Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1951: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, October 1951: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy Science Fiction October 1951-smallGalaxy began its second year of publication with the October 1951 issue. With contributions from both Asimov and Heinlein, it continued to show the strength of its fiction content.

“The C-Chute” by Isaac Asimov — A disparate group of space travelers become prisoners when their ship is stormed by enemy aliens. The Kloro secure the men in a room and leave only two of their own to pilot the ship back to their territory, where it can be prepared for battle.

Not content to sit idly by and become prisoners of war for an indeterminate amount of time, the men formulate a plan. Someone could suit up and go outside the ship, walking the hull to the steam tubes, in order to re-enter the ship at the control room, hopefully surprising the enemy pilots. The only dilemma is figuring out which of the men has the wherewithal and courage to succeed.

There was a lot of point-of-view shifting throughout the story, allowing the reader to enter the mind of each character. I thought this was done well and honestly there was greater variety in these characters than what Asimov produced in his novel The Stars, Like Dust.

“Pleasant Dreams” by Ralph Robin — Chief Watcher Gniss invites a childhood friend to witness how his group uses technology to spy on criminal suspects. Through the telepathic instrument, they can witness the suspects’ dreams, allowing them to learn of co-conspirators without the need for interrogation.

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Forgotten Treasures of the Pulps: Tony Rome, Private Eye

Forgotten Treasures of the Pulps: Tony Rome, Private Eye

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Miami HaleMiami PBOThe paperback original (PBO to collectors) was the immediate successor to the pulp magazine as the home of pulp fiction. Marvin Albert was one of the bright lights of the paperback original market for detective fiction.

Albert’s work is revered in France, where he is considered a master of the hardboiled form, but he is largely forgotten stateside since his work lacks the literary polish of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler and was never shocking like Mickey Spillane. Albert may not have broken new ground, but he did excel at crafting hardboiled private eye stories in the classic tradition from the 1950s through the 1980s.

Much like Max Allan Collins or Michael Avallone, he also supplemented his income by adapting screenplays as movie tie-in novels for the paperback original market. Oddly enough, Albert specialized in bedroom farces for his movie tie-in assignments, in sharp contrast to his tough guy crime novels and westerns.

Albert utilized a number of pseudonyms during his career (although many of these titles were reprinted under his real name towards the end of his life). He published three hardboiled mysteries featuring a tough private eye called Tony Rome in the early 1960s. The books were published under the byline of Anthony Rome, as if to suggest the tales being told were real cases.

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Catching Up on the Gaming World with Fate Diaspora

Catching Up on the Gaming World with Fate Diaspora

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Diaspora EHP Softcover Cover 6x9 220
…a rainy holiday afternoon (in space)

The firing squad lines up across the ruined courtyard.Perspiration drips into Tahm’s eyes. The not-flies settle on his face. He strains against his cuffs, the rough wood of the post scraping his arms.

The sergeant barks an order, startling a swarm of lizard-birds into the sky. Twelve rifles come to bear.

Tahm watches the lizard-birds, mentally follows them to where they will roost. He’s a scout and the jungle is his life. Was his life. Soon the jungle will gain life by feeding on his body.

There’s a cracking sound like lightning striking distant treetops, screams, more cracking. Then silence.

Tahm looks down into the courtyard. The execution party now lie sprawled in the mud, smoke billowing from ruined heads and torsos.

A man in scarred battle armour emerges from the ruins. He carries no unit insignia, belongs to neither side in the civil war. Nor does his gun belong; a sleek energy weapon that can only have come from orbital factories of the Grim system.

Their eyes meet.

“Don’t shoot me,” says Tahm.

The gun man’s eyes narrow. “You didn’t see anything.” He turns away and vanishes back into the rubble.

Moments later, the dead men’s assault shuttle roars into the sky, leaving Tahm still tied to the post, now surrounded by corpses.

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Goth Chick News: Comic Book Fan Boys on the Big Screen (Fan Girls Rejoice)

Goth Chick News: Comic Book Fan Boys on the Big Screen (Fan Girls Rejoice)

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Four Color Eulogy-smallThis is as excited as I get about anything.

Back in February, I told you about a new project by our favorite indy film geniuses at Pirate Pictures, in which comic collectors finally get to be the film heroes — far overdue if you ask me.

And yes, the Black Gate crowd went wild over the idea – or as wild as you all get about anything.

So a couple weeks ago, I undertook a road trip to visit the creative team and ask them some questions about the inspiration for Four Color Eulogy; like how it happens that a bunch of comic fans were able to turn their passion into an actual movie?

I figured we’d sit around in a slightly grungy coffee shop and I’d capture all their witty banter on my handy digital recorder, then hustle home to Chicago and type it up for you.

