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Month: January 2018

Time to Revise Your Lin Carter Bibliography

Time to Revise Your Lin Carter Bibliography

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The Brythunian Prints 1-smallAmong the couple of boxes of fanzines I picked up a few weeks ago was this oddity.

It’s the first (and I suspect only) issue of The Brythunian Prints, dated June 1967. I’ve not been able to find out any information at all on this title. It was a sword and sorcery fanzine, “published by the Brythunian Troop of the Hyborean Legion.”

The editors (Ken Hulme, Jim Feerhmeyer and Greg Shank) dedicate the issue “to L. Sprague de Camp and George Scithers for their kindness and cooperation!” Based on Shank’s editorial, they were apparently students at Toledo University, where they formed an organization called the Northwest Ohio Science Fiction Society.

The fanzine is 16 pages long, five pages of which are a S&S story, “Shandu the Magnificent” by Tom Trotter and Ken Hulme. It’s just as good as you would expect it to be. ?

The most interesting content is two pages of poetry by Lin Carter, under the general heading “War Songs and Battle Cries,” apparently reprinted with Carter’s permission from The Wizard of Lemuria and Thongor of Lemuria. The remaining content is taken up with editorials, limericks by John Boardman (four of which were reprinted from Amra) and a book review of The Fantastic Swordsmen edited by de Camp. The back cover is Tolkien related, as it pictures “Baggins and Trinket” (the Ring).

I’d be curious to know if anyone has any further info on this one.

Doug’s last post for us was The Fellowship of the Ring and the Palantir.

Egyptian Dystopian Fiction: The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz

Egyptian Dystopian Fiction: The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz

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the_queue_basma_abdel_aziz-smallSince the Arab Spring, there has been an upsurge in dystopian fiction coming out of the Middle East. The dashed hopes of that widespread popular uprising have found their expression in pessimistic novels such as Otared, (reviewed in an earlier post) and several other notable works of fiction.

One of the most lauded in the West is The Queue by Basma Abdel Aziz, an Egyptian writer and social activist.

In The Queue, we are transported to a strange near future where the civilian government has been taken over by a faceless entity called the Gate. The Gate issues a series of edicts that become ever more baffling and hard to obey. Companies are forced to changed what they produce, individuals need to get signed forms for even the most mundane matters, and little by little the Gate forces its way into every aspect of the city’s life.

The people rebel, in what the Gate refers to as the Disgraceful Events, which are suppressed with predictable police brutality. One of the casualties is a young man named Yehya, who is shot by a police officer. Yehya needs a form signed in order to have the bullet removed, but the Gate closes right after the Disgraceful Events.

As Yehya languishes, the Gate issues a continuous torrent of edicts, prompting more and more citizens to line up in front of the Gate hoping to get their forms filled out. The line soon stretches for miles, developing its own economy and culture. Street preachers rail against the citizens for their lack of faith in the Gate, shopkeepers try to make a living selling tea and snacks to the other people in line, and salesmen give away free mobile phones that are bugged.

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Birthday Reviews: John Bellairs’s “The Pedant and the Shuffly”

Birthday Reviews: John Bellairs’s “The Pedant and the Shuffly”

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The Pedant and the Shuffly John Bellairs-inside-small

Art by Marylyn Fitschen

John Bellairs was born on January 17, 1938 and died on March 8, 1991. He is best known for his novel The Face in the Frost. Most of his focus was on young adult fiction, including the Anthony Monday series, the Cubby Lewis Barnavelt series, and the Johnny Dixon series. After Bellairs’ death, Brad Strickland wrote novels in the Barnavelt and Dixon series.

Occasionally Bellairs turned his attention to short fiction. His short story “The Pedant and the Shuffly” was originally published as a stand-along book in February 1968 with illustrations by Marylyn Fitschen. Mythopoeic Press reprinted it in 2001 and it was included in the NESFA Press Bellairs omnibus Magic Mirrors in 2009. Both reprintings included Fitschen’s illustrations.

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New Treasures: Go Forth and Multiply, edited by Gordon Van Gelder

New Treasures: Go Forth and Multiply, edited by Gordon Van Gelder

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Go Forth and Multiply-small Go Forth and Multiply-back-small

Here’s a fun thing, especially for fans of classic SF such as myself. An anthology celebrating a popular theme in science fiction magazines of the 50s and 60s: repopulating a planet.

It’s the kind of story that fell out of fashion by the early 70s, when overpopulation and pollution became hot-button topics, gradually eclipsing colonial and expansionist themes in SF. As a result many of the stories in Go Forth and Multiply have never been reprinted since they originally appeared in magazines like Astounding and New Worlds in the 1950s, including Randall Garrett’s “The Queen Bee,” Rex Jatko’s “On the Care and Breeding of Pigs,” and E. C. Tubb’s “Prime Essential.”

