Search Results for: Literary Wonder

Vintage Treasures: A Sense of Wonder by John Wyndham, Jack Williamson and Murray Leinster

A Sense of Wonder (New English Library, 1974). Cover by Bruce Pennington A Sense of Wonder was originally published in hardcover in the UK by Sidgwick & Jackson in 1967, and reprinted in the US as The Moon Era (which we covered as part of our survey of Sixty Years of Lunar Anthologies back in December.) It’s a short little anthology (175 pages) of early 30s SF by three of the biggest names of the pulp era, assembled and edited by pulp…

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Call for Backers! Unique Anthology THEN AGAIN Blends Literary and Speculative Fictions Through Art

Where can you find original short stories by John Crowley, Sofia Samatar, Sarena Ulibarri, Tina Connolly, Mary Ruefle, Elizabeth Hand, Paul Park, Jim and Karen Shepard, Paul Di Filippo, Akiko Busch, Safia Elhillo, Jeffrey Ford, Kij Johnson, Kirsten Imani Kasai, Renee Simms, and others all in one place? Now this is a Kickstarter campaign worth backing — one of the rewards is a special edition of this book. Laura Christensen is a visual artist who has developed a technique for painting on found…

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Weird and Wonderful and Frightening: An Interview with Fantasy Renaissance Man Howard Andrew Jones

Howard Andrew Jones is a true renaissance man of modern fantasy. He began writing short stories featuring his Arabian heroes Dabir & Asim for magazines and anthologies like Paradox, Sages & Swords, and Black Gate. He switched to novels with the widely acclaimed The Desert of Souls, one of the major works of fantasy of 2011. He followed that with a sequel, The Bones of the Old Ones (2011), and a 4-book sequence for Pathfinder Tales: Plague of Shadows, Stalking the…

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New Treasures: Wonderblood by Julia Whicker

There have been a lot of intriguing fantasy debuts already in 2018, and to really stand out you need to do something different. Julia Whicker’s Wonderblood, set in a post-apocalyptic America where magic is openly practiced, sounds like it will fit the bill nicely. Margot Livesey calls it “A stunning debut… Julia Whicker evokes an apocalyptic America where medicine is illegal, everyone is searching for portents and only a severed head can offer protection.” That’s plenty different, anyway. Wonderblood was published…

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Revenge of the Literary Living Dead: Zone One by Colson Whitehead

Science fiction, horror fiction, fantasy fiction, mystery fiction — for most of their history, ghetto fiction, in that such stories and the writers who produced them were decidedly “second class” citizens of the literary world and so were kept confined to areas where no respectable reader (much less critic) would want to venture, primarily pulp magazines and cheap paperbacks with the kinds of covers that you would never want your girlfriend’s mother — or your mother, for that matter —…

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The Books of David G. Hartwell: Visions of Wonder and The Science Fiction Century

We lost David Hartwell on January 20th. This is our sixth article in a series that looks back at one of the most gifted editors in our industry. With the publication of The Dark Descent and The Ascent of Wonder, David quickly established himself as the go-to guy for big genre survey volumes, and he produced many of them. These massive books were popular with libraries and book clubs, and many stayed in print for years. David had found a fine niche for himself…

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The Books of David G. Hartwell: Foundations of Fear and The Ascent of Wonder

We lost David Hartwell on January 20th. This is our fourth article in a series that looks back at one of the most important publishers in our industry. David Hartwell’s first anthology, The Battle of the Monsters and Other Stories, was published through tiny Gregg Press in 1976. He reached a bigger audience ten years later with his second, Christmas Ghosts (1987), co-edited with Kathryn Cramer. After that came his real breakout book, the massive The Dark Descent (1987), which Tor kept in print…

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Vintage Treasures: Special Wonder, Volumes 1 & 2, edited by J. Francis McComas

The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction was founded in 1949 by Anthony Boucher and J. Francis McComas, who believed science fiction and fantasy could aspire to a literary niche far above the level of the pulp magazines of the 30s and 40s. With F&SF they succeeded brilliantly, launching a magazine with a discerning adult readership that published some of the best fiction of the 20th Century — and is still published today. Anthony Boucher remained editor of F&SF from…

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Fantasia Diary 2015, Days 2 and 3: Un homme idéal, Kung Fu Killer, and Wonderful World End

In the days leading up to the Fantasia Festival I’d look at the schedule and see a dilemma looming on the second day, last Wednesday. The first of many similar dilemmas ahead: which of two movies playing directly opposite each other do I watch? In this case a French suspense film, Un homme idéal (in English A Perfect Man), was up against a Donnie Yen martial-arts movie, Kung Fu Killer. The next day would be simpler, as my girlfriend and…

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Art of the Genre: The Top 10 Literary Sci-Fi/Fantasy Covers of the 1980s

There is a line from the band ELO‘s song Ticket to the Moon, on their concept album Time, that says, Remember the good old 1980s, when things were so uncomplicated, I wish I could go back there again, and everything could be the same… I can’t listen to that album [and yes, I listen to ELO often, sue me] without having those words haunt me. You see, the 1980s were ‘my’ time. We all have this period, the decade from…

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