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Category: Vintage Treasures

Beautiful Galactic Women, Hive Dwellings, and Robot Goons: Rich Horton on Our Man in Space/Ultimatum in 2050 A.D.

Beautiful Galactic Women, Hive Dwellings, and Robot Goons: Rich Horton on Our Man in Space/Ultimatum in 2050 A.D.

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Our Man in Space-small Ultimatum in 2050 AD-small

Rich Horton continues his exploration of the Ace Double line at his website Strange at Ecbatan. His recently reviewed a pair of largely forgotten novels, Our Man in Space by Bruce Ronald, and Ultimatum in 2050 A.D. by Jack Sharkey, originally published in 1965 as Ace Double #M-117. In his opening comments, Rich highlights one of the more appealing aspects of later Ace Doubles — they remain inexpensive and easy to find.

Most of the previous Ace Double reviews I’ve done feature books I’ve chosen because I had at least some interest in one of the writers. This one was a lot more random — basically, it was inexpensive and it was available at a dealer’s table at a recent convention… I had never heard of Bruce Ronald, and while I know Jack Sharkey’s name well, from any number of stories in early 60s magazines, he’s never been a particular favorite of mine… Sharkey wrote four short novels, three of them (including Ultimatum in 2050 A. D.) serialized in Cele Goldsmith’s magazines, Amazing/Fantastic.

Our Man in Space is a very minor work of SF, but for much of its length it’s amusing enough… It’s about an actor, Bill Brown, who is hired as a spy for Earth, because of his acting skill and his resemblance to an Earth diplomat, Harry Gordon, who has been killed. Brown’s job is to impersonate Gordon, and to travel to Troll, where Harry Gordon has been hired by the officials of Troll to find out when overpopulation pressures will cause Earth to explode…

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “Red Nails”

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “Red Nails”

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Weird Tales July 1936 Red Nails-smallHoward Andrew Jones and Bill Ward wrap up their re-read of The Conquering Sword of Conan by Robert E. Howard with the novella “Red Nails,” the last Conan tale REH ever wrote. In a letter to Clark Ashton Smith, Howard said:

Sent a three-part serial to Wright yesterday: “Red Nails,” which I devoutly hope he’ll like. A Conan yarn, and the grimmest, bloodiest and most merciless story of the series so far. Too much raw meat, maybe, but I merely portrayed what I honestly believe would be the reactions of certain types of people in the situations on which the plot of the story hung…

“Red Nails” was originally serialized in the July, August/September, and October 1936 issues of Weird Tales. Here’s Bill and Howard:

Bill: Arguably, the final Conan stories seem to show a bit of a distancing between REH and his creation… I think anyone reading “Red Nails” who has some awareness of REH’s life will at some point stop to ponder the question of whether or not he ever intended to return to Hyboria, or if perhaps the Cimmerian himself had run out of stories to dictate at REH’s shoulder. Whatever the answer, “Red Nails” does serve as a fitting farewell to the character and world that have become so dear to so many, offering a story of adventure, intrigue, and exoticism…

Howard: [Valeria is] the closest we’ve come for a long time to seeing someone who is Conan’s equal partner… although she’s not, really. She IS the most formidable of the women who appear in Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories… But what a masterful opening, with Valeria finding the lay of the land, then mystery following upon mystery. The strange skeleton, the lost city, and the exotic environment are all incredibly compelling.

Read the complete exchange here.

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The Lost World: A Classic Sixties SF Blockbuster

The Lost World: A Classic Sixties SF Blockbuster

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Lost World 4

The Lost World (1960)
Directed by Irwin Allen

The shorthand version of this review is that The Lost World was directed, co-written and co-produced by Irwin Allen. If you know anything about Allen, who had something of a lock on science fiction TV in the Sixties, you’d probably have a pretty good idea of what to expect. It’s not outstanding production values, award-winning scripts and stellar acting.

To give some perspective, The Lost World was released a year before Allen’s Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea came to the big screen and a few years before the latter as made into a TV show. A show that was followed by in quick succession by other Allen productions, such as Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel, and Land of the Giants. While I didn’t find The Lost World to be a very “good” movie, I thought it was an entertaining example of a blockbuster SF/adventure movie from this era.

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Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer – Part One: “The Zayat Kiss”

Blogging The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer – Part One: “The Zayat Kiss”

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NOTE: The following article was first published on March 7, 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 250 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.

ZayatInColliersinsidious 1Arthur Henry Ward was born in England in 1883. His father hoped his son would make his way through life as a respectable businessman, but young Arthur was determined to make a name for himself as an author.

He discovered immortality with the invention of two unlikely monikers that conjured an air of exotic intrigue when they debuted in print a century ago. The first was his chosen pen name, Sax Rohmer and the second was the name of the character at the heart of his first published novel, Dr. Fu-Manchu.

