Black Gate

Jack Williamson is a science fiction legend. He won the Hugo and Nebula award for his novella “The Ultimate Earth,” published in Analog in 2000, when he was 92 years old. He kept right on writing until 2006, when he died at the age of 98.

Of course, Jack Williamson first made a name for himself in the pulp era, when he was right at the top of the field, with novels like Golden Blood (1933), The Legion of Space (1934), The Cometeers (1936) and One Against the Legion (1939). That’s right, Williamson was a popular writer for more than seven decades. Sales records fall all the time in this fast-moving business…. but that one is likely to stay for a very long time.

Williamson is also highly collectible, especially his early paperback appearances. In my Vintage Treasures posts it’s routine for me to highlight highly desirable paperbacks from the 50s, 60s, and 70s that can be purchased for $5-$6, or less than the price of a modern paperback. (That’s what “highly desirable” means in the vintage paperback biz. Paperbacks that aren’t highly desirable usually sell for under $1.)

Not so with Williamson. His first book, The Green Girl, is one of the most collectible paperbacks in the field, with copies routinely selling on eBay from $25 – $150.

Of course, much of that has to with the eye-catching cover, painted by prolific pulp artist Ray Johnson. The novel was out of print for over 60 years (another reason for its collectibility), but that cover has spawned thousands of posters and t-shirts. Click on the image at left for a bigger version.

The Green Girl was originally published in two parts in Amazing Stories in March and April, 1930, and reprinted in 1950 as Avon Fantasy Novel #2, under editor Don Wollheim. While Williamson had had many popular appearances in the magazines by this point, this was his first solo appearance in book form.

…

Read More Read More

We’re continuing with our look at the extraordinary 40-year career of Tanith Lee, who passed away on May 24th. So far we’ve covered 13 of her novels; today I’d like to look at her equally dazzling short story career.

Lee published well over 300 short stories during her long career, an amazing accomplishment. Her first three major collections were all published by her long-time publisher DAW, starting with the sword-and-sorcery collection Cyrion in 1982.

Cyrion (Sept 1982, 304 pages, $2.95, cover by Ken Kelly)
Red as Blood, or Tales from the Sisters Grimmer (January 1983, 208 pages, $2.50, cover by Michael Whelan)
Tamastara, or The Indian Nights (March 1984, 174 pages, $2.95, cover by Don Maitz)

A lot has been said about Cyrion over the years, but I think perhaps James Lecky, on his blog Tales from the Computerbank, said it best in his 2009 review.

…

Read More Read More

Ray Bradbury is known primarily as a writer, and as one of the most gifted fantasists of the 20th Century. But in his 70+-year career, he also edited a handful of anthologies. The first of these, Timeless Stories for Today and Tomorrow, originally published as a Bantam Giant paperback original in 1952, was also the most popular, with multiple reprintings and editions over the next two decades.

Most SF and fantasy anthologies in the forties and fifties drew heavily from pulp sources. Bradbury’s approach was very different. His fat, 306-page anthology collected classic and contemporary fantasies originally published in The New Yorker, Charm magazine, Harper’s magazine, and other more literary sources, and included such writers as John Steinbeck, Franz Kafka, E. B. White, John Cheever, Roald Dahl, Shirley Jackson, and Henry Kuttner and C. L. Moore.

…

Read More Read More

Over the Hills and Far Away is my favorite Dunsany collection, and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition, edited by Lin Carter and published in 1974, is my favorite edition.

Yes, some of that has to do with the gorgeous wraparound cover by Gervasio Gallardo (see the original painting here). But I think most of it has to do with Lin Carter’s attitude as an unabashed Dunsany fanbody, and the passion that comes across throughout the book. This is a man who was arguably the most respected voice in fantasy in the mid-Twentieth Century, and his admiration for Dunsay was second to none. Here’s a bit from his introduction:

Lord Dunsany is probably the greatest fantasy writer who ever lived. Quite a few of the most distinguished writers of fantasy have made a similar judgment of his work. James Branch Cabell, for example, praised Dunsany’s craftsmanship in glowing terms. H.P. Lovecraft adored Dunsany’s early Book of Wonder tales, and paid them the highest compliment of direct imitation (as I also have done in my little fables of Simrana the Dreamworld). In fact, Lovecraft wrote several pieces about Dunsany’s work, which he considered superlative. I think Clark Ashton Smith might also have concurred with my estimate of Dunsany, and perhaps Jack Vance and Fritz Leiber would agree as well…

In the pages of this book I have brought together twenty-five of his finest fantasy stories, as well as one major novella, or short novel. Also included are two of his most brilliant and fantastical plays, four of his short-short stories, and (just to give you a balanced and comprehensive view of his entire literary career) four of the later short stories concerning Mr. Joseph Jorkens, the world traveler and noted clubman.

Over the Hills and Far Away was edited by Lin Carter and published by Ballantine Books in 1974. It is 234 pages, priced at $1.25. The cover is by Gervasio Gallardo. It is part of the groundbreaking Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, which Keith West is current examining for us in detail; his most recent article was Dragons, Elves, and Heroes.

It’s a pretty popular time for dinosaur novels, what with Victor Milán’s upcoming The Dinosaur Lords, and the biggest movie of the summer being Jurassic World. What many people don’t realize is that dinosaur stories weren’t created by the makers of Jurassic World. They weren’t even created by Steven Spielberg, director of Jurassic Park, way back in the last century in 1993. Believe it or not, they weren’t even created by Michael Crichton, the author of the original 1990 novel. Dinosaur novels were totally created by the science fiction novelist Keith Laumer, in his 1971 novel Dinosaur Beach.

Okay. After doing some, y’know, actual fact checking, it turns out Keith Laumer didn’t completely create the dinosaur novel. But it’s true enough for our purposes. Which are, to give us an excuse to talk about Dinosaur Beach.

…

Read More Read More