Search Results for: Robert Silverberg

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

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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…

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A Sampling from an SF Grandmaster: The Silverberg Collections from Three Rooms Press

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First-Person Singularities (2017), Time and Time Again (2018), and Alien Archives (2019), all published by Three Rooms Press My 3,000-word article on The Art of Author Branding: The Paperback Robert Silverberg last week required a lot of research and reading, and all that generated a nostalgic interest in Silverberg. So this week I’ve been digging into his recent collections, and that led me to the pleasant discovery that Three Rooms Press has been issuing a brand new Silverberg collection each year…

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Vintage Treasures: Wondermakers, edited by Robert Hoskins

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Cover art: uncredited (left) and FMA (right) Robert Hoskins was a pretty familiar name on paperback racks in the 1970s. He was a senior editor at Lancer Books from 1969-1972, and during that time published and edited five volumes of the prestigious Infinity SF anthology series. Overall he edited over a dozen science fiction anthologies, including First Step Outward (1969), Swords Against Tomorrow (1970), and Against Tomorrow (1979). He also wrote ten novels, including three for Roger Elwood’s Laser imprint. Between 1969-1979…

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Vintage Treasures: The Wonderful World of Robert Sheckley

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The Wonderful World of Robert Sheckley (Bantam Books, 1979). Cover by the great Paul Lehr Back in the 90s, when I was reading a lot of Gardner Dozois’ science fiction anthologies, I got used to his complaints about the short memory of science fiction fans. What he meant was that after a popular and important SF writer died or retired, it wasn’t long — 2-5 years, sometimes less — before their entire catalog was out of print, and shortly after that…

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New Treasures: Wildside Double #6 — Alien StarSwarm by Robert Sheckley / Human’s Burden by Damien Broderick & Rory Barnes

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With all the recent attention we’ve been giving to the classic Ace Doubles by Andre Norton, Harlan Ellison, Murray Leinster, and others, I would be remiss to not point out that Wildside Press has recently revived the tradition of the Ace Double with a handsome series of back-to-back short novels (novellas, really). It looks like they’re pairing hard-to-find reprints with original fiction, which I think is a terrific idea. They’ve assembled a crackerjack list of writers, too — including Robert Sheckley, Damien…

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Cloud Painters, Alien Blobs, and War in the Asteroids: March-April 2024 Print SF Magazines

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March-April 2024 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and the Winter 2024 Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Covers by Eli Bischof (for “Ganny Goes to War”), Eldar Zakirov (for “How Sere Kept Herself Together”) and Mondolithic Studios. There’s some great old-time serial adventure in this month’s print SF magazines. In the Asimov’s SF novella “How Sere Kept Herself Together,” Alexander Jablokov brings back his cynical detective Sere Glagolit (introduced in “How Sere Picked Up Her Laundry,”…

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A Reckless and Unwarranted Speculation on the Origin of a Great Science Fiction Story

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Alice (James Tiptree Jr.) Sheldon For many writers, asking them the apparently innocent question, “where do you get your ideas?” is like waving a red flag in front of a bull. (Watch the Harlan Ellison documentary Dreams with Sharp Teeth for a great example; at the very thought of someone posing that question, Ellison goes from zero to apoplexy in 1.2 seconds. I know — Harlan Ellison, but still…) Nevertheless, as a humble reader to whom the mysteries of creative…

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Brian Stableford, July 25, 1948 – February 24, 2024

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The Last Days of the Edge of the World (Ace Books, September 1985), The Empire of Fear (Ballantine Books, October 1993), and The Werewolves of London (Carroll & Graf, November 1994). Covers by Don Maitz, uncredited, and uncredited Perhaps it is recency bias, or poor memory, or some other artifact of how human minds process data, but I cannot recall a time when the science fiction field lost so many significant writers in such a short time. At any rate,…

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Domestic Gods, Cannibal Toys, and Sherlock Holmes in Tombstone: January-February 2024 Print SF Magazines

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January-February 2024 issues of Analog Science Fiction & Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction. Cover art by Julie Dillon, and Maurizio Manzieri (for “Burning Grannies”) It’s February 10th, and I’m a little concerned to see there’s no sign of the January/February issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. Not on their website or Facebook Page, both of which still show the November-December issue, and not on Twitter/X or Amazon. I can’t even find a copy of the cover, which I…

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A World Built on Atrocity: Damon Knight’s “Down There”

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New Dimensions III, edited by Robert Silverberg (Signet/New American Library, February 1974). Cover by Charles Moll One of the writers who strongly influenced me when I was learning to write fiction was Damon Knight. Although he founded the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, co-founded the Milford Writers’ Workshop, made the Clarion Writers’ Workshop the force that it is in the development of speculative fiction, edited the influential anthology series Orbit, and wrote one of the first significant critical…

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