Black Gate

While public health officials and the vice president fear for the worst, I haven’t started wearing a face mask. If there’s anything that looks to me like something out of a sci-fi movie, it’s people going about their daily business with those things on. Can designer face masks be far behind, maybe just the sort of thing to stimulate consumer spending and get the economy going again?

In any event, Steve Carper has devised a particularly ironic solution to the problem in A Kiss is Just a Kiss, which is a sample of his tales collected in Tyrannosaur Faire. You can buy his book here as either a downloadable PDF or good-old fashioned print. The collection includes Steve’s “Pity the Poor Dybbuk,” which first appeared in Black Gate’s second issue, back in the Summer of 2001, when everyone was breathing easier.

Courtesy of Locus comes this link to James Lovegrove’s Review of the cover — not the book itself — of PS Publishing’s reissue complete with original artwork (hence the review) of Ray Bradbury’s 1966 short story collection S is for Space, a sequel of sort to R is for Rocket, which also featured a cover by Joe Mugnaini. Lovegrove says that a first edition copy is a rare find. It just so happens that I have one. My parents weren’t book people, but my neighbors across the street were. Mr. Heinholdt worked for The New York Herald (for you youngsters out there, that was a fairly reputable newspaper in its day) and Mrs. Heinholdt (further note for you youngsters: in those days, kids had no idea that adults had first names) worked at this marvelous used book store of cavernous dimensions infused with the smell of old paper stored for way too long where for hours I’d thumb through poorly filed carboard boxes of Astounding magazines from the 1940s  stuffed in tight spaces beneath groaning bookshelves. Knowing of my enthusiasm for Bradbury and science fiction, for Christmas of 1966, Mr. and Mrs. Heinholdt gave me a hardcover of S is for Space. I thought it was the first hardcover of a “real adult” book of literature  I was ever to own.

But it would seem my memory is faulty. It wasn’t a “real  adult” book, after all. Lovegrove notes that the book was aimed at what today is called the young adult market.  And, sure enough, there are cover flap blurbs from the Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books and a notation that the book is recommended in the H.W. Wilson Standard Catalog for High School Libraries.

Sigh. Another childhood illusion shattered.  Funny thing is, I was flipping through the stories, and for the most part they strike me as stronger — as well they should, this is, after all, Bradbury in his prime — than his latest We’ll Always Have Paris that I recently reviewed. Even from my adult perspective.

I don’t know if I’d assign Bradbury to a high school audience, these days. I don’t think they’d get it. Too many anachronisms. Can the iPod and Facebook generation relate much to boys who thrill to the night carnival?

Oh, in case you were going to ask, no, my copy is not for sale, whatever it may be worth as a first edition in very good condition. Some things you just can’t put a price on.

Everyone who loves imaginative fiction should raise their voice, frequently, in praise of NESFA, the venerable fan group whose press has been doing great work, putting out archival collections of classic sf in hardcovers. I was reminded of this earlier this week when reading Frederik Pohl’s pleasant reminiscence of his onetime collaborator Cyril Kornbluth (the fierce and witty genius who, too young, died a horrible suburban death right out of a Mad Men episode). I instantly went into graying-fan mode, whining that my old hero wasn’t sufficiently appreciated by the rising generation. It was swiftly and civilly pointed out to me that there is, in fact, a fair amount of CMK’s slender output still in print, including his complete short sf in the aptly titled NESFA collection, His Share of Glory (ably edited by Timothy P. Szczesuil). That’s not enough for an enthusiast for me, of course: I want an omnibus of all the Pohl/Kornbluth novels, and a reprint Kornbluth’s best book, The Syndic, and I want and I want and I want. But it was uncivil of me to ignore the existence of a book I liked so much, so I thought I’d review it here. As a bonus I’ll toss in some comments about the NESFA collection From These Ashes: The Complete Short SF of Fredric Brown (edited by Ben Yalow).

…

Read More Read More