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Category: Vintage Treasures

The High House by James Stoddard

The High House by James Stoddard

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51nkGCbEv1LI need to find some new superlatives for the books I read. Too often I fall back on “terrific” or “awesome” or just plain “great.” Those are all stalwart words, but after I’ve described two or three books with them, it just seems lazy to describe the next two or three with the same exact words. I do it to make clear I liked a particular book and that I think it’s worth Black Gate readers’ attention, but it’s really lazy of me to just keep using the same superlatives again and again. That said, James Stoddard’s The High House (1998) is exceptional, superb, and top-notch.

The High House of Evenmere is

a truly beautiful pile of building, all masonry, oak, and deep golden brick, a unique blend of styles — Elizabethan and Jacobean fused with Baroque — an irregular jumble balancing the heavy spired tower and main living quarters on the western side with the long span flowing to the graceful L of the servants’ block to the east. Innumerable windows, parapets, and protrusions clustered like happy children, showing in their diversity the mark of countless renovations. Upon the balustrades and turrets stood carved lions, knights, gnomes, and pinecones; iron crows faced outward at the four corners. The Elizabethan entrance, the centerpiece of the manor, was framed by gargantuan gate piers and pavilions, combining Baroque outlines with Jacobean ornamentation.

The building “is the mechanism that propels the universe, (. . .) If the Towers’ clocks are not wound their portion of Creation will fall to Entropy.”

Lord Ashton Anderson is responsible for protecting the High House. The foremost enemy of the house is the Society of Anarchists, led in the field by the Bobby, a man dressed in the uniform of a police constable and with a face from which the features sometimes vanish, leaving him looking like a “faceless doll.”

The story, though, is not Lord Anderson’s, but his son Carter’s. When Carter is nearly killed and the Bobby steals the Master Keys, Lord Anderson sends his son away for safety. Carter doesn’t return for fourteen years, during which time his father vanished while on expedition in the land of the Tigers of Naleewuath.

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Birthday Reviews: Jack Womack’s “Audience”

Birthday Reviews: Jack Womack’s “Audience”

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The Horns of ElflandJack Womack was born on January 8, 1956. His novel Elvissey, the fifth book in his six-book Dryco series, received the Philip K. Dick Award in 1994, tying with John M. Ford’s Growing Up Weightless. Womack has also worked in New York as a publicist in the publishing industry.

“Audience” was written for the anthology The Horns of Elfland, edited by Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman, and Donald G. Keller. It was reprinted in Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling’s The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror: Eleventh Annual Edition the next year and again in 2001 by Mike Ashley in The Mammoth Book of Fantasy. The story was nominated for the World Fantasy Award.

“Audience” was originally written for an anthology about music and Womack took that idea and decided to explore the importance and ephemeral nature of sound. His character tries to seek out smaller museums when traveling, avoiding the large, well-known places like the Louvre in favor of out of the way places which offer unknown exhibits. One of these museums is the Hall of Lost Sounds, which contains small rooms which allow visitors to hear collected sounds which no longer can be heard in their natural place.

Just as Proust noted how smells can trigger memories, Womack uses sounds to do the same thing. His curator gives a tour of the museum, commenting on where in his own life each of the lost sounds come from. The story also points out that sounds can change over time. A person’s voice as a teenager sounds different from their voice as an adult, and without recordings, completely vanishes. Even with recordings, the way a person hears their own voice can never be recaptured.

“Audience” is less a story and more a slice of life rumination which teaches the reader to examine their senses and memories in new ways.

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The Fellowship of the Ring and the Palantir

The Fellowship of the Ring and the Palantir

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I Palantir 1-small I Palantir 2-small I Palantir 3-small

Last week, I posted a few fanzines that I’d picked up in a SF collection a few weekends ago. These originated from the estate of a Chicago area fan who appears to have been pretty active in the 1960’s and 1970’s, even publishing his own fanzine. He apparently attended a number of SF conventions, including many Worldcons, during that period. Among the material are several program books and other ephemera from cons during that time, including the 1960 Worldcon, known as Pittcon. One of the more interesting items I picked up which has a convention tie-in is a copy of the Fantasy Press edition of E.E. “Doc” Smith’s The Vortex Blaster, which is inscribed by Doc to him, reading, “At the Pittcon 1960. Ain’t we having fun? With very best regards, Edward E. Smith, PhD.”

Among the events at that Pittcon was the organizational meeting of the first organized group of J.R.R. Tolkien fans, The Fellowship of the Ring. The FotR went on to publish the first Tolkien fanzine, I Palantir (the first issue of which contained the first piece of Tolkien fan fiction), edited by Ted Johnstone and Bruce Pelz. Among other contributors was Marion Zimmer Bradley, who had pieces in issues 2 and 3 (the latter under the name Elfride Rivers). I Palantir lasted four issues, from 1960 through 1966, before folding.

