Severed Arms and the Angel of Death: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XV edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Severed Arms and the Angel of Death: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XV edited by Karl Edward Wagner

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories XV (DAW Books, October 1987). Cover by Michael Whelan

It’s been awhile, but given a nudge from John O’Neill I’m back with the ongoing perusal of DAW’s Year’s Best Horror series.

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XV was the fifteenth in the lineup and the seventh volume edited by the great Karl Edward Wagner (d. 1994). This book was copyrighted and printed in 1987 and represents the best short horror in the field for 1986. Michael Whelan’s art appears for the twelfth time as a cover for the series. Whelan’s art here depicts a gruesome scene of a severed, but wrapped, human arm in the meat drawer of a refrigerator. A sign of horror trends in the mid- to late 1980s?

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Forgotten Authors: Harry Stephen Keeler

Forgotten Authors: Harry Stephen Keeler

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Harry Stephen Keeler

Harry Stephen Keeler was born in Chicago on November 3, 1890. His father died when he was two and his mother subsequently remarried. After her new husband, who was a gambler, lost Keeler’s mother’s savings and mortgaged the family home that was left to her by Keeler’s father, he killed himself. Keeler’s mother subsequently remarried again, but her third husband died of illness when Keeler was only 13 years old.  Following the suicide of his first step father, Keeler’s mother took in boarders, mostly theatrical workers, to make ends meet and keep the family home.

The trauma of losing a father and two step fathers by the age of 13 appears to have had an impact on Keeler’s mental state and his mother had him committed to an insane asylum when he was a child. He apparently had multiple sessions in the asylum, including one that ended with his discharge on July 29, 1914, when he was declared recovered and had his property and voting rights restored.

Keeler often skipped school to attend to a paper route, but eventually he managed to earn a degree in electrical engineering from the Armour Institute. From 1912 to 1914, he worked in a steel mill in Chicago. He began writing in earnest in 1913, publishing his first short story that year. 1914 saw him publishing his first piece of crime fiction, the novella “Victim No. 5.” His early fiction appeared in magazines such as Argosy and Top-Notch Magazine.

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From Woking to Ansby: The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

From Woking to Ansby: The High Crusade by Poul Anderson

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The High Crusade (Berkley Books, October 1983). Cover by Tom Kidd

The High Crusade is one of the earlier novels in Poul Anderson’s long career: serialized in Astounding Science Fiction in the summer of 1960 (just as it was changing its title to Analog), published in book form that same year, and nominated for a Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1961, though it lost to A Canticle for Leibowitz. It remained popular and is still in print. In a lot of ways the story is a romp, but it also has themes that Anderson returned to more seriously in later books.

The High Crusade starts out as an alien invasion story, of a form going back to H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds: A spacecraft lands in England, and mysterious beings emerge from it, wielding advanced weapons and killing people to show their power. We have the same contrast between human and alien military technologies. But in this story, Anderson plays a trick he loved to do, especially early in his career (in stories such as “Journeys End” and “The Man Who Came Early”): he reverses the expected outcome from earlier stories.

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David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part Two: Red Sonja

David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part Two: Red Sonja

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Red Sonja by David C. Smith and Richard L. Tierney (Ace Books, December 1981 – May 1983). Covers by Boris Vallejo

In addition to his Black Vulmea and Bran Mak Morn stories, David C. Smith collaborated with Richard L. Tierney (1936 –2022) on six novels in a series about Red Sonja. Though often described as Robert E. Howard pastiches, that label is not completely accurate. Red Sonja (spelled with a J), is not a Howard character, although she is based on a couple of female swordslingers Howard did create, particularly — it seems to me — on Valeria, from the Conan story “Red Nails.” (A very similar character named Valeria appeared in the first Conan movie — Conan the Barbarian.)

Howard did create a character named Red Sonya (spelled with a “y”), who appeared as a secondary character in one historical tale — “The Shadow of the Vulture,” from the collection Sowers of the Thunder. She had red hair instead of blonde like Valeria, but otherwise is less reminiscent of Red Sonja than is Valeria.

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Fiction Writers, Read Non-Fiction

Fiction Writers, Read Non-Fiction

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The priestess, a gold prosthetic eye, and a burnt city. This woman is begging for a story about here. Read about the discovery here.

Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

This one is for the writers out there. Also, I’d like to remind all the writers out there that any writing advice should be taken with a large grain of salt, and while the title does make it seem like I’m commanding thee to read non-fiction, you don’t have to. Of course. I just find that I get most of my inspiration for my fiction from non-fiction.

Very specifically, archaeology… Especially for fantasy (but it has its place in science fiction, too, as you’ll see).

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A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Will Murray on Lester Dent’s Lost Detective

A (Black) Gat in the Hand: Will Murray on Lester Dent’s Lost Detective

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I’m always happy when my Pulp buddy Will Murray writes an A (Black) Gat in the  Hand essay. He tackles cool stuff that never even occurs to me. And often which I knew nothing about. Will is the leading authority on Lester Dent’s Travis McGee predecessor (and you KNOW I love me some John D. MacDonald), Oscar Sail. But I had never even heard of the the maritime PI who follwed Sail: Cyrus Peace. So I’m thrilled to give you Will’s essay on another Dent PI: who, unfortunately, never made it to print. Read on, MacDuff. 

