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Vintage Treasures: Sturgeon is Alive and Well… by Theodore Sturgeon

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Sturgeon is Alive and Well… was Theodore Sturgeon’s fourteenth short story collection. It was first published in 1971, and came following a five-year gap after Starshine (1966). As I mentioned in my write-up on that book, Starshine went through nearly a dozen printings in as many years. But Sturgeon is Alive and Well… had only three: a hardcover in 1971, a paperback reprint the same year from Berkley Medallion (above left, cover by the great Paul Lehr), and a Pocket…

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Vintage Treasures: Not Without Sorcery by Theodore Sturgeon

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Theodore Sturgeon’s first short story collection was Without Sorcery, a handsome hardcover published in 1948 with an introduction by Ray Bradbury. As you can imagine, it’s a tough book to find these days, even for collectors. The paperback edition, released 13 long years later, dropped five stories and the introduction, and was re-titled Not Without Sorcery. It became Sturgeon’s tenth collection and was released in two editions, from Ballantine (in 1961, with a rather drab cover by an unknown artist)…

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Vintage Treasures: Starshine by Theodore Sturgeon

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For this installment of Vintage Treasures, we’re going to set the Wayback Machine for that far distant era of American publishing, when it wasn’t at all unusual for a midlist science fiction writer to publish a paperback collection clocking in at a slender 174 pages… and have it go through nearly a dozen printings in as many years. Ah, for the days when the American public had a greater appetite for short stories! Starshine was Sturgeon’s thirteenth collection (thirteen short story…

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Vintage Treasures: Sturgeon in Orbit by Theodore Sturgeon

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about my surprise in finding a Theodore Sturgeon collection I hadn’t known existed: To Here and the Easel, a handsome Panther Books paperback from 1975 that never had a US edition. That book re-ignited my interest in Theodore Sturgeon, whom I consider one of the finest short story writers to dabble in SF and fantasy in the 20th Century. And it reminded me that I have by no means exhausted the Sturgeon titles I already have in…

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Fantasia Focus: The Zero Theorem, by Terry Gilliam

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Before continuing my Fantasia diary with a look at the movies I saw last Sunday, I want to focus in on one specific film that struck me as an utterly brilliant piece of science-fiction satire. I think it divided the audience; I’ve heard and seen reactions from people who were left cold by it as well as from people who loved it as much as I did. Perhaps that’s not surprising. The movie is The Zero Theorem, directed by Terry…

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Vintage Treasures: To Here and the Easel by Theodore Sturgeon

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about Theodore Sturgeon’s collection The Stars Are the Styx and complained that virtually all of Sturgeon’s brilliant short story collections had now been out of print for over three decades. I did this mostly out of bitterness and greed. I’d spent several years happily tracking down all 16 of Sturgeon’s paperback collections — a highly collectible lot — but now, those days were over. I wanted more, but  no more were forthcoming. It’s not like I…

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Vintage Treasures: The Stars Are the Styx by Theodore Sturgeon

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We’re living in a truly splendid era for fantasy fans. Fantasy films and TV shows routinely top box office charts and Nielsen ratings, fantasy novels crowd bestseller lists, and Gandalf, Harry Potter, and Tyrion Lannister are all household names. Believe it or not, there was a time when girls did not find you cool for talking about Wolverine or Captain America, or for being able to rattle off the names all 13 dwarves who accompanied Bilbo into the Misty Mountains….

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Michaele Jordan Reviews Pantheon

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Pantheon Josh Strnad Urania Speculative Fiction, an imprint of Musa Publishing, Colorado Springs, CO (180 pp in Adobe pdf format, $4.99, Kindle edition, April 2014) Reviewed by Michaele Jordan Josh Strnad does not look like a horror writer. He’s not dark and brooding, or dressed in black leather. Rather, he’s young and blond, fresh faced and apple-cheeked. He looks like he just came straight from a Wisconsin dairy farm. (And for all I know, he did.) Yet he writes horror….

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New Treasures: The Merriest Knight, The Collected Arthurian Tales of Theodore Goodridge Roberts

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Yesterday, I spent the day at the Spring Auction at Games Plus, which I’ve taken to calling the Paris Fashion Week of Games. It was a very successful outing — so successful that I knew I had some explaining to do to Alice, who balances the family finances. While I was waiting to settle up with the cashier, my eyes fell on a curious artifact in the tiny books section at Games Plus: The Merriest Knight, The Collected Arthurian Tales of…

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The Big Barbarian Theory

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Conan, King Kull, Cormac, Bran Mak Morn — characters often imitated, never duplicated. These creations of Robert E. Howard started the sword-and-sorcery boom of the 1960s and early 1970s. Then there are the barbarian warriors inspired by Howard — Clonans, as one writer recently referred to these sword-slinging, muscle-bound characters. A fair observation, but in some cases, not so true. We prefer to think of these tales of wandering barbarian heroes as “Solo Sword and Sorcery” because the majority of…

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