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Amazing Stories October 1960: A Retro-Review

Amazing Stories October 1960: A Retro-Review

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Amazing Stories October 1960-smallAt the 2015 Worldcon, Sasquan, one of the dealers had a nice stash of old magazines. I bought a bunch of Goldsmith-era Amazings and Fantastics. This is one from quite early in Cele Goldsmith’s editorial career. Indeed, Norman Lobsenz’s editorial calls it “the first issue of the “new” Amazing that we have been talking about.”

He adds “There is one problem facing us … the constant shortage of first-rate stories.” This is a point he would make other times in editorials (and in the letter column), to a greater degree than I have ever seen from an editor in the pages of a magazine.

The cover here is by Alex Schomburg. The interiors are by two of the greatest artists in the field’s history, Virgil Finlay and Ed Emshwiller, and a name I didn’t recognize, Bernklau, who seems to have been active in the field only from 1959 to 1961 (in a variety of magazines). He was probably the Art Bernklau who did covers for Beacon Books in the same period.

Besides the editorial, the features include S. E. Cotts’ book review column, the Spectroscope; a science article by Lester Del Rey, “Homesteads on Venus,” and the lettercol, “Or So You Say.”

Cotts opens the book review column be celebrating that the column has more space. There is mention of SF in other media: an article in the National Review (“SF seems a strange bedfellow for such a right-wing magazine” says Cotts – a curious remark), SF on TV (Twilight Zone), on record, and an opera. This last is Harry Martinson’s Aniara (music by Karl-Birger Blomdahl). Martinson eventually (quite controversially) shared a Nobel Prize for literature.

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Vintage Treasures: Special Wonder, Volumes 1 & 2, edited by J. Francis McComas

Vintage Treasures: Special Wonder, Volumes 1 & 2, edited by J. Francis McComas

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Special Wonder-small

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction was founded in 1949 by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, who believed science fiction and fantasy could aspire to a literary niche far above the level of the pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s. With F&SF they succeeded brilliantly, launching a magazine with a discerning adult readership that published some of the best fiction of the 20th Century — and is still published today.

Anthony Boucher remained editor of F&SF from Fall 1949 to August 1958. After his death in 1968, McComas assembled a tribute anthology called Special Wonder, collecting stories from 29 of the top writers in the field. It was published in hardcover in 1970 by Random House, and then reprinted in paperback in two volumes in January and February of 1971 by Beagle Books (above). Special Wonder contained reprints that were “to Tony’s taste,” most of which had been published in F&SF, and in aggregate they provided a splendid representative sample of the kind of writing that Boucher sought out, nurtured, and made a home for in the field.

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Dr. Strange, Part I: Establishing the Mythos: Master of the Mystic Arts in The Lee-Ditko Era

Dr. Strange, Part I: Establishing the Mythos: Master of the Mystic Arts in The Lee-Ditko Era

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dr strange 1
The brilliant, eerie worlds of Dr. Strange.

I’ve always liked Dr. Strange. Issue #43 was one of the first four comics my mother gave me in 1980. Stephen Strange is a lonely, stoic hero whose scope of danger and action is nearly always cosmic, and whose inner demons are as powerful as anything he faces with magic.

By the time I was finishing high school, my collection had grown to the point that I had a pretty good grip on his adventures from his first appearance in 1963 to his loss of everything in the late 80s.

Our fearless leader John O’Neill blogged recently about the news of the Dr. Strange movie. I don’t know how I feel about the movie — I have a lot of trouble with disappointing adaptations, but like I did with the Adam Warlock books, I’d like to take a retrospective look on my favorite comic sorcerer.

In my head, the classic Dr. Strange can be broken into three periods. In this post, I’ll look at the establishment of the Dr. Strange mythos in the Lee-Ditko era (roughly Strange Tales #130-#141).

In the early 1960s, there were essentially two creative engines at Marvel. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby had created Thor, the Hulk, the X-Men, Iron Man, the Avengers, and the Fantastic Four. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko had created Spider-Man.

