Vintage Treasures: Echoes of Valor II, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Vintage Treasures: Echoes of Valor II, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Comments 3 comments

Echoes of Valor II-smallKarl Edward Wagner continued his sword-and-sorcery anthology series with Echoes of Valor II, published in hardcover by Tor Books in August 1989, two years after the release of Echoes of Valor.

Wagner settled into an established pattern with this volume. The first one had been unusual for a couple of reasons. For one thing, it contained only novellas — three big stories by Robert E. Howard, Fritz Leiber, and Henry Kuttner. Not that you can go wrong with Howard, Leiber, and Kuttner, but the next two books in the series offered a more varied table of contents.

Echoes of Valor had also been bare bones from an editorial standpoint. Not even an introduction, let alone commentary on the stories. Wagner rectified that with Echoes of Valor II, which included new and reprinted story intros and author retrospectives by C. L. Moore, Sam Moskowitz, Forrest J. Ackerman, and Wagner himself. This seems more what Wagner had in mind for EoV, which he clearly intended to be a definitive S&S anthology series.

In fact, it’s probable that the first volume was put together much more hurriedly than the last two. Not only was it missing the editorial content that would be the hallmark of the series, but it went straight to paperback. Echoes of Valor II appeared first in a handsome hardcover edition, and was reprinted in paperback in February 1991.

This one contains a rich assortment of classic S&S and heroic fantasy, including a Conan tale by Robert E. Howard, a Jirel of Joiry story and two Northwest Smith tales from C. L. Moore, a Venus novella by Leigh Brackett and Ray Bradbury, and a Hok the Mighty novella by Manly Wade Wellman… along with fascinating articles on how some of the stories came together.

…

Read More Read More

Shimmer 23 Now on Sale

Shimmer 23 Now on Sale

Comments 2 comments

Shimmer 23-smallI’m someone who believes that the core of the fantasy genre is still its short fiction magazines.

This used to be a lot more true, of course. When fantasy and science fiction were still fresh and new as distinct literary genres in the early 20th Century, the only place they regularly appeared was pulp magazines. For fantasy, that meant Weird Tales, the shot-lived Unknown, and later Famous Fantastic Mysteries and the like. Mass market paperback fantasy didn’t take shape until the 1950s, and didn’t really become popular until The Lord of the Rings appeared in paperback in the 60s. Nowadays when people think of fantasy, they tend to think of paperback bestsellers like George R.R. Martin, Stephen King, and Brandon Sanderson.

Where did all three of those writers get their start? In magazines, of course.

Magazines are where the next generation of breakout fantasy writers are already at work today. And if you’re interested in trying a magazine that has a fabulous rep for discovering and promoting stellar writers long before they’re well know — authors like Amal El-Mohtar, Genevieve Valentine, Lou Anders, Chris Roberson, Aliette de Bodard, and many others — then I highly recommend Shimmer.

Shimmer is published bi-monthly, and edited by E. Catherine Tobler. It’s available in both print and your choice of DRM-free electronic formats (indeed, a wide range of formats, not just PDF and Kindle.) It has shown a talent for rooting out great fiction across a wide range of fantasy and SF, and takes pride in publishing “Speculative fiction for a miscreant world.”

…

Read More Read More

Introducing BlackGateDate.com: Examining the Dating Profiles of the Men of the Fantasy World

Introducing BlackGateDate.com: Examining the Dating Profiles of the Men of the Fantasy World

Comments 3 comments

Science fiction writer Amy Sundberg recently wrote an excellent post about dating on her blog. This inspired me to think a little more about dating too. Dating is not something I have a lot of time to do, but I have been on a dating site or two and this set me wondering about how to approach dating from the angle of the fantasy genre. It isn’t pretty, but it’s perhaps more honest than what is shown on dating websites.

Username: ImTooSexyForTheMaiar,TooSexyForTheMaiar
Summary: I am the all-seeing eye and I have spread my shadow across the world and crushed the races of Middle Earth. I also make jewelry.
Body type: I am a burning eye. I looked really good when I was an angel. Now that I’ve conquered Middle Earth I’m getting back into shape. Work out partner?
I’d Fit Well With: I’m All-Dominating, in the bedroom and out. I fit well with someone into that.
Six Things I Could Never Do Without: The One Ring.
Deepest Secret: I sometimes I wonder what it would be like to submit to a lover or get a spanking. I’ve been a bad boy. Also, I haven’t told any of my friends, but I make kick-ass balloon animals.

