Vintage Treasures – Page 63

Rescued from the Vaults of Time: The Sapphire Goddess – The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis

Tuesday, January 8, 2019 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 4 comments

Dave Ritzlin, impresario of DMR Books, has rescued another writer from the distant, fog-obscured days of pulp fantasy. He has done for Nictzin Dyalhis as he did for the nearly-forgotten Clifford Ball (reviewed by me here). If you, like most people, have no idea who Dyalhis was, Ritzlin presents as much information as is available in an excellent introduction to The Sapphire Goddess (2018), his new collection of all nine of the author’s fantasy and science fiction stories.

A quote from the introduction:

Even though Nictzin Dyalhis was the eccentric author’s legal name at that time, it’s highly unlikely he was named that way at birth. He claimed that “Nictzin” was a Toltec Indian name and “Dyalhis” was an old English (or, alternately, Welsh) surname. Neither of these claims is true. Many speculated that his real name was Nicholas Douglas or Nicholas Dallas or something similar, which he modified into something more exotic.

Nonetheless, Weird Tales publisher Farnsworth Wright swore to Donald Wandrei that all the checks for Dyalhis’s stories “were made out to that name.” Whatever the reality, there’s something wonderfully perfect about a fantasist being remembered solely by a name of mysterious origins.

The nine stories in The Sapphire Goddess were published between 1925 and 1940. Eight were published in Weird Tales, with only “He Refused to Stay Dead” published in another magazine, Ghost Stories. Save for the explicitly sci-fi “When the Green Star Waned” and its sequel “The Oath of Hul Jok”, they are a mix of horror and heroic fantasy. Running through most of them is a theme of reincarnation or forgotten past lived in another dimension.

“When the Green Star Waned” (1925) and “The Oath of Hul Jok” (1928) are two adventures of the planet Venhez’s greatest heroes. The first concerns a journey to the now-silent planet Aerth to determine why no one’s heard anything from its inhabitants in years. Dyalhis’s first published story, it’s not an especially finely-wrought story, but it is very successful at creating a nightmare atmosphere, made all the more malevolent with horrible semi-material monsters from the dark side of the moon. It also seems to have introduced the word Blastor for ray guns. That alone is a more than worthy legacy for any pulp story.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Stephen Fabian

Sunday, January 6, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 4 comments

Peter Graham is often quoted as saying that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12. I was reminded of this quote last year while reading Jo Walton’s An Informal History of the Hugo Awards (Tor Books) when Rich Horton commented that based on Graham’s statement, for him, the Golden Age of Science Fiction was 1972. It got me thinking about what science fiction (and fantasy) looked like the year I turned twelve and so this year, I’ll be looking at the year 1979 through a lens of the works and people who won science fiction awards in 1980, ostensibly for works that were published in 1979. I’ve also invited Rich to join me on the journey and he’ll be posting articles looking at the 1973 award year.

In 1972, the British Fantasy Society began giving out the August Derleth Fantasy Awards for best novel as voted on by their members. In 1976. The name of the awards was changed to the British Fantasy Award, although the August Derleth Award was still the name for the Best Novel Award. A category for Best Artwork was created in 1977 and ran for three years until 1979. Stephen Fabian won the award in its second year. In 1980, the Artwork Award was replaced by an award for Best Artist and Fabian won the inaugural award. The category has remained part of the awards to the present day, although a re-alignment in 2012 means the awards are now selected by a jury rather than the full membership of the British Fantasy Society. In 1980, the awards were presented at Fantasycon VI in Birmingham.

Fabian was born on January 3, 1930 in Garfield, New Jersey. Fabian was self-taught and heavily influenced by Edd Cartier, Hannes Bok, and Virgil Finlay. He began creating sketches for fanzines in the mid-1960s, but it wasn’t until he was laid off from a job due to the oil embargo of the 1970s that he turned his skills towards professional artwork. On the day that he received word of the layoffs, he also received invitations from Sol Cohen and Jim Baen to submit work for their consideration for inclusion in Amazing Stories (Cohen) and Galaxy (Baen). His first paid work was a cover for Robert E. Howard’s Western The Vultures.

His work was also championed by book collector and publisher Gerry de la Ree, who published several portfolios of Fabian’s work, bringing him to the attention of both fans and publishers who were able to give him work.

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Sky Pirates and Interstellar Wars: The Black Star Passes by John W. Campbell

Friday, January 4, 2019 James Enge Comments 5 comments

Art by Chris Foss

This was the cover of the paperback I had as a youth — still my favorite thing that Campbell published under his own name (with The Moon is Hell running a close second).

