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Category: Vintage Treasures

Vintage Treasures: The Silistra Quartet by Janet Morris

Vintage Treasures: The Silistra Quartet by Janet Morris

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High Couch of Silistra-small The Golden Sword Janet Morris 1981-small

In the last few weeks I’ve touched on a few tales of modern writers who didn’t make it — or at least, fantasy series that never got off the ground, and died after one or two hardcover releases without even a paperback edition. To switch things up a bit, today I thought I’d look at one of the most successful fantasy debuts of all time, a series that became a huge international hit with its first release, launching the career of one of the most prolific fantasy writers of the late 20th Century: Janet Morris’ The Silistra Quartet.

The Silistra Quartet began with Janet’s first novel, High Couch of Silistra, which appeared in paperback from Bantam Books in 1977 with a classic cover by Boris (above left). Although it was packaged as fantasy, High Couch was really science fiction, the far-future tale of the colony planet of Silistra, still recovering from an ancient war that left the planet scarred and much of the population infertile. With a dangerously low birth-rate, it’s not long before the human colonists of Silistra develop a new social order, with a hierarchy based on fertility and sexual prowess.

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Jack Binder and the Early Chicago SF Fan Club

Jack Binder and the Early Chicago SF Fan Club

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14 leaflet 1937 spring-small

Back in the mid-1930’s, one of the most active science fiction fan clubs was the Chicago Science Fiction Club, which had among its members such fans as Jack Darrow (among fandom’s most prolific writers of letters of comment to the SF pulps), Earl and Otto Binder (the Eando Binder writing team), Jack Binder (their brother, an artist), Walter Dennis and Paul McDermott (both of who had started the Science Correspondence Club in 1929 and later published The Comet, edited by Ray Palmer and arguably the first SF fanzine), William Dellenback, Allen Kline (brother of author Otis Adelbert Kline) and Howard Funk. The Chicago Club had formed as the Chicago Chapter of the Science Fiction League, the nationwide fan organization created and promoted by Wonder Stories. The Chicago Chapter’s activities were prominent in the pages of Wonder Stories, and in Sam Moskowitz’ words, it was “the outstanding chapter of the time.”

From November 1935 to the Spring of 1937, the Club published a fanzine called The 14 Leaflet. The Spring 1937 issue is available online as a pdf in the fanzine section of fanac.org. The copy that’s online, however, is missing the first interior page of the issue. Following the cover (by William Dellenback; I acquired his original preliminary for it back in 2001 when I bought material from Jack Darrow’s estate) but before page 1, many copies of the issue had another page inserted, which contained 19 very small photos (all taken by Dellenback) of various club members. The photos were all glued to a plain sheet of white paper, with numbers identifying them, with the code, revealing the identities of the folks in the photos, on page 2. However, the copy scanned online was apparently missing this photo page. On page 11 of the issue, the editors noted that 50 copies were being printed with the photo page (most going to the members) and 25 copies were being printed without the photo page.

I’ve looked for the Spring 1937 issue of The 14 Leaflet for many years, but had not had any success finding it. I wanted to see those photos!

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Future Treasures: The Human Chord/The Centaur by Algernon Blackwood

Future Treasures: The Human Chord/The Centaur by Algernon Blackwood

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The Human Chord The Centaur Algernon Blackwood-small The Human Chord The Centaur Algernon Blackwood-back-small

I’m embarrassed to admit that I’ve not read much Algernon Blackwood. But I’ve been educated on his substantial contributions to the American horror genre by my fellow Black Gate writers, especially Ryan Harvey and Bill Lengeman. In his 2009 post “The Incredible Adventures of Algernon Blackwood,” Ryan wrote:

Of all the practitioners of the classic “weird tale”…  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… 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.”

And in his 2015 review of Algernon Blackwood’s The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories, Bill Lengeman clearly agreed.

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New Treasures: A Cure For Cancer by Michael Moorcock

New Treasures: A Cure For Cancer by Michael Moorcock

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A Cure for Cancer Moorcock-small A Cure for Cancer Moorcock-back-small

Titan Books has been doing a marvelous service for modern fantasy fans, as they gradually reprint Michael Moorcock’s back catalog — including some of the most fondly remembered fantasy of the 20th Century. They began with his early steampunk trilogy Nomad of the Time Streams (starting with The Warlord of the Air), and continued with the complete Chronicles of Corum. This year they’ve turned their attention to the Cornelius Quartet, starring the hippest adventurer in fantasy, scientist and rock star Jerry Cornelius.

The first volume, The Final Programme (which we gave away three copies of last month) was published on February 2. Volume Two, A Cure For Cancer, arrived earlier this month. A mirror-image of his former self, Jerry Cornelius returns to a parallel London, armed with a vibragun and his infamous charisma and charm, and hot on the trail of the grotesque Bishop Beesley. Click on the cover above for the complete book description (or just to gawk at the trippin’ cover art).

A Cure For Cancer was published by Titan Books on March 1, 2016. It is 340 pages, priced at $9.95 in paperback and $7.99 for the digital version. The cover was designed by Julia Lloyd.

The Problem With Marion Zimmer Bradley: Rich Horton on Falcons of Narabedla/The Dark Intruder

The Problem With Marion Zimmer Bradley: Rich Horton on Falcons of Narabedla/The Dark Intruder

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Falcons of Narabedla 1964-small The Dark Intruder 1964-small

In a recent review at his blog Strange at Ecbatan, Rich Horton tackles the thorny subject of Marion Zimmer Bradley, one of the top-selling fantasy writers of the 20th Century (The Mists of Avalon, Darkover) head on.