Over the years, the name lost its hyphen and became synonymous with the moustache artists and actors always depicted the character as wearing despite the fact that he was always described in print as clean-shaven. Dr. Fu-Manchu is a brilliant and honorable scientist who is opposed to British colonial interference in the East. Using a variety of fiendish inventions, insects, and assassins, he sets out to remove Western influence and silence those who know too much about the East.

Most intriguing in our post-9/11 world, the Devil Doctor chooses to fight his battles not in China, but on British soil using terror as his weapon. He is opposed in his efforts by stalwart British colonialist Nayland Smith and Smith’s bodyguard and Fu-Manchu’s chronicler, Dr. Petrie. Rohmer’s stories spanned five decades moving in real time with his characters aging alongside their author. For much of the first half of the last century, Dr. Fu-Manchu was the villain readers loved to hate.

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The Books of David G. Hartwell: Foundations of Fear and The Ascent of Wonder

The Books of David G. Hartwell: Foundations of Fear and The Ascent of Wonder

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Foundations of Fear-small The Ascent of Wonder-small

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

David Hartwell’s first anthology, The Battle of the Monsters and Other Stories, was published through tiny Gregg Press in 1976. He reached a bigger audience ten years later with his second, Christmas Ghosts (1987), co-edited with Kathryn Cramer. After that came his real breakout book, the massive The Dark Descent (1987), which Tor kept in print for a decade, and eventually reprinted in three paperback volumes.

David had found his forte: huge retrospective anthologies that put both his exceptional taste and his encyclopedic knowledge of the field on full display. Libraries snapped them up, they garnered him major awards, and they established him as one of the most respected editors in the field. He produced roughly a dozen of them in his career, each one a feast that readers can return to time and again.

Today I want to look at two of his best from the early 90s: Foundations of Fear (1992), the companion volume to The Dark Descent, which convincingly made the case for the thriving genre of 20th Century supernatural horror, especially at novella length; and The Ascent of Wonder: The Evolution of Hard SF (1994), a massive 990-page tome that aimed to be the definitive exploration of science fiction’s “visionary core,” co-edited by Kathryn Cramer.

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On the Trail of the Octopus

On the Trail of the Octopus

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Serial Squadron DVDseriados-the-trail-of-the-octopus-posterEric Stedman of The Serial Squadron has a well-deserved reputation for restoring vintage serials (in many cases salvaging otherwise lost serials) and preserving them for posterity. As Sax Rohmer’s 133rd birthday is rapidly approaching, I thought I would turn our attention to a vintage 1919 serial that borrowed quite a few elements from Rohmer’s work, The Trail of the Octopus. The Serial Squadron released their restored version of this forgotten gem in 2012.

The original serial produced by Hallmark Pictures nearly a century earlier comprises 15 chapters. The serial is centered around an Asian criminal mastermind, Wang Foo (known as “The Octopus”) who commands an international gang of Egyptians, Chinese, Africans, Turks, Jews, even a cult of devil worshippers in pursuit of an ancient Egyptian artifact, the Sacred Talisman of Set. While Fu Manchu was the head of an international secret society that contained Europeans as well as Asians and Arabs, it’s impossible not to see that The Octopus commands all of the stereotypical foreign and/or exotic elements feared by white Europeans just after the First World War.

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The Great Pulp Gathering: That Time Jack Williamson, L. Sprague de Camp, Frank Belknap Long, Edmond Hamilton, John W. Campbell, Manly Wade Wellman, Otis Adelbert Kline and others met at Mort Weisinger’s House in 1937

The Great Pulp Gathering: That Time Jack Williamson, L. Sprague de Camp, Frank Belknap Long, Edmond Hamilton, John W. Campbell, Manly Wade Wellman, Otis Adelbert Kline and others met at Mort Weisinger’s House in 1937

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weisinger home 1937 07 - top l to r Williamson de Camp Clark Long Weisinger Hamilton Kline bottom l to r Binder Wellman Schwartz-small

From time to time I’ve posted in various places material I acquired at an auction many years ago from the estate of Jack Darrow. In the 1930’s, Darrow (whose real name was Clifford Kornoelje) was pretty much science fiction fan #2 behind Forry Ackerman.

Darrow’s best friend was science fiction pulp author Otto Binder – who, with his brother, Earl, formed half of the writing tandem of Eando Binder (their other brother was pulp/comic artist Jack Binder). By 1936 however, although the byline often continued to read Eando, the stories were written solely by Otto. In 1939, Binder also began working in comics, particularly for Captain Marvel and the other Fawcett titles, though he would eventually work for all the major publishers. Among the material in Darrow’s estate was a box of correspondence between him and Binder about a foot thick.

