Viriconium, are not the entirety of M. John Harrison’s intricate, multi-faceted portrayal of the titular city. A fourth book, Viriconium Nights (1984), collects seven stories written between 1971 and 1983. Each is strange, some bordering on the inpenetrable, but all attempt to shine lights onto new aspects of the larger story.

As he did with each succeeding novel, Harrison twists, recasts, and reweaves characters, thematic melodies, and locations first found in The Pastel City.  Sometimes, as with that book’s ostensible hero, tegeus-Cromis, things seem to be exactly as they were before. Other times, particularly with the city of Viriconium itself, they are changed considerably. Its very name becomes mutable, one time being Uriconium, another just Vriko. This reminds us of one of Harrison’s central ideas: that there is no real “there” to Viriconium; it is just a bundle of words painted on a page at its creator’s discretion.

Viriconium Nights commences with “The Lamia & Lord Cromis.” tegeus-Cromis is in search of the lamia, a beast which has slain numerous members of his family. Though he appears to have accepted the same will happen to him, still he sets out accompanied by the wonderfully named Dissolution Khan and the dwarf gladiator, Morgante. The hunt ends in a morass of complications, death, and unclarity.

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A Response to Thomas Parker’s Master List of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Literature

A Response to Thomas Parker’s Master List of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Literature

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IMG_4426
Big lists can be intimidating…

I was reminded of something while perusing Thomas Parker’s laudable Master List of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Literature last week ( or “The List” — posted HERE on Black Gate).

Each of us likely has a book or two (or ten) we adore – absolutely cherish and consider indispensible – that will never appear on any of these lists (unless we compile our own list).

These are gems worthy of our love, yet they are just not that well known, or they have been overlooked or mostly forgotten. Some books, after all, are trees that grow for hundreds of years, while others are flowers that bloom in glory and then are gone.

Later on I might mention a few that I admire, but I will not be arguing that any of them should be on Parker’s or any of the other lists. My thesis here is simply that there are far more great books than can be squeezed onto a top 500 or top 700 or top 5,000. And that’s wonderful news, isn’t it?

Put another way:  If some horrible cosmic accident occurred in the multiverse that wiped out all 700 of the books (and book series) on Parker’s list – suddenly none of them existed here on our version of Earth – much of our great fantasy, science-fiction, and horror literature would be lost, granted. Still, I believe we could, from what remained, start right back at square one and compile another list of 700 books just as worthy  and strongly representative of the genres.

Of course, why we even need such lists is simple: One reason there are so many great books and so many good books is because there are so many books. Period. (With between 600,000 and 1,000,000 new ones being added each year in the United States alone.) And, as you might guess, the ratio of the good to the bad, mediocre, ambivalent, hackneyed, limp is, well, daunting. If you try to find the great or the good without guidance, the odds are stacked against you. Like going alone to Manhattan without a map and just assuming you’ll walk around and stumble into the best places.

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Feeding the Forest with Memory: Mythago Wood and Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock

Feeding the Forest with Memory: Mythago Wood and Lavondyss by Robert Holdstock

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Lavondyss Robert Holdstock-smallThere are a few novels I will return two over and over. García Marquéz’ One Hundred Years of Solitude is one. Dan Symmons’ Hyperion is another. I’ve been back to R. Scott Baker’s Prince of Nothing series a few times.

But my pile is shrinking. I’ve grown as a reader and can’t read Dune anymore, and I haven’t tried to go back to Tolkein in probably a decade. But one truly haunting work is Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood and Lavondyss. The novels won the World Fantasy Award in 1985 and the BSFA Award in 1988 respectively, if my dates aren’t off.

The two novels center on three families who live around Ryhope Wood, which is one of the last ancient, undisturbed forests in England, meaning that its roots and its ghosts are truly ancient. Now, there are lots of people who evoke deep time in their writing. Tolkein obviously. Edgar Rice Burroughs. Steven Erikson.

But reading Holdstock is to viscerally experience layers of deep, Jungian time. The wood is haunted not by ghosts of the past per se; it is haunted by the ancient memories of ghosts that each person carries within them, all the legends, remembered in story and forgotten.

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An Interlude with Messrs Brunner & Van Vogt

An Interlude with Messrs Brunner & Van Vogt

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D-391

Ace Double D-391. Covers by Ed Valigursky

Ace Doubles are a popular topic at Black Gate. I suspect there may even be a bit of friendly competition to see who can unearth items not already reviewed. While John O’Neill and Rich Horton most certainly have a lead on the rest of us, it is a pleasant experience to find a book that has not yet been dealt with and add one’s own commentary.

That was the case with D-391, originally published in 1959:

  1. The World Swappers by John Brunner
  2. Siege of the Unseen by A.E. Van Vogt

I took a deliberate break from my ongoing analysis of Jane Gaskell’s Atlan Saga to clear my mind, and I needed something to tide me over. Working alphanumerically through my growing Ace Double collection, the first unread book that came to hand was this somewhat tatty volume. (Well technically it was a western — D-034 Hellion’s Hole/Feud In Piney Flats by Ken Murray (1953) — but the allure of Messrs Brunner and Van Vogt proved too great.)