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Vintage Treasures: Pamela Sargent’s Women of Wonder

Vintage Treasures: Pamela Sargent’s Women of Wonder

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Women of Wonder The Classic Years-small Women of Wonder The Contemporary Years-small

In 1973, author Pamela Sargent began to assemble stories for a groundbreaking anthology: Women of Wonder, collecting science fiction stories by women, about woman. It was the first anthology of its kind, and as you can probably imagine, Sergeant ran into some obstacles when she tried to sell it. Here’s Ms. Sargent:

For over two years, I tried to find a publisher for Women of Wonder, and the reactions of editors were instructive. A few editors thought the idea was wonderful but decided not to do the book anyway. Some editors found the book absurd, a couple doubted whether I could find enough good stories to fill the book, and one editor didn’t think there was a large enough audience for such an anthology.

But the audience was there, and so were the authors.

That’s taken from the introduction to the fourth volume in the series, Women of Wonder: The Classic Years, published by Harcourt Brace in 1995.

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Vintage Treasures: Walkabout Woman by Michaela Roessner

Vintage Treasures: Walkabout Woman by Michaela Roessner

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Walkabout Woman Michaela Roessner-back-small Walkabout Woman Michaela Roessner-small

Fantasy shelves in the 80s groaned under the weight of Tolkien pastiches, Celtic fantasies, Thieves World anthologies, and a whole lot of Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms books. Books with more original settings, however, or which tapped into non-Western mythic traditions, were a lot harder to come by.

That’s part of what made Michaela Roessner’s debut novel Walkabout Woman so special. Set in the modern Australian outback, the novel offered fascinating glimpses of Aboriginal culture, paired with an intriguing story of a young Aboriginal girl pulled away from her home by a well-meaning missionary. The novel was a nominee for the Mythopoeic Award, and won the Crawford Award. Based almost solely on the strength of this novel, Roessner won the 1989 John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer.

Michaela Roessner was not a prolific writer, and she produced only three other books in her brief career: the SF novel Vanishing Point (1993), and two historical novels, The Stars Dispose (1997) and The Stars Compel (1999). Since 1999 she has concentrated mostly on short fiction. She’s produced roughly a dozen short stories in the last two decades; her most recent, “The Klepsydra: A Chapter from A Faunary of Recondite Beings,” appeared in the November 2011 issue of F&SF. Walkabout Woman was published in September 1988 by Bantam Spectra; it is 276 pages, priced at $3.95 in paperback. The wraparound cover is by Mark Harrison. It has never been reprinted, but Roessner did self-publish a digital version in July, 2011.

Peter Tremayne’s Dracula Lives Trilogy Revisited

Peter Tremayne’s Dracula Lives Trilogy Revisited

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NOTE: The following article was first published on February 14, 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.

Dracyla UnbrnNurceaIt has long been my contention that pulp fiction not discovered by age thirteen was beyond my ability to appreciate later in life. A certain amount of nostalgia seemed essential to enjoying such escapism once age and responsibility have got the better of you. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule in the rare instances where genuine literary talent is in evidence as is the case with the Holy Trinity of hardboiled detective fiction: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald. Given that I recently covered Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I decided to revisit Peter Tremayne’s three Dracula novels and one short story that I enjoyed so much as a teenager to see how they held up three decades on.

Peter Tremayne is best known today for his long-running Sister Fidelma mysteries. His medieval detective series is sort of a lightweight version of an Umberto Eco doorstop. Although Tremayne’s real world credentials are quite impressive as both an academic and scholar, his fiction is strictly populist in its appeal. Turn back the clock 40 years and one would find Peter Tremayne as a dedicated pulp pastiche writer trying his hand at extending the lifespan of H. Rider Haggard’s She, deliriously combining Shelley’s Frankenstein with Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, and delving deep into Stoker’s Dracula for a trilogy of loosely connected titles published by Bailey Brothers in the UK.

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The Search for Perry Rhodan 50

The Search for Perry Rhodan 50

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Perry Rhodan 50-smallBack when I was a teenager in the 1970’s, I was a big fan of the Perry Rhodan series.

The English edition was published by Ace Books, and edited by Forry Ackerman. Forry offered subscriptions to the series, and I started subscribing as soon as I found out about the series.

The primary cover artist for the first 100+ issues was Gray Morrow. Morrow’s cover for #50, “Attack From the Unseen,” showed Perry posing heroically.