F&SF publisher (and editor emeritus) Gordon Van Gelder has gathered a terrific collection of what Tangent Online calls “twelve great classic science fiction stories,” including Kate Wilhelm’s acclaimed novella  “Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang,” Richard Wilson’s Nebula Award-winning “Mother to the World,” and stories by John Brunner, Poul Anderson, Robert Sheckley, Damon Knight, and many others.

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A Gentle Book about Harsh Times: The List by Patricia Forde

A Gentle Book about Harsh Times: The List by Patricia Forde

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The List Patricia Forde-small The List Patricia Forde-back-small

“Extinction is the saddest word,” Letta’s mentor tells her on his deathbed. “You don’t understand. In the old days, before the Melting, no one would listen. No one. The politicians just talked and talked. They used words to keep the people in ignorance.”

A dystopian novel, Patricia Forde’s The List takes place in our world after the polar ice caps have disappeared and sea levels have risen. Letta, our seventeen-year-old heroine, is only an apprentice when she abruptly inherits her master’s position as Wordsmith. Now a member of the elite, she’s one of the few people in the town of Ark who’s allowed to use the full scope of language. Everyone else must speak “List,” 500 words that leader John Noa has approved. (Yes. Letta lives in Noa’s Ark.)

The List doesn’t include words like “hope,” “love,” or “dream.” Noa considers these words too dangerous, since they encourage people to think about the future. Most articles are gone, as well as “Hello,” “Thank you,” and “Please.” People are only allowed to use specialized vocabulary if it’s necessary for them to do their jobs. Art and music of all kinds likewise have been forbidden.

As Wordsmith, Letta prepares basic Lists for Ark schoolchildren and specialized Lists for apprentices. She also thinks it’s part of her job to preserve non-List words so that humans can recover language at some future time, when our ancestors have proven they can handle it responsibly. What she doesn’t know is that Noa destroys her note cards, believing humans must be stripped of language completely.

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Birthday Reviews: Nat Schachner’s “Ancestral Voices”

Birthday Reviews: Nat Schachner’s “Ancestral Voices”

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Cover by Howard V. Brown
Cover by Howard V. Brown

Nat Schachner was born on January 16, 1895 and died on October 2, 1955. Schachner was an attorney who began writing in collaboration with fellow attorney Arthur Zagat. After about a year working together, each man began writing solo, but after publishing science fiction for a decade, Schachner turned his attention towards biographies, focusing on early Americans.

“Ancestral Voices” was a solo effort published by F. Orlin Tremaine in the December 1933 issue of Astounding Stories.It has never been reprinted in English, although a French translation appeared in 1973 and an Italian translation ten years later.

Schachner opens “Ancestral Voices” with a brief look at several people for whom their ancestry helps define who they are in a very basic way, from a Hitlerian dictator of “Mideuropa” (although Hitler is also mentioned) to the crème-de-la-crème of Boston society, to an accountant who is convinced of his superiority over his boss because he is Anglo-Saxon rather than Spanish. Schachner also posits a boxing match between an Aryan champion, Hans Schilling and a Jewish challenger, Max Bernstein, clear stand-ins for Max Schmeling and Max Baer, who fought in the year the story was published.

The main thrust of the story, however, is the arrogant scientist Emmet Pennypacker, who has created a time machine. Denying his assistant any part of the glory, Pennypacker travels backwards in time, without knowing when or where he’ll wind up. To his chagrin, he finds himself in Aquileia during the Hunnic attack of July 18, 452. Unable to return to his own time until the machine is ready to take him there, he winds up rescuing a Roman girl from her Hun rapist.

Although the idea of going back in time and stopping your parent from being born has become cliché, that is the scenario Schachner wrote. However, given the fifteen centuries that separated Pennypacker from his distant forebears, it means he eradicated the common ancestor of about 50,000 people living in the Twentieth Century.

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The 2018 Philip K. Dick Nominees

The 2018 Philip K. Dick Nominees

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The Book of Etta-small After the Flare Deji Bryce Olukotun-small All Systems Red-small

The nominees for the 2018 Philip K. Dick Award, given each year for distinguished science fiction originally published in paperback in the United States, have been announced. They are (links will take you to our previous coverage):

The Book of Etta by Meg Elison (47North)
Six Wakes by Mur Lafferty (Orbit)
After the Flare by Deji Bryce Olukotun (The Unnamed Press)
The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt (Angry Robot)
Revenger by Alastair Reynolds (Orbit)
Bannerless by Carrie Vaughn (Mariner/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
All Systems Red by Martha Wells (Tor.com)

This is a terrific ballot, with something for every reader. Over at the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog, Joel Cunningham sums things up nicely.

