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Category: Vintage Treasures

The Books of David G. Hartwell: Visions of Wonder and The Science Fiction Century

The Books of David G. Hartwell: Visions of Wonder and The Science Fiction Century

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Visions of Wonder-small The Science Fiction Century-small

We lost David Hartwell on January 20th. This is our sixth article in a series that looks back at one of the most gifted editors in our industry.

With the publication of The Dark Descent and The Ascent of Wonder, David quickly established himself as the go-to guy for big genre survey volumes, and he produced many of them. These massive books were popular with libraries and book clubs, and many stayed in print for years. David had found a fine niche for himself that showed off his considerable talents for genre scholarship (not to mention his excellent taste), and he continued to compile these giant books for the rest of his life.

His next two major anthologies were huge science fiction retrospectives. The first, Visions of Wonder (1996), weighing in at a mere 798 pages, was co-edited with Milton T. Wolf, Vice President of the Science Fiction Research Association, and was a fine attempt to create an up-to-date SF textbook, mixing in critical essays by Damon Knight, John W. Campbell, Jr., Judith Merril, Samuel R. Delany, and others — plus a comprehensive guide to modern SF scholarship compiled by Gary K. Wolfe — with a generous sample of top-notch fiction. The 1005-page The Science Fiction Century (1997) was nothing less than a comprehensive survey of a hundred years of science fiction, containing works by H. G. Wells, C. S. Lewis, E. M. Forster, Rudyard Kipling, Jack London, A. E. van Vogt, Jack Vance, Robert Silverberg, Poul Anderson, Roger Zelazny, James Tiptree, Jr., Bruce Sterling, Nancy Kress, William Gibson, and dozens of others.

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Unknown, April 1941: A Retro-Review

Unknown, April 1941: A Retro-Review

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Unknown April 1941-smallWhile World War II continued to escalate, the April 1941 issue of Unknown was published. It’s easy to imagine the desire to escape through Unknown’s fantasy fiction during such times of uncertainty.

“The Castle of Iron” by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt — A trio of psychologists use magic to transport between worlds. Harold Shea and Vaclav Polacek join their friend Reed “Doc” Chalmers, who summons them to an iron castle owned by a leading magician named Atlantes. Atlantes promises to help Doc save the life of a young woman he’s in love with, but there never seems to be any progress. Doc suspects he’s being perpetually lured so that Atlantes has an ally against the threat of opposing knights.

When Atlantes’ nephew, Roger, leaves the castle, Atlantes fears betrayal and sends Harold and Vaclav out to search for the young man. But searching the land among enemy knights isn’t a simple matter.

De Camp and Pratt wrote five stories around the main cast of characters, known today as the Compleat Enchanter series. “The Castle of Iron” is the third in the series, and the previous two appeared in other issues of Unknown — “The Roaring Trumpet” in May, 1940, and “The Mathematics of Magic” in August, 1940. The final two stories were later published in Beyond Fantasy Magazine and Fantasy Magazine. “The Castle of Iron” was expanded into a novel in 1950.

The novella (yes, I know it’s listed in the Table of Contents as a novel) is a pretty quick read. Having no familiarity with the characters previously, I didn’t have much difficulty in jumping into the series; there was enough background information without turning things into info dumps or “as you know, Bob” statements. While I’m curious about the series as a whole, I probably won’t rush out to find it. Not that it’s a bad story, but it did feel somewhat slow at points, and I wasn’t completely drawn into the characters. I wonder if I’d feel differently if I’d started with the first story and worked my way up to this one.

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Future Treasures: Stories of the Strange and Sinister by Frank Baker

Future Treasures: Stories of the Strange and Sinister by Frank Baker

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Stories of the Strange and Sinister-small Stories of the Strange and Sinister-back-small

Stories of the Strange and Sinister first-smallI first discovered Valancourt’s marvelous 20th Century Classics line when I stumbled on their booth at the 2014 World Fantasy convention in Washington D.C.. I was so impressed, in fact, that I wrote up a lengthy survey of their back catalog as soon as I got home.

Valancourt has been bringing neglected horror and thriller classics back into print in handsome new editions for years now. Their latest subject is Frank Baker, whose first novel, The Twisted Tree, was published in 1935. He published an odd little book titled The Birds in 1936… it sold only about 300 copies, and Baker labeled it “a failure.” It likely would be utterly forgotten today, if Alfred Hitchcock had not turned it into a hit with his 1963 horror film of the same name.

Perhaps Baker’s most successful work was Miss Hargreaves (1940), a comic fantasy in which two young people invent a story about an elderly woman, only to find that their imagination has brought her to life. He published more than a dozen others, including Mr. Allenby Loses the Way (1945), Embers (1947), My Friend the Enemy (1948) and Talk of the Devil (1956), before his death in 1983.

