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Category: Vintage Treasures

A Fond Look Back at Bluejay Books

A Fond Look Back at Bluejay Books

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Alien Cargo Theodore Sturgeon-smallThe most popular article on the Black Gate website in July was our report on the departure of James Frenkel from Tor Books.

News articles like that are usually good for some decent traffic. It seems everyone had something to say about Frenkel stepping down from his post at the most powerful genre publisher in America and all that attention generated a lot of clicks.

Most conversations, however, dwelled on the circumstances of his departure, and overlooked his many accomplishments. During his years at Tor, Frenkel sure was busy. He acquired and edited some of their most important books, including volumes from Frederik Pohl, Dan Simmons, Jack Williamson, Timothy Zahn, Greg Bear, Andre Norton, Vernor Vinge, and many others.

But even before he joined Tor, Frenkel made major contributions to American SF and fantasy, particularly as publisher at Bluejay Books in the mid-80s. It’s Bluejay, and the beautiful books they produced before going out of business, that I want to talk about today.

Bluejay was active just as I was really discovering American fantasy and SF in the early 80s, haunting bookshops in downtown Ottawa. They were pioneers in the trade paperback market, hired excellent cover artists — including Rowena Morrill, Tom Kidd, Barclay Shaw, John Pierard, Jill Bauman, and others — and published many of the top writers in the field, such as Theodore Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, Harlan Ellison, Vernor Vinge, and many more.

That was a powerful combination, and it meant that Bluejay was an imprint with enormous prestige — at least in my mind. I kept an eye out for their books on the shelves and always gave them special attention.

That prestige extended to all their titles, not just the authors I recognized (part of the magic of having a strong and easily recognizable visual brand). It also extended to the new authors they discovered and championed.

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Vintage Treasures: Shattered Glass by Elaine Bergstrom

Vintage Treasures: Shattered Glass by Elaine Bergstrom

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Shattered Glass Elaine Bergstrom-smallFor a long time, I credited the rise of the paranormal fantasy genre pretty much single-handedly to Buffy the Vampire Slayer. While I knew it was a little simplistic, it seemed obvious that the roots of the modern fascination with dating vampire, ghouls, werewolves, etc. arose from the long-running romance between the leads of Buffy and Angel, perhaps the two most successful horror TV shows of the our generation.

Of course, as I explore the modern history of dark fantasy, I find more and more evidence that paranormal romance was alive and well long before Joss Whedon penned his first screenplay. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s first vampire romance, Hôtel Transylvania, featuring Count Saint-Germain, was published in 1978, for example. (And the series is still going strong — with volume 26, Night Pilgrims, just released in August.)

Yarbro was hardly the only pioneer in the genre, however. Elaine Bergstrom was working as a copywriter when she wrote her widely acclaimed first novel, Shattered Glass (1989), one of the first vampire romances. It featured a family of vampiric immortals and received a Stoker nomination. She followed up with five additional novels of the Austra family: Blood Alone (1990), Blood Rites (1991), Daughter of the Night (1992), Nocturne (2003), and Beyond Sundown (2011). Here’s the back cover copy for the book that kicked it all off:

Modern technology has rendered the vampires’ night hunt obsolete. But some vampires continue to kill. By choice.

Stephen Austra is a prominent artist, renowned for his wondrous restorations of stained glass in cathedrals and churches. He is also a vampire. But he respects ordinary human lives, and would never hurt a soul. Or so his lover, Helen Wells, desperately wants to believe…

Chilling, erotic and provocative, this sensational new novel by Elaine Bergstrom will lure you into a world where immortal evil meets undying passion. And where a series of appalling murders leads a beautiful young woman into the depths of suspicion… and to new heights of terror.

Bergstrom has also written two Ravenloft novels: Tapestry of Dark Souls (1993) and Baroness of Blood (1995). Shattered Glass was published in July 1989 by Jove Books. It is 372 pages, originally priced at 3.95 in paperback. It is currently available in digital format for $3.99.

Vintage Treasures: The Coming of the Rats by George H. Smith

Vintage Treasures: The Coming of the Rats by George H. Smith

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The Coming of the Rats-smallA lot of post-apocalyptic novels and films appeared in the 50s and 60s. World War II was still a recent memory, and the threat of the H-Bomb was very real, even if most folks didn’t understand exactly what the “H” stood for. Publishers and filmmakers played on the very real terrors people faced every day. Fear of another war. Fear of atomic radiation.

