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Category: Vintage Treasures

Lord Dunsany, Philip José Farmer, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Lord Dunsany, Philip José Farmer, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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Over the Hills and Far Away-smallI’m still enjoying the Appendix N surveys by Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode at Tor.com, as they read through every author Gary Gygax cited as an influence on Dungeons and Dragons, even though I’ve found lots to disagree with in their recent columns.

So I’m happy to continue with these re-caps here. Especially since I don’t have a lot emotionally invested in their next two subjects: Lord Dunsany and Philip José Farmer.

I have a lot of respect for Lord Dunsany, but that chiefly stems from the many fine writers who have cited him as an influence. I’ve read only a handful of his shorter works and, while I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read, he’s mostly an untapped natural resource for me.

It’s much the opposite with Philip José Farmer. I was a huge fan of his Riverworld books when I first read them decades ago. But they didn’t really hold up on re-reading 15 years later, for me.

So Farmer is a writer I largely lost interest in years ago, although I have to admit I haven’t really given fair attention to his many fantasy novels. I know his work is highly regarded, and in fact both Cynthia Ward and Christopher Paul Carey made excellent cases here for why I should pay a lot more attention to his Gods of Opar and Tales of the Wold Newton Universe series, for example.

So let’s say I have more of an open mind with both Lord Dunsany and Philip José Farmer, and I’m willing to be influenced.

With that out of the way, let’s see what Tim and Mordicai have to say.

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Space 1999: The Fantasy in Your Mirror May Be Closer Than It Appears

Space 1999: The Fantasy in Your Mirror May Be Closer Than It Appears

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Space 1999When I was a kid, hurling rocks at dinosaurs and running away, there were not many otherworldly shows on TV. Battlestar Galactica ran for two years and then Buck Rogers for about the same, with some incomprehensible Land of the Lost or Dr. Who thrown in at seeming random. Saturday mornings were a rich source of imagination, with Tarzan, Space Academy, Jason of Star Command and Flash Gordon, but unfortunately, in my day, Saturday mornings were only on Saturdays.

Every so often though, I’d find Space 1999 in the TV Guide; it was pretty cool. The sets and ships were pretty different from the sleek models in every other scifi show, and the space suits and the Moon seemed so alien. Twenty-five years later, armed with a couple of science degrees, I ordered a season for nostalgia’s sake.

O. M. G.

It was awful. Aside from the terrible writing and passive characters, and the apparent scattering of Caucasian British humans throughout the cosmos, I could do nothing but choke on the science and toss this drivel into a corner (actually, I think I left the boxed set in Havana, but that’s a story for another time…).

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Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1951: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, July 1951: A Retro-Review

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galaxy science fiction July 1951-smallWith a colorful, 4th of July holiday-appropriate cover, the July issue of Galaxy hit newsstands (or arrived in your mailbox if you were a subscriber), much to the delight of its readers (or so I imagine). The issue felt very full — as though H. L. Gold used some undetectable device to cram extra fiction into the folds. Or perhaps it was the anticipated conclusion of “Mars Child” and the absence of any science article. At any rate, I think this was one of the better issues.

“Venus is a Man’s World” by William Tenn — Ferdinand is the only boy on a rocket filled mostly with young women on a journey to Venus. That world offers a better opportunity of finding a suitable husband than Earth, where the population is mostly made up of women. Not that Ferdinand cares about any of that. He just wants something to do, so he explores the ship, including restricted areas, like one of the lifeboats. Except that someone’s already in the lifeboat — a stowaway who calls himself Butt. And Butt knows all kinds of things that Ferdinand’s sister never talks about. If only he’d let Ferdinand hold his gun…

I absolutely loved this story, and it was easily my favorite of the issue. The narration is told in first-person from Ferdinand’s point of view, and it is hilarious and engaging. Butt’s character is outstanding. This is also a piece that stands the test of time. It was eventually collected in William Tenn’s third collection, The Square Root of Man (1968).

“Common Denominator” by John D. MacDonald — As humanity begins to study another advanced race in the galaxy, they discover that the aliens have a crime rate and insanity rate of nearly zero. Charting the past millennia reveal that it all improved eight thousand years in the past. Lambert, Chief of the Bureaus of Racial Maturity, has the chance to speak with one of them and to try to understand how such a change was possible.

