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Category: Vintage Treasures

The Heroic Fantasy of C.L. Moore

The Heroic Fantasy of C.L. Moore

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Jirel of Joiry (Ace Books, November 1982). Cover by Stephen Hickman

While Edmond Hamilton introduced me to Space Opera, his wife, Leigh Brackett, and another woman writer, Catherine Lucille Moore (1911 – 1987), showed me the kind of emotional power these stories could wield. Moore was an influence on Brackett, and both of these writers wrote beautiful and poetic prose, which is something I always look for in the books I take home with me, although it’s not something I often find. (Robert E. Howard was another writer who could create that kind of prose, and both Moore and Brackett acknowledged him as an influence.)

Moore is known today for two genres that she did stellar work in. Neither of those is Sword and Planet, but one of them is Sword & Sorcery. Her Jirel of Joiry stories are exotic and luminescent. Jirel is one of the earliest flame-tressed female warriors in fantasy fiction. Depending on how far afield I eventually travel with this series, we may well come back to Jirel.

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Tor Doubles #26: John Varley’s Press Enter and Robert Silverberg’s Hawksbill Station

Tor Doubles #26: John Varley’s Press Enter and Robert Silverberg’s Hawksbill Station

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Cover for Fugue State by Wayne Barlowe
Cover for The Death of Doctor Island by Ron Walotsky

Tor Double #26, originally published in October 1990, contains the fifth and final story by Robert Silverberg. It also contains the second of three stories by John Varley.

Hawksbill Station was originally published in Galaxy in August, 1967. It was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award. Set in the Cambrian period, before land animals or plants have evolved, it focuses on the titular prison, sent back in time from the twenty-first century to house political dissidents.

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The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton, Part II

The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton, Part II

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The Star Kings by Edmond Hamilton (Paperback Library, November 1970). Cover artist unknown

See Part I of The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton here.

Edmond Hamilton’s Kaldar tales seem very much an homage to ERB’s Barsoom stories. An Earthman adventurer named Stuart Merrick is sent to Kaldar by a group of scientists. He finds himself a princess to love and becomes that world’s greatest warrior, and at the end of the first tale is drawn back toEearth by those same scientists. When asked what he found, he says, “My world.”

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Tor Doubles #25: Gene Wolfe’s The Death of Doctor Island and John M. Ford’s Fugue State

Tor Doubles #25: Gene Wolfe’s The Death of Doctor Island and John M. Ford’s Fugue State

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Cover for Fugue State by Wayne Barlowe
Cover for The Death of Doctor Island by Ron Walotsky

Tor Double #25 was originally published in September 1990 and collects Gene Wolfe’s The Death of Doctor Island and an expanded version of John M. Ford’s Fugue State. Both stories have settings which question the nature of reality, although in very different ways.

The Death of Doctor Island was originally published in Universe 3, edited by Terry Carr and published by Random House in October, 1973. It was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Nebula Award, winning the latter. It also won the Locus poll.

Wolfe’s story focuses on Nicholas de Vore, who rescues himself from a sandy pit to discover he is living on a nearly deserted island. He eventually learns that there are two other people living on the island, Ignacio, an older man who attacks Nick upon first meeting him, and Diana Phillips, a young woman who provides him with advice and assistance in surviving on the island. The most important “person” he meets, however, is the disembodied voice of “Doctor Island,” who is Nicky’s primary source of communication on the island.

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The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton, Part I

The Sword & Planet of Edmond Hamilton, Part I

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Crashing Suns by Edmond Hamilton (Ace Books, 1965). Cover by Ed Valigursky

Edmond Hamilton, who I’ve mentioned here before as Leigh Brackett’s husband, wrote mostly Science fiction and I consider him one of the first generation of Space Opera writers. And one of the best of the bunch. You might wonder what Space Opera is and how it differs from Sword & Planet fiction, as well as from more mainstream SF. Well, let me explain.

Space Opera was coined to be used pejoratively, to denigrate a certain type of SF in which action and drama were king. This type of story supposedly only used the trappings of SF to tell an adventure tale rather than engaging with futuristic ideas. And the trappings included such things as ray guns, faster-than-light travel, and space battles.

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Tor Doubles #24: Roger Zelazny’s The Graveyard Heart and Walter Jon Williams’ Elegy for Angels and Dogs

Tor Doubles #24: Roger Zelazny’s The Graveyard Heart and Walter Jon Williams’ Elegy for Angels and Dogs

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Cover for The Graveyard Heart and Elegy for Angels and Dogs by Bob Eggleton

Tor Double #24 was originally published in August 1990 and is the final volume in the series which compiled a classic story along with a sequel (or prequel) written by another author. Walter Jon Williams used the world Zelazny created with an overlap of only a few characters to expand Zelazny’s story. Not original to the Tor Doubles series, Elegy for Angels and Dogs was originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine 26 years after The Graveyard Heart appeared.