In 1976, Ace ran a survey in the back of issue #s 86-91, offering a free poster of the cover for #50 if you cut out the survey and returned it to Ace. I filled out my survey the day I got #86 in the mail, and sent it back immediately.

And then I waited. And waited. And waited. And no poster ever showed up. I’ve never seen one of these posters, have never heard of anyone who actually got one, and don’t think they were ever printed. My disappointment with Ace over this was deep.

Fast forward 28 years to the 62nd Worldcon, Noreascon 4, held in Boston. Prior to the convention, Deb and I visited our friend, Jerry Weist, and his wife Dana, who lived in the area. While going through stacks of art in Jerry’s flat files, I was astounded to find the original Gray Morrow painting for Perry Rhodan 50!

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Blogging Sax Rohmer… In the Beginning, Part Six

Blogging Sax Rohmer… In the Beginning, Part Six

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Dover RomanceTarcher RomanceWhen Arthur Henry Ward adopted the nom de plume of Sax Rohmer, he found a match for the bohemian occultist persona he was working to cultivate. The very name sounded exotic and foreign. It was less of a name than it was a statement of intent. As part of his new identity, Rohmer claimed to be a Rosicrucian as well as a member of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It appears that both claims were false, although the Ward family doctor, R. Watson Councell was active in occult circles.

It was Dr. Councell who provided much of the information for Rohmer’s 1914 study of the occult, The Romance of Sorcery. It is possible Dr. Councell actually wrote sections of the work considering his own later publication, Apologia Alchymiae (1923) which featured a preface by Rohmer. In the 1970s, Rohmer scholar Dr. Robert E. Briney came across four privately printed titles published by The Theosophical Publishing Society of London credited to one Arthur H. Ward: The Song of the Flaming Heart (1908), The Seven Rays of Development (1910), The Threefold Way (1912), and Masonic Symbolism and the Mystic Way (1913).

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John DeNardo’s Quick History of Serialized Science Fiction and Fantasy

John DeNardo’s Quick History of Serialized Science Fiction and Fantasy

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Astounding Stories August 1934-smallOur friend John DeNardo, editor of the marvelous SF Signal, posted a long article to Kirkus Reviews last month on the history of serialized fiction in SF and Fantasy. I finally had time to sit down and read it today, and found it a very rewarding survey of classic serialized fiction, all the way up to 2015.

In terms speculative fiction stories — that is, science fiction, fantasy and horror stories, which are of particular interest to readers of this column — serialized fiction has a long and interesting history. But just like readers sometimes don’t have the time to read long novels, you may not have the time for a long, sordid history… so let me sum things up….

By the early 20th century, that format was adopted in the United States as well. Magazines were a prevalent venue for fiction back then, and serial fiction — science fiction in particular — received a boon when Edgar Rice Burroughs serialized his novels Tarzan and A Princess of Mars. Both of these stories were later published as novels (in 1914 and 1917, respectively) and both were followed by numerous sequels, some of which were also serialized.

Other authors soon adopted the same publishing model. E.E. “Doc” Smith published his Skylark and Lensman series in serial format in the 1930s, for example. Even decades later, stories were getting published in serialized format.

Some of the more recent examples John cites include Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), Stephen King’s The Green Mile (1996), Karl Schroeder’s Sun of Suns (2006), and John Scalzi’s The End of All Things (2015). Read the complete article here.

Vintage Treasures: The Ballantine Paperbacks of Vincent King

Vintage Treasures: The Ballantine Paperbacks of Vincent King

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Light a Last Cande Vincent King-small Another End Vincent King-small Candy Man Vincent King-small

The sixties and early seventies were a very fertile era for science fiction in America. Writers like Frank Herbert, Roger Zelazny, Samuel R. Delaney, Ursula K. Le Guin, Anne McCaffrey, and many others were busy launching decades-long careers. Their books are still read and enjoyed today.

And then there are those writers who weren’t so lucky. Who never really connected with a wide audience, and whose entire catalog has been out of print for three decades or more. Folks like the British writer Vincent King, who published three paperbacks through Ballantine in 1969-1971, all with eye-catching covers by Robert Foster and Dean Ellis. None of them was ever reprinted in the US, and they quickly vanished.

There are no digital editions. King is the kind of writer who can only be enjoyed the old-fashioned way: by hunting down his books.

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