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Category: Vintage Treasures

A Poisoned Bouquet: Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier

A Poisoned Bouquet: Fancies and Goodnights by John Collier

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Fancies and Goodnights (Bantam Giant, 1953). Cover by Charles Binger

Fantasy, this genre that we love so much, is in reality not one genre but many; that’s one reason we love it. Any form that can accommodate the cynicism of Glen Cook and the lyricism of Patricia McKillip, that can hold the clarity of Robert E. Howard and the ambiguity of John Crowley, that can contain the brutality of George R.R. Martin and the hilarity of Terry Pratchett… well, there’s nothing it can’t do. Fantasy contains multitudes.

There’s a problem with being a member of a multitude, however — it’s easy to get lost, easy to be pushed to the back of the line by the ever-swelling mob of new books, new writers, new modes, easy to be misplaced or forgotten. It’s happened to many worthwhile writers. It’s happened to John Collier.

John Henry Noyes Collier, who died in 1980 at the age of seventy-eight, specialized in “slick” fantasy stories, “slick” because they generally appeared in “slick-paper magazines” as opposed to the cheap-paper pulps, upscale publications like The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, or Esquire. Characterized by modern, urban settings, a sophisticated, often satirical tone, and the irony-laced employment of traditional figures such as witches, genies, angels, devils, magicians, and ghosts, slick fantasy flourished during the twenties, thirties, and forties, and manifested itself in many different media. The humorous supernatural novels of Thorne Smith such as Topper (1926) and The Night Life of the Gods (1931), plays like Noel Coward’s breezy mix of marriage farce and spiritualism, Blithe Spirit (1941), and films like René Clair’s screwball comedy, I Married a Witch (1942, and itself the progenitor of one of the most popular television series of the 60’s, Bewitched), are all examples of this effervescent mode. John Collier may have been its greatest prose practitioner. …

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Take Me Home! A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

Take Me Home! A Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs

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I opened my eyes upon a strange and weird landscape. I knew that I was on Mars; not once did I question either my sanity or my wakefulness. I was not asleep, no need for pinching here; my inner consciousness told me as plainly that I was upon Mars as your conscious mind tells you that you are upon Earth. You do not question the fact; neither did I.

So reacts John Carter, ex-cavalryman of the Army of Northern Virginia, when he transmigrates to the red planet in A Princess of Mars (1917). Chased by torture-minded Apaches, Carter secrets himself in a cave. By unknown means, he finds his spirit severed from his body and transported to Mars.

On Mars, a dying, barren world littered with the ruins of millennia-gone civilizations, he finds his great love and becomes the greatest hero that Barsoom, as its inhabitants call Mars, has ever known. Along that path to glory, thousands of miles are traveled and thousands of foes slain. A Princess of Mars is pure escapist fantasy, where the protagonist, standing in for the increasingly civilized American man Burroughs was writing for, fights and defeats all foes, outwits every enemy, and wins the hand of the most beautiful woman in the world. To some, that might sound juvenile, but they are wrong. A Princess of Mars is absolutely deserving of the mind-blowingly pulpy cover illustrations of Frank Frazetta.

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Random Reviews: “BAXBR/DAXBR” by Evelyn E. Smith

Random Reviews: “BAXBR/DAXBR” by Evelyn E. Smith

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Time to Come, Edited by August Derleth
Time to Come, Edited by August Derleth, Cover artist unknown

Evelyn E. Smith was born in 1922 and in addition to her career as a science fiction author, which spanned from approximately 1952 until 1985, she also wrote romance novels using the name Delphine C. Lyons and also worked as a crossword puzzle writer. This latter job is very much evidenced in her 1954 story “BAXBR/DAXBR” (also “DAXBR/BAXBR,” its title should appear as two words that cross at the X).

The basic gist of the story is that George, Smith’s main character, often finds himself commuting in proximity to a man he doesn’t know, but things of as “the little man from the Planetarium,” since that is where their pathways often converge.  On rare occasions they greet each other and the man has a strange accent that George can’t place, but that is generally the extent of their interaction.

On the day the story takes place, fate and a crowded subway car throw the two men together. While the little man reads some letters, George tries to ignore him, playing mental games with words in which he ideates a crossword puzzle based on the words he sees. During this time, his eyes happen to fall on one of the man’s letters and he sees a word he is unfamiliar with, “BAXBR.” Rather than assume the word was gibberish, a private joke, or something in code, George obsesses over it.

As it happens, both men find their way to the main branch of the New York Public Library, where their paths diverge. George finds himself searching for the word in the dictionary and, when he can’t find it there, tries to find it in dictionaries for several foreign languages, trying to get a clue for the word’s origin from the man’s incomprehensible accent. Even the reference librarian who tried to help George was unable to find the word.

