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Category: Vintage Treasures

The Mystery of Alan Burt Akers, Author of The Dray Prescot Series

The Mystery of Alan Burt Akers, Author of The Dray Prescot Series

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The first eight Dray Prescot books (DAW Books, 1972-1975).
Covers by Josh Kirby, Tim Kirk, Jack Gaughan, and Richard Hescox

As I started collecting and reading the Dray Prescot series of Sword & Planet novels, I tried to find out more about the author: Alan Burt Akers. The early books, published by DAW books starting in 1973, had no description or details of Akers, although they had ample details on Dray Prescot, who supposedly had recorded his adventures on tapes, which Akers then transcribed.

At the time I was sure Alan Burt Akers was a real person. It was many years before I learned the truth. Akers was a pseudonym for Henry Kenneth Bulmer (1921-2005). I don’t know why he chose that particular pseudonym, although I noted that it included all three parts of the name, and I was sure this was an homage to Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline.

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A Smalltown Horror Masterclass: Paul Finch on Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest

A Smalltown Horror Masterclass: Paul Finch on Norman Partridge’s Dark Harvest

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Dark Harvest (Tor Books, September 4, 2007, cover by Jon Foster)
and the film adaptation (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures, October 11, 2023)

Paul Finch’s “The Carrion Call” appeared in the eighth issue of the print version of Black Gate, and over the last decade he’s produced over a dozen Terror Tales anthologies (most recently Terror Tales of the West Country, which Mario Guslandi reviewed for us back in January). But he also maintains Walking in the Dark, one of the more entertaining and informative genre blogs, where he discusses horror new and old.

Last month he reviewed Norman Partridge’s modern Halloween classic Dark Harvest, originally published in 2006 — when it received many of the year’s major awards, including the Stoker, International Horror Guild Award, and a nomination for the World Fantasy Award for Best Novella. It was adapted into a feature film of the same name, and released for a brief theatrical run this month.

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Vintage Treasures: The Med Series by Murray Leinster

Vintage Treasures: The Med Series by Murray Leinster

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The Med Series (Ace, May 1983). Cover by James Warhola

For most of its life John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction was the most important SF magazine on the stands. It was the beating heart of the genre in a way that’s tough to comprehend today, in a market that’s grown far beyond print.

Campbell made his mark by discovering, nurturing, and publishing the most important writers of his day. But — quite cleverly, I think — he also cultivated lifetime readers by making Astounding home to exciting and highly readable series, many of which were later successfully packaged as bestselling books. Readers of Astounding knew they were getting an early look at the titles everyone would eventually be talking about.

A study of the major SF series launched in Astounding would fill several volumes, but they include Frank Herbert’s Dune, Asimov’s Foundation and Robot tales, Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern, H. Beam Piper’s Paratime and Federation/Empire sagas, Gordon R. Dickson’s Dorsai!, Poul Anderson’s Psychotechnic League, James Schmitz’s Telzey Amberdon and The Hub tales, and countless others.

One of my favorite story cycles from the Campbell era of Astounding was Murray Leinster’s The Med Series, the tales of the intrepid doctors of the Interplanetary Medical Service “roving through the uncharted vastness of deep space.” They were eventually repackaged in a handful of paperbacks that are long out of print, but still fondly remembered by a few of us old timers.

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Let’s Found a New Species: Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

Let’s Found a New Species: Odd John by Olaf Stapledon

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Odd John (Beacon/Galaxy Science Fiction Novel #36, 1959). Cover by Robert Stanley

In 1963, in the early issues of X-Men, Stan Lee introduced the expression Homo superior into superhero comics. But the name had a history before then: It was coined in 1935 by Olaf Stapledon, a British philosopher and science fiction writer, in Odd John, the fictional biography of a young superhuman.

The book that established Stapledon’s reputation, Last and First Men, published in 1930, was certainly science fiction but can’t be considered a novel in any normal sense; its two-billion-year history of humanity’s future is presented almost entirely as historical narrative, with only a few paragraphs of dialogue. But Odd John is definitely a novel, with a protagonist, John Wainwright, and a viewpoint character who is, by necessity, an unreliable narrator, as he himself points out on the first page of the story.

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Vintage Treasures: This Immortal by Roger Zelazny

Vintage Treasures: This Immortal by Roger Zelazny

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This Immortal (Ace Books, September 1980). Cover by Rowena Morrill

Two weeks ago I dashed off a Vintage Treasures piece on Larry Niven’s first collection Neutron Star, the first I’d ever done on Niven, and it helped me realize that there are several other major writers sorely underrepresented in these pages. Near the top of that list is Roger Zelazny, one of the most important fantasists of the 20th Century, and the man behind much of the work that turned me into a lifelong science fiction reader.

So today I’d like to talk about This Immortal, Zelazny’s first novel, published as a paperback original in July 1966 by Ace Books. It was the work that cemented Zelazny’s reputation as one of the finest genre writers of his generation, and it tied with perhaps the most famous science novel of all time — Frank Herbert’s Dune — for SF’s highest honor, the Hugo Award for Best Novel.
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Viy by Nikolai Gogol

Viy by Nikolai Gogol

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daguerreotype of Gogol

Viy is the colossal creation of the common folk’s imagination. The Little Russians (Ukrainians) use this name for the chief of the gnomes, whose eyelids on his eyes reach all the way to the ground. This whole story is a folk legend. I did not want to change anything about it, so I am narrating it in almost the same simple form which I heard it.

