Search Results for: Andre Norton

Units of Conviction: Being Michael Swanwick

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Being Michael Swanwick (Fairwood Press, November 21, 2023) Prolificity is in the DNA of science fiction. H. G. Wells, whose most famous works date back to the 1890s, wrote some fifty novels, seventy non-fiction books, and one hundred short stories. Pick almost any SFWA Grand Master and you’ll encounter a bibliography that will engulf your life for many months, if not years. How many shelves to house the hundreds of books published, for instance, by Andre Norton, or Poul Anderson,…

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Talking Tolkien: Ten Things I Think I Think

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It’s time to wrap up Talking Tolkien. And I thought a Tolkien-themed version of Ten Things I Think I Think would be a fun way to do it. So away we go… READ THE LEGEND OF SIGURD & GUDRUN I read this last year, and I intend to write an essay on it, but just haven’t fit it in yet. This is a good book. And you can really see the influence it had on Tolkien. It’s as depressing as…

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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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Vintage Treasures: The Flashing Swords! Original Anthologies, edited by Lin Carter

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Paperback editions of Flashing Swords! #1-5 (Dell Books, 1973-1981). Covers by Frank Frazetta (1 & 2), Don Maitz (3 & 4), and Richard Corben Lin Carter is best remembered these days as the editor in charge of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, which was by any measure a monumental achievement, bringing back into print a truly impressive array of important fantasy books, many in serious danger of being forgotten. But Carter’s career extended beyond that. He was a very prolific…

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Vintage Treasures: 39 Short Novels edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

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The 13 Short Novels trilogy (Bonanza Books/Crown, 1984-87). Covers designed by Morris Taub I spent a lot of hours last year chasing down, reading, and writing about some very fine anthologies produced by the triumvirate of Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. Their output in the decade before Asimov’s death in 1992 was frankly amazing: some 70 anthologies, including nearly a dozen each in Isaac Asimov’s Wonderful Worlds of Science Fiction and Isaac Asimov’s Magical Worlds of…

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Vintage Treasures: The Starhammer/Vang Trilogy by Christopher Rowley

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Starhammer, The Vang: The Military Form and The Vang: The Battlemaster (Del Rey, 1986 – 1990). Covers by David Schleinkofer and Stephen Hickman I’m a huge fan of modern science fiction, and I find no shortage of new novels and and series to coo over here. But there are times when I miss the old-school SF of last century, rooted in the Cold War paranoia of the 50s and 60s. The Golden Age of invaders from space, all-consuming blobs, and…

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IMHO: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF SWORD & SORCERY AND HEROIC FANTASY

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The Evolving and Cloned Barbarian Conan, King Kull, Cormac, Bran Mak Morn — names that conjure magic, characters often imitated, but never duplicated. These creations of Robert E. Howard (circa 1930) 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. I prefer to think of these…

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Alan Brown on Cordwainer Smith’s Classic Norstrilia

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First paperback release of Norstrilia (Ballantine, 1975), with the infamous “dog-derived undergirls” back cover text (they “smelled of romance all the time.”) Cover by Gray Morrow For the past six years Alan Brown has had an entertaining biweekly series at Tor.com on our favorite topic — vintage SF & fantasy. He’s covered Keith Laumer’s Bolo, Poul Anderson’s Flandry of Terra, Andre Norton’s The Beast Master, Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, David Brin’s Startide Rising, and…

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Vintage Treasures: The Hugo Winners, Volumes 1, 2 and 3, edited by Isaac Asimov

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The Hugo Winners, Volumes I & II and The Hugo Winners, Volume 3 (Doubleday, 1972 and 1977). Cover designs by F. & J. Silversmiths, Inc, and Robert Jay Silverman I’ve written 1,973 Vintage Treasures articles for Black Gate. (That seems like a lot. Is it a lot? If it were, the paperbacks waiting to be written up wouldn’t be threatening to topple over in a spine-crushing avalanche, right? Still seems like a lot, somehow.) My Vintage Treasures pieces aren’t reviews, sometimes…

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Vintage Treasures: Heroic Fantasy edited by Gerald W. Page and Hank Reinhardt

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Heroic Fantasy (DAW, 1979). Cover by Jad If you were a sword & sorcery fan in the 70s and 80s, there wasn’t a lot to get excited about. Lin Carter’s Flashing Swords anthologies. Andrew J. Offutt’s Swords Against Darkness, naturally. And the occasional Conan pastiche and Lancer paperback. And there was Gerald W. Page and Hank Reinhardt’s one-shot anthology Heroic Fantasy, which came out of nowhere, never had a sequel, but was packed with terrific original stories by Charles Saunders,…

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