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Author: John ONeill

Behind the Scenes with Skull & Friends

Behind the Scenes with Skull & Friends

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I finally got around to listening to the epic podcast produced earlier this year by the staff and contributors to Tales From the Magician’s Skull. It features the brain trust behind my favorite sword & sorcery magazine, including its illustrious publisher Joseph Goodman, mastermind behind Goodman Games; editor Howard Andrew Jones (Managing Editor emeritus of Black Gate); and authors John C (Chris) Hocking, James Enge, and S.E. (Seth) Lindberg.

The whole thing is well worth listening to, roaming free-form over topics of interest to anyone who enjoys reading or writing quality short fantasy, including horror stories from the slush pile, the rising influence of Clark Ashton Smith and Warhammer, the importance of the establishing shot in fantasy fiction, other sources of quality S&S (including Adrian Simmons’ Heroic Fantasy Quarterly, Jason Ray Carney’s Whetstone, Dave Ritzlin’s DMR Books, Cirsova, and Weirdbook), Icelandic sagas, the timeline of James Enge’s Morlock tales, Hocking’s Benhus stories, Howard Hanuvar tales, and the mysterious and untimely demise of an unusual number of magazine interns.

A couple of friends tipped me off that I was name-checked about forty minutes in, so it wasn’t a surprise when I heard it, but it was certainly worth the wait. The topic under discussion was the rare and classic Fighting Fantasy board games, including The Warlock and Firetop Mountain and especially Legend of Zagor. Here’s a transcription from around the 36-minute mark.

Howard: I bet John O’Neill has all of that, probably multiple copies in shrink.
S.E. Lindberg: Oh my god.

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Vintage Treasures: Weird Shadows From Beyond, edited by John Carnell

Vintage Treasures: Weird Shadows From Beyond, edited by John Carnell

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Weird Shadows From Beyond (Avon Books, August 1969). Cover by Josh Kirby

John Carnell edited the highly-regarded British SF magazines New Worlds (from 1946-64), Science Fantasy (1951-64), and Science Fiction Adventures (1958-63). In the US he’s probably best known an an anthologist, editor of the long-running New Writings in SF (21 volumes from 1964-72), and individual volumes like No Place Like Earth (1952), Gateway to Tomorrow (1954), and Lambda I and Other Stories (1964).

I found a copy of his slender 1969 anthology Weird Shadows From Beyond in a small collection I bought on eBay earlier this year. Carnell’s thoughtful introduction both intrigued me and nicely set the mood for the tales within:

A freshly turned grave with one mourner filled with hate; a telephone kiosk at night with something outside trying to get in; a ghoul playing knucklebones on a tombstone; a bodiless evening dress suit dancing in a moonlit glade; an iron shark hook; a handful of perfect teeth; a witch and a were-leopard — these are but a few of the ingredients which are an integral part of some of the stories in this collection of bizarre stories. Stories told with the consummate skill of modern writers, for the tree of the macabre has come a long way since its roots spawned in the day of the Gothic novel.

Doubtless those giants of yesterday — Poe, Blackwood, Dunsany, Lovecraft, Bierce, Wakefield, and the many others — would be pleased with their foster-children and somewhat amazed by present-day techniques of story-telling, yet, while more than half a century separates the old from the new, both classes of writer have the same aim in view; to entertain and at the same time to cause an occasional shudder or an uneasy feeling at dead of night.

Weird Shadows From Beyond contains ten short stories published between 1956 and 1964, seven of which were drawn from Carnell’s Science Fantasy magazine. They include an Elric story by Michael Moorcock, a pair of stories by Mervyn Peake, and stories by William Tenn, Brian W. Aldiss, Theodore Sturgeon, E. C. Tubb, an original story by Eric C. Williams, and others. Here’s the complete table of contents.

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New Treasures: The Best of Walter Jon Williams

New Treasures: The Best of Walter Jon Williams

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The Best of Walter Jon Williams (Subterranean Press, February 28, 2021). Cover by Lee Moyer

Walter Jon Williams began his writing career in the early 80s designing games for Fantasy Games Unlimited, most notably the Age of Fighting Sail role playing game Privateers and Gentlemen (1983). He had more success with science fiction in the following years, and his work — especially his novellas, which he’s justly famous for — have been nominated for numerous awards. With The Best of Walter Jon Williams, Subterranean Press has produced one of the most important collections of the year, gathering the most vital work of one of the most successful short fiction writers in the field. Here’s the jacket copy.

