Search Results for: Ballantine Adult Fantasy west

Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy edited by Lin Carter

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Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy, Volume 1 (Ballantine Books, 1972). Cover by Gervasio Gallardo Over the decades we’ve spent a lot of pixels at Black Gate talking about Lin Carter’s groundbreaking Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. He was under contract to produce a book a month for editors Ian and Betty Ballantine, and that’s exactly what he did for five years and 65 titles, almost all reprints of out-of-print fantasy novels and original anthologies. For the most part my favorites…

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IMHO: A PERSONAL HISTORY OF SWORD & SORCERY AND HEROIC FANTASY

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The Evolving and Cloned Barbarian Conan, King Kull, Cormac, Bran Mak Morn — names that conjure magic, characters often imitated, but never duplicated. These creations of Robert E. Howard (circa 1930) started the Sword and Sorcery boom of the 1960s and early 1970s. Then there are the barbarian warriors inspired by Howard — “Clonans,” as one writer recently referred to these sword-slinging, muscle-bound characters. A fair observation, but in some cases, not so true. I prefer to think of these…

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Adventure and Tragedy on a Far Future Earth: Keith West on Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith

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Zothique by Clark Ashton Smith. Ballantine Adult Fantasy #16, 1976. Cover by George Barr Some years back Keith West wrote a series of articles for Black Gate on the legendary Ballantine Adult Fantasy series edited by Lin Carter. In fifteen pieces between 2013-2015 Keith covered the first fourteen or so titles, including The Blue Star by Fletcher Pratt, The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany, and The Doom that Came to Sarnath by H. P. Lovecraft. Yesterday I was delighted…

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Betty and Ian Ballantine

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The Balrog Award, often referred to as the coveted Balrog Award*, was created by Jonathan Bacon and first conceived in issue 10/11 of his Fantasy Crossroads fanzine in 1977 and actually announced in the final issue, where he also proposed the Smitty Awards for fantasy poetry. The awards were presented for the first time at Fool-Con II at the Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas on April 1, 1979. The awards were never taken particularly seriously, even by…

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Young Magicians edited by Lin Carter

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The Young Magicians Lin Carter, ed. Ballantine Books October 1969, 280p. $0.95 Cover art by Sheryl Slavitt I apologize for having taken so long to get this post done. I’ve been on the road for over half the weekends since the end of April, mostly family trips for graduations or dive meets my son was competing in. I thought I would have a little more time when the second summer session started since I would be teaching, but that hasn’t…

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The Future of Fantasy: May New Releases

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May, why do you do this to me? There are so many dynamite new fantasy books hitting the stands, I scarcely know where to look. And I have absolutely no idea where I’ll find the have time to read any of them. Well, I’ll worry about that later. The task at hand is to introduce you to the 30 most intriguing fantasy titles released this month. And trust me, I had a heck of a time whittling it down to 30….

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Dragons, Elves, and Heroes edited by Lin Carter

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Dragons, Elves, and Heroes Edited by Lin Carter Ballantine Books (277 pages, October 1969, $0.95) Cover art by Sheryl Slavitt It’s been a while since my last post, and no, I haven’t fallen off the face of the Earth, run away to join the circus, or been abducted by aliens. Although there have been times I’ve considered that circus thing. Or maybe gypsies. No, I’m just overloaded this semester (my day job is in academia), which hasn’t left a lot of…

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Figures of Earth by James Branch Cabell

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Figures of Earth James Branch Cabell Ballantine Books (290 p, November 1969. $0.95) Cover art by Robert Pepper Okay, this one is probably going to be the last Cabell I read for a while. It turned out to be more of a slog than I expected. I’ll elaborate below. Figures of Earth was the second volume of James Branch Cabell’s Chronicles of Fabled Poictesme, published as part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. It is the story of how the…

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees

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Lud-in-the-Mist Hope Mirrlees Ballantine Books (273 pages, March 1970, $0.95) Cover art by Gervasio Gallardo One of Lin Carter’s greatest achievements as editor of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, in my opinion, was rescuing Lud-in-the-Mist from obscurity. The third and final novel by Hope Mirrlees, Lud-in-the-Mist was her only fantasy. After this book was published, she stopped writing. More on that later. Carter tells the story in his introduction that he had never heard of the book when a friend…

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The Ballantine Adult Fantasy Series: The Spawn of Cthulhu edited by Lin Carter

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The Spawn of Cthulhu H. P. Lovecraft and Others Lin Carter, ed. Ballantine Books (274 pages, October 1971, $0.95) Cover by Gervasio Gallardo Lin Carter edited more than one anthology for the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. Up until now, I’ve not discussed any of them. One reason is that where I am sequentially, there have only been two. The other reason is it’s easier to discuss a single novel than the contents of an anthology. I’m going to break with…

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