Search Results for: Isaac Asimov

Vintage Treasures: Neutron Star by Larry Niven

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Neutron Star (Ballantine Bools, April 1968). Cover artist unknown As I was preparing last week’s Vintage Treasures article (on Poul Anderson’s Fire Time), I realized that the next book on deck was Neutron Star, by Larry Niven, one of the most important science fiction collections of the 20th Century. And I simultaneously realized we’ve never done a Vintage Treasures feature on Niven before, a pretty serious oversight. (For comparison purposes, as I was assembling reference links at the bottom of…

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Science Fiction History Considered As a Series of Images of Newsstand Displays

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Science Fiction magazines likely displayed on the stands at ten year intervals, 1933 to 2013 Many readers here no doubt lack the experience of having personally cruised news stands, tobacco shops and underground hole-in-the-wall used book stores, through no fault of their own. Unless you can fault someone for not having been born in a particular year, which I think would be a silly thing to do. I, on the other hand, managed to arrive on this planet at a…

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Vintage Treasures: Fire Time by Poul Anderson

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Fire Time by Poul Anderson (Ballantine Books, November, 1975). Cover by Darrell Sweet Poul Anderson was a terrifically prolific and popular science fiction writer, in a way I don’t think it’s possible to be today. I mean that in the sense that, yes, he wrote a lot of books — a ridiculous number of books, really. He published hundreds of novels and short stories in his lifetime. (How many, exactly? I have no idea. No one knows. Modern counting methods…

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Vintage Treasures: Time to Come edited by August Derleth

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Time to Come (Berkley Books, December 1958). Cover by Robert E. Schulz Back in December I kicked off a survey of the Science Fiction Anthologies of August Derleth, starting with his 1948 reprint anthology Strange Ports of Call. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction calls Derleth “one of the pioneering anthologists in the genre.” He began his editing career with horror collection Sleep No More in 1944. Strange Ports of Call, which drew heavily from pulps such as Astounding, Wonder Stories, Amazing, The…

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Vintage Treasures: The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection, edited by Gardner Dozois

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The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Third Annual Collection (Bluejay Books, April 1986). Cover by Tom Kidd I saw a copy of the third volume in Gardner Dozois’ Year’s Best Science Fiction anthology series on eBay for $11.45 last week, and decided to take a chance. Turned out to be the Book Club edition, a reprint that’s a smaller size than my other volumes, which was a disappointment. But at least I finally had a copy. On the back of the…

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Talking Tolkien: The Architects of Modern Fantasy, Tolkien and Norton – by Ruth de Jauregui

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Talking Tolkien is back for another installment and Ruth de Jauregui brings in another Fantasy giant, the great Andre Norton. Those DAW paperbacks are classics. Read on! The influences of J.R.R. Tolkien and Andre Norton fill the world of speculative fiction and, while the genre existed before and after both authors, their works have forever shaped new authors and the flow of the modern fantasy novel. Tolkien forged the modern rendition of the epic journey tale that has its roots…

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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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Beauty and Nightmares on Aliens Worlds: Interviewing C. S. Friedman

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We have an ongoing series at Black Gate on the topic of “Beauty in Weird Fiction” where we corner an author and query them about their muses and methods to make ‘repulsive’ things ‘attractive to readers.’ Previous subjects have included Darrell Schweitzer, Anna Smith Spark, Carol Berg, Stephen Leigh, Jason Ray Carney, and John C. Hocking (see the full list at the end of this post). Inspired by the release of Nightborn: Coldfire Rising (July 2023, see Black Gate’s review for more information), we are delighted to interview C.S. Freidman! …

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A Salute to a Science Fiction Reader: R.K. Robinson, 1945 – June 30, 2022

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I never met Rick Robinson. I knew him, as many of you did, as R.K. Robinson, one of Black Gate‘s most enthusiastic readers. He began by subscribing to our print version two decades ago, and became a regular supporter of the blog when we switched to electronic publication in 2011. He left over 500 comments here over the years, and that’s how I came to know him, as a knowledgeable and friendly reader whom we could always count on to…

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Vintage Treasures: The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha

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The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF (DAW Books, June 1987). Cover art by Tony Roberts By the time The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF appeared as a paperback original from DAW Books in mid-1987, editor Donald A. Wollheim was of course well established as one of the most important and influential — perhaps the most influential — editor in science fiction. Founding editor at Ace Books, and founder of DAW Books, Wollheim had been editing The Annual World’s Best SF…

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