Black Gate

I haven’t said a lot about the Timescape imprint from Pocket Books, one of the most prestigious publishing lines of the 80s. Founded by David G. Hartwell, it was named after Gregory Benford’s SF novel Timescape, and it produced over 100 paperbacks between 1981 to 1985 — including the four volumes of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun, Philip K. Dick’s The Divine Invasion and The Transmigration of Timothy Archer, Clark Ashton Smith’s The City of the Singing Flame, John M. Ford’s The Dragon Waiting, Donald Kingsbury’s Courtship Rite, and many others — including many Hugo and Nebula award nominees. It was shut down by Pocket in 1985, as it wasn’t producing a sufficient number of bestsellers for its budget. The line has a sterling reputation for quality. And among the many high-profile books, it also produced a number of highly regarded titles from lesser known authors… including The Lights of Barbrin, the debut fantasy from an unknown writer named Joseph Burgo.

The Quest of Ehred the Mighty

Braced by the strength of his Haziad — the four freedom fighters who represent fire, air, earth, and water — fire-bearer Ehred fought his way to importance, wielding a mighty force that made him all powerful in Nabrilehr, the land of the misfits.

But the evil Rand, barred from all Haziads because of his twisted devotion to the dangerous Unmaker, strove long and hard — and finally stole Ehred’s fire power for his own destructive use.

Now Ehred and his Haziad must steal back the blazing power — for in Rand’s hand it threatens to consume Ehred’s world!

Burgo never produced another fantasy novel, and this is his only contribution to the field. The Lights of Barbrin was published in paperback by Pocket in September 1978, and reprinted under the Timescape imprint in February 1982. It is 192 pages, priced at $2.50. The cover is by Carl Lundgren. There is no digital edition, and it has now been out of print for 33 years.

I’ve been enjoying Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth’s Lovecraft Reread over at Tor.com, and I was pleasantly surprised to see them deviate from the core Lovecraft canon to discuss one of the classics of the Cthulhu Mythos not written by Lovecraft himself: Frank Belknap Long’s “The Hounds of Tindalos.”

“The Hounds of Tindalos” was originally published in the March 1929 issue of Weird Tales. It can be found in several anthologies and collections, including the 1978 Jove paperback collection The Hounds of Tindalos, with a fine cover by Rowena (above; click for bigger version). You can find the complete text online here. As Anne says:

Frank Belknap Long was one of Lovecraft’s inner circle, and his “Hounds” is the first Mythos tale which Lovecraft neither wrote himself nor collaborated on. Perfect start for our consideration of the extra-Lovecraftian Mythos, that slow but unkillable creep of cosmic terror into other susceptible minds! Long would go on to create Great Old One Chaugnar Faugn and to kill a fictionalized Lovecraft in “The Space-Eaters.” But the Hounds are probably his most famous creation. Lovecraft mentions them in “Whisperer in Darkness.” Writers as diverse as Brian Lumley, Roger Zelazny, Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear, William S. Burroughs, and John Ajvide Lindqvist have evoked them. They also haunt video and roleplaying games, metal songs, anime, illustration. Well, why shouldn’t the Hounds be pervasive? Have angles, they’ll travel, lean and athirst.

“Hounds” has always inflicted shivers on me. This reread, I was momentarily distracted by a few infelicities. The story strikes me as way too short for its expansive subject: all of time and space and the wonders and horrors therein.

Read the complete article here.