While the story itself is written well, I found the premises simplistic and absurd. But I’m not going to reveal the reason for the alien race’s rise in peace and safety because that is part of the bite of the story. I’m starting to see more of this trend in some of Galaxy’s fiction, though, where an author will envision what humanity (or a variety of humanity) might look like if X or Y was subtracted or added. And that utopia is but one tweak away.

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Harpy’s Flight by Megan Lindholm (aka Robin Hobb)

Harpy’s Flight by Megan Lindholm (aka Robin Hobb)

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oie_2355541zLiqR1TsBefore becoming the better known Robin Hobb, Mary Astrid Lindholm Ogden wrote under the pen name Megan Lindholm. Today, what little she writes under the Lindholm name tends to be contemporary fantasy. Initially, though, some of it came very close to heroic fantasy. Ogden’s first published story was a swords & sorcery tale under the Lindholm byline, in Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s important 1979 anthology Amazons!.

That first story, “Bones for Dulath,” introduced a pair of traveling adventurers: the stolid wagon driving Ki and her more lighthearted companion Vandien. In a review of Amazons! I wrote last year I said:

It’s not an especially exciting story but Ki’s voice and the easy camaraderie between the two feels real and comfortable. Ki and Vandien find themselves face to face with a strange, dangerous mountain creature and a town of people who’ve come to see it as a god. I’ve read a few of Lindholm’s novels under the Robin Hobb name and enjoyed them but they’re more mainline fantasy than this good slice of S&S.

In her first published novel, Harpy’s Flight (1983), Lindholm returned to Ki and Vandien to tell how they met and became companions. It’s not the work of heroic fantasy I was expecting based on “Bones for Dulath,” but instead something closer to the mainline fantasy of her Hobbs books. Still, it is good solid work, particularly for a first book. Lindholm/Hobb has a tremendous talent for creating truly strange, alien worlds and peopling them with multi-dimensional human characters, not simply hangers for a bundle of traits and quirks. That talent is beautifully displayed throughout Harpy’s Flight.

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt

The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt

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The Blue StarThe Blue Star
Fletcher Pratt
Ballantine Books (242 pages, May 1969, $0.95)
Cover art by Ron Walotsky

Lin Carter chose Fletcher Pratt’s novel The Blue Star to be the inaugural title in Ballantine’s Adult Fantasy series. I’ve found nothing that explicitly says why this novel rather than another, but a remark in his introduction provides a clue.

Prior to this publication, The Blue Star had only been published in an omnibus edition along with Fritz Leiber’s Conjure Wife and James Blish’s There Shall be no Darkness in 1952. This was 17 years prior to Ballantine reprinting it and two years before The Lord of the Rings was first published. Carter wrote, “I am pleased to have been instrumental in getting this remarkable novel back into print again.”

The novel tells the story of Rodvard Bergelin, who is a clerk in the genealogical offices of the Empire in the capital city of Netznegon. Not given an actual name, the Empire is in decay. Ruled by a Queen whose only heir has been exiled, political intrigue abounds. Rodvard is a member of a revolutionary group known as the Sons of the New Day. They have Bolshevik overtones, but when they eventually gain power, things resemble the French Revolution.

The other protagonist is a young woman who is a witch, Lalette Asterhax. In Pratt’s world, magic is real, but only witches can use it. The only exception is through a gem known as a Blue Star. Not all witches have one, but Lalette does. The power to be a witch is hereditary, passed from mother to daughter. A witch gains her powers when she loses her virginity.

The Sons of the New Day order Rodvard to seduce Lalette. Neither is really interested in the other. Rodvard is taken with a voluptuous young noblewoman who has started hanging around his office. Lalette, on the other hand, is being pursued by an old nobleman, Count Cleudi. In order to get away from him and out from under her mother’s thumb, Lalette reluctantly yields to Rodvard’s advances.

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Vintage Treasures: Nine Horrors and a Dream by Joseph Payne Brennan

Vintage Treasures: Nine Horrors and a Dream by Joseph Payne Brennan

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Nine Horrors and a Dream-smallBack in September, prodded on by some comments Douglas Draa made in my article on The People of the Black Circle, I tracked down a copy of Joseph Payne Brennan’s short story collection The Shapes of Midnight (which I wrote about in detail here).