But no. We’re way beyond grungy coffee shops now…

Instead, they suggested we meet “at the studio.”

And oh, by the way, why don’t we just roll out the actual movie cameras and film the interview instead?

Lighting? Sure! Sound guys? We’ve got plenty of them.

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New Treasures: Blood Riders by Michael Spradlin

New Treasures: Blood Riders by Michael Spradlin

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Blood Riders Michael Spradlin-smallOkay, I admit I’ve been on a weird western kick recently. It started with the Bloodlands novels of Christine Cody, Lee Collins’s She Returns From War, and Guy Adams’s The Good The Bad and The Infernal and the sequel Once Upon a Time in Hell; then I moved on to Mercedes Lackey & Rosemary Edghill’s Dead Reckoning, and The Six-Gun Tarot by R.S. Belcher. For those of you keeping up at home — congratulations. We should form a book club.

Michael Spradlin’s Blood Riders is the latest, and it looks like it will fit right in, with plenty of vampires, monsters, and weird goings-on in the post-Civil War Western Territories.

The Western Territories, 1880. For four years, Civil War veteran and former U.S. Cavalry Captain Jonas P. Hollister has been rotting in a prison cell at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His crime: lying about the loss of eleven soldiers under his command… who he claims were slaughtered by a band of nonhuman, blood-drinking demons.

But now a famous visitor, the detective Allan Pinkerton, has arrived with an order for Hollister’s release. The brutal murder of a group of Colorado miners in a fashion frighteningly similar to the deaths of Hollister’s men has leant new credence to his wild tale. And suddenly Jonas Hollister finds himself on a quest both dangerous and dark — joining forces with Pinkerton, the gunsmith Oliver Winchester, an ex-fellow prisoner, a woman of mystery, and a foreigner named Abraham Van Helsing, who knows many things about the monsters of the night — and riding hell for leather toward an epic confrontation… with the undead.

Blood Riders was published September 25, 2012 by Harper Voyager Fantasy. It is 388 pages, priced at $7.99 for the paperback and $6.99 for the digital edition.

Vintage Treasures: The Scroll of Man by John Dalmas

Vintage Treasures: The Scroll of Man by John Dalmas

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The Scroll of Man-smallThis month, I’ve been trying out books by authors I’ve never read before and today it’s time to try the American SF writer John Dalmas.

John Dalmas was born in Chicago in 1926; his first published story was The Yngling, which appeared (in two parts) in the October and November issues of Analog Science Fiction in 1969. Since then, he’s published some 27 novels, including his latest, The Signature of God, which appeared as an e-book last year. He turns 88 this year and maintains a fairly active blog here. (That’s the spirit, Dalmas! Don’t let any of those younger SF writers give you crap.)

Dalmas is probably best known for his Regiment books from Baen, a military SF series which began with The Regiment in 1987 and continued for five more novels. But I settled on The Scroll of Man because it has a cool cover with a regal blue cat and a young lady with some impressive headgear, zapping her lazy kitty with a mini lightning bolt. I wish I could do the same thing when my cat won’t budge from my recliner, let me tell you. You show ’em, princess lady.

“I hit the ground and lay there, feeling close-cropped grass against my body. A moment earlier I’d been kicking along on skis across the Yukon flats in a Siberian training project. But this looked like some sort of temple garden, it was a summer night, and I was naked and unarmed.

“And two large golden eyes were watching me from the shadows.”

The Guardian had sent out a call for a great warrior. Now She had one… only he was from three million years in the past.

Okay, I have no idea what any of that is about. My guess, princess lady is The Guardian. I don’t know how the cat figures into events, but I bet it deserved the lighting bolt. Cats. You can’t trust ’em.

The Scroll of Man was published in 1985 by Tor. It is 255 pages, priced at $2.95. It has never been reprinted and there is no digital edition. The colorful cover is by Ramos.

A Writer’s Inspiration

A Writer’s Inspiration

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The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard-smallSomething I’m often asked in interviews and by readers is what inspired me to write a book. Where do I get my ideas? It’s a difficult thing to pin down because there are so many elements involved, but I’m going to try to answer as fully and honestly as I can.

My source of first inspiration is myself. Not that my life is so very interesting, but what I mean is I’ve been a lover of stories for as long as I can remember. So when I’m brainstorming for a new book, the first person’s approval I seek is my own. What kind of story would I like to read? Because if I’m not writing stories I enjoy, then there’s no point.

