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Some Vintage Genre Fiction Still Worth Reading (and Why)

Some Vintage Genre Fiction Still Worth Reading (and Why)

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Harold Lamb
Harold Lamb. Still worth reading.

We love our vintage Historical Adventure, Science Fiction, Fantasy and Sword and Sorcery/Planet/ Sandal/Wombat etc. Call it Vintage Genre Fiction. This despite the fact that most old stuff is crap.

Seriously.

Listen: We’re on a road trip and my wife — Driver’s Privilege, and bear with me — puts on a retro chart show for 1968. We bop along to The Rolling Stones and some Soul, then on comes a song called MacArthur Park.

Go on, click the link I dare you. You’ll love the maudlin delivery, the lush strings and perky keyboard arrangement. Better yet are the lyrics. Here’s the refrain:

Someone left the cake out in the rain,
I don’t think that I can take it,
‘Cause it took so long to bake it,
And I’ll never have that recipe again, oh noooooo

At this point the kids and I are howling with pain.

Now if you like 60s music, know about, then right now you’re fighting the urge to dive down to the comments and start explaining why it’s good (please don’t). And it’s true, if you have a specialist interest then your cultural pleasures aren’t always mainstream.

Everybody else is still trying to unhear that song (Someone left the cake out in the rain/ I don’t think that I can take it/ Cause it took so long to bake it…).

And that, my friends, is how most people react to Vintage Genre Fiction.

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Mutants, Burger Creatures, and Genetically Engineered Sharks: Orbit 12, edited by Damon Knight

Mutants, Burger Creatures, and Genetically Engineered Sharks: Orbit 12, edited by Damon Knight

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Orbit 12-smallOrbit 12
Edited by Damon Knight
Berkley Medallion (240 pages, $0.95, March 1974)
Cover by Paul Lehr

If I’ve got my story straight, there were 21 volumes of Damon Knight’s Orbit anthology series in all — and The Best of Orbit. The first of these saw the light of day in 1966.

Obviously, that puts this volume somewhere in the middle of the pack as far as the chronology goes. Reviewing is a subjective thing and we all like what like, but I’ve got to say that I wasn’t very impressed. I’ll start with a look at the two stories I liked, and move on to the many more that I liked less.

PICKS

“What’s the Matter with Herbie?,” by Mel Gilden

Nine stories into this volume and this is the first story that appealed to me. It’s a tale of two very alien aliens in a universe where strange aliens seem to be the norm. There’s not much to the plot but Gilden’s imaginative take and whimsical touch made it worth reading.

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Can You Help Date This John W. Campbell Pic?

Can You Help Date This John W. Campbell Pic?

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John W Campbell-small

A few weeks ago I talked about Hubert Rogers’ Astounding covers, and his fascinating correspondence with Robert A. Heinlein and L. Sprague de Camp.

During one of his trips to visit editor John W. Campbell at Astounding‘s offices, Rogers took along his camera. Here’s one of several shots that Rogers took that day of Campbell at his desk. [Click the image for a bigger version.]

None of the photos are dated, unfortunately, but my guess is that it’s sometime in the 1940’s. If anyone can pin down a more precise date, I’d love to hear it!

Vintage Treasures: Travelers of Space, edited by Martin Greenberg

Vintage Treasures: Travelers of Space, edited by Martin Greenberg

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Travelers of Space 1951-small

Gnome Press, the brainchild of Martin Greenberg and David A. Kyle, was founded in 1948, and it published some of the most important science fiction and fantasy of the 20th Century in hardcover for the first time — including Sixth Column by Robert A. Heinlein (1949), The Castle of Iron by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (1950), Conan the Conqueror by Robert E. Howard (1950), I, Robot (1950) and Foundation (1951) by Isaac Asimov, City by Clifford D. Simak (1952), Robots Have No Tails by Lewis Padgett (1952), Judgment Night by C.L. Moore (1952), and Sands of Mars by Arthur C. Clarke (1952). The Gnome Press hardcovers — gorgeously designed and made with great care — are some of the most collectible books in the field.