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A Sure Cure for that Listless Feeling

A Sure Cure for that Listless Feeling

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Pick a book, any book

As we segue (stagger, stumble, reel, crawl, stop-drop-and roll) from winter into spring, we are faced as always with the never-ending question: “What in the world am I going to read next?”

Everyone will solve this dilemma in their own way. Dart and ouija boards, animal entrails, tarot cards, various dice systems, and the blind recommendations of pimply, pasty complexioned clerks in chain bookstores have all been resorted to by readers desperate for guidance. For many people (Black Gate followers no less than anyone else, judging from many recent posts), year-end “best of” and “top ten” lists are indispensable tools for keeping up with the best current writing… but what about the vast reservoir of older books?

If the very thought of all the classics and near-classics that you’ve never gotten around to doesn’t make all your courage drain away in an instant and set you fleeing for the hills, never to return, I have a… well, I won’t say a “modest” or “reasonable” proposal, because, as you will see, there’s nothing modest or reasonable about it — it is, rather, unashamedly megalomanic. In fact, it could be considered quite literally insane — but it works for me, and so to help keep the voices in my head under control, I would like to share my madness with you.

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A Tale of Two Covers: Swords Against Darkness

A Tale of Two Covers: Swords Against Darkness

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Swords Against Darkness Andrew Offutt-small Swords Against Darkness Paula Guran-small

Last September we reported here on the massive stack of research material Paula Guran was digesting in a noble attempt to produce the ultimate modern Swords & Sorcery anthology. The project, Swords Against Darkness, now has a cover (above right), and a release date (July). It does not (yet) have a table of contents. But when it does, you’ll be the first to know.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun to put Paula’s cover side by side with its namesake, Andrew J. Offutt’s groundbreaking 1977 paperback anthology from Zebra, which spawned a series of five books containing original S&S tales from Poul Anderson, Tanith Lee, Charles R. Saunders, Orson Scott Card, Charles de Lint, Diana L. Paxson, Keith Taylor, Manly Wade Wellman, Richard L. Tierney, David Drake, Ramsey Campbell, Andre Norton, and many others. Paula’s new anthology is twice as long as that slender paperback, and will come crammed with classic stories by Leigh Brackett, Robert E. Howard, C.L. Moore, Michael Moorcock, Tanith Lee, Steven Erikson, and many others.

Of course, Offutt’s version also boasted an original cover by the great Frank Frazetta, and it’s hard to compete with that. The new cover goes for a more modern look and, while I’m old-school enough to wish for cover art instead of a photo edit, I think it does the job well enough. Here’s the back cover text.

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In the Hot Seat: The Reviewer Gets Grilled: An Interview with Fletcher Vredenburgh

In the Hot Seat: The Reviewer Gets Grilled: An Interview with Fletcher Vredenburgh

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Fletcher Vredenburgh-small

Fletcher is no stranger to the readers and fans of Black Gate. His articles and reviews are not only well-written, insightful and entertaining, they are extremely popular, as well. He is the “reviewer extraordinaire,” and his reviews have led me to read many books. I trust his opinion and his taste in what makes for a good novel. Fletcher is also one of the most voracious readers I have ever met; even in my prime, when I was reading about 2 books a week, I couldn’t top him. Tireless and energetic, Fletcher amazes me with his wonderful reviews, which are also very well written. He is not a “book critic,” however, as you’ll find out when you read my interview with him. He is a reviewer of books. A Master Review Writer. I’m happy I met him through social media, proud to call him my friend, and grateful to him for his great reviews of my books.

So let’s begin, shall we? Let’s see if we can find out what makes him tick, what he likes to read and his whole process for reviewing a book.

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Final Thoughts on Narnia. The Last Battle: A Criticism and a Defense

Final Thoughts on Narnia. The Last Battle: A Criticism and a Defense

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the last battle 1Well, these were my books. You know, the ones that got me forever hooked on fantasy worlds and addicted to stories untethered from the things we know. I was eight, in the second grade, when I began reading them, and they were the first to begin teaching me that precious lifelong lesson: that though you might not trod in Faerie with your flesh-and-bone feet, there are many other pathways thither.

It was this shared knowledge that made an eight-year-old American boy feel he had much more in common with an old British professor who had died a decade before he was born than he did with most people he met day to day. And that remains true to this day. My spirit is more kindred with a New York woman born in 1918 (Madeleine L’Engle) than with my next door neighbor, closer to a Japanese man born in 1941 (Hayao Miyazaki) than to many of my blood kin.

It’s because we all share the secret – both those of us who weave the stories and those who are the audience willing and eager to fall under their spell – that there are doors to Faerie hidden in our own imaginations. Whenever and wherever we might have lived, wherever we might be. It’s a gift that goes back to the Beowulf poet, and back further to Homer, and back further still; indeed, it is one of the first magical abilities that separated man from the beasts.

But lest I diverge into a long-winded tribute to the power of fantasy, let me get to the issue at hand today. I have recently revisited Narnia, this time with a fellow traveler newly discovering the wonders of other realms. My daughter, just turning eight – the exact age I was when I first went through the wardrobe – has become a big fan.

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