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Category: Vintage Treasures

Vintage Treasures: The Five Star Novella Collections

Vintage Treasures: The Five Star Novella Collections

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In Another Country and Other Short Novels-small Behind the Eyes of Dreamers and Other Short Novels-small Immersion and Other Short Novels

Five Star Publishing was the short-lived but extremely prolific genre publishing arm of Gale, which produced almost exclusively hardcovers aimed at the library market. John Helfers at Teckno Books was the acquisitions editor, delivering an impressive 48 mystery, 36 romance, and 24 SF & fantasy titles per year.

Five Star didn’t get a lot of attention from the mainstream genre press, and many of their more interesting efforts sailed well below the radar. As a result, I didn’t learn that they’d produced a quartet of novella collections — by Robert Silverberg, Pamela Sargent, Gregory Benford, and Mike Resnick — until a few weeks ago. As soon as I discovered the existence of In Another Country and Other Short Novels by Robert Silverberg, I tracked it down immediately. I found a brand new copy for sale through Amazon for just $3.65, and ordered it on the spot. It arrived last week, and I’m extremely pleased with it.

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Collecting Philip K. Dick

Collecting Philip K. Dick

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Philip K Dick paperback collection-medium

Recently I wrote here about a handsome collection of 35 books by Isaac Asimov I bought on eBay for $82.17 — a lofty price for vintage paperbacks, but I wasn’t the only one who noticed what great shape they were in. Last week I also reported on the set of 32 paperback of the same vintage by Arthur C. Clarke I purchased at the same time. Clarke is still highly regarded these days, but not in the same category as Asimov. I expected to pay much less for them, and I was right — I won the auction for $27.

The same seller was also offering the striking set of Philp K. Dick books above (click for bigger version). While not virtually brand new like the Clarke and Asimov collections, they were nonetheless in terrific shape, especially for 40-year old paperbacks. I bravely took part in the auction, but bowed out before it hit $100. I expected it to go a lot higher, and it did.

The set sold for $536 and change, about $9.50 per book — a bargain, considering what Dick paperbacks in that kind of condition sell for individually.

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Decadent Alien Races and Electricity Creatures: Rich Horton on Warlord of Kor/The Star Wasps

Decadent Alien Races and Electricity Creatures: Rich Horton on Warlord of Kor/The Star Wasps

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Warlord of Kor-small The Star Wasps-small

Terry Carr made his reputation in the field as an extremely talented editor. He edited 16 volumes of the Best SF of the Year, from 1972-1987, five volumes of Fantasy Annual (1978-1982), 17 volumes of Universe, and over a dozen standalone anthologies. But early in his career he also wrote a small number of novels, starting with Warlord of Kor, an Ace Double paired with Robert Moore Williams’ The Star Wasps (1963). Over at Strange at Ecbatan, Rich Horton took a look at the book as part of his ongoing series of Ace Double reviews.

This one qualifies as pretty forgotten, and mostly for good reasons… But it does feature a major major SF figure, Terry Carr. Carr is not widely known as a writer, but he was a hugely significant editor… while he didn’t write a whole lot of fiction, some of it was very good, including an admired novel (Cirque (1977))…

In all honesty, Warlord of Kor isn’t all that bad, though it’s not all that great either… The protagonist is Lee Rynarson, something of an archaeologist who is studying the only intelligent race humans have ever found in their expansion through the Galaxy (or perhaps multiple galaxies). These are the Hirlagi, sort of a horse/dinosaur mix on Hirlaj. There are only 26 Hirlaji surviving — they seem a tired [and] decadent race. They have a long racial memory, and Rynarson, in talking with one of them, hears stories of a warlord in the distant past, who united much of the planet, only to decide, after “communing” with the mysterious god Kor, that the Hirlaji must abandon not just war but science… a reasonable first effort.