Campbell’s best stuff is unquestionably the work he published as Don A. Stuart (e.g. “Who Goes There?”, “Twilight,” “The Elder Gods,” etc). And the heroes of this series, Arcot & Morey, are chemically free from any trace of personality.

But the same is not true of their partner Wade, who appears in the first story “Piracy Preferred” (from Amazing Stories, June 1930) as a super-scientist sky pirate, and after he is cured of his criminal tendencies becomes a valuable and prankish member of the team.

The title story in The Black Star Passes (from Amazing Stories Quarterly, Fall 1930), tells the tale of an interstellar war. But the bad guys are not simply ravening bug-beasts from beyond the void, and the story ends without the happy genocide so common in space opera. (“YAY! We have destroyed an entire intelligent species with our superior science knowhow! Too bad they weren’t Civilized, like us!”) In Campbell’s story, the invaders are defeated, but the collective effort involved in the invasion saves their civilization.

Vintage Treasures: The Great Science Fiction Series, edited by Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander

Thursday, January 3, 2019 John ONeill Comments 14 comments

One of the things I like to do with Vintage Treasures posts is to shine a light on fascinating genre books from the 20th Century, and point out how inexpensive they are. Everyone like to share their hobbies; mine is collecting science fiction paperbacks and — unlike stamp or coin collecting, say, or vintage toys — virtually the entire field is available to you. With the exception of unique autographed items and the like, I’m unaware of a single science fiction paperback, no matter how rare, that costs more than a few hundred dollars. I’ve collected tens of thousands, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never paid more than 20 bucks for any one of them.

Hardcovers, of course, are a different story. I’ve dealt with a few extremely collectible books (remind me to tell you the tale of the most valuable book in my collection, the Meisha Merlin edition of A Game of Thrones, some time), but it’s not something I make a habit of. In general I stay away from the limited edition collectible market, which I think is a particular disease that afflicts collectors like me.

But every once in a while I’ll stumble on a rare or collectible title that piques my interest. That’s exactly happened with The Great Science Fiction Series, a 1980 Harper & Row hardcover anthology edited by Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander, which I found on eBay over the summer. I was struck by it for three reasons. One, because I’d never seen it before, and I certainly thought I was familiar with all of Fred Pohl’s anthologies by now. Two, I thought it was a great idea: a collection of twenty stories from the best SF series from 1944-1980, each with an accompanying essay by the author. And three, it was ridiculously expensive, over $140. A quick search on AbeBooks confirmed that copies were available, starting around $80. Used copies on Amazon started at over $100.

I couldn’t find any literature that explained why the book was so pricey, but it didn’t seem any particular mystery. Likely copies were very scare, which would explain why I’d never seen it. There’s never been a reprint, paperback or otherwise. The book simply wasn’t very well known. Of course… if it wasn’t very well known, that meant that sooner or later someone would sell a copy without knowing what they had. I set an automated eBay search, and sure enough I got a hit less than two months later. That’s how I acquired the virtually new copy above for less than $20.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

Wednesday, January 2, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 6 comments


Cover by Terry Oakes	Cover by Paul Bacon	Cover by Chris Moore

Peter Graham is often quoted as saying that the Golden Age of Science Fiction is 12. I was reminded of this last year while reading Jo Walton’s An Informal History of the Hugo Awards (Tor Books) when Rich Horton commented that based on Graham’s statement, for him, the Golden Age of Science Fiction was 1972. It got me thinking about what science fiction (and fantasy) looked like the year I turned twelve and so this year, I’ll be looking at the year 1979 through a lens of the works and people who won science fiction awards in 1980, ostensibly for works published in 1979. I’ve also invited Rich to join me on the journey and he’ll be posting articles looking at the 1973 award year.

The Hugo Award was first presented at the 11^th World Science Fiction Convention (sometimes called Philcon II), held in Philadelphia from September 5-7, 1953. That year the award for Best Novel, not yet known as a Hugo Award, was given to Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man. The awards were not perceived as an annual event at that time and, in fact, no awards were presented the following year. They were presented again in 1955 and have been presented annually since, although in 1957, the Best Novel category was not included. The Best Novel Awardhas been referred to, with some tongue in cheek, as “the Big One” and is generally the last one announced at the ceremony. The Hugo Awards are nominated and voted on by the members of the World Science Fiction Convention. Clarke won the Hugo Award for Best Novel twice, for Rendezvous with Rama in 1974, and for The Fountains of Paradise in 1980. In 1980 the Hugo Award was presented at Noreascon Two in Boston, Massachusetts on August 31.