I didn’t know much about Brennan (that’s one of the wonderful things about this hobby — always delightful new authors to discover!) I recently came across him again, this time in a collection of 52 vintage paperbacks I bought on eBay for fifteen bucks — a collection which also included The Unknown and Robert Bloch’s Nightmares. (Here’s a pic of the set, since I know I’m gonna get questions about it). The book this time was titled Nine Horrors and a Dream, a very slender paperback containing, not too surprisingly, 10 stories.

Once again I turned to the experts to find out more. Our buddy Douglas Draa talks in detail about the book on his blog, Uncle Doug’s Bunker of Horror. Here’s what he has to say, in part:

Nine Horrors and a Dream has been one of my most sought after books these last several years… the wonderful “Richard Powers” cover art has help to maintain the high interest in this specific collection. So I was very happy to get this book at a fair price…

What I enjoy so much about these stories is Mr. Brennan’s economy of word, sense of place and strong mood. Most of his stories [are] fairly short, but he stills manages to make them into fully fleshed out reading experiences. Nine Horrors and a Dream is a prime example… That calibre of writing [isn’t] something you stumble across every day.

More than enough of an endorsement for me. I find it curious that there’s some story duplication with The Shapes of Midnight, though. And while we’re asking questions, which story is the dream? I suppose that’s all part of the mystery. I plan to dig into in this weekend and find out.

Nine Horrors and a Dream was published in 1962 by Ballantine Books. It is 122 pages, originally priced at 35 cents in paperback. It was originally published in hardcover by Arkham House in 1958. It has been out of print for over five decades. I bought my copy for about 30 cents, as part of a collection.

Why I’m Here – Part One

Why I’m Here – Part One

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I don't want to be this man
I don’t want to be this man

A couple of times this past summer I felt really old. Somehow the classic sci-fi/fantasy books I grew up reading weren’t well known to younger readers (really, you don’t know who Manly Wade Wellman is?!?) or even all that important anymore. In the forty-year span of my sci-fi and fantasy reading life, the genres’ audiences had changed.

Now you could be a sci-fi reader without having read Dune or planning to ever read it. Roger Zelazny’s Chronicles of Amber was “shockingly discordant and unsatisfying to actually read all the way through.” This was nuts — cats-and-dogs-living-together nuts.

After my brain stopped spasming and cooled off a little, I started to actually think. Sure, there are certain — I’d say canonical — books important to the development of fantasy and sci-fi. But if you haven’t read them will somebody revoke your fandom card? If you don’t like the books I like, does that make you less discerning than I? I doubt it.

Besides, discerning is not a word I’d use for a lot of my own book choices. I mean, there’s a certain Lord of the Rings ripoff homage published by Ballantine in 1977 that I, along with the whole fantasy-reading audience, went nuts for. (You had to be there when fantasy pickings were meager.) I still love The Sword of Shannara today. It doesn’t get less discerning than that.

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Vintage Treasures: Nightmares by Robert Bloch

Vintage Treasures: Nightmares by Robert Bloch

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Nightmares Robert Bloch-smallI’ve been on something of a Robert Bloch kick recently.

It started with the Vintage Treasures article on The Best of Robert Bloch I wrote back in July, the second in my series on Lester Del Rey’s Classics of Science Fiction. That lead me to his Lovecraftian novel Strange Eons, first published in 1979, which I wrote about in October.

Strange Eons was fun, but honestly I think I prefer Bloch’s short stories. And he certainly has a lot of them, gathered in dozens of collections starting with The Opener of the Way, published in 1945 by Arkham House when he was just 28 years old, and ending the year he died with his final collection The Early Fears (1994, Fedogan & Bremer) — which won the Bram Stoker Award for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection.

As usual, I tend to gravitate towards the paperbacks. Last week I bought a copy of Nightmares, a slender 1961 paperback from Belmont which contains 10 short stories originally published in Weird Tales, Fantastic, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and other fine publications.

Nightmare is a selection of tales from Pleasant Dreams — Nightmares (1960), an Arkham House hardcover which contained 16 short stories and novelettes (and cost, according to a note on the copyright page, an outrageous $4). The paperback is dedicated to August Derleth, Fritz Lieber (sic), and Star Trek writer Samuel A. Peeples, author of “”Where No Man Has Gone Before” (one of my favorite episodes, incidentally, although doubtless he’s listed here for his horror work).