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Vintage Treasures: A Treasury of Fantasy, edited by Cary Wilkins

Vintage Treasures: A Treasury of Fantasy, edited by Cary Wilkins

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A Treasury of Fantasy-small

In the mid-90s, Gramercy Books had some success with a line of titles focusing on the supernatural and the occult, including The Book of the Dead, The Witchcraft Delusion, and A Treasury of Witchcraft (a collection of spells from ancient sources, which today has accumulated some hilarious Amazon reviews from folks reporting on their various effectiveness.) All of these were (at least nominally) non-fiction, but in early 1995 they added to their line up A Gothic Treasury of the Supernatural, a thick collection of half a dozen classic horror novels repackaged in an attractive hardcover.

The latter must have been successful enough for Gramercy to dabble in fiction anthologies at least one more time, since later in 1995 they repacked a 1981 Crown anthology by Cary Wilkins, A Treasury of Fantasy, with a brand new wraparound Romas cover (looking very much like Michael Whelan). Except for a rather embarrassing typo on the cover (they misspelled the editor’s name as “Wilkens”), this is the preferred edition of a thick omnibus collection of three novels and eight short stories by William Morris, George MacDonald, Lord Dunsany, H.P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, Ursula K. Le Guin, and others.

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Vintage Treasures: Beyond the Curtain of Dark edited by Peter Haining

Vintage Treasures: Beyond the Curtain of Dark edited by Peter Haining

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Beyond the Curtain of Dark Four Square Beyond the Curtain of Dark UK-small Beyond the Curtain of Dark-small

Peter Haining was a prolific editor, producing over 100 anthologies between 1965 and his death in 2007. Black Gate readers are probably most familiar with his Sherlock Holmes books (which Bob Byrne has mentioned more than once), his 1976 Weird Tales facsimile anthology, and his various volumes on the pulps, including The Fantastic Pulps (1976), Terror!: A History of Horror Illustrations from the Pulp Magazines (1977), Supernatural Sleuths (1986), and The Classic Era of American Pulp Magazines (2001).

I stumbled across a very rewarding anthology of horror stories in a $1 bin at Windy City Pulp and paper earlier this year. Beyond the Curtain of Dark was originally published in October 1966 in the UK by Four Square Books, with a delightful cover by Josh Kirby (above left). It was reissued in November 1972 by New English Library in the UK with a cover by the fabulous Bruce Pennington (middle), and in the US by Pinnacle Books (right, cover artist unknown). It contains 23 stories, a nice mix of pre-1910 fiction (nine stories by Ambrose Bierce, Edgar Allan Poe, Mary Shelley, Nathaniel Hawthorne, F. Marion Crawford and others) and pulp horror stories published between 1938-1965 (14 stories by Robert Bloch, Harry Harrison, Ray Bradbury, Theodore Sturgeon, Fredric Brown, H. P. Lovecraft and August Derleth, Henry Kuttner, Isaac Asimov, and others).

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Collecting Arthur C. Clarke

Collecting Arthur C. Clarke

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Arthur C. Clarke paperback lot-small

A couple weeks ago I reported here on a pristine collection of 35 Isaac Asimov books I purchased on eBay. Coincidentally, I also happened to stumble across blogger Mark R. Kelly’s Asimov Re-read. I found many of his comments right on the money, and Mark’s insights became the core of my article.

Eclipsed by all that discussion was the fact that the same day I also purchased a lot of virtually new paperbacks by Arthur C. Clarke (above). Although it was roughly the same size (32 titles) and same vintage (30+ years), and the books were in similar gorgeous shape, I expected to pay much less for them. And that’s exactly what happened: I took the lot home with a single bid for $27, less than a third of what I paid for the Asimov collection.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1953: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1953: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction January 1953-smallGalaxy rolled along into a new calendar year. Elsewhere in the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower was about to begin his first term in office, succeeding Harry S. Truman. It’s amazing to sit back for a moment and realize how long ago all of this great fiction was published.

“The Defenders” by Philip K. Dick – Humanity has been underground for years while the United States and Russia fight a nuclear war. On the surface, robots called leadys fight for humans, detonating bombs that destroy and irradiate the earth. It’s a harsh life for humans, drudging out their years without sunlight, struggling to survive while producing weapons to win the war. Taylor gets called from his rest period to go with a team to the surface to investigate some inconsistent reports from the leadys. It’s a dangerous assignment, given the amount of destruction and radiation awaiting them, but it’s not one he can refuse.