…

Read More Read More

The Shock of the Old: The Professor Jameson Space Adventures by Neil R. Jones

The Shock of the Old: The Professor Jameson Space Adventures by Neil R. Jones

Comments 7 comments

Amazing_Stories,_April_1937-smallFew things are more exciting than finding an unheralded new author or reading an impressive new book fresh off the press. It is exhilarating to be present at the advent of a significant new work, to witness the beginning of an important writer’s career, or to feel yourself at the cutting edge of a genre. That sense of exploration and discovery is at the very heart of science fiction and fantasy.

These genres we love have roots that reach deep into the past, though, some of those roots extending into the cheap pulp magazines of the 20’s and 30’s, venues that at the time — and for long after — were utterly disreputable; anything that had even a whiff of such seamy origins was utterly damned in the eyes of critics.

Today’s top writers have moved far beyond those simple beginnings, and their finest works exhibit a thematic sophistication and literary polish that their progenitors can’t match, even as the best of those pioneers have finally achieved a hard-won respectability (penny-a-word pulpsters like Leigh Brackett and H.P. Lovecraft escaping the lurid confines of Planet Stories and Weird Tales to appear between the staid covers of the Library of America?! It’s about time.)

Writers like Neil Gaiman, China Meiville, and Susanna Clarke are expanding the boundaries of what can be accomplished with what is decreasingly called genre fiction, and for that we should all be grateful. Sometimes though, I must confess that I am compelled to put aside the careful work of the current generation for a while, because I just need a jolt of unadulterated pulp, and nothing else will do. (I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t around for the pulps, much as I wish I had been, so I have to rely on paperbacks, most of which are themselves now as old as I am, or older.)

…

Read More Read More

New Treasures: Stomping Grounds, edited by Neil Baker

New Treasures: Stomping Grounds, edited by Neil Baker

Comments 1 comment

Stomping Grounds Apirl Moon Books-smallApril Moon Books is a new press, but they’re not acting like it.

They’ve produced two of the most innovative — and frankly, most fun — anthologies of the past year, The Dark Rites of Cthulhu and Amok! Editor Neil Baker explains the concept at the heart of their newest release in his introduction:

Just one look at the face of Calvin as he stamps through a sandbox city while Hobbes looks on aghast, or the sheer, unadulterated joy of Stitch as he trashes a carefully constructed city in Lilo’s bedroom, reveals the stark truth; it must be a hell of a lot of fun to reduce a city to rubble under your mighty, scaled feet.

Stomping Grounds is the second volume of Short Sharp Shocks, April Moon’s short fiction horror line. The third, Ill-considered Expeditions, featuring tales of exploration and derring-do gone horribly wrong, will be released in April.

Stomping Grounds includes 17 short stories celebrating the joy of rampaging giant monsters from CJ Henderson, Aaron Smith, Michael Thomas-Knight, D.G. Sutter, and many others.

Here’s the book description.

…

Read More Read More

Historical Cthulhu: That Is Not Dead, edited by Darrell Schweitzer

Historical Cthulhu: That Is Not Dead, edited by Darrell Schweitzer

Comments 3 comments

That Is Not Dead-smallAccording to H.P. Lovecraft’s legendary canon of cosmic horror tales, the Great Old Ones such as Cthulhu, Nyarlathotep, Yog Sothoth, and all-mighty Azathoth have lurked in the dim places of the cosmos since the beginning of time.

“That is not dead,” wrote the mad poet Abdul Alhazred, “which can eternal lie, and with strange aeons even death may die.” One of Lovecraft’s most famous lines is the inspiration for a new hardcover volume of historical Cthulhu Mythos fiction from PS Publishing.

That is Not Dead features all-new tales of cosmic horror set in various periods of history. Here’s what editor/contributor Darrell Schweitzer had to say about the book:

That is Not Dead is a collection of Mythos stories, based on the premise that if the Old Ones have been around since elder aeons, someone should have noticed before Lovecraft’s characters did about 1900. The theme then is lurking presences. Inasmuch as the stories deal with history, it is secret history, i.e. “what really happened…”

Here’s the complete Table of Contents (by historical era).