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London Wins Great Game

London Wins Great Game

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1905-01-01 Pittsburgh Press 24 The Balky Pitcher

The Pittsburgh Pirates owned the National League at the start of the 20th century. They won the pennants in 1901, 1902, and 1903 by a total of 41½ games. Then came the disastrous, injury-filled season of 1904 when the club fell to fourth behind the Giants, Cubs, and Reds. John McGraw’s New York team ran away from the rest of  the league and refused to play the upstart American League after the season. Pittsburghers undoubtedly took that personally,  since the Boston Americans — the same Boston club that upset the Pirates in the one and only 1903 World Series — again won the AL pennant. “Wait until next year” was already the slogan of frustrated fans everywhere.

Baseball fans in Pittsburgh saw good reason to hope that better baseball lay in the offing. So did the press. On January 1, 1905 they looked ahead. Way ahead. The headline in the Pittsburg Press read “London Wins Great Game.”

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Christmas for the Paperback Collector

Christmas for the Paperback Collector

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$18 eBay lot 65 novels Nov 14-small

Back in October I was doing an innocent eBay search on R.A. Lafferty, and I stumbled on the lot of vintage science fiction paperbacks above. 65 titles from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, in what looked like pretty good shape, for the Buy-It-Now price of $18.

Well, this was a pickle. The way the books were laid out I couldn’t even see them all, which was annoying. And the vast majority of the ones I could see, I had already.

On the other hand, 65 books, 18 bucks, that’s…. what, like a quarter per book? At that price, it’d be well worth it just to upgrade my existing copies with ones in better shape. And there were a handful of tantalizing titles I didn’t have, like The Rainbow Cadenza by J. Neil Schulman, The Crystal Memory by Stephen Leigh, Conscience Place by Joyce Thompson, and The Steps of the Sun by Walter Tevis. Plus that Lafferty paperback, The Devil is Dead. And y’know, it was true that I couldn’t see all the covers, so who knew what treasures were lurking in all that jumble?

In the end, it was just too tempting. I pulled the trigger on the auction, shelled out the $18 (plus shipping), and waited impatiently to find out exactly what I’d bought.

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Vintage Treasures: Thirteen Tales of Terror by Jack London

Vintage Treasures: Thirteen Tales of Terror by Jack London

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Thirteen Tales of Terror Jack London-small Thirteen Tales of Terror Jack London-back-small

I haven’t read much Jack London. He’s most famous of course for his novels of the Klondike Gold Rush, The Call of the Wild and White Fang, which are outside my field of speciality. But he also dabbled a bit in the genre, both at novel length (with his dystopian science fiction novel The Iron Heel) and especially with his short stories, which were routinely reprinted in places like Famous Fantastic Mysteries and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. He had one posthumous SF collection, The Science Fiction Stories of Jack London (1993), a 211-page volume from Citadel Twilight.

But I’m more interested in his tales of terror, which include stories of death ships, spectres, the mysterious arctic, enormous wolves, and stranger things. Most of London’s tales of adventure were gathered in collections like Son of the Wolf (1900) and Children of the Frost (1902), but his supernatural fiction remained largely uncollected until it was gathered in Curious Fragments: Jack London’s Tales of Fantasy Fiction, a small press hardcover from Kennikat Press in 1975.

Three years later some of his most popular supernatural stories, like “A Thousand Deaths” (from The Black Cat, May 1899), and “Even Unto Death” (San Francisco Evening Post Magazine, 1900) were published in paperback for the first time, with several of London’s tales of suspense, in Thirteen Tales of Terror (Popular Library), edited and with an introduction by John Perry. Here’s a photo of the intriguing story teasers from the inside front cover.

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From Ancient Opar to the Moon: An Interview with Author Christopher Paul Carey

From Ancient Opar to the Moon: An Interview with Author Christopher Paul Carey

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Swords Against the Moon Men-full jacket-small

Christopher Paul Carey is a name well known to the readers of Philip José Farmer. In 2012, his collaboration with Farmer, The Song of Kwasin, was published by Subterranean Press in the omnibus Gods of Opar: Tales of Lost Khokarsa. Other installments in the Khokarsa series (also known as the Ancient Opar series) by Carey followed, including Exiles of Kho, Hadon, King of Opar, and Blood of Ancient Opar. As Farmer’s Khokarsa series was inspired by the lost city of Opar from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan novels, it is fitting that Christopher Paul Carey now tries his hand at Swords Against the Moon Men, a new novel set in the world of Burroughs’ Moon trilogy (The Moon Maid, The Moon Men, and The Red Hawk). I took some time to ask Chris about Swords Against the Moon Men as well as other aspects of his writing career.