An interesting sub-genre of modern detective fiction is the private detective who lives on and operates from a boat anchored somewhere along the Florida coast.

John D. McDonald’s Travis McGee is considered the most successful in this peculiar sub-genre. His houseboat, The Busted Flush, was moored off Fort Lauderdale.

(Editor’s Note – Click here for Black Gate’s John D. MacDonald coverage)

Others include the trio of troubleshooters who operated out of a Miami Beach houseboat in the 1960-62 Warner Bros. television show, Surfside 6––Dave Thorne, Sandy Winfield II, and attorney-turned PI Ken Madison.

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Into the Weird: Weird Times 1 — Architecture and Housing

Into the Weird: Weird Times 1 — Architecture and Housing

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The first issue of Weird Tales went on sale in late February of 1923. It was cover-dated March, but that was a sell-by date. The issue would have arrived in stores on or about February 18, roughly a week before the first issue of Time magazine. In writing about early Weird Tales, I found it useful to think about that kind of context, and to look into that moment in history.

Partly that was because some aspect of a story would occasionally become clear once I understood specific terms or references or background. Mostly, though, I found an immersion in the time helped themes become clearer and habits of thought more obvious. In the hope that exercise might be useful for anyone else reading early Weird Tales or other fiction of the 1920s, I’ll be putting up a series of posts looking at different aspects of the era, reflecting on things I’ve learned or think I’ve learned. I hope these posts will also be useful as references I can link to in my reviews, rather than having to take the time to explain some 1920s-specific detail in a story.

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Murder — What Is It Good For? Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

Murder — What Is It Good For? Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood

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There’s nothing I love more than a good murder… but, before you summon the authorities, let me qualify that a bit. I love a fake murder, a fictional murder. I’ll follow Perry Mason, Lieutenant Columbo, and Jessica Fletcher anywhere.

The real thing, though? I have deeply conflicted feelings about books, movies, and especially television shows that deal with actual homicides, which puts me at odds with virtually the entire Entertainment Industrial Complex, with Prime and Netflix and all of the other streamers, because it seems like real murder is their bloody bread and butter; do any of them make anything other than true crime shows?

Immersing yourself in a fictional killing is one thing; I know that when the cameras stopped rolling, the victim got up from the floor, brushed himself off, and shared a smoke and a joke with Raymond Burr or Peter Falk. But an actual murder, where a real human being suffered and died? I don’t know — that just doesn’t seem like entertainment to me, but I’m clearly in the minority (even in my own house). I blame it all on Truman Capote and his 1966 smash bestseller (and the smash film version which followed a year later), In Cold Blood. Capote’s “nonfiction novel” has to be reckoned one of the most influential books of the twentieth century, as it virtually created the true crime genre that now dominates the media landscape to the tune of several billion dollars a year.

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Forgotten Authors: Chauncey Thomas

Forgotten Authors: Chauncey Thomas

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Chauncey Thomas

Chauncey Thomas was born in Maxfield, Maine to Prince and Mary (Née Webb) Thomas on May 1, 1822. Both of his parents claimed descent from the early Plymouth Colony settlers. Spending his early life helping out on his father’s farm, he only attended school intermittently and, when he was 15 years old was apprenticed to Whiton & Badger, a chaise carriage maker in Bangor, Maine. The terms of his apprenticeship meant he had to work 12 hours a day, in return for board and clothing and the occasional payment of a dollar. He also received one term at the Apprentices’ School in Bangor.

In 1844, Whiton and Badger procured a position for Thomas at the Boston firm of Slade & Whiton, a firm which dated back to 1813. Thomas was given the task of working on drawings for woodwork and blacksmithing departments, as well as creating renderings of finished products for clients.

Eventually, he was placed in charge of the construction of carriage bodies, but around that time he suffered a knee injury that required him to recuperate at home for nearly two years, during which time he studied astronomy, various types of mathematics, and surveying.  When he was able to return to work in 1851, he moved to West Newbury, Massachusetts and entered a partnership with Daniel P. Nichols to form Nichols & Thomas. He stayed with the Nichols family and fell in love with Nichols’ younger sister, Mary Jane.

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Dark Muse News: Mordschlag Sword and Sorcery Magazine

Dark Muse News: Mordschlag Sword and Sorcery Magazine

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One of the most fun, unique aspects of Goodman Games’ Tales from the Magician’s Skull was the blending of Sword & Sorcery with Dungeon Crawl Classics statistics for the stories.  That’s a wonderful recipe that has not been reproduced, despite many super-cool S&S periodicals being available (Dark Moon Quarterly, Battleborn, New Edge S&S, Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Swords and Sorcery Magazine, Savage Realms, Swords & Sorceries: Tales of Heroic Fantasy, etc. plus loads of anthologies).

Well, this Dark Muse News post has a Press Release for The Arcanist: Fantasy Publishing’s Backerkit campaign showcasing Mordschlag Magazine! Once again, S&S adventure and RPG gaming are combined. Every pocket-sized issue of Mordschlag promises new short fiction, an article analyzing the genre, and monster stat-blocks pulled straight from the tales and ready-to-play in ShadowDark RPG.

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