Stories of the Strange and Sinister is his only collection. It was first published in 1983 (see cover at right), and has long been out of print.

The new edition will be published by Valancourt on March 15, 2016. It is 184 pages, priced at $16.99 in trade paperback and $7.99 for the digital version. See more details at the Valancourt website.

See all of our coverage of the best in upcoming fantasy here.

Vintage Treasures: Worlds Imagined: 14 Short Science Fiction Novels, Compiled by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg

Vintage Treasures: Worlds Imagined: 14 Short Science Fiction Novels, Compiled by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg

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Worlds Imagined Robert Silverberg-smallI bought a fine anthology of science fiction novellas on eBay last week for 5 cents. With $3.99 shipping, that brought the whole thing to $4.04 — about 28 cents per novella. Pretty sweet deal.

The anthology is Worlds Imagined, published by Avenel in April 1989, and edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg. Excuse me, ‘Compiled by,” not edited by. I guess Silverberg and Greenberg didn’t feel comfortable with the title of editors, for merely selecting the fiction. That’s editorial integrity for you.

One of the things I love about this book is the editors’ (erm, compilers’) impassioned defense of the novella in their intro. I read it years ago, and much of it stayed with me. Here it is, in part.

The short novel — or “novella,” as some prefer to call it — is one of the richest and most rewarding of literary forms. Spanning twenty to thirty thousand words, usually, it allows for more extended development of theme and character than does the short story, without making the elaborate structural demands of the full-length book… Some of the greatest works in modern literature fall into the class of novellas. Consider Mann’s “Death in Venice,” Joyce’s “The Dead,” Melville’s “Billy Budd,” and Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness” — or Faulkner’s “The Bear,” Tolstoi’s “The Death of Ivan Ilych,” Carson McCuller’s “Ballad of the Sad Cafe”…

Since a prime task of the science fiction writer is to create carefully detailed worlds of the imagination, room for invention is a necessity. The short story can give only a single vivid glimpse of the invented world; the full-length novel frequently becomes so enmeshed in the obligations of plot and counterplot that the background recedes to a secondary position. But the short novel, leisurely without being discursive, is ideal for the sort of world-creation that is science fiction’s specialty. and since the days of H.G. Wells and his classic novella “The Time Machine” it has exerted a powerful attraction for science fiction writers.

Preach, brothers!

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Telepathy Machines and Strange Alien Games: Rich Horton on King of the Fourth Planet/Cosmic Checkmate

Telepathy Machines and Strange Alien Games: Rich Horton on King of the Fourth Planet/Cosmic Checkmate

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Last June, in the comments section of an article on a 1959 Ace Double by Andre Norton and Jerry Sohl, Joe H, asked:

I think this is the only “classic” Ace Double I own… King of the Fourth Planet/Cosmic Checkmate by Robert Moore Williams/Charles V. De Vet & Katherine MacLean. Any chance it might make your list someday?

It sometimes takes us a while, but we always do right by our readers!

I’ve never read this one. But Rich Horton has, of course, and he reviewed it around a decade ago. King of the Fourth Planet, a tale of Martians and telepathy machines, didn’t appeal to him, but he found Cosmic Checkmate (later expanded and republished under the title Second Game), a tale of space exploration and alien games, much more intriguing. Here’s his review.

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Classically Awful or Awfully Classic: A.E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A

Classically Awful or Awfully Classic: A.E. Van Vogt’s The World of Null-A

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The World of Null-A-smallAlfred Elton van Vogt (1912-2000) is one of the great names of 20th century science fiction, and not just because the moniker sounds so odd, like it belongs to a mad scientist in a lurid Gernsbackian tale, the kind where “cosmic rays” are used to mutate the sleepy denizens of the city zoo into panicky prehistoric behemoths, which then rampage through the streets, spreading riot and chaos, thus allowing a cabal of sinister foreigners to hijack the metropolis’s secret supply of plutonium in order to build a colossal… sorry. Got a bit carried away there; once you’re in full Pulp Mode it’s hard to disengage. Back to A.E. van Vogt.

Van Vogt was a giant of the golden age of the 40’s, first appearing in John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction with the short story “Black Destroyer” in 1939. In the years that followed, he dominated the pages of the magazine with countless short stories and novels that even today are regarded as classics, among which the best known are Slan, The Empire of the Atom, The Voyage of the Space Beagle, The War Against the Rull, The Book of Ptath, and The Weapon Shops of Isher. (He frequently incorporated his short stories into his full length books; van Vogt was a pioneer of the “fix-up” — a term he coined — in which a novel is cobbled together from earlier, shorter pieces.)

