Search Results for: James Schmitz

Vintage Treasures: Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction edited by Gardner Dozois

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Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction (St. Martin’s Griffin, 1994). Cover by Kim Poor When I talked about Gardner Dozois’ 1997 anthology Modern Classics of Fantasy a few years ago, I called it “a book that makes you yearn to be stranded on a desert island” (or anywhere you could read interrupted for a few days, really.) That description applies equally well to his 1994 volume Modern Classic Short Novels of Science Fiction, a book that over the last few decades…

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Vintage Treasures: Maurai & Kith by Poul Anderson

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Maurai & Kith (Tor Books, 1982). Cover art by Thomas Kidd Uber-editor Jason M. Waltz kindly invited me to write the introduction to his new anthology The Lost Empire of Sol: A Shared World Anthology of Sword & Planet Tales, co-edited by Black Gate blogger Fletcher Vredenburgh, a terrific new shared-world volume that contains new stories by Howard Andrew Jones, E.E. Knight, Mark Finn, Keith Taylor, Joe Bonadonna and David C. Smith, and many more. As I was putting it…

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The Art of Things to Come, Part 3: 1961-1963

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Science Fiction Book Club brochure (1961) As I related in the first two installments of this series (Part One: 1953-1957, and Part Two: 1958-1960), like tens of thousands of science fiction fans before and after me, I was at one time a member of the Science Fiction Book Club (or SFBC for short). I joined just as I entered my teen years, in the fall of 1976, shortly after I’d discovered their ads in the SF digests. The bulletin of…

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Would You Spend $44 on a Collection of 30 Vintage DAW Paperbacks?

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Would you spend $44 on these 30 vintage DAW paperbacks? I buy a lot of paperbacks on eBay.  I mean, a lot. But believe it or not, I don’t spend a lot of money. I’ve gotten in the habit of buying small collections; because shipping costs work out better and I spend much less per item. I haven’t done the math recently, but I budget anywhere from $0.25 to $0.50 per book when I go hunting, and usually stick to…

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Thank You — Yes You — For Helping Fill Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio’s Cosmic Corsairs

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Cosmic Corsairs (Baen, August 4, 2020). Cover by Tom Kidd I was minding my own business at Barnes and Noble last week, picking up random books and opening them to the Acknowledgements page, as one does. And what should I find in Hank Davis and Christopher Ruocchio’s new Cosmic Corsairs anthology? For help and advice, many thanks to John O’Neil and his Black Gate webzine, R.K. Robinson, Jason McGregor, Chris Willrich, Rich Horton, Marie Bilodeau, and others I’m unforgivably forgetting. I was very touched….

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Vintage Treasures: The Astounding-Analog Reader edited by Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss

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The Astounding-Analog Reader (Sphere 1972 and 1973). Covers by unknown (left) and Chris Foss (right) I used to scoff at the idea of online bookstores. How will you browse for books?, I demanded to know. You’ll never replace that wonderful moment of discovery, of serendipity, finding a treasure you weren’t looking for, which happens all the time in great bookstores. Of course, these days I find books online all the time. I’m a huge fan of Harry Harrison and Brian W. Aldiss’s…

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The Omnibus Volumes of Daniel Abraham: The Long Price Quartet

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Daniel Abraham is the author of The Dagger and the Coin five-volume fantasy series, five books in the Black Sun’s Daughter horror series (as M. L. N. Hanover), and a pair of Star Wars novels. With Ty Franck he is the author of the breakout hit The Expanse, under the name James S. A. Corey. But before all that he created a four-volume fantasy series called The Long Price Quartet that helped cement his rep as a rising young star. The…

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Birthday Reviews: October Index

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January index February index March index April index May index June index July index August index September index October 1, Donald A. Wollheim: “Blueprint” October 2, Edward Wellen: “Barbarossa” October 3, Ray Nelson: “Time Travel for Pedestrians” October 4, Gary Couzens: “Half-Life” October 5, Zoran Živković: “The Whisper” October 6, David Brin: “Just a Hint”

The February Fantasy Magazine Rack

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My favorite read so far this month has been the annual Year in Review issue of Locus, which contains detailed round-ups of the best fiction of 2017 from Gary K. Wolfe, Paul Kincaid, Geoff Ryman, Gardner Dozois, and many others. For those who (like me) didn’t get nearly as much read last year as you might’ve liked, it’s an irreplaceable guide to the novels, collections and stories worth your time last year. We also added SFX‘s March Books Issue to…

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Amazing Stories, December 1961: A Retro-Review

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Another issue from fairly early in Cele Goldsmith’s tenure. The cover is by Lloyd Birmingham, his first of a fair quantity of covers for Amazing, Fantastic, and also Analog through 1964. Interiors are by Virgil Finlay, Dan Adkins, and (as a reprint from 1930) Leo Morey. S. E. Cotts’ book review column, the Spectroscope, begins with a look at one of the most famous of SF novels, Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. She disliked it — “408…

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