Among these letters was one from Binder to Darrow, dated July 10, 1937, which was accompanied by two snapshots. On the back of each, Binder writes that these are photos of “science fiction authors at Mort Weisinger’s home June 1937” (the home was in New Jersey). At the time, Weisinger was the editor of Thrilling Wonder Stories.

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Thomas M. Disch on the Best Science Fiction of 1979

Thomas M. Disch on the Best Science Fiction of 1979

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The Best Science Fiction of the Year 9 Terry Carr-small Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year Ninth Annual Collection Gardner Dozois-small The 1980 Annual World's Best SF Donald A. Wollheim-small

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction February 1981-smallThe Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction has put some delightful old content on their website for those who care to look, and earlier this month I came across their reprint of Thomas M. Disch’s Book column from the February 1981 issue, in which he compares the three Best of the Year volumes published the previous year.

1979 was a marvelous year for short SF, with many stories destined to become classics — including George R.R. Martin’s brilliant “Sandkings,” and his Hugo Award-winning “The Way of Cross and Dragon,” Barry B. Longyear’s novella “Enemy Mine,” Donald Kingsbury’s “The Moon Goddess and the Son,” Vonda N. McIntyre’s “Fireflood,” Orson Scott Card’s “Unaccompanied Sonata,” Richard Cowper’s “Out There Where the Big Ships Go,” and many others. Of course, Disch was as curmudgeonly as always.

The annuals are out, and here, if we can trust the amalgamated wisdom of our four editors, are the thirty best stories of 1979. It is in the nature of annual reports to pose the question, Was it a good year? and it pains me, as both a shareholder and a consumer, to answer that for science fiction, as for so many other sectors of the economy, 1979 was not a good year.

Against such a sweeping judgment it may be countered that sf is not a unitary phenomenon nor one easily comparable to a tomato harvest. Sf is a congeries of individual writers, each producing stories of distinct and varying merit. A year of stories is as arbitrary a measure as mileage in painting. Nevertheless, that is how the matter is arranged, not only by anthologists but by those who organize the two prize-giving systems, SFWA, which awards the Nebulas, and Fandom, which gathers once a year to hand out Hugos. The overlap between the contents of the annuals and the short-lists for the prizes is so great that one may fairly surmise that something like cause-and-effect is at work. As the nominating procedures are conducted in plain view, it seems certain that the editors will keep their eyes open for the likeliest contenders, since the annual that most successfully second-guesses the awards nominees has a clear advantage over its rivals.

Tomato harvest! At least he makes me laugh.

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John Dee, Scholar and Magician

John Dee, Scholar and Magician

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Dee had many books on astronomy. In the notes he wrote in the margins of this one, he discussed the two lunar eclipses he saw in 1556 and 1566. When a comet appeared in 1577, Queen Elizabeth asked him if it was an ill omen but Dee reassured her that it wasn't.
Dee owned many books on astronomy. In the notes he wrote in the margins of this one, he discussed the two lunar eclipses he saw in 1556 and 1566. When a comet appeared in 1577, Queen Elizabeth asked him if it was an ill omen but Dee reassured her that it wasn’t. I apologize for the quality of some of this photos. There were bright lights over the glass cases. Good for viewing, not so good for photography!

 

The name John Dee conjures up images of a Tudor-era mage plumbing the mysteries of the occult and speaking with angels through his system of Enochian magic. This is how most people know Dr. Dee, and it is all I knew about him until I visited an excellent exhibition at the Royal College of Physicians in London.

Scholar, Courtier, Magician: The Lost Library of John Dee sets the record straight on a misunderstood and often maligned Renaissance man. Far more than a mere occultist, Dee was a geographer, mathematician, astronomer, world traveler, and cryptographer. He was influential in two royal courts and was an early advocate for the colonization of the Americas.

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Vintage Treasures: The Early Fantasy Novels of Nancy Kress

Vintage Treasures: The Early Fantasy Novels of Nancy Kress

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The Prince of Morning Bells-small The Golden Grove-small The White Pipes-small

Nancy Kress is one of the finest science fiction writers we have. She’s won the Nebula Award six times, the Hugo twice, and the John W. Campbell Award. Her novels include the acclaimed Sleepless series (Beggars in Spain, Beggars and Choosers, Beggars Ride), An Alien Light (1988), and Steal Across the Sky (2009).

But before all of that, she began her career with three fantasy novels that are still fondly remembered today.

The Prince of Morning Bells (Timescape/Pocket, 224 pages, $2.75, October 1981) — cover by Carl Lundgren
The Golden Grove (Berkley, 246 pages, $2.95, January 1986) – cover artist unknown
The White Pipes (Berkley, 218 pages, $2.95, August 1986) — cover artist unknown

The books are not connected, but their publication did signal the arrival of a major new voice in fantasy.

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