Black Gate

Talking Man (Avon, 1987). Cover by Jill Bauman

Terry Bisson is a brilliant short story writer. He’s published five collections, including Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories (1993), which contains one of my all-time favorite SF tales, “They’re Made out of Meat.” You can read the whole thing online here. Go ahead, it’s short. I’ll wait. Wasn’t that amazing? That killer last line!

Bisson has also written over a dozen SF novels. A fair number, but not so many that you can, you know, lose track of them. Presumably. So imagine my surprise last month when I’m minding my own business, surfing paperback collections on eBay (as one does), when I glimpse the slender spine of something that looks like “Talking Man” by Terry Bisson.

What the heck was Talking Man? I’d never heard of it. To add insult to injury, a simple internet search revealed that this was a highly regarded novel — and a major oversight for a self-described Bisson fan such as myself. It was nominated for the World Fantasy Award, and Publishers Weekly gave it a warm review back in 1986, saying  (in part):

Having dreamt this world into being, the wizard called “Talking Man” falls in love with what he has made and retires there. He lives in a house trailer on a Kentucky hillside close by his junkyard, and he only uses magic on the rare occasions he can’t fix a car the other way. He’d be there still if his jealous codreamer Dgene hadn’t decided to undo his creation and return this world to nothingness. Talking Man lights out to stop her… The geography shimmers and melts, catfish big as boats are pulled from the Mississippi, the moon crumbles into luminous rings and refugees from burning cities choke the highways… fantastic and gothic… very entertaining.

Even Jo Walton raved about this book, at some length, over at Tor.com. Damn it, does the whole world know about this novel but me? Apparently.

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Imaginary Lands (Ace Books, 1985). Cover by Thomas Canty

By 1985 Robin McKinley was already a star. Her breakout novel The Blue Sword (1982) was a nominee for both the Mythopoeic Award and the Newbery Medal, and two years later The Hero and the Crown (1984) won the Newbery Medal, one of the most coveted accolades in children’s literature. If there was a hotter new writer in the field at the time, I can’t think of her.

In 1982 Ace Books had published her successful collection The Door in the Hedge, and in 1985 McKinley approached them with a different idea: an original anthology of secondary world fantasy tales, with contributions primarily from newer writers. Patricia A. McKillip, whose Riddle-Master trilogy had been a significant hit in the 70s; Joan D. Vinge, whose 1980 novel The Snow Queen had won a Hugo; P. C. Hodgell, whose 1982 debut novel God Stalk became a cult classic; modern master James P. Blaylock, whose career was just getting started with The Elfin Ship (1982) and The Disappearing Dwarf (1983); popular YA author Robert Westall; and McKinley’s husband Peter Dickinson, author of The Changes Trilogy, among others.

Imaginary Lands was a doozy, winning the World Fantasy Award and helping cement McKinley’s reputation. It contained some of the year’s best fantasy, including Blaylock’s famous story “Paper Dragons” (a Nebula nominee and winner of the World Fantasy Award), and “Flight,” by Peter Dickinson, a World Fantasy Award nominee for Best Novella. Imaginary Lands was a paperback original, and was successful enough to be re-released in hardcover in 1986 for the library market by Greenwillow. It had a UK release from Orbit in 1987, but that was the end of its short literary life. It’s a classic volume of fantasy that’s been out of print for over three decades, and never had a digital release.

I think that’s a shame. There are a lot of things I like about modern publishing, but the slow death of the mass market anthology isn’t one of them. It’s just not economical to bring books like this back into print, and certainly not as cheap paperbacks, and that means modern readers will probably never learn about this book. Unless folks like me champion it, and point out that you find buy copies online at criminally low prices — like the one above, a virtually new copy which I bought on eBay for less than two bucks back in January.

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The Wonderful World of Robert Sheckley (Bantam Books, 1979). Cover by the great Paul Lehr

Back in the 90s, when I was reading a lot of Gardner Dozois’ science fiction anthologies, I got used to his complaints about the short memory of science fiction fans. What he meant was that after a popular and important SF writer died or retired, it wasn’t long — 2-5 years, sometimes less — before their entire catalog was out of print, and shortly after that they were virtually forgotten.

He made a compelling case at the time. But to be honest, these days the science fiction heroes of my formative years don’t seem very forgotten. Roger Zelazny, Poul Anderson, Clifford D. Simak, Isaac Asimov, Robert Silverberg, James Tiptree, Jr, John Brunner… maybe it’s just because I hang out at places like Black Gate, but their work seems to be discussed, celebrated, and enjoyed nearly as much as ever. Some — like Philip K. Dick, Lovecraft, Tolkien, and Robert E. Howard — are even enjoying a renaissance on a scale none of us could have imagined while they were alive.

There are exceptions, of course. Wonderful writers whose works are forgotten, or very nearly so. Robert Sheckley is a good example. In 2001 Sheckley was named Author Emeritus by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America; he produced nearly two dozen novels in a career spanning five decades, including Dimension of Miracles (1968), The Status Civilization (1960), and The 10th Victim (1965). His most enduring work was his short fiction, collected in Citizen in Space (1955), Pilgrimage to Earth (1957), Shards of Space (1962), and over a dozen more — including the NESFA Press tribute volume The Masque of Mañana, and five volumes of The Collected Short Fiction of Robert Sheckley from Pulphouse (1991). Sheckley died in 2005, and his work — the most popular of which was kept in print continuously for decades — is nearly completely forgotten today.

Well, if we’re going to pay attention to someone, it might as well be someone forgotten. So today’s Vintage Treasure is a wonderful little collection from 1979, very nearly the peak of Sheckley’s popularity, The Wonderful World of Robert Sheckley.

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