For me however, the most desirable Gnome Press books are their original titles, and especially their anthologies, which gathered neglected short fiction from the Golden Age of science fiction pulps for the first time. They published several in their Adventures in Science Fiction series, all edited by Martin Greenberg, including Men Against the Stars (195), Journey to Infinity (1951), The Robot and the Man (1953), and Travelers of Space (1951).

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Open Road Returns Cherry Wilder’s A Princess of the Chameln to Print

Open Road Returns Cherry Wilder’s A Princess of the Chameln to Print

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A Princess of the Chameln-smallCherry Wilder was the pseudonym of New Zealand SF and fantasy writer Cherry Barbara Grimm, who died in 2002. She produced many popular fantasy novels in the late 70s and early 80s, starting with the Torin trilogy (which we discussed back in July), and the four novels in the Rulers of Hylor series (A Princess of the Chameln, Yorath the Wolf, The Summer’s King, and The Wanderer; the last co-written with Katya Reimann). Sadly, all have been out of print in the US for thirty years.

Fortunately, Open Road is taking steps to rectify that. They published a digital version of A Princess of the Chameln on November 17, and next month they will offer a print-on-demand edition. Here’s the new description.

When her royal parents are killed during a coup, Princess Aidris Am Firn of the Chameln flees for her life. Constantly on the run from unseen enemies of the crown, she poses as a commoner and joins a cadre of women warriors so she can fight those who assassinated her parents and continue to hunt her. While cultivating allies, Aidris learns that two pretenders have ascended to the dual thrones of Chameln. Having discovered their true queen is still alive, counselors from Chameln rally to her side and convince the queen that the time has come for her to reclaim her birthright. But before she can do this, she must discover who her enemy really is, lest the unknown assassins strike her down too.

The other books in the series will follow shortly: Yorath the Wolf (ebook February 16, POD April 12) and The Summer’s King (ebook May 17, POD July 12). Open Road is also responsible for the fabulous Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak, the 14-volume series we examined here.

A Princess of the Chameln will be published on February 2, 2016. It is 288 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback, and $5.99 for the digital edition.

Vintage Treasures: The Walking Drum by Louis L’Amour

Vintage Treasures: The Walking Drum by Louis L’Amour

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WalkingDrum
I read this book so you don’t have to.

I read this book so you don’t have to.

Perhaps this review will make you want to read it.

Perhaps you shouldn’t.

It’s complicated.

The Walking Drum is the only medieval adventure written by Louis L’Amour, the mindbogglingly prolific author of a zillion Westerns. That alone makes it a retro must-read. A medieval romp by a horse-opera yarn-spinner who had also been a professional boxer and merchant seaman. How can we resist?

In actuality, the book is… odd. It fulfills expectations, both positive and negative, exceeds them, falls well short of them, and — ultimately — could have done with an edit before being released into the wild.

Reading it has made rethink my choice of reading matter (and also my strategy as a writer, but that’s for another article). Let me start from the beginning

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Vintage Treasures: Assignment Nor’ Dyren by Sydney J. Van Scyoc

Vintage Treasures: Assignment Nor’ Dyren by Sydney J. Van Scyoc

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Assignment Nor Dyren-small Assignment Nor Dyren-back-small

Sydney J. Van Scyoc is an American science fiction writer. She was born in 1939, and published her first story, “Shatter the Wall,” in Galaxy magazine in 1962. She was very active for the next three decades, publishing eleven novels and around 30 stories between 1962 and 1991, including Saltflower (1971), Starmother (1976), Cloudcry (1977), Sunwaifs (1981), and the Daughters of the Sunstone trilogy. Most of her novels were published as paperback originals from Berkley or Avon. In 1992, she reportedly retired to make and sell jewelry, but in 2004 & 2005 she sold two new short stories to Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF.

Assignment Nor’ Dyren, her second novel, is one of her most well known. Compared by some to The Left Hand of Darkness, it’s the tale of two human agents to the planet Nor’ Dyren who discover the inhabitants have a social order that divides them into three specialized castes. But the world seems to be crumbling — broken machines are not being repaired, there’is no innovation, and society has been in decline for over two centuries. Tasked with saving the planet, the human agents find themselves up against strange and sinister opposition.