Your latest novel, Swords Against the Moon Men, is the sixth volume in the Wild Adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs series. Could you tell us a little bit about the series, for the benefit of readers who are unfamiliar with it, and how your novel fits in?

The Wild Adventures of Edgar Rice Burroughs is a new line of books authorized and published by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. The books are all set in Burroughs’ fantastical worlds but written by today’s authors. So far, the series includes four new Tarzan books (Tarzan: Return to Pal-ul-don by Will Murray, Tarzan on the Precipice by Michael A. Sanford, Tarzan Trilogy by Thomas Zachek, and Tarzan: The Greystoke Legacy Under Siege by Ralph N. Laughlin and Ann E. Johnson), a sequel to Burroughs’ Beyond the Farthest Star (A Soldier of Poloda by Lee Strong), and now my novel, Swords Against the Moon Men, which takes place in the world of Burroughs’ lunar trilogy.

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Modular: Resurrecting RuneQuest: An Investigation by the Tales of the Reaching Moon Editorial Staff

Modular: Resurrecting RuneQuest: An Investigation by the Tales of the Reaching Moon Editorial Staff

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Runequest Deluxe Third Edition boxed set-small Runequest Deluxe Third Edition boxed set 2-back-small

[This article was originally published in Tales of the Reaching Moon #5 in Spring, 1991, after the RuneQuest trademark had been sold to Avalon Hill and the game re-released in Deluxe and Standard boxed sets. Its publication was a catalyst for Avalon Hill bringing Ken Rolston on board and kicking off what became known as the (short-lived) “RuneQuest Renaissance.”

This article was actually based on a report commissioned by Avalon Hill itself in 1990 (prior to the decision to publish Eldarad). The original report was written by an award-winning game designer.]

Introduction

RuneQuest is a great game. We all know that. Unfortunately, things haven’t been going so good for the game for some time. We all know that too. We, the Tales of the Reaching Moon staff present here our thoughts about the history of the game, the hole RuneQuest is currently in, and what action we think Avalon Hill should take to dig its way out again.

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Vintage Treasures: Blind Voices by Tom Reamy

Vintage Treasures: Blind Voices by Tom Reamy

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Tom Reamy Blind Voices-back-small Tom Reamy Blind Voices-small

In a 2014 Vanity Fair interview, George R.R. Martin shared just how profoundly he was affected by the death of Tom Reamy in 1977.

Tom died of a heart attack just a few months after winning the award for best new writer in his field. He was found slumped over his typewriter, seven pages into a new story. Instant. Boom. Killed him… Tom’s death had a profound effect on me, because I was in my early thirties then. I’d been thinking, as I taught, well, I have all these stories that I want to write… and I have all the time in the world… and then Tom’s death happened, and I said, Boy. Maybe I don’t…

After Tom’s death, I said, “You know, I gotta try this. I don’t know if I can make a living as a full-time writer or not, but who knows how much time I have left?…” So I decided I would sell my house in Iowa and move to New Mexico. And I’ve never looked back.

In the same article George also commented on the relentless pace of production on Game of Thrones, saying “Long before they catch up with me, I’ll have published The Winds of Winter, which’ll give me another couple years. It might be tight on the last book, A Dream of Spring, as they juggernaut forward.” Might be tight indeed. Almost four years later The Winds of Winter remains unpublished, and GoT has long since passed the novels.

Who the heck was Tom Reamy? That’s a question the late Bud Webster attempted to answer in his inaugural column in Black Gate 15.

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Lost and Found Treasure

Lost and Found Treasure

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Sword and Sorceress VII-small Sword and Sorceress VII-back-small

A few weeks ago, I was cruising Facebook when I stopped up short at a familiar image.

It was on our esteemed editor John O’Neill’s wall. And as is often the case with such things, I was struck by a wealth of memories. I received Sword and Sorceress VII as a gift for my 12th birthday. It was probably bought at the B. Dalton in College Mall in Bloomington, IN, one of two easily accessible bookstores on that side of town back in 1990. (Before anyone does the math too fast, yes, I’m celebrating a big birthday next year. It’s in May, if you want to send gift cards for more books.)

I couldn’t tell you exactly which stories were in this volume. I know it had one of Mercedes Lackey’s “Tarma and Kethry” tales in it, but beyond that none of them stand out alone. But as a whole, that volume changed my life as a reader. While I’d feasted on the The Chronicles of Narnia, Robin McKinley, and Susan Cooper, this book was my first exposure to fantasy for grown-ups. And it was full of women.

When I think casually, 1990 doesn’t feel that far away. But in terms of the way women were portrayed in fiction it was another era entirely, and in ways I can’t even begin to explain unless you were there.

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