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Vintage Treasures: Dinner at Deviant’s Palace by Tim Powers

Vintage Treasures: Dinner at Deviant’s Palace by Tim Powers

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Dinner at Deviant’s Palace (Ace, 1985). Cover by John Berkey

Tim Powers is a much beloved figure among American fantasy fans. As Gabe Dybing pointed out here in 2020:

He has a strange sort of fame. The most obvious cause for his celebrity is that twice he has won the World Fantasy Award for best novel (Last Call, 1992, and Declare, 2000). He also has been credited with inventing, with The Anubis Gates (1983), the steampunk genre… Finally, for whatever reasons, Disney Studios optioned his 1987 novel On Stranger Tides for its Pirates of the Caribbean movie.

In my own reading circle in the mid-80s however, it wasn’t The Anubis Gates that generated the most excited chatter about Powers, nor his (considerable) steampunk cred. No, it was his Mad Max-inspired novel of a scavenger culture in post-apocalyptic LA, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, which was nominated for a Nebula and won the Philip K. Dick award for best original paperback in 1986.

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The Eclectic 1965 Ace Catalog: Avram Davidson, Philip K. Dick, Samuel R. Delany, and Andre Norton

The Eclectic 1965 Ace Catalog: Avram Davidson, Philip K. Dick, Samuel R. Delany, and Andre Norton

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Rogue Dragon (Ace Books, 1965, cover by Jack Gaughan) and the back-page Ace paperback catalog

As ludicrous as it might sound, I have a few books I bought more than half a century ago and still haven’t got around to reading. This short Avram Davidson novel was one of them, until I dusted it off last night.

Looking at the ads in the back of the book — from a time when publishers could do direct mail-order sales — I was struck by how eclectic the Ace catalog was. A couple of great anthologies there, including Carr and Wollheim’s 1965 World’s Best; some recycled pulp-era stuff; ersatz Edgar Rice Burroughs from Lin Carter; two Andre Norton juveniles; the first publication of Delany’s The Ballad of Beta-2 (as half an Ace Double, paired with something by the now sadly forgotten Emil Petaja); an excellent collection of Avram Davidson’s short stories; Philip K. Dick’s Dr. Bloodmoney…

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Vintage Treasures: The Arbor House Treasury of Short Science Fiction Novels edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg

Vintage Treasures: The Arbor House Treasury of Short Science Fiction Novels edited by Robert Silverberg and Martin H. Greenberg

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The Arbor House Treasury of Short Science Fiction Novels (Arbor House, 1980). Cover design by Antler & Baldwin

Last Saturday I talked about the highly regarded Arbor House Treasuries, a set of a dozen genre-focus anthologies assembled in the early 80s by a round-robin team of distinguished editors: Robert Silverberg, Martin H. Greenberg, Bill Pronzini, Charles G. Waugh, Barry Malzberg, and John Duning.

Today I want to take a closer look at the one that first caught my eye, The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels, mostly because I find it a really terrific collection of novellas, and a great mix of classics — including Samuel R. Delany’s famous Hugo nominee “The Star Pit,” “The Golden Helix” by Theodore Sturgeon, “The Miracle-Workers” by Jack Vance, and Silverberg’s Nebula winner “Born with the Dead”– and some long-overlooked gems, like Charles V. De Vet and Katherine MacLean 1958 Hugo nominee “Second Game,” Wyman Guin’s “Beyond Bedlam,” and Damon Knight’s “Dio.”

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Were-Antelopes, Haunted Cabins, and the Horror of Retail: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VII (1979), edited by Gerald W. Page

Were-Antelopes, Haunted Cabins, and the Horror of Retail: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VII (1979), edited by Gerald W. Page

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VII (DAW, July 1979). Cover by Michael Whelan

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series VII was the seventh volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories, published in 1979. This was the fourth and final installment edited by horror author and editor Gerald W. Page (1939–). Given the strength of his anthologies, I doubt that Page was let go; but I don’t know why this was his last. Perhaps he returned to his own writing.

Michael Whelan’s (1950–) artwork appears for a fifth time in a row on the cover. His subject matter was quite eclectic for DAW, including this depiction of a grisly ghoul attack, one presumably interrupted by you or I the reader. It is a pretty terrifying and mesmerizing cover. I wonder if there’s not some humor mixed in as well. The foremost tombstone bears the name Carter. Is this a jibe at writer and editor-extraordinaire Lin Carter, editor of the competing Year’s Best Fantasy volumes? Or a political comment towards President Jimmy Carter?

