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Category: Rich Horton

Ever After: John Crowley (December 1, 1942 – August 8, 2026)

Ever After: John Crowley (December 1, 1942 – August 8, 2026)

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John Crowley

John Crowley has died, at 83. He was my favorite living writer, and remains one of my favorite writers of all time. He was born in 1942 in Maine, and grew up in Vermont, Kentucky and Indiana. He went to Indiana University, then to New York, originally with a goal of working in film, and indeed he has written numerous scripts for documentary films. (At Indiana, he was a member of their 1961 GE College Bowl championship trivia team, making him probably the second most famous trivia player among SF writers who went to Indiana — behind Black Gate‘s own Steven H. Silver, two-time Jeopardy! champion.)

But his true calling was surely prose, and in 1975 he published his first novel, The Deep. A dozen more novels followed, including a four-book series collectively called Aegypt. He also published more than two dozen short stories, and many essays. He was a Professor of Creative Writing at Yale beginning in 1993. His wife, Laurie Block, is a documentary filmmaker.

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An Obscure 70s Fantasy: The Vanishing Tower, by Michael Moorcock

An Obscure 70s Fantasy: The Vanishing Tower, by Michael Moorcock

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The Vanishing Tower (DAW Books, June 1977). Cover by Michael Whelan

Here’s another in my series of reviews of “mostly obscure” 1970s/1980s books — the last one was of Evangeline Walton’s The Children of Llyr. That book was published in 1971, and so was the original edition of The Vanishing Tower (first titled The Sleeping Sorceress.)

And already I can hear people asking “Obscure? Obscure?! Evangeline Walton’s Mabinogion retellings were not really obscure, and Michael Moorcock’s Elric novels are not remotely obscure!”

And I apologize — because you’re right. This novel in particular is part of one of the major sword and sorcery series of all time. Yet — as with the The Children of Llyr — it’s a book I myself didn’t read until just now, over 50 years after it first appeared.

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Rich Horton on The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O’Keefe

Rich Horton on The Blighted Stars by Megan E. O’Keefe

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The Devoured Worlds trilogy by Megan E. O’Keefe: The Blighted Stars, The Fractured Dark, and
The Bound Worlds (Orbit, May 23, 2023, September 26, 2023, and June 25, 2024). Covers by Jaime Jones

It’s January 17, and I’m doing a fairly good job on at least one of my New Year’s resolutions — catching up on some of my favorite blogs. I started with Rich Horton’s excellent Strange at Ecbatan, a review site that covers a delightfully eclectic mix of old and new books, from one of the most knowledgeable and astute readers we have. Rich’s most recent review was Howard Andrew Jones’ terrific debut novel The Desert of Souls, a piece resurrected from my first website, the sadly now defunct SF Site.

Back in September Rich discussed The Blighted Stars, the first book in Megan O’Keefe’s Devoured Worlds trilogy. I talked about the first two titles in the series here in July 2023. What drew me was the intriguing mix of SF and horror, and the promise of creepy adventure on a dead planet in the opening volume, in which an idealistic resistance fighter is stranded with the heir to an imperial space dynasty. But, as usual, Rich has a lot more insight to offer than I.

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An Original Ballantine Adult Fantasy: The Children of Llyr by Evangeline Walton

An Original Ballantine Adult Fantasy: The Children of Llyr by Evangeline Walton

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The Children of Llyr (Ballantine Adult Fantasy #33, August 1971). Cover by David Johnston

This latest entry in my series of essays about mostly obscure SF and Fantasy from the ’70s and ’80s looks at a novel published in one of the most celebrated publishing series of the early ’70s. This was the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, which ran from 1969 to 1974, under the editorship of Betty Ballantine, with the assistance of “Editorial Consultant” Lin Carter.

I’ve discussed Carter’s work before, and I subscribe to the more or less standard view that he was not a very good writer of fiction, but that his contributions to the field as an editor (or “consultant”) were tremendous. And nowhere more so than in this series of books — though Ballantine’s oversight was also important.

The first volume was The Blue Star, by Fletcher Pratt, a reprint of a 1952 novel. The final official Ballantine Adult Fantasy publication was #65, Over the Hills and Far Away, by Lord Dunsany.

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A Hobo in Space: Starhiker by Jack Dann

A Hobo in Space: Starhiker by Jack Dann

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Starhiker by Jack Dann (Harper & Row, March 1977). Cover uncredited

It’s been a while since I’ve taken a look at a ’70s science fiction novel in this space, and this seems a good book to feature. It’s rather better than some of the books I’ve written about, though it has, as far as I can tell, never been reprinted. And it’s a very 1970s book.

Jack Dann was born in upstate New York some 80 years ago, and after spending some time in New York City moved back to Binghamton, close to his birthplace of Johnson City. He attended SUNY Binghamton, where SF writers Pamela Sargent and George Zebrowski were also students, and Joanna Russ was a Professor. (I don’t know if Dann had contact with Russ at that time.)