My second inspiration is always my readers. This is the “performance” side of my writing. I’m not comfortable on stage or behind a microphone, but for some reason crafting a story to tell the world is my niche. In a way it feels safer than standing on a stage, all alone and vulnerable. Yet one of the first lessons you learn when you’re published is that not everyone is going to love your baby as much as you do. I always tell novice writers they better have thick skins because the world can be cruel. However, for all the slings and arrows lobbed in my direction from time to time, the experience of hearing from a happy reader is thrilling beyond words.

I’m also inspired by all the great writers who have come before me and those working now. I don’t think there’s ever been a time since I was eight or nine years old that I haven’t been reading fiction. I finish one book and pick up another. I also enjoy re-reading my favorite books/series. Glen Cook, Robert E. Howard, Robert Heinlein, Leo Tolstoy, H.P. Lovecraft, and many others — these are the foundations of my universe.

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House of Cards Kicked the Cat

House of Cards Kicked the Cat

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Houseofcards_RichardsonI mentioned Netflix’s wildly successful House of Cards in a recent Public Life of Sherlock Holmes posting. I’ve written a couple of screenplays that will be made into movies shortly before the Earth plunges into the sun.

Or more likely, sometime after that event. Just as I enjoy reading books on writing, I’ve also found lots to learn from books on screenwriting (which is a very different proposition).

A brief aside: Amazon (which should give me stock with the number of purchases I’ve made from them) includes screenwriting as a subcategory of “Humor & Entertainment.”

Not every screenwriting book is funny. In fact, the most useful ones generally aren’t! That said, we resume our normal programming.

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An Age of Random Portents and Incoherent Miracles – Echoes of the Goddess by Darrell Schweitzer

An Age of Random Portents and Incoherent Miracles – Echoes of the Goddess by Darrell Schweitzer

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The Goddess is dead. The Earth is very old. The fabric of time itself has worn thin. Who knows what might be glimpsed through it? — Opharastes, After Revelation

oie_543314pkYzAsIcWhen the Goddess who reigned over Earth died her body shattered and the pieces, resonating with her power, rained down over the world. Wherever they settled they caused great changes in both the people and the land. In some places new realities were created. In others, images of the Goddess herself appeared and lingered on for years until the dawn of a new age and the emergence of a new deity.

Echoes of the Goddess: Tales of Terror and Wonder From the End of Time (2012) by Darrell Schweitzer is a collection of eleven stories written over the past thirty five years and set between the earliest days of the Goddess’ death and the last days before the new age.

One of the best things to come out of reviewing books is that I’ve finally read a bunch of the authors that I somehow managed to overlook for years, despite their large catalogs and great reviews. Steve Brust and Andre Norton are two of those recent “discoveries” as is today’s author, Darrell Schweitzer.

It’s hard to fathom that I’d managed to read only two stories (“Those of the Air” in Cthulhu’s Heirs and “The Castle of Kites and Crows” in Swords Against Darkness V) by a man who has written around three hundred of the things, several novels, and numerous works of non-fiction. Nonetheless, for most of my reading life, Schweitzer existed as little more than a name I knew.

Last year, I bought his The White Isle (1980) because it was cheap, there was some mention of a comparison to Lord Dunsany, and the cover looked cool. The novel is a dark (very dark!) take on the Orpheus and Eurydice story. It’s a powerful and bleak story of love and blind obsession set in one of the most despairing worlds I’ve ever encountered. I reviewed it last year at my site and promised myself to keep my eyes open for more of Schweitzer’s work. When Echoes of the Goddess showed up as an e-book, I snagged it at once.

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Art of the Genre: I.C.E.’s Middle-Earth Roleplaying Part Four: The Maps

Art of the Genre: I.C.E.’s Middle-Earth Roleplaying Part Four: The Maps

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MIddle-EarthHave you ever designed a campaign and thought to yourself, ‘Damn, this is so good, I should build a company on it?’ Well, certainly you aren’t the only one, and dozens of game companies have been born from folk’s home brew campaigns, but it wasn’t until very recently that I realized that I.C.E.’s Middle-Earth Role-Playing was born of the same ilk.

Now before you all go running off to Twitter about Tolkien being a RPG nerd, you have to have the full understanding of what I’m talking about. First and foremost, Tolkien WAS NOT a gamer, but that didn’t mean that his world wasn’t ripe for table-top role-players to want to explore in the mid to late 1970s.

One case in particular came out of the University of Virginia in 1977, when then student Pete Fenlon decided he wanted to create a role-playing game around Tolkien’s world for some friends on campus.

My first question upon finding this out was, ‘Why didn’t you just play D&D?’ and Pete’s answer was simple: D&D simply wasn’t Tolkien. As an avid camper and backpacker, as well as a member of the SCA, Fenlon understood way too much about Tolkien to throw a campaign into a world of negative integer armor classes and D20 to-hit charts.

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