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A Hearty Library of Genre Fiction: The Arbor House Treasuries edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Bill Pronzini, Robert Silverberg, and Others

A Hearty Library of Genre Fiction: The Arbor House Treasuries edited by Martin H. Greenberg, Bill Pronzini, Robert Silverberg, and Others

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The Arbor House library. Cover designs by Antler & Baldwin, Inc.

Last week I ordered a copy of The Arbor House Treasury of Great Science Fiction Short Novels, a thick anthology from 1980 edited by  Martin H. Greenberg and Robert Silverberg, and when it arrived I was astounded by the rich assortment of treasures within. Novellas both classic and long overlooked (even by 1980), including “By His Bootstraps” by Robert A. Heinlein, “The Golden Helix” by Theodore Sturgeon, “Born With the Dead” by Robert Silverberg, “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany, “Giant Killer” by A. Bertram Chandler, “A Case of Conscience” by James Blish, “Houston, Houston, Do You Read?” by James Tiptree, Jr, “On the Storm Planet” by Cordwainer Smith, “The Miracle Workers” by Jack Vance, and many more.

It made me wonder how I’d managed to miss this book for four decades, and sparked an interest in other Arbor House Treasuries. I knew there were a couple others… a mystery volume, and one on noir, or something? Twenty minutes on Amazon, eBay, and ISFDB (my research triumvirate these days) yielded at lot more than I thought — no less than eleven. I keep hoping a little more digging will yield a clean dozen.

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“Deeply Weird”: Craig L. Gidney on The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce

“Deeply Weird”: Craig L. Gidney on The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce

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The Darkangel and A Gathering of Gargoyles (Tor Books, 1984 and 1985). Covers by Kinuko Y. Craft

Facebook is a great place to discover vintage fantasy. I know, right? It’s not just old people and Bob Byrne talking about actors he recognizes. Earlier this month Craig L. Gidney (A Spectral Hue, Skin Deep Magic) caught my attention with this short post.

Before there was Twilight, there was The Darkangel by Meredith Ann Pierce, the original teenage vampire romance novel. The Darkangel was a deeply weird novel. It’s set on the moon, a locale which adds an extra eerie element. The moon is full of strange creatures, including gargoyles and a lorelei that lives in a pool of the moon. The heroine has agency, though she isn’t an Action Girl. The plot of the first book owes a great deal to the Bluebeard legend. The entire trilogy is dream-like. I wish more people knew about it. The novel turned me on to the dark fairytale fiction of Tanith Lee and Patricia McKillip.

He’s absolutely right. The Darkangel was nominated for the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, and won the International Reading Association’s annual Children’s Book Award. It was followed swiftly by a sequel A Gathering of Gargoyles; both were published in paperback from Tor. A third novel, The Pearl of the Soul of the World, eventually appeared five years later to complete the trilogy.

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Erekosë and Me

Erekosë and Me

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The Eternal Champion
The Eternal Champion, Cover by Frank Frazetta

Michael Moorcock’s Erekosë saga is contained in three novels, and graphic novel, and a couple of short stories which were incorporated into his novels of Elric, Corum, and Hawkmoon.  I was first introduced to the character when I came across him in those interpolated adventures and I sought out his own novel, The Eternal Champion. When I first read it in the early 1980s it became one of my favorites of Moorcock’s novels.  At the time, I had some difficulty tracking down the second novel, The Silver Warriors (original title Phoenix in Obsidian), which I eventually did at a used bookstore in New Haven, Connecticut. I then had to wait several years for the publication of The Dragon in the Sword, which linked Erekosë with Moorcock’s von Bek family.  It was only much later that I came across the graphic novel, The Swords of Hell, The Flowers of Heaven, written by Howard Chaykin, which is set between Phoenix in Obsidian and The Dragon in the Sword.

The series begins with John Daker, a married man with a child, who lives in London, although his wife and child are forgotten throughout the books. After a series of troubling dreams, Daker finds himself pulled into a different world, where he is informed by King Rigenos that he is Erekosë, the Eternal Champion of Humanity, and must help destroy the evil Eldren who threaten their existence. Yearning to return to the life he knew as Daker, Erekosë accepts his role unquestioningly and adapts quickly to his new existence. In many ways, he is a troubling aspects of the Eternal Champion.

Although his summoning is similar in many ways to the manner in which Corum is summoned at the beginning of The Bull and the Spear published a couple years after The Eternal Champion, one of the major differences between the two characters is that Corum was native to his world and Daker was not.  Enough of Daker remained within Erekosë, especially at the beginning of the novel that as a human raised on twentieth century earth the idea of being surrounded by slaves should have caused some issues. Similarly, for someone for whom World War II was such a recent memory, the idea of leading a genocide against the Eldren should have caused some moral qualms.

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