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Transcendent and Creepy: Rich Horton on The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

Transcendent and Creepy: Rich Horton on The Forever War by Joe Haldeman

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The Forever War (Ballantine Books, 1976). Cover by Murray Tinkelman

Rich Horton continues to review classic science fiction novels at his blog, Strange at Ecbatan. Last month he turned his attention to Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, on the 50th anniversary of its release.

It’s definitely worth reading — a bitter and cynical look at war, some cool ideas including the effect of time dilation and lots of physics, a somewhat transcendent but pretty creepy conclusion. And, also, some very ’70s things, including pretty questionable — at times downright offensive — “sexual revolution” era sexual politics, and oddly 70s-ish notions of dystopia. My impression… I liked it then and I endorsed its Hugo and Nebula wins.

The Forever War is one of the most honored science fiction novels of all time. First published by St. Martin’s Press in 1975, it swept every major SF Award, including the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards. In 1987 it placed 18th on Locus’ list of All-Time Best SF Novels, beating out The Martian Chronicles, Starship Troopers, and Rendezvous with Rama. It’s been in print nearly continuously for the last four and a half decades. Here’s some of the most noteworthy editions.

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Fantastic, August 1961: A Retro-Review

Fantastic, August 1961: A Retro-Review

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Fantastic, August 1961. Cover by Leo Summers

It’s been a long time since I did a Retro-Review from Cele Goldsmith’s time at Amazing/Fantastic. So I’m happy to be back at it! This issue is from about two years into Goldsmith’s tenure.

There are two features — Norman Lobsenz’s editorial, and the letter column, According to You. (Well, and a brief Coming Soon piece.) The editorial talks about using computers to analyze the various items certain Thais believe have magical powers, ending with a slight joke about hoping to find a love philtre “for Cele.” It introduces the concept by talking about the famous Arthur C. Clarke story in which a computer helps Tibetan monks list all the names of god — but misidentifies the story weirdly by adding another billion names: “The Ten Billion Names of God.”

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We Are Missing Important Science Fiction Books

We Are Missing Important Science Fiction Books

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Bewilderment by Richard Powers (W. W. Norton, November 1, 2022); Orbital by Samantha Harvey
(Grove Press, October 29, 2024), and Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford (Faber & Faber, April 4, 2024)

I just finished Richard Powers’ Bewilderment, from 2021. It’s a really intriguing and powerful novel, that I argued with at times, but still loved. It’s got a great ending, tremendously moving.

And it is absolutely science fiction. Way more so than most SF books these days, even hard SF. But, somehow, it didn’t even get a sniff at either the Nebula or Hugo shortlist.

Mind you, I didn’t read it until now, so I’m part of the problem. And, to be fair, both Ian Mond and Paul di Filippo reviewed it for Locus, so it wasn’t ignored.

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A Masterful Three Novella Original Anthology: The New Atlantis, edited by Robert Silverberg

A Masterful Three Novella Original Anthology: The New Atlantis, edited by Robert Silverberg

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The New Atlantis (Warner Books paperback reprint, 1978). Cover by Lou Feck

My latest look at a book from the 1970s treats a major anthology from 1975. The New Atlantis and Other Novellas collects three long stories: “Silhouette,” by Gene Wolfe; “The New Atlantis,” by Ursula K. Le Guin, and “A Momentary Taste of Being,” by James Tiptree, Jr. The project received plenty of notice at awards time – the book as a whole was fifth in the Locus Poll for Best Anthology, “A Momentary Taste of Being” and “Silhouette” were 7th and 9th, respectively, in the Locus Poll for Best Novella, while “The New Atlantis” won the Locus Poll for Best Novelette, and received a Hugo nomination in that category, and both it and the Tiptree also got Nebula nominations.

Let’s look at the individual stories first.

“Silhouette” by Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe was a remarkable writer at all lengths — he produced brilliant short-shorts, short stories, novelettes, novellas, novels, series of novels, even a series of series of novels. “Silhouette,” at about 20,000 words, is one of his novellas — and it may be that the novella was his ideal length.

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Barry N. Malzberg, July 24, 1939 – December 19, 2024

Barry N. Malzberg, July 24, 1939 – December 19, 2024

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Barry Malzberg in 2009

Barry Malzberg died Thursday, December 19, 2024, at the age of 85. I never met Barry in person, but I knew him through correspondence — much of it on an email list, but also some personal email — for at least a quarter century. But I knew him as an author for far longer. When I was first buying books from the local drugstore, at the age of 14 or so, I bought a great many of his novels, slim paperbacks off the spinner rack. I confess that I bought the first one in part because it was 95 cents, and other books on the rack were $1.25. But I was immediately taken with his voice, one of the most recognizable voices in SF at that time, and I kept buying his books.

Malzberg was born in New York City on July 24, 1939. He was an avid reader of SF throughout the 1950s. He attended Syracuse, graduating in 1960 and returning in 1964 to study creative writing (fellow students included Joyce Carol Oates and Harvey Jacobs.) He received fellowships in creative writing and in playwriting, but had no success selling to literary magazines. He took a job with the Scott Meredith Literary Agency, and began selling stories to men’s magazine and SF magazines, as well as novels in various genres, including erotica.

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