We last covered Sydney J. Van Scyoc with her 1989 fantasy novel Feather Stroke. Assignment Nor’ Dyren was published in October 1973 by Avon Books. It is 222 pages, priced at 75 cents. Believe it or not, the gorgeously baroque cover is uncredited, and no one seems to know for sure who painted it. It looks a lot like the work of Paul Lehr, but it’s hardly likely there’s an unidentified Lehr out there. Click the images above for bigger versions.

A Concentrated Dose of the Best Our Field Has to Offer: Jonathan Strahan’s Best Short Novels 2004-2007

A Concentrated Dose of the Best Our Field Has to Offer: Jonathan Strahan’s Best Short Novels 2004-2007

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Best Short Novels 2004-small Best Short Novels 2005-small Best Short Novels 2006-small Best Short Novels 2007-small

Jonathan Strahan is one of the most accomplished and acclaimed editors in the genre. He’s edited the annual Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year since 2007, as well as some of our most highly regarded original anthologies — including the Infinity series (Engineering Infinity, Edge of Infinity, etc) and the Fearsome books (Fearsome Journeys and Fearsome Magics), all for Solaris. He’s also edited (with Terry Dowling) one of my favorite ongoing series, the five volumes in the monumental Early Jack Vance from Subterranean Press.

But the work that truly made me a Strahan fan was a brief (four volume) series he did exclusively for the Science Fiction Book Club, Best Short Novels. I’d been a member of the SFBC since the age of twelve but, after leaving Canada for grad school in 1987 and moving around after that, I’d let my membership lapse. I received plenty of invites to rejoin after settling here in St. Charles, but it was Strahan’s first volume in the series, Best Short Novels: 2004, that finally enticed me to do it. I’ve never regretted it.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “Beyond the Black River”

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “Beyond the Black River”

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Beyond the Black River Robert E Howard-smallHoward Andrew Jones and Bill Ward continue their re-read of The Conquering Sword of Conan by Robert E. Howard, the third omnibus volume collecting the complete tales of Conan, with “one of the most famous Conan stories of all,” and one of the last, “Beyond the Black River.” It was originally published in in the May-June 1935 issue of Weird Tales.

“Barbarism is the natural state of mankind,” the borderer said, still starring somberly at the Cimmerian. “Civilization is unnatural. It is the whim of circumstance. And barbarism must ultimately triumph.”

Bill: So concludes “Beyond the Black River,” a story that might almost be REH’s thesis on his philosophy of civilization. It is a story that introduces new elements to Conan’s world, demonstrating again how flexible and expandable REH’s Hyborian blueprint was even after sixteen complete short (and not so short) stories and a novel. But it also maintains a continuity with what has come before, giving us perilous adventure with supernatural antagonists and, of course, Conan being Conan.

Howard: I think it builds nicely on what we’ve seen before. As it happens, though, it’s not exactly a great introduction to Conan himself, or even the Hyborian Age… It’s very different from the preceding Conan stories, feeling very much like a tale of Indian warfare, and Conan himself, while busy doing incredible things, is almost a secondary character.

Read the complete exchange here.

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Vintage Treasures: The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

Vintage Treasures: The Compleat Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt

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The Compleat Enchanter-small The Compleat Enchanter-back-small

I’ve been on something of a Fletcher Pratt kick recently, ever since I purchased a fine collection of old paperbacks that included five of his books, including The Well of the Unicorn and Tales From Gavagan’s Bar (co-written with L. Sprague de Camp), both of which I recently wrote up as Vintage Treasures.

Way down in the bottom of that box was a copy of The Compleat Enchanter. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. Everyone who collects classic American fantasy has two or three (or five or six) copies of The Compleat Enchanter. It’s something of a classic, in a worn sort of way. It doesn’t get much attention these days, because it’s a light, humorous tale, the very opposite of the kind of thing that usually interests me. And so, out of habit, I didn’t give it much attention.

That was a mistake. I’ve ignored The Compleat Enchanter for the better part of 40 years, but when I finally picked it up this week I was quickly captivated. Yes, it is a screwball fantasy, about a psychology professor named Harold Shea who stumbles on equations that transport him into parallel universes, and who uses this ability to visit magical worlds shaped by the mythologies and legend of Earth. But it’s also crammed full of crisp dialog and surprising twists, and the unique charm of De Camp and Pratt, two American masters who were obviously having a lot of fun with the their creation.

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