And, going by the cover of George H. Smith’s The Coming of the Rats, the deep-seated fear that rats would attack our women and strip their clothes off.

Now, I’m not sure how our parents and grandparent dealt with these crippling fears, but from what I understand their coping mechanism involved a lot of cheap paperbacks, and multiple Saturday matinees (which seems like a stable strategy, when you think about it).

This is how that generation learned the facts about atomic radiation. And how the logical result would be mutants, and lots of ’em. Giant mutant ants. Mutant town-eating blobs. And horrible, women-chewing mutant rats.

Which brings us to The Coming of the Rats, and its hallowed place in the post-apocalyptic fiction canon.

Author George H. Smith (not to be confused with George O. Smith, author of Venus Equilateral and Troubled Star, or the George H. Smith who wrote Swamp Lust, Swamp Bred, and other swamp love classics) had a checkered career as a paperback writer in the 60s. His first publication was a short story in Startling Stories in 1953, and he sold a number of stories to SF magazines throughout the fifties before graduating to novels. He’s mostly remembered today for a line of soft-core erotica written under various pseudonyms.

His first attempt at more serious SF was The Coming of the Rats. But nobody told the cover artist, who cheerfully went the soft-core route, depicting a toga-party victim unsuccessfully fending off high-jumping rats.

Of course, the best covers intrigue readers and make them ask questions, and this cover made me ask questions. Chiefly, “Why are you wearing a dish towel?”

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A Hero in the Service of Organized Crime: A Review of Jhereg by Steven Brust

A Hero in the Service of Organized Crime: A Review of Jhereg by Steven Brust

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oie_250265755JIVFDZI’m always excited to find a new author, especially one with a long back catalogue for me to plunge into. With 26 novels to his name, Steven Brust is one of those finds.

When I first started blogging about swords & sorcery I spent some time looking around for newer books and series (newer for me meaning anything written after 1984). Again and again, people suggested Steven Brust’s Dragaeran Empire series. Without reading too much about it I learned the main protagonist, Vlad Taltos, had a little pet dragon. Right away my brain flashed some kind of warning and, fearing the books might be too cute by half, I rejected them.

Well, a few weeks ago Bill Ward wrote very highly of the adventures of Vlad Taltos. I figured why not? For a penny (plus $3.99 shipping) I ordered The Book of Jhereg (1999), an omnibus containing the series’ first three books: Jhereg, Yendi, and Teckla. Though still apprehensive of the little dragon, I started on Jhereg (1983) and blew through it in two days. Well I’m feeling a little foolish now for not having overcome my dracophobia much sooner.

The Dragaerans are nearly immortal, seven foot tall beings with slightly pointed ears and more finely featured than humans. Their society is divided into seventeen houses, each with its own traits and skills. Humans are a small and disfavored minority. The human Vlad Taltos is an assassin in House Jhereg, the Dragaeran equivalent of the mafia.

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Vintage Treasures: Pirates and Plunder

Vintage Treasures: Pirates and Plunder

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Pirates and Plunder box-smallBack in the early 80s, publishers were still exploring the boundless possibilities of role playing.

It occurred to more than one designer that sword & sorcery — the tiny genre Gygax and Arneson had chosen to build their fabulously successful Dungeons & Dragons upon — was a niche market at best, with very limited widespread appeal.

Yet if D&D had managed to come so far with source material of such limited public familiarity, what might a game with much broader appeal accomplish?

And so the early 80s was a time when we had an astounding array of new role playing games promoted by a host of hopeful publishers, in a wide range of genres — science fiction, action, spy thrillers, mystery, superhero, and many others. There were gangster games (Gangbusters), Arthurian games (Pendragon), games based on popular action films (Indiana Jones, James Bond), and westerns (Boot Hill). There were horror games (Chill, Beyond the Supernatural), post-apocalyptic survival games (Twilight 2000, Gamma World), games based on prime time soap operas (SPI’s infamous Dallas), and bestsellers like Richard Adams’ Watership Down (Bunnies & Burrows).

Virtually all of them failed. Turns out that D&D didn’t succeed in spite of the fact that it drew inspiration from the classic heroic fantasy listed in the famous Appendix N, but in fact because of it. Sword & sorcery offered the kind of larger-than-life heroes players wanted to play — and more importantly, no other genre came so readily pre-packaged with a catalog of terrific opponents, from orcs to vampires to dragons.