And yes, Fritz’s Leiber’s name was misspelled. Clearly the paperback editions were not edited as tightly as they could have been, or Fritz Leiber wasn’t yet a big name. Probably both.

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Experience the Joy of the Pulps With The Incredible Pulps

Experience the Joy of the Pulps With The Incredible Pulps

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The Incredible Pulps-smallWe’ve been chatting a lot about pulp fantasy recently — for example, in our recent explorations of Appendix N, Unknown magazine, escaping our genre’s pulp roots, forgotten pulp villains, Clark Ashton Smith’s Martian pulp fiction, and much more.

I occasionally get asked what I mean by “pulp.” It’s not the most intuitive term, I’ll grant you that, especially for younger readers. For them, if it means anything it usually conjures up images of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, and perhaps vague echoes of noir detective stories.

“Pulp fiction” means the fast-paced genre stories written for the popular magazines of the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s, and modern fiction written in conscious emulation of that style. The most popular of the pulp magazines, including Argosy, Adventure, All-Story Weekly, and Detective Story, had reliable circulations in the hundreds of thousands. They cost a quarter or less, and were printed on cheap (pulp) paper, frequently with ragged, untrimmed edges.

The pulps are still discussed and collected today for a number of reasons. Several of the most important writers of the 20th century — including Edgar Rice Burroughs, Sax Rohmer, H.P. Lovecraft, Ralph Milne Farley, Raymond Chandler, Agatha Christie, Louis L’Amour, and Harold Lamb — got their start in the pulps. They featured some of the most famous heroes of the early 20th Century, including Doc Savage, The Shadow, Conan, Buck Rogers, Tarzan, Zorro, and many others.

But the best fiction from the pulps has been reprinted many times and — unless you’re Howard Andrew Jones, Stephen Haffner, or John C. Hocking, on the trail of an obscure or neglected author — you rarely dig through pulps for the fiction any more. No, there’s really only one reason most of us still collect pulps. And that’s the fabulous covers and artwork.

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H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

H.P. Lovecraft, A. Merritt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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The Lurking Fear HP Lovecraft-smallWe’re drawing closer to the end of Gygax’s famous Appendix N, the list of influences and recommended reading he included at the back of the D&D Dungeon Masters Guide.

Over at Tor.com, Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode continue their tireless trek through the entire list, sampling a little bit of each writer and generously sharing their impressions with us, while here at Black Gate we continue to appreciate and critique their columns. Since that’s a heck of a lot easier than actually trying to read along with such a massive project. Makes me tired just to think about it. Seriously, I need a bit of a lie down.

In the last few weeks they covered one of the most popular fantasy writers of the 20th Century — indeed, one of the most popular writers to pick up a pen, period — and a relatively obscure short story writer who was ignored for virtually his entire life, until a tiny press in Sauk City, Wisconsin, decided to make it their mission to return all of his works to print shortly after his death. Yes, we’re here today to discuss A. Merritt and H.P. Lovecraft, respectively.

Let’s start with Lovecraft. Mordicai kicks things off in fine fashion:

The guy basically invented contemporary horror — besides splatter and slasher, I suppose — and you can’t really talk about him without a sort of gleeful enthusiasm. Or at least, I can’t.

Uncaring alien godthings and cults of fishpeople get all the attention, but the stories that stick with me are the ones that get a little more surreal. Don’t get me wrong: At the Mountains of Madness, Call of Cthulhu, The Dunwich Horror, The Shadow Over Innsmouth… there are a reason that these stories are at the forefront, as the juxtaposition of modern man with truly unknowable forces is a ripe category…the ensuing cosmic creepfest and insanity in response to a nihilistic and uncaring universe might be seen as Lovecraft’s thesis.

That said, for me it is the odder tales, like The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, that kick it up a notch. Hordes of cats, friendly conversations with cannibal ghouls, trips to the moon, evil ticklers, and terrifying plateaus that only exist in dreams? Yes please! I’m going to go on a limb and say that I see a little Randolph Carter in some of my favorite protagonists. Dale Cooper from Twin Peaks, I’m looking at you…

While I’m a devoted fan of Lovecraft’s longer and most famous works — I consider “The Shadow out of Time” to be one of the finest pieces of fantastic fiction ever written — there’s no question that his Dream-Quest tales are equally worthy of attention. A tip of the hat to Mordicai for not taking the easy route.

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