…

Read More Read More

Crush It Like Cthulhu

Crush It Like Cthulhu

Comments 2 comments

narragansett_honeyale

Southern New England staple Narragansett Beer is trying to corner the Weird Tales beer-drinker market by releasing four beers inspired by H.P. Lovecraft. The first, available this Monday, is based on Lovecraft’s, “The Festival”:

[O]nce Narragansett came up with the idea to release a line of H.P. Lovecraft beers, it made sense. “The Festival” is generally acknowledged as the first story in the Cthulhu Mythos. It was published in January of 1925, almost 90 years ago exactly. And the Cthulhu Mythos has a name for the stuff that Kingsport’s residents drink to allow them to survive the ride across interstellar space on the back of the Byakhee: space mead.

“Our head brewmaster, Sean Larkin, was just fascinated with this idea of space mead,” says Hellendrung. “So he tried to come up with a recipe, inspired by the honey meads that were popular in Lovecraft’s time.” The finished beer is a robust dark ale with an edge of sweetness, brewed from five malts and two different kinds of hops.

…

Read More Read More

Smart Guy, Huh?

Smart Guy, Huh?

Comments 5 comments

ScorpionIt used to be okay to be the smartest person in the room – at least on paper, real life isn’t my area of expertise. Sherlock Holmes was definitely a loner, and eccentric, no question. But when he left Baker Street, he was appropriately dressed, even, or perhaps especially, when in disguise. He knew, understood and used all the social conventions, and could converse easily with everyone and anyone, from any walk of life. He may not have been interested in women romantically, but he had no trouble interacting with them.

This facility used to be part of being the smartest person in the room. Now, we see more examples of this extremity of genius than ever before, including two versions of Holmes. It might have been CSI that started this off – what was Grissom but the smartest guy in the room? – and since then we’ve had House MD bringing in the medical side, and The Mentalist for the con artist in all of us, and this season alone we’ve got Forever, and Scorpion, plus, I believe, a couple more coming along soon.

And let’s not forget, that for as long as most of us have been alive, we’ve had Dr. Who.

…

Read More Read More

Goth Chick News: When Gaming, Books and Zombies Converge…Oh the Joy

Goth Chick News: When Gaming, Books and Zombies Converge…Oh the Joy

Comments 0 Comment

Dying Light-smallIt’s been over a year since we first got a peek at an upcoming zombie-killing, gaming extravaganza entitled Dying Light.  Back in August, 2013, Dying Light’s creators Techland hinted that the game would be released in all formats somewhere around May, 2014.

Several months (and delays) later, we finally have a firm date of January 27, 2015 and a lot has changed – not the least of which appears to be the angle of the storyline, though officially the delays were due to the extreme complexity of development.

A year ago we were told this:

Dying Light is a first-person, action survival horror game set in a vast and dangerous open world. During the day, players traverse an expansive urban environment overrun by a vicious outbreak, scavenging the world for supplies and crafting weapons to defend against the growing infected population. At night, the hunter becomes the hunted, as the infected become aggressive and more dangerous. Most frightening are the predators which only appear after sundown. Players must use everything in their power to survive until the morning’s first light.

Awesomeness.

…

Read More Read More

Writerly New Year’s Resolutions and How to Make Them Work: Part 2

Writerly New Year’s Resolutions and How to Make Them Work: Part 2

Comments 0 Comment
Writing Space
It all comes down to time and space to write.

How are the New Year’s Resolutions working out?

Are you being a more productive writer?

If not, then you probably need to set things up so you can be more productive, which is what I promised to talk about this week.

It all comes down to time and space to write.

You can squeeze more into your existing writing time by having an effective writing process — we had that rant already in Part 1 — and by learning to touch type.

Touch typing rocks. The words appear on the screen by telepathy. No distractions, no fiddling fingers. You think better, write faster.

However, what you really want is more writing time, with less interruption, which in turn means establishing a better physical space within which to do it. The time and space then need defending.

…

Read More Read More