But while most of those games are long forgotten today, a handful are still fondly remembered. Pirates and Plunder, a role playing game set in the golden age of piracy, is one of the latter. At least, it’s fondly remembered by me.

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Manly Wade Wellman, Fletcher Pratt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

Manly Wade Wellman, Fletcher Pratt, and Appendix N: Advanced Readings in D&D

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Who Fears the Devil-smallI’ve been waiting for Mordicai Knode and Tim Callahan at Tor.com to get to both Manly Wade Wellman and Fletcher Pratt as part of their ongoing exploration of Gary Gygax’s famous Appendix N — and not very patiently, either.

Manly Wade Wellman is consistently one of the most beloved authors we feature here at Black Gate. Just three days ago Fletcher Vredenburgh reviewed his Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty, and a while back new Black Gate blogger Alex Bledsoe offered a fine reminiscence of Wellman’s Appalachian fantasy tales in “How I Discovered Silver John.” The most popular contest in our history was our call for The Best One-Sentence Reviews of Manly Wade Wellman, and the winners received a copy of Haffner Press’ gorgeous The Complete John Thunstone.

And Fletcher Pratt? He wrote The Well of the Unicorn, one of the 20th Century’s most acclaimed heroic fantasy novels (none other than Lester del Rey called it “The best piece of epic fantasy ever written.”) With his frequent collaborator L. Sprague de Camp, he was also the author of the very popular Incomplete Enchanter and Gavagan’s Bar series.

So I’ve been looking forward to both authors receiving the Appendix N treatment. And now at last the wait is over.

Sadly, Tim doesn’t seem to fully briefed on the greatness that is Manly Wade Wellman:

I didn’t know anything about Manly Wade Wellman before Mordicai and I embarked on this project. I had never heard of the author, outside of the mention of his name in Appendix N.

Ouch. Well, I’d read almost nothing by Clark Ashton Smith prior to last week (when I read his brilliant pulp horror story “The Vault of Yoh-Vombis“), so I guess we all have our blind spots.

The real question is: What does Tim think of Wellman now?

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Lin Carter and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series

Lin Carter and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series

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Beyond the Fields We KnowMany fantasy fans don’t realize how good they have it these days. Fantasy stories dominate the best seller lists, set box office records, and are some of the highest rated programs on television.

This hasn’t always been the case. In the years following the Second World War, fantasy in popular culture went into a decline. The reasons for this are beyond the scope of this post, primarily because I don’t want to write a doctoral thesis. Once was enough.

What I’d like to address in this and following posts is the resurgence of fantasy in the 1960s and 1970s, specifically fantasy published by Ballantine Books in what became known as the Adult Fantasy Series.

The catalyst that led to the current fantasy boom was J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, of course. Although initially published by Ace in editions not authorized by Tolkien, Ballantine Books ended up as the publisher of the authorized editions. The books were a tremendous success. Readers began clamoring for more fantasy.

Ian and Betty Ballantine followed up The Lord of the Rings with, in addition to some other work by Tolkien, the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake, four novels by E. R. Eddison (The Worm Ouroboros, Mistress of Mistresses, A Fish Dinner in Memison, and The Mezentian Gate), A Voyage to Arcturus by David Lindsay, and The Last Unicorn and A Fine and Private Place, the latter two by Peter S. Beagle. Considered precursors to the actual Adult Fantasy series itself, many of these books were later reprinted as part of the series with the unicorn head colophon.

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The Hero’s Struggle

The Hero’s Struggle

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The Swords of Lankhmar-smallConan the Barbarian. Elric of Melnibone. Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser. Gilgamesh. Hercules. Hector of Troy.

These giants of heroic fantasy (and the mythology from whence it springs) strode across the landscape of my imagination as a young man. They were my guiding stars when I started to write my own stories. But what were they teaching me?

When I think about these heroes, one thing that comes through is their incredible lust for life. Even when they lapse into melancholy, they never stop striving, never stop fighting, and that struggle is the essence of life. Whether it’s Conan carving out a place for himself in the kingdoms of Hyborea, or Elric fighting to keep his fragile body alive with potions and sorcery, or Hector facing the dread Achilles to protect his home, these heroes confront the challenges of their ages.

