Black Gate

Back in 1988, there were only eight Grand Masters of Science Fiction. The Grand Master award is given by the Science Fiction Writers of America periodically to a writer with a lifetime of meritorious achievement. Robert A. Heinlein was the first, in 1975. (As of 2014, there are now 30; Samuel Delany received his award at the SFWA Nebula Awards banquet in May this year. See the complete list of winners here.)

For Noreascon III in 1988, NESFA Press invited Andre Norton to assemble a special collection of stories, one each from all eight Grand Masters — the story each author felt was their finest. The results were packaged with an introduction by Robert Bloch, plus comments on the individual stories by Andre Norton and her co-editor  Ingrid Zierhut, into Grand Masters’ Choice, a prestigious collection of SF and fantasy.

It’s interesting to see each author’s selection — and there are plenty of surprises. There’s a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser novelette from Fritz Leiber, a Witch World novella by Andre Norton, a Reginald Rivers tale from L. Sprague de Camp, a Humanoids story by Jack Williamson, and four others.

Now, I probably have all of these stories in other collections. Somewhere. But I couldn’t resist this handsomely-packaged anthology, mostly because I’ve read almost none of the stories within and it was just too irresistible to have them all in one place.

The tales I’m most interested in reading are Andre Norton’s “Toads of Grimmerdale,”  which originally appeared in Lin Carter’s sword & sorcery anthology Flashing Swards! 2 — and which has been recommended to me several times in the past year — and “The Autumn Land,” a novelette by one of my favorite writers, Clifford D. Simak.

Here’s the blurb from the back of the 1991 paperback edition.

…

Read More Read More

When you’ve been collecting paperbacks as long as I have, there aren’t a lot of discoveries left that really get you excited. Sure, there are still the occasional finds in a good used bookstore, or that opportunity to replace a lost book at a great price. But nothing like those unexpected discoveries you made when you first started collecting. The ones that made your pupils go big, and made you think, “I need this book right now.”

Of course, there are exceptions.

A few weeks ago, I spotted Sea Tales of Terror, a 1974 paperback from British publisher Fontana, on eBay. It was the first copy I’d ever laid eyes on. And my eyeballs got big, and I thought “I need this book right now.”

Mostly it was the cover, I think. Painted by Justin Todd, it shows a skeletal figure, made entirely of salt water and sea foam, clutching a full-masted schooner, against an angry red sky. That cover promised adventure and nights of delightful reading curled up in my big green chair.

With a little determination, I won the auction. (Truthfully, it wasn’t hard. The bidding fizzled above five bucks and I got it for less than seven. Vintage paperbacks — there just aren’t that many that cost as much as a new paperback.)

We’ve mentioned Fontana’s Tales of Terror anthologies before, but I really had no idea there were so many. I count a total of ten, although that’s not a firm number. Earlier this year, I wrote about Gaslight Tales of Terror, edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes, who edited several others, including Welsh Tales of Terror (1973), and Tales of Terror from Outer Space (1975). J.J. Strating, editor of this volume, also produced European Tales of Terror (1968) and Oriental Tales Of Terror (1971). Clearly, I need to do some homework and report back on what I find.

…

Read More Read More