Search Results for: Tale Two Covers

The Art and Act of Story-telling: Evenmere Tales and Other Stories by James Stoddard

Evenmere Tales and Other Stories (Ransom House, October 23, 2023) James Stoddard, author of six novels including the delightful Evenmere trilogy (The High House, The False House, and Evenmere), has finally released a complete collection of his short stories. These stories at their best are first rate American fantasy. Even when they are not at their best, they are worth reading. Stoddard’s ambitions are extraordinary, and achieved often enough that he should be read, and read again. Stoddard’s complete collection…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Tales By Moonlight edited by Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Tales by Moonlight, volumes One and Two (Tor, January 1985 and July 1989). Covers by Mark E. Rogers and Jill Bauman Jessica Amanda Salmonson has produced only a handful of anthologies, but they are all highly regarded. Her first, Amazons!, won the World Fantasy Award in 1980, and the two Heroic Visions volumes she edited in the mid-80s are still enjoyed and discussed today, with an original Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser novella by Fritz Leiber, plus terrific sword and…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales, Part II

Table of Contents for Weird Tales 1, edited by Lin Carter (Zebra Books, December 1980) For yesterday’s Vintage Treasures post, I finally had the chance to discuss Lin Carter’s early-80s attempt to resuscitate the Magazine that Never Dies, the long-running weird fiction pulp Weird Tales. Since I examined all four paperbacks, there wasn’t room in that article to look back at some of the fascinating discussions they’ve triggered over the last four decades, including lengthy commentary from Carter himself —…

Read More Read More

Vintage Treasures: Lin Carter’s Weird Tales

Weird Tales , Volumes 1 -4 (Zebra Books, December 1980 – August 1983). Covers by Tom Barber (#1-3) and Doug Beekman (#4) Lin Carter was one of the finest genre editors of the 20th Century, and Weird Tales magazine was the most important fantasy magazine of the last century, publishing the career-defining work of Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, and hundreds of other writers. In December 1980 Zebra Books published the equivalent of a genre superhero Team-Up,…

Read More Read More

Retro Review: Two F&SFs from Robert P. Mills’ Editorship

The November 1958 and May 1961 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Covers by John Pederson and Ed Emshwiller I’ve recently looked at a few issues of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction from the early to mid-50s, when Anthony Boucher (at first in collaboration with J. Francis McComas) was the editor. Boucher left that post with the August 1958 issue, and Robert P. Mills took over. (Mills had been the editor of F&SF’s sister magazine…

Read More Read More

The New Weird Tales

Weird Tales #366, the Sword & Sorcery issue (January 2023), and #367, the Cosmic Horror issue (May 2023). Covers by Bob Eggleton and Mike Mignola I ordered a copy of the new Sword & Sorcery issue of Weird Tales last year, and it finally arrived a few weeks ago — so late that I almost forgot I ordered it. But it did arrive — and turned out to be damn impressive. A huge oversize (8×10) issue in full color, with…

Read More Read More

Horror Pervades the UK: Terror Tales Of The West Country, Edited by Paul Finch

Terror Tales Of The West Country (Telos Publishing, October 31, 2022). Cover by Neil Williams This is volume 14 in the successful ongoing series Terror Tales, a bunch of anthologies collecting horror short stories set every time in a different area of the United Kingdom. Which, all in all, appears to be a really spooky place where dark and supernatural events occur all the time. For the present  book editor Paul Finch (an excellent horror writer himself) has chosen the West…

Read More Read More

Tales of Adventure and Exploration from the Pre-Spaceflight Era: Mike Ashley’s British Library Science Fiction Classics

All ten anthologies in the British Library Science Fiction Classics edited by Mike Ashley, plus his non-fiction survey Yesterday’s Tomorrows, and interior art from Moonrise (bottom right). Covers by Chesley Bonestell, David A. Hardy, Warwick Goble, Frederick Siebel, et al Mike Ashley is a fascinating guy. He interviewed me years ago about founding the SF Site (sfsite.com), one of the first science fiction websites, back in 1995, for his book The Rise of the Cyberzines, the fifth volume of his…

Read More Read More

Demons are Forever: Review of A Hybrid’s Tale. The Cambion Journals: Book One by Andrew P. Weston

“Cambion: the half-human offspring of the union between a human male and a Succubus, or a human female and an Incubus.”  A Hybrid’s Tale is the latest offering by Andrew P. Weston. It’s a short, fast-paced novel set in the realm of “demondim,” and is the first book in his new series, The Cambion Journals. It’s “billed” as Occult Horror, but it’s much more than that. Weston skillfully blends and cross-breeds genres: supernatural horror and science fiction, fantasy and mythology,…

Read More Read More