In 1964… Marion married Walter Breen, a fellow SF fan and a noted numismatist, within a month. Breen was already well known as an advocate of pederasty, and MZB certainly knew of his proclivities, and indeed Breen had been banned from at least one SF convention in that time period. Breen had been convicted of pederasty-related crimes as early as 1954, and continued to have trouble with the law, finally going to jail after another conviction in 1990. MZB managed to dodge serious consequences of her husband’s activities throughout her life, and she died in 1999. In 2014 her daughter, by Breen, Moira Greyland, accused her of sexual abuse, and in retrospect it seems to me that it should have been clear all along that Bradley was at least negligently complicit in her husband’s crimes, certainly aware of them, and now it appears more likely than not that she was a participant herself. (Though I suppose I must add that damning and convincing as the accusations seem, Bradley never did have a chance to defend herself against those that came after her death, though some of her own testimony given during Breen’s legal troubles is chilling enough.) This has understandably had a devastating effect on her reputation — and she was not really a good enough writer to make it likely that her work will long survive the posthumous stain. Jim Hines briefly discusses this, with links to more direct information, in a good blog post here.

With that preamble, he has another look at Bradley’s 1964 Ace Double, the novel Falcons of Narabedla paired with the collection The Dark Intruder.

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Old Dark House Double Feature II: Secret of the Chateau (1934) and The Headless Ghost (1959)

Old Dark House Double Feature II: Secret of the Chateau (1934) and The Headless Ghost (1959)

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Secret of the Chateau poster

Secret of the Chateau
Universal Studios, 1934
Directed by Richard Thorpe

Books — as in rare collectible ones — are the theme in this particular incarnation of the old dark house movie. Whose old dark house properties are a good bit more understated than some other movies in this genre (sub-genre?). It takes a while for all parties concerned to even get to the old dark house and when they do things play out more like a fairly standard murder mystery. But its close enough for government work, as the saying goes.

The book that’s causing all of the fuss is a Gutenberg Bible, the first book ever to be printed on a printing press. Needless to say, it’s somewhat valuable and high on the want list of a certain book thief.

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Take a Classic Science Fiction Tour With IF Magazine

Take a Classic Science Fiction Tour With IF Magazine

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If Worlds of Science Fiction 50s lot-small

The entire run of IF Magazine, one of the great 20th Century science fiction magazines, is now freely available online at the Internet Archive.

IF, originally titled If Worlds of Science Fiction and later Worlds of If, was a monthly magazine that began publishing in 1952. It was published continuously for 22 years, until it was merged with Galaxy in 1974. During its run it published some of the most acclaimed SF of the 20th Century, including “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream” by Harlan Ellison, Robert A. Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Larry Niven’s “Neutron Star,” James Blish’s A Case of Conscience, Roger Zelazny’s Creatures of Light and Darkness, Heinlein’s Farnham’s Freehold, Jack Williamson and Fredrick Pohl’s The Reefs of Space, and much, much more.

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Analog, November 1971 and October 1972: Two Retro-Reviews

Analog, November 1971 and October 1972: Two Retro-Reviews

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Analog November 1971 Analog October 1972-small

John W. Campbell died in July 1971. He had been editor of Astounding/Analog for 34 years. His name appeared on the masthead through December of that year, along with remaining editorials. Presumably Kay Tarrant did the work necessary to keep the magazine going, possibly, some suggest, even buying new stories, until the new editor was chosen. Ben Bova took over officially with the January 1972 issues. (Rumor has it that Charles Platt, of all people, was one of those considered for the job; a more obvious possibility was Frederik Pohl, who said he was asked to apply. [He had left Galaxy at about this time, and was as I recall editing books for Bantam.])

So I thought I’d consider an issue from the end of Campbell’s tenure, and one from the beginning of Bova’s: November 1971 and October 1972.

The November 1971 issue has a cover by John Schoenherr. Interiors are by Schoenherr, Kelly Freas, and Leo Summers. Campbell’s editorial, his second-last, was called “The Gored Ox,” in which he inveighs against the press’s desire to print anything they want (inspired by the Pentagon papers). The Science article is by Margaret Silbar, who contributed 16 pieces of non-fiction to Analog between 1967 and 1990. It’s called “In Quest of a Humanlike Robot.”

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Vintage Treasures: Try a Little Sturgeon Caviar

Vintage Treasures: Try a Little Sturgeon Caviar

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Caviar 1955-small Caviar 1970-small Caviar 1977-small
Lester Del Rey
Lester Del Rey

I started what eventually became a casual series of posts about Theodore Sturgeon back in June 2014, when I wrote a brief piece on his 1979 collection The Stars Are the Styx. It was casual because I’d make another entry in the series only when I acquired another of his collections. The result was eight posts over roughly two years, not a bad stretch, really.

The only real drawback to this system is I’ve been dying to do a post on his 1955 collection Caviar, perhaps my favorite of his many books, and a copy has not tumbled into my hands for many years. So I’m breaking with my system (and had to troop upstairs and root around on the shelves until I found a copy, no small accomplishment) to bring you this report. You’re welcome.

Why is Caviar my favorite? Nostalgic reasons, mostly. It contains “Microcosmic God,” the first Theodore Sturgeon tale I can remember reading, and still one of my favorites.

Also, I had a lot of fun tracking down the various paperback versions, especially the 1977 Del Rey edition with the brilliant cover by Darrell K. Sweet (above right), which pretty clearly has publisher Lester del Rey putting in a cameo appearance as “Microcosmic God”‘s genius inventor James Kidder.

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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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