Search Results for: Wollheim

A (Qualified) Vindication of Lin Carter’s Fiction: Kesrick

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Care to join me in a Pavlovian conditioned reflex experiment? Good. I’m going to ring a bell and we will observe your response. Ready? Lin Carter. (That was the bell.) Hmmm… exactly as I expected. At the mention of the name of the late fantasy editor, anthologist, and author, you immediately whispered, muttered, or shouted some variation of the formula, “His great knowledge and advocacy of classic fantasy, especially through his groundbreaking editorship of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series from…

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The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part IV: Dray Prescot by Alan Burt Akers

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Not only is the Dray Prescot series the longest running Sword & Planet series ever published in English, but it’s also consistently of a high quality. There are quite a few volumes that — for me—rival any of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Barsoom books. Certainly, these two series are my all-time favorites, and together make up the primary influence on my own Sword & Planet series, the five books of the Talera series by Charles Allen Gramlich (Gotta get those “three”…

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The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part III: Michael Moorcock, Michael Resnick, and Robert E. Howard

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Quite a few writers who went on to bigger names in other genres wrote some of their earliest books in Sword & Planet. Michael Moorcock was one of these. He’s mostly known for his Elric series. Elric is a kind of anti-Conan. But in 1964, at around the age of 25, he wrote three Edgar Rice Burroughs pastiches set on Mars. In the introduction to a later release of these books he mentioned his early infatuation with ERB, and that…

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The Fundamentals of Sword & Planet, Part II: John Norman

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Read Part I of this series, Don Wollheim, Edwin L. Arnold, and Otis Adelbert Kline. The most controversial of the second generation of Sword & Planet authors was certainly John Norman, which is the pseudonym for author John Lange, a philosophy professor. The first book, Tarnsman of Gor, was published in 1966 and then generally one a year until a break after 1988. There are a total of 37 books at last count but I’ve only personally read up to…

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In the History of Vintage Science Fiction & Fantasy, Nothing Compares to Gnome Press

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Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and the Foundation Trilogy. Robert A. Heinlein’s Sixth Column. Arthur C. Clarke’s first three novels. The entire Conan saga from Robert E. Howard. The International Fantasy Award winner City by Clifford D. Simak. The Hugo Best Novel winner They’d Rather Be Right from Mack Clifton and Frank Riley. Books by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt, A. E. van Vogt, C. L. Moore and Henry Kuttner, Murray Leinster, Frederik Pohl, Jack Williamson, Andre Norton, and…

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The Failed Giant: Five Tributes to Barry N. Malzberg

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Barry N. Malzberg died on December 19. In his Black Gate obituary, Rich Horton wrote: Malzberg was in his unique way a true giant in our field. Barry himself, in his later years, seemed to regard his career as a failure, but it was no such thing. He may have stopped publishing novels out of a feeling the publishing world wasn’t receptive to his work, but the best of what he did publish is outstanding, and thoroughly representative of his…

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G.W. Thomas on Science Fiction of the 30s by Damon Knight

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Conan the Barbarian: Archie Style! From Everything Archie #111 (May 1984). Art by Stan Goldberg and Larry Lapick. G.W. Thomas has gradually become my favorite genre blogger. Not just because of his constant stream of content — he posts every two days at Dark Worlds Quarterly, and has been doing so for nearly a decade — but because of his endlessly zany topics. In the past few months he’s covered Haunted Houses in 50s comics, the Top Ten Ghostbreakers from…

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Adventure in the Magellanic Cloud: The Mote in Time’s Eye by Gérard Klein

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The Mote in Time’s Eye (DAW, January 1975). Cover by Josh Kirby This is the latest in a series of posts I’m doing covering relatively obscure SF novels of the ‘70s and ‘80s. This novel was first published in French in 1965, but as it didn’t appear in English until 1975, I figure it fits this series. One of the things on the good side of the Donald A. Wollheim ledger is his willingness to publish SF in translation. This…

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Vintage Treasures: Night’s Black Agents by Fritz Leiber

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Nights Black Agents (Berkley Books, May 1980). Cover by Wayne Barlowe Nights Black Agents was Fritz Leiber’s first first collection — and in fact his first book. It was originally published in hardcover by Arkham House in 1947, when Leiber was 37 years old. It collects six stories published in Weird Tales and Unknown Worlds, plus one tale from a fanzine, and three new stories — including the long Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser novella “Adept’s Gambit.” Needless to say,…

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The Horrors of Sam Moskowitz

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Horrors in Hiding, Horrors Unseen, and Horrors Unknown (Berkley Medallion, February 1973, June 1974, and February 1976). Covers: Vincent Di Fate (x2), uncredited A few years back I wrote a trio of Vintage Treasures pieces about a series of Berkley Medallion paperback horror anthologies from the mid-70s, all edited by Sam Moskowitz (with an assist from Alden H. Norton). Horrors in Hiding (February 1973) Horrors Unseen (June 1974) Horrors Unknown (February 1976) The last two were the final anthologies Moskowitz…

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