The Nebula Award was created by the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) and first presented in 1966, when the award for Best Novel was won by Frank Herbert for Dune. It has been presented annually since then, with a tie in 1967 when it was won by Samuel Delany for Babel-17 and Daniel Keyes for Flowers for Algernon. Clarke won the Nebula Award for Best Novel twice, for Rendezvous with Rama in 1974 and for The Fountains of Paradise in 1980.

It has been several decades since I read The Fountains of Paradise, and re-reading it I realized that I had no real memories of it at all. I remembered that the central point of the book was to build a space elevator from a peak in Sri Lanka (repositioned and renamed Taprobane in the novel), but absolutely nothing else.

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The Omnibus Volumes of Sean Russell: Moontide and Magic Rise

Tuesday, January 1, 2019 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Art by Braldt Bralds and Shutterstock

Canadian fantasy writer Sean Russell produced three popular paperback series with his publisher DAW in the 90s, each exactly two books long:

Initiate Brother (The Initiate Brother, 1991, Gatherer of Clouds, 1992)
Moontide and Magic Rise (World Without End, 1995, Sea Without a Shore, 1996)
The River into Darkness (Beneath the Vaulted Hills, 1997, The Compass of the Soul, 1998)

These were all handsome volumes, and I collected them enthusiastically. By the early 2000s Russell had switched publishers, to Avon Eos (where he produced the Swan’s War trilogy), and after that he exited the fantasy genre entirely. He’s currently writing an ongoing series of novels about the HMS Themis, a Royal Navy frigate at the time of the French Revolution, under the name Sean Thomas Russell.

Over the last few years DAW has been collecting Russell’s 90s fantasy in large-size omnibus editions. The first, The Initiate Brother Duology, appeared in 2013, and The River Into Darkness was released just three months ago (and we covered it here as part of our look at the Best Sci-Fi and Fantasy Books of October 2018). And just a few weeks ago I stumbled on Moontide and Magic Rise at Barnes & Noble, a hefty 820-page tome released in May, collecting World Without End and Sea Without a Shore.

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Birthday Reviews: December Index

Tuesday, January 1, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

Cover by John Picacio — **Cove by John Picacio**

The final Birthday Review Index.

And so the journey begun on January 1 with a review of E.M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” has come to an end, 367 reviews and approximately 166,183 words later, plus a few extra guest reviews and words by Rich Horton and Bob Byrne. There was one date I couldn’t find someone to review (we need authors born on March 8) and I goofed on a couple of authors and wound up writing replacement reviews. Edward Page Mitchell holds the joint distinction of the earliest birth among the reviewed authors, on March 24, 1852, and the earliest published work, with his “The Clock That Went Backward” published in 1881. Rachel Swirsky in the most recently born author reviewed with Steve Perry’s “A Few Minutes in the Plantation Bar and Grill Outside Woodville, Mississippi” published in January 2018 being the most recently published story. I reviewed two stories entitled “Cat” and two stories entitled “Little Red in the Hood.”

January index
February index
March index
April index
May index
June index
July index
August index
September index
October index
November index

December 1, Jo Walton: “Escape to Other Worlds with Science Fiction”
December 2, Jerry Sohl: “Death in Transit”
December 3, John Dalmas: “In the Bosom of His Family”
December 4, Kurt R.A. Giambasitani: “Intaglio”
December 5, John Decles: “The Power of Kings”
December 6, Roger Dees: “Worlds Within WorldsEchoes of Pride”

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James Davis Nicoll asks Who Are the Forgotten Greats of Science Fiction?

Monday, December 31, 2018 John ONeill Comments 22 comments

As we close out 2018, I’m proud to look back at the last twelve months and all the new authors we’ve championed and celebrated. Dozens of debut novels, and hundreds of new short stories, from a lively graduating class of SF and fantasy writers. Of course, Black Gate isn’t just about the new — we try to spend just as many pixels illuminating the neglected writers of the Twentieth Century, who become more forgotten with each passing year.

We published hundreds of reviews, retrospectives, and Vintage Treasures posts about the forgotten greats of the genre here at Black Gate in 2018. But some of my favorite articles appeared at other venues, including Unbound Worlds, the B&N Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, and The Verge. One of the better writers showcasing classics this year was James Davis Nicoll, who in a September article at Tor.com asked Who Are the Forgotten Greats of Science Fiction?

To answer the question he looked at the Cordwainer Smith Rediscovery Award, which he rightly laments as underappreciated (“I wish the award were more widely known, that it had, perhaps, its own anthology. If it did, it might look a bit like this.“) James did his part to promote the award by showcasing the winners, including masters such as R.A. Lafferty, William Hope Hodgson, Edgar Pangborn, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Leigh Brackett, Fredric Brown, Mildred Clingerman, and others. Here’s James on three of my favorites.