The Graveyard Heart was originally published in Fantastic Stories of the Imagination in March, 1964. Opening at New Year’s Eve 2000, Zelazny offers a decadent society of the Set, who live to attend flamboyant parties and be seen, going into cryosleep between the parties to prolong their lives. Alvin Moore has managed to get an invitation to the “Party of Parties,” where he promptly falls in love with Leota, one of the Set.

Since the Set only come out of hibernation every few years to attend elaborate parties, there can be no relationship between Moore and Leota. Unable to accept this, Moore decides he must be admitted to the Set and goes about figuring out how to improve his chances of achieving his goal.

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Tor Doubles #23: Norman Spinrad’s Riding the Torch and Joan D. Vinge’s Tin Soldier

Tor Doubles #23: Norman Spinrad’s Riding the Torch and Joan D. Vinge’s Tin Soldier

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Cover for Riding the Torch by Wayne Barlowe
Cover for Tin Soldier by Ron Walotsky

Both stories published in this volume originally appeared in 1974, with Joan D. Vinge’s Tin Soldier appearing in April and Norman Spinrad’s Riding the Torch appearing four months later.

Tin Soldier was originally published in Orbit 14, edited by Damon Knight and published by Harper and Row. The story was also Vinge’s debut story.

Among Vinge’s best known works is her Hugo and Locus Award winning novel The Snow Queen, which was also nominated for the Nebula, the Ditmar, and the coveted Balrog. That novel took its inspiration from the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen. Vinge’s first story, The Tin Soldier, looks to the same source, taking its title from Andersen’s “The Steadfast Tin Soldier,” a fact referenced in the story.

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The Sword & Planet of Leigh Brackett

The Sword & Planet of Leigh Brackett

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The Secret of Sinharat and People of the Talisman (Ace Double M-101, 1964). Covers by Ed Emshwiller

Leigh Brackett (1915 – 1978) is my favorite from among the second generation of Sword & Planet writers (S&P). Many people I meet recognize her name from her association with Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back, for which she wrote the initial script. Or for the script to The Big Sleep, which she also wrote. Or, for several western movies she wrote the scripts for.

Those don’t mean anything to me, though. I know her from her Space Opera and S&P books, particularly the series featuring Eric John Stark.

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Tor Double #22: Leigh Brackett’s The Jewel of Bas and Karen Haber’s Thieves’ Carnival

Tor Double #22: Leigh Brackett’s The Jewel of Bas and Karen Haber’s Thieves’ Carnival

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Cover for The Jewel of Bas and Thieves’ Carnival by Luis Perez

This volume represents the third collection of linked stories. While Robert Silverberg wrote In Another Country to take place at the same time as C.L. Moore’s Vintage Season and Harry Turtledove’s The Pugnacious Peacekeeper was a more traditional sequel to L. Sprague de Camp’s The Wheels of If, Karen Haber provided a prequel to Leigh Brackett’s The Jewel of Bas. Although Haber’s Thieves’ Carnival appears first in this volume, I’m going to stick with my norm of reviewing the earlier published story first.

The Jewel of Bas was originally published in Planet Stories in Spring 1944. It is the final of three stories by Leigh Brackett in the Tor Double series. The story opens with Ciaran and Mouse, a raggedy couple who has recently gotten married. Leaving the city they have known for their entire lives, Ciaran convinces Mouse that they should take a shortcut he has heard of across the Forbidden Plains, despite its foreboding name and its reputation for causing people to disappear.

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Sword & Planet from DMR Books: Henry Kuttner and Howie K. Bentley

Sword & Planet from DMR Books: Henry Kuttner and Howie K. Bentley

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Startling Stories, May 1947; and Lands of the Earthquake by Henry Kuttner
(DMR Books, June 2017). Cover art by Earle Bergey and Logon Saton

Lands of the Earthquake/Under a Dim Blue Sun is a “Double” novel, in the tradition of the old Ace Doubles. It contains a long novella by Henry Kuttner called Lands of the Earthquake, and a shorter novella by Howie K. Bentley called Under a Dim Blue Sun. Both fit the Sword & Planet mold (S&P).

The publisher here is DMR books, and it’s printed in the old paperback size that I like. You can find DMR Books online or on Amazon. The cover art on the Kuttner piece is Logon Saton.

The Kuttner piece was first published in 1947 in Startling Stories but has not been reprinted until now. It involves a modern Earthman, William Boyce, being transported to a fantasy land where time stands still but physical space moves. This temporarily brings different lands close enough to each other to interact.

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