Search Results for: Mike Ashley

Vintage Treasures: Pilgrims through Space and Time: A History and Analysis of Scientific Fiction by J. O. Bailey

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Cover by Ronald Clyne You never know what strange wonders you’ll find at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Show. This year, among many other treasures on the $1 table, I found a coverless copy of J. O. Bailey’s 1947 nonfiction tome Pilgrims through Space and Time, which grew out of his 1934 Ph.D. thesis at the University of North Carolina. You’d think a dissertation would be too dry to become a classic of genre (and in most cases you’d be…

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Vintage Treasures: The Weird Tales Anthologies

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Weird Tales and More Weird Tales (Sphere, 1978). Covers by Les Edwards Weird Tales is unquestionably the most storied and respected American fantasy magazine. It first appeared in March 1923, and published its last issue in Spring 2014 — a nearly 91-year run. That’s impressive by any standard. Of course, Weird Tales isn’t measured purely by its longevity. The three greatest pulp fantasy writers — Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith — did their most important work in its pages,…

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Birthday Reviews: Michael G. Coney’s “The Byrds”

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Michael G. Coney was born on September 28, 1932 and died on November 4, 2005. Coney won the 1977 British SF Association Award for his novel Brontomek! and was also nominated in 1984 for his novel Cat Karina. In 1996, his story “Tea and Hamsters” made the ballot for the Nebula Award for Best Novelette and two of his stories, “Die, Lorelei” and “The Sharks of Pentreath” were nominated for Seiun Awards. “The Byrds” first appeared in the 1983 anthology…

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New Treasures: The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories edited by Stephen Jones

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I love these Mammoth anthologies. Because they’re mammoth! You can curl up with them for an entire weekend. Or use them as a stepladder to get to those dishes in the top cupboard. They have countless uses around the house. Stephen Jones’ latest, The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories, arrived earlier this month, and it looks like an essential fall purchase. It’s 528 pages of new and reprint stories from Ramsey Campbell, Steve Rasnic Tem, Joe R. Lansdale, Helen Marshall,…

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Birthday Reviews: Tom Holt’s “Touched by a Salesman”

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Tom Holt was born on September 13, 1961. Holt received a nomination for the William L. Crawford IAFA Fantasy Award in 1991 for his humorous novel Expecting Someone Taller. His more recent, more series work under the name K.J. Parker has earned him additional award nominations for the Kitschies and the World Fantasy Awards. He has won back-to-back World Fantasy Awards for his novellas “A Small Price to Pay for Birdsong” in 2012 and “Let Maps to Others” in 2013….

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Birthday Reviews: F. Anstey’s “The Adventure of the Snowing Globe”

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F. Anstey was born Thomas Anstey Guthrie on August 8, 1856. He began using the pseudonym F. Anstey after an editor included a typo in his byline, replacing his first initial with an F. He published under both the F. Anstey name and his own name. He died on March 10, 1934. Trained as a lawyer, Anstey frequently used his legal background in his books and novels, most of which were humorous. He was a frequent contributor to Punch. In addition…

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John DeNardo on 31 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books You Should Read in July

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Over at Kirkus Reviews, John Denardo has a regular monthly book column. For July he mixes things up a bit by recommending a book for every single day of the month. I am constantly in awe at the vast number of books that are published every month. July alone sees the publication of several hundred speculative fiction titles vying for your reading time. It can thus be a daunting task for readers to find their way to the best of…

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Birthday Reviews: Peter Crowther’s “Cliff Rhodes and the Most Important Voyage”

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Peter Crowther was born on July 4, 1949. Crowther, who runs PS Publishing, has received two World Fantasy Special Professional Awards for the press, one in 2004 and one in 2008. The press has also received seven British Fantasy Awards for Small Press, and Postscripts Magazine, edited by Crowther and Nick Gevers, has also won a BFA for Best Magazine. Crowther’s short story collection Lonesome Roads was his first BFA Award in 2000. The story “Cliff Rhodes and the Most…

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Birthday Reviews: Adam Roberts’s “Pest Control”

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Adam Roberts was born on June 30, 1965. Roberts won the John W. Campbell Memorial Award and the British SF Association Award for his novel Jack Glass in 2013. In 2016, he won a second BSFA Award for his non-fiction book Rave and Let Die: The SF and Fantasy of 2014. He has also been nominated for the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the British Fantasy Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, the Sidewise Award, and the Kitschies. In addition to…

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The Wonderful Adventures of “Mr. Jones,” the Electric Man

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A special treat this time: a lost robot story that nobody has seen for more than a century. Supernatural tales, ghost stories, odd occurrences, mysterious disappearances, and bizarre inventions all found a home in The Black Cat, a magazine founded in 1895, a year before the first pulp magazine appeared. Mike Ashley calls it “a spiritual ancestor to Weird Tales.” The stories were proto-genre, a mixture of what then got called “unusual” stories, a term that must have had more…

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