Their struggles say a lot about humanity. How far would we go to protect our own? Where is the line between justice and vengeance? Is violence ever warranted?

So when it came time to create the heroes for my own stories, I didn’t set out to emulate these characters, but time and time again I noticed certain parallels. For instance, Caim (the main character of my Shadow Saga) has many of the physical traits of the Gray Mouser, but married to a personality more like Conan. Caim is direct in his sneakiness, deliberate in his dealings, and he possesses a code of honor that, although rather bleak and brutal to most people, elevates him above his peers.

Heroes often fight. They tend to love and mourn with superhuman passion. But first and foremost, they struggle. With their enemies, with their societies, with the gods, and oftentimes even with themselves. They struggle, and so must our contemporary heroes who wish to tread in their titan-sized footsteps.

Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty by Manly Wade Wellman

Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty by Manly Wade Wellman

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oie_1743857GRCQJimHHistorical adventure fiction is one of the primary roots of swords & sorcery. From it you get the same fast-paced adventure in exotic settings.

Some writers of S&S, Robert E. Howard and Sprague de Camp for example, wrote historical adventure fiction alongside their more fantastic stories. Often the tales involve battling Crusaders and Saracens, high seas Viking adventures, swashbuckling freebooters, or Roman centurions fighting Teutonic hordes. Sometimes, though, they star cavemen.

Manly Wade Wellman spent his childhood in a primitive village in Portuguese West Africa. Till he died Wellman spoke of a young boy forced to kill a leopard in order to protect cattle. Other boys had been less lucky and had fallen prey to leopards. His time and experience in Angola was perhaps the greatest influence on his life, but most certainly on his prehistoric stories.

In 1939, after a decade of writing pulp science fiction with titles like “The Disc-Men of Jupiter” and “Outlaws on Callisto,” Manly Wade Wellman introduced his Cro-Magnon hero, Hok the Mighty, in the novelette “Battle in the Dawn.” Four stories followed before he retired the character. While there’s a strong anthropological component to the Hok stories, with footnotes explaining then-current thoughts on the discoveries made by early man, these five tales get progressively more fantastic.

In 2010 Paizo collected all the Hok stories, along with several fragments and the cavenmen vs. Martians mini-epic “The Day of the Conquerors,” in Battle in the Dawn: The Complete Hok the Mighty for their Planet Stories line.

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New Treasures: Assassin’s Dawn: The Complete Hoorka Trilogy, by Stephen Leigh

New Treasures: Assassin’s Dawn: The Complete Hoorka Trilogy, by Stephen Leigh

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Slow Fall to Dawn-small Dance of the Hag-small A Quiet of Stone-small Untitled-3

[Click on any of the images above for bigger versions.]

Paperback publishing has come a long way since the early 80s. Improved binding and glues have made producing thicker books much more economical. Or something, I dunno. But we’re definitely living in the golden age of the omnibus, when publishers are cramming shelves with big, fat paperbacks collecting forgotten fantasy and SF series from prior decades, all for about the same price as every other dopey paperback.

Is that a great deal, or what?  I certainly thought so on Saturday, when I found a handsome volume collecting all three novels in Stephen Leigh’s long out-of-print science fantasy Hoorka Trilogy on the shelves at Barnes & Noble. Assassin’s Dawn includes Slow Fall to Dawn (1981), Dance of the Hag (1983), and A Quiet of Stone (1984). The Hoorka are a guild of assassins with a strict code: any victim that can survive until dawn may go free, unmolested. But the consequences of this law can be harsh, especially when the client has no such scruples, as their leader Gyll discovers as he tries to take his guild offworld, into the newly thriving Alliance, a star-spanning organization attempting to put together the pieces of a once-great empire.

Stephen Leigh is also the author of The Crystal Memory, Dark Water’s Embrace, Dinosaur Planet, Speaking Stones, The Bones of God, and The Abraxas Marvel Circus. His publisher DAW has been something of a pioneer in the fantasy omnibus biz, with a nice assortment from Terry A. Adams, Tanya Huff, Marion Zimmer Bradley, C. J Cherryh, Jennifer Roberson, S. Andrew Swann, Peter Morwood, and many others.

Assassin’s Dawn was published May 2013 by DAW. It is 610 fat pages, priced at $8.99 for both the paperback and digital versions.