I didn’t want to give more of a description in fear that I might spoil the story. It has a couple of surprising points – the first of which is somewhat easy to guess. It has a classic, Cold War feel to it, which adds to its charm. Philip K. Dick used the story as a basis for the novel The Penultimate Truth, published in 1964.

“Teething Ring” by James Causey – An alien visits Melinda at her home, though she doesn’t realize he isn’t human. The strange man asks to survey her in exchange for one of his devices. Although she selects something for herself, her toddler son takes interest in a neural distorter and won’t be dissuaded. Melinda offers the man a dollar for it and gives it to her son; after all, it keeps him quiet.

It’s a lighthearted tale, but I didn’t find it that interesting. It does, however, make for a good relief between “The Defenders” and “Life Sentence.”

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Society of Illustrators Inducts Richard Powers into Hall of Fame

Society of Illustrators Inducts Richard Powers into Hall of Fame

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Richard Powers Of all Possible Worlds-small Richard Powers The Goblin Reservation-small The-Man-in-the-High-Castle-Richard-Powers-small

Tor.com is reporting that legendary paperback artist Richard Powers, who illustrated hundreds of science fiction and fantasy paperbacks, has been inducted into the Hall of Fame by the Society of Illustrators.

Richard Powers began illustrating covers for American paperback publishers in 1950. He was extremely active in the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, painting hundreds of covers for Berkley, Ballantine, Putnam, Doubleday, and many others. He died in 1998, and was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2008.

The Society of Illustrators has been electing artists recognized for their ““distinguished achievement in the art of illustration” into the Hall of Fame since 1958. The newest Hall of Fame inductees include Beatrix Potter, Peter de Seve, Marshall Arisman, Guy Billout, Rolf Armstrong, and William Glackens.

Click on any of the images above to see Powers’ artwork in all its high-resolution glory.

Dr. Strange, Part II: Becoming Sorcerer Supreme and Dying in the Englehart Era

Dr. Strange, Part II: Becoming Sorcerer Supreme and Dying in the Englehart Era

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Marvel_Premiere_Vol_1_9In a blog post of some weeks ago, looked at the one of my favorite Dr. Strange periods, when they’d established his overall mythos. The early 1970s was another kick-ass period for Dr. Strange, when the Master of the Mystic Arts became the Sorcerer Supreme.

In 1971, after the end of the series Strange Tales, Marvel’s Master of the Mystic Arts found a home in Marvel Premiere with issue #3. Marvel was just beginning an eerie period that mirrored the monster movie craze of the 1970s.

This period brought into prominence Marvel’s werewolves, zombies, Morbius the Living Vampire, Ghost Rider, Son-of-Satan, Dracula, Satana, Blade, and even ended up turning one of the X-Men into a furry monster. This tone seeped into Dr. Strange too.

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Vintage Treasures: The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann

Vintage Treasures: The Weirwoods by Thomas Burnett Swann

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The Weirwoods-small The Weirwoods-back-small The Weirwoods 1977-small

We haven’t discussed Thomas Burnett Swann much here at Black Gate (a quick search pops up only one previous title, his 1972 paperback Wolfwinter). He is largely forgotten today.

His second novel, The Weirwoods, was serialized in two parts in Science Fantasy in 1965. It appeared in paperback from Ace Books in 1967 with a cover by Gray Morrow (above left, click for bigger version). The back cover of that edition is in the middle. It is a very slender novel, just 125 pages, with an original cover price of 50 cents. At right is the October 1977 Ace reprint, with a cover by Stephen Hickman.

Swann published some 16 novels, which together constitute a secret history of the magical races of classical mythology, starting in ancient Egypt in roughly 2500 BC, and the inexorable decline of magic in the face of the growth of Christianity and other world religions. The Weirwoods is set in the world of the Etruscans, the pre-Roman civilization that dominated Italy from 800 to 500 B.C., and tells the tale of nobleman Lars Velcha, whose city Sutrium sits beside the mysterious Weirwoods, home to witches, centaurs, fauns, water sprites, and far stranger things. When Velcha captures the weir-man Vel and makes him a slave, he triggers a war that brings disaster to his city.

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