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Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1954: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, January 1954: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy January 1954-small Galaxy January 1954-back-small

Mel Hunter’s “Flight Over Mercury” is featured on the cover of the January, 1954 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. It’s much more interesting than the actual surface of Mercury, which looks a lot like our moon.

“Natural State” by Damon Knight — The major cities of the United States operate as industrial nations of their own while the rest of the country becomes agricultural. The cities repeatedly try to subjugate those in the country, but the cities’ technology can’t compete against the genetic engineering of those in the country.

Alvah is sent from New York to open trade with the outsiders — the Muckfeet — in hopes of bringing them into a civilized world and to support the needs of the city. When he meets with the Muckfeet, he finds that they consider him backwards – that those in the cities are the uncultured, uncivilized people. It’s up to a young woman named B.J. to reeducate him, if he’ll listen.

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Birthday Reviews: Robert Silverberg’s “When We Went to See the End of the World”

Birthday Reviews: Robert Silverberg’s “When We Went to See the End of the World”

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Cover by Dean Ellis
Cover by Dean Ellis

Robert Silverberg was born on January 15, 1935. In 1956, he won a Hugo for being the Most Promising New Author, nearly two decades before the John W. Campbell, Jr. Award debuted. He has subsequently won two Hugo Awards for Best Novella and one for Best Novelette. Silverberg has also received two Nebula Awards for Best Short Story, two more for Best Novella, and one for Best Novel.

He has won or been nominated for numerous other awards. Silverberg was a Guest of Honor at Heicon ‘70, the 28th Worldcon, held in Heidelberg, Germany. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 1999 and named an SFWA Grand Master in 2004. Other lifetime achievement awards include the Big Heart Award, the Forry Award, the Prix Utopia, the Skylark Award, the Milford Award.

“When We Went to See the End of the World” was published in Universe 2 in 1972 by Terry Carr. The story was nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula Award. Carr reprinted it the following year in The Best Science Fiction of the Year #2, and Isaac Asimov included it in Nebula Award Stories Eight. Lester del Rey also included it in his Best Science Fiction Stories of the Year, Second Annual Collection. It has since been included in several collections and anthologies and has been translated into Italian, Dutch, German, French, and Russian.

“When We Went to See the End of the World” is set at a cocktail party which in many ways seems very much of the early seventies when the story was written. Casual sex and marijuana are routine, but the main focus of the story is Nick and Jane telling the rest of the attendees about their recent excursion to see the end of the world.

Such excursions are new, only recently having come down from a price where only millionaires could afford to go, so Nick and Jane gained social status by being the first in their neighborhood to see the end of the world, and Nick sees the opportunity to have an affair with a neighbor’s wife.

Their status, and Nick’s chances for an affair, appear to be ended when a couple of latecomers to the party indicate that they have also taken the journey to the end of the world, although the world they saw was extremely different from what Nick and Jane had experienced. Before either couple can accuse each other of lying about their experiences, another couple announces that they completed the journey and saw someone else when they were there.

The story is a reasonably light-hearted look at a common idea in science fiction and presents a reasonable explanation for the multiple experiences the party-goers who visited the end of the world had. At the same time, since all of the activity takes place in the confines of the cocktail party, it is quite possible to read “When We Went to See the End of the World” is a story about people trying to one up each other, rather than relating their actual experiences.

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Vintage Treasures: Dark Imaginings: A Collection of Gothic Fantasy edited by Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski

Vintage Treasures: Dark Imaginings: A Collection of Gothic Fantasy edited by Robert H. Boyer and Kenneth J. Zahorski

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Dark Imaginings 1978-small Dark Imaginings 1978-back-small

Dark Imaginings is the first dark fantasy anthology I can remember lusting after in a bookstore. It was published in 1978, when I was 14 years old, at the lordly price of $4.95 — pretty steep in an era when a typical paperback was a buck fifty, even for a big oversized trade paperback.

In those days I would make weekly sojourns to downtown Ottawa every Saturday afternoon to hunt through the used bookstores on Bank Street for science fiction paperbacks, and I would gaze at it longingly on the bookshelf at WHSmith, or take it down and thumb through it. Joel Schick’s beautiful cover, featuring a canopy of dead, grasping trees in a twisted wood, spoke to me of dark tales whispered by strangers on Halloween. Man, I wanted this book.

And who wouldn’t? Dark Imaginings is packed with classic tales of gothic fantasy, including a Kull tale by Robert E. Howard, a Northwest Smith novelette by C. L. Moore, an Averoigne story by Clark Ashton Smith, a Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser tale by Fritz Leiber, a Cthulhu Mythos story by H. P. Lovecraft, a novel excerpt from Poul Anderson, and ten more stories. Each is illustrated with a sparse b&w pencil sketch by James Cagle. It’s a fine volume to curl up by the window with on a blustery winter evening, as I learned when I finally bought a copy, over a decade later.

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