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Vintage Treasures: Strange Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson

Wednesday, December 26, 2018 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Strange Dreams Stephen R Donaldson-small

Strange Dreams Stephen R Donaldson-back-small

Bantam Spectra cover by Gervase Gallardo

Twenty-five years ago oversized trade paperbacks fantasy anthologies were few and far between. Today they’re the default, but in the early 90s, when original anthologies routinely appeared as mass markets paperbacks, you had to be something special to warrant the deluxe trade paper format. (Nowadays, of course, the mass market anthology is long dead, but that’s a subject for a different post.)

Strange Dreams was something special. In the early 90s Stephen Donaldson was one of top-selling fantasy writers on the planet, with the bestelling Mordant’s Need and Chronicles of Thomas Covenant to his credit. In his introduction he relates how the book came about as a result of a conversation with master anthologist Martin H. Greenberg.

We were discussing the basis on which I might be willing — or indeed able — to pull together a collection, and I quickly dismissed the traditional anthological fundaments: Historical Development (where fantasy came from and how it grew); Defense of Genre (why fantasy is written); Technical Display (how fantasy can be written); and Thematic Modulation (what fantasy has to say about X and Y)… once all these bases have been diminished, why bother to do a collection at all?

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Birthday Reviews: Wynne Whiteford’s “Night of the Wandjina”

Sunday, December 23, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment

Wynne Whiteford was born on December 23, 1915 in Melbourne, Australia. He died on September 30, 2002.

In 1987, Whiteford received a short story award from the Epicurean and Cultural Society. Whiteford’s novel The Specialist was nominated for the Ditmar Award in 1991. In 1995 he was presented with the Chandler Award, presented for Outstanding Achievement in Australian Science Fiction.

“Night of the Wandjina” was Whiteford’s final published work and appeared in the 1998 anthology Dreaming Down Under, edited by Jack Dann and Janeen Webb. When the anthology was split into two volumes for a paperback printing, the story appeared in volume one. It has not, otherwise been reprinted.

When a company is preparing to drill for oil, one of their employees, Kel, warns them that he is uncomfortable that they plan to drill near an aboriginal site. Asked whether he believes they might disturb the spirits, Kel proceeds to tell a story about one of his earlier forays in oil exploration.

Kel tells his Director that he once went into the Outback with a team of four. When they found some aboriginal symbols looked like aliens, their aboriginal teammate, Djerri, commented that it represented a Wandjina, which he explained was a sort of wind spirit. When they decided to dig anyway, Djerri took one of their motorbikes and headed back to their camp, unwilling to be a part of the drilling team. They found a glass cylinder which they carefully unearthed, but when it broke it released a small whirlwind which seemed to take control of one of them and caused him to run until his body gave out.

The story treats the aboriginal culture and beliefs with respect, but at the same time carries a certain amount of “there are somethings man is not meant to know” and “don’t disturb the ancient spirits.” Kel and his mates approach the area knowing that they have a job to do and although Djerri can’t convince them not to, they are try to do the least amount of damage they can, although they also give into their natural curiosity, with dire consequences.

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Adventures in Fantasy Literature

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Category: Vintage Treasures

Rescued from the Vaults of Time: The Sapphire Goddess – The Fantasies of Nictzin Dyalhis

Tuesday, January 8, 2019 Fletcher Vredenburgh Comments 4 comments

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Stephen Fabian

Sunday, January 6, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 4 comments

Sky Pirates and Interstellar Wars: The Black Star Passes by John W. Campbell

Friday, January 4, 2019 James Enge Comments 5 comments

Vintage Treasures: The Great Science Fiction Series, edited by Frederik Pohl, Martin H. Greenberg and Joseph D. Olander

Thursday, January 3, 2019 John ONeill Comments 14 comments

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke

Wednesday, January 2, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 6 comments

The Omnibus Volumes of Sean Russell: Moontide and Magic Rise

Tuesday, January 1, 2019 John ONeill Comments 2 comments

Birthday Reviews: December Index

Tuesday, January 1, 2019 Steven H Silver Comments 1 comment

James Davis Nicoll asks Who Are the Forgotten Greats of Science Fiction?

Monday, December 31, 2018 John ONeill Comments 22 comments

Vintage Treasures: Strange Dreams by Stephen R. Donaldson

Wednesday, December 26, 2018 John ONeill Comments 4 comments

Birthday Reviews: Wynne Whiteford’s “Night of the Wandjina”

Sunday, December 23, 2018 Steven H Silver Comments 0 Comment