In an era in which many of the SF writers of the 40’s and 50’s (some of major importance) have vanished from the shelves, most of the van Vogt books I’ve mentioned are still in print, and he remains influential — and controversial. (He did a short stint as a cheerleader for L. Ron Hubbard’s dianetics, for instance.) His writing seems to be equal parts sublime and appalling, and any discussion of van Vogt must sooner or later get around to addressing one simple question: can a “classic” be a godawful, incoherent mess?

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Wrap Up Their Epic Conan Re-Read

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Wrap Up Their Epic Conan Re-Read

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Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward have completed their epic re-read of every complete story of Conan the Cimmerian written by Robert E. Howard. They’ve been blogging about the project at howardandrewjones.com, and we’ve been following along with the viewers at home. In their wrap-up, Howard and Bill look over the vast catalog of Conan pastiches.

Howard: Such a fantastic character practically begs to have more adventures told about him, which is probably why the regrettable Conan pastiche industry popped up. Well, maybe not entirely regrettable, because I’ve read some I’ve really enjoyed…

Bill:  I’m actually looking forward at this point to checking out the many pastiches I’ve never read — I’ve got a stack of Ace Conans that I’d started reading before we came up with the plans for this epic reread… I’ve never read the deCamp and Carter pastiches, or the other stories by REH that de Camp Frankensteined into Conan tales. It’ll be a while before I jump into that series, though, as [I’ll] be rereading all the REH tales again as well. As for other pastiches, I’ve only read a few — Wagner’s Road of Kings was good, and, of course, Hocking’s [Conan and the] Emerald Lotus is terrific.

Read the complete exchange here.

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Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Three – “The Clue of the Pigtail”

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer, Part Three – “The Clue of the Pigtail”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on March 28, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 260 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

The_Mystery_of_Dr._Fu-Manchu_cover_1913220px-Mysteriousfumanchu“The Clue of the Pigtail” was the second installment of Sax Rohmer’s serial, Fu-Manchu. It was first published in The Story-Teller in November 1912. It would later comprise Chapters 4-6 of the novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu [US title: The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu] published the following year. Rohmer makes a drastic switch from the weird menace of “The Zayat Kiss” to a more traditional Yellow Peril storyline. The influence of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries is much less pronounced the second time around. This episode and the one that immediately follows it (“Redmoat” which we will examine in greater detail next time) see Rohmer instead delve deeper into the background of his Yellow Peril mystery. This transition is a necessary one to provide Dr. Fu-Manchu with a plausible motive for the weird deaths he was directing against his political enemies in the first story.

Most critics cite the Boxer Uprising of 1900 as the beginning of Yellow Peril fiction. While that inaugural international conflict of the 20th Century certainly did much to incite reader interest, Yellow Peril stories had existed prior to the series of massacres of Western missionaries that would ultimately spell the end of the Manchu Dynasty and be responsible for much of the ideological and socio-political transformation of the globe in the last century. A brief overview of the most prominent Yellow Peril stories prior to Sax Rohmer’s introduction of Dr. Fu-Manchu may prove beneficial.

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Collecting James White

Collecting James White

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Collecting James White-small

I’ve been enjoying doing a little research on vintage paperback prices… mostly because it involves my favorite pastime, shopping online for science fiction paperbacks. Except now I get to do it, y’know, in the name of science.

What I’ve learned so far hasn’t been super surprising. Robert A. Heinlein is popular. Philip K. Dick is really popular. I guess the biggest surprise is that the #2 man on the list is Karl Edward Wagner, which I didn’t expect (but I probably should have). Here’s a snapshot of what you can expect to pay as you diligently build your SF library, based on a sample of top-condition paperback auctions over the last 2-3 months.

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The Quest of Frank Schildiner

The Quest of Frank Schildiner

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7a0183d69395cea098c126a7581be8a7franktourbkJean-Claude Carriere is best remembered as the acclaimed screenwriter of Hotel Paradiso (1966), Belle de Jour (1967), The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie (1972), The Return Of Martin Guerre (1982), and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). Less well known is the fact that he also authored (under the house name of Benoit Becker) six very bloody sequels to Mary Shelley’s classic Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818) in 1957 and 1958 for a French horror-specialty imprint. Carriere’s  books chronicle the exploits of Gouroull, as he christened the Monster, as he moves across Europe from 1875 to 1939.

Gouroull is portrayed very much in the mold of Mary Shelley’s literary original. He is a terrifying amoral creation possessed of superhuman strength and cunning. Truly the only one of his kind, he is a creation who has outlived his creator and knows not love or restraint. Gouroull is the ultimate sociopath. This Frankenstein monster is quite foreign to our pop cultural mindset. Gouroull uses his razor sharp teeth to slash his victims’ throats. He does not breathe. His skin is naturally flame-resistant. Ichor runs in his veins in place of blood. He is a monster like no other.

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