Nikolai Gogol, footnote to “Viy“

None of that is true. There are no Slavic folkloric sources, Ukrainian or otherwise, describing a gnome king, let alone one with great, drooping eyelashes (The name Viy appears derived from the Ukrainian word for eyelash). Some have claimed a Serbian connection, but that appears to be false, as well. Nonetheless, Gogol’s story of a monk, a witch, and Viy has become so deeply embedded in Russian and Ukrainian culture that many people believe the terrible creature is a real part of those countries’ folklore.

Nikolai Gogol was one of the greatest Russian writers and simultaneously the greatest Ukrainian writer (though, he didn’t write in Ukrainian and both nations have fought over his legacy). Born in Sorochyntsi in 1809, a Cossack town between Kyiv and Kharkiv and over a hundred miles from each. He died in 1852 by starving himself to death during a period of extreme religious asceticism. Before he became famous for absurdist stories like “The Nose” or sharp-eyed satires like his play The Inspector General, he wrote a series of stories that drew on his youth in the Ukraine and its customs and legends. From St. Petersburg where he had moved and gained the friendship of such luminaries as Alexander Pushkin, he would write to his mother asking for descriptions and details about all manner of information on the Ukraine.  “Viy” is one of those early stories, first appearing in his 1835 collection, Migorod, alongside the Cossack epic, “Taras Bulba.”

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Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales, Part II

Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales, Part II

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Table of Contents for Weird Tales 1, edited by Lin Carter (Zebra Books, December 1980)

For yesterday’s Vintage Treasures post, I finally had the chance to discuss Lin Carter’s early-80s attempt to resuscitate the Magazine that Never Dies, the long-running weird fiction pulp Weird Tales.

Since I examined all four paperbacks, there wasn’t room in that article to look back at some of the fascinating discussions they’ve triggered over the last four decades, including lengthy commentary from Carter himself — especially his (largely unfulfilled) plans for the future volumes — or reviews of the stories within from modern readers. So I took the time to do that today.

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Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales

Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales

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Weird Tales , Volumes 1 -4 (Zebra Books, December 1980
– August 1983). Covers by Tom Barber (#1-3) and Doug Beekman (#4)

Lin Carter was one of the finest genre editors of the 20th Century, and Weird Tales magazine was the most important fantasy magazine of the last century, publishing the career-defining work of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and hundreds of other writers. In December 1980 Zebra Books published the equivalent of a genre superhero Team-Up, the first two volumes of a paperback relaunch of Weird Tales helmed by Lin Carter.

The ambitious effort had several things in common with the original pulp incarnation. Namely, it was criminally underfunded, published sporadically, and doomed.

But it also had a hugely talented and hardworking editor, and in three short years it published a total of four volumes containing ‘lost’ stories by Robert E. Howard and H.P. Lovecraft, an original John the Balladeer story by Manly Wade Wellman, reprints of classic tales from the pages of Weird Tales, and original fiction by Ramsey Campbell, Carl Jacobi, Tanith Lee, Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Steve Rasnic Tem, Hannes Bok, Joseph Payne Brennan, Evangeline Walton, Charles Sheffield, Frank Belknap Long, Lin Carter, and a lot more.

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The Mystery of Steven Klaper, Agent of Insight

The Mystery of Steven Klaper, Agent of Insight

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Agents of Insight (Tor, October 1986). Cover by Barclay Shaw

Back in 2017 I bought a copy of Agents of Insight, and thought it would be interesting to do a brief write up of the genre-blending science fiction-P.I. novel for Black Gate. But I immediately ran into a problem. The author, Steven Klaper, was a complete mystery. This was the only work of any kind I can find published under that name. No other novels, short stories, comics, nothing. When that happens, I automatically assume the name is a pseudonym — and I’m usually right. But even after 30 years, I couldn’t find any record of the name “Steven Klaper” used by a more well-known writer.

I made a plea on for information on Facebook, and Gordon van Gelder, publisher of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, immediately offered a useful suggestion.

Thirty-one years isn’t that long ago and there are plenty of Tor Books employees with long memories like Beth Meacham and Claire Eddy who probably know if Klaper was a pen name for, say, the guy who published as Samuel Holt or if in fact Klaper was just a guy who only ever published one book.

Tor Editor extraordinaire Beth Meacham did indeed remember Steven, and this is where things got interesting.

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One of the Best Swordfights in Fantasy: Dray Prescot 20: A Sword for Kregen by Alan Burt Akers

One of the Best Swordfights in Fantasy: Dray Prescot 20: A Sword for Kregen by Alan Burt Akers

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Dray Prescot 20: A Sword for Kregen (DAW Books, August 1979). Cover by Richard Hescox

About 1979, while in college at Arkansas Tech University, I visited a local used bookstore and found a copy of A Sword for Kregen.

The great cover, drawn by Richard Hescox (who I got a chance to meet), had what looked like a human locked in a sword fight with a creature with four arms and a tail with a hand on it. The four arms immediately reminded me of the Tharks of Barsoom. No way I was leaving the store without that book. It only cost me $1.17. (The price is still written on the cover.)

The book proved to be Sword & Planet and had one of the best swordfights I’d ever read. And, the human hero turned out ‘not’ to be the best swordsman in the fight. I’d never imagined such a thing from reading Edgar Rice Burrough’s Barsoom books and the works of Gardner Fox and others. I fell in love. And best of all, the cover said this was #20 of a series! I had a lot more good reading ahead of me, and I didn’t know the half of it.

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