With the publication of his debut novel, The Privateer, in 1981, Walter Jon Williams began one of the most varied and prolific careers in contemporary popular fiction. His work encompasses cyberpunk (Hardwired), military SF (The Dread Empire’s Fall series), humor (The Crown Jewels), even disaster fiction (The Rift). But much of Williams’s best work takes place in the shorter forms, as this generous volume, filled to overflowing with award-winning and award-nominated stories, clearly proves.

With one exception, The Best of Walter Jon Williams reflects its author’s affection for — and mastery of — the novella form. That exception is “The Millennium Party,” a brief, brilliant account of a virtual anniversary celebration unlike any you have ever imagined. Elsewhere in the collection, Williams offers us one brilliantly sustained creation after another. The Nebula Award-winning “Daddy’s World” takes us into a young boy’s private universe, a world of seeming miracles that conceals a tragic secret. “Dinosaurs” is the far future account of the incredibly destructive relationship between the star-faring human race and the less evolved inhabitants of the planet Shar.

“Diamonds from Tequila” is a lovingly crafted example of SF Noir in which a former child actor attempts a comeback that proves unexpectedly dangerous. “Surfacing” is a tale of alienation featuring a research scientist more at home with the foreign and unfamiliar than with the members of his own species. Finally, the magisterial “Wall, Stone, Craft” offers a brilliantly realized alternate take on a young Mary Godwin, future creator of Frankenstein, and her relationships with the poets Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron, culminating in the creation of a monster who would “stalk through the hearts of all the world.”

These stories, together with half a dozen equally substantial tales, are the clear product of a master craftsman with a seemingly limitless imagination.

The Best of Walter Jon Williams contains eleven novellas and one short story, plus an introduction by Daniel Abraham (one half of the joint-pseudonym James S.A. Corey), and Williams’ extensive Story Notes (13 pages). Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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Vintage Treasures: Legacy by James H. Schmitz

Vintage Treasures: Legacy by James H. Schmitz

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Legacy by James H. Schmitz (Ace Books, 1979). Cover by Bob Adragna

Although I purchased several of his paperbacks in my teens, I didn’t really learn to appreciate the work of James H. Schmitz until I read and reviewed Gardner Dozois’ terrific 1998 anthology The Good Old Stuff: Adventure SF in the Grand Tradition, which contained Schmitz’s story “The Second Night of Summer.” In his intro for that tale Gardner wrote:

Although he lacked van Vogt’s paranoid tension and ornately Byzantine plots, the late James H. Schmitz was considerably better at people than van Vogt was, crafting even his villains as complicated, psychologically complex, and non-stereotypical characters, full of surprising quirks and behaviors that you didn’t see in a lot of other Space Adventure stuff… And his universes, although they come with their own share of monsters and sinister menaces, seem as if they would be more pleasant places to live than most Space Opera universes, places where you could have a viable, ordinary, and decent life once the plot was through requiring you to battle for existence against some Dread Implacable Monster; Schmitz even has sympathy for the monsters, who are often seen in the end not to be monsters at all, but rather creatures with agendas and priorities and points-of-view of their own, from which perspectives their actions are justified and sometimes admirable — a tolerant attitude almost unique amidst the Space Adventure tales of the day, most of which were frothingly xenophobic.

“The Second Night of Summer” is a superb tale of an attack on the planet Noorhut by mysterious and deadly inter-dimensional invaders — an attack thwarted single-handedly by the coolly competent Granny Wannattel and her friendly alien companion. That single story sparked an enduring interest in Schmitz, and I’ve read and enjoyed a lot of his short fiction in the past few decades.

That in turn stirred an interest in those 70s novels that have been gathering dust on my shelves. I recently picked up the 1979 Ace Books edition of Legacy, set in Schmitz’s richly-imagined galactic federation of The Hub, and find myself much more interested in reading it than any of this month’s new SF releases.

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Future Treasures: Voyagers: Twelve Journeys through Space and Time by Robert Silverberg

Future Treasures: Voyagers: Twelve Journeys through Space and Time by Robert Silverberg

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Robert Silverberg is a Science Fiction Grand Master, a living legend of SF, and one of the most prolific and widely respected genre writers of the 20th Century. And here he is, 21 years into the 21st Century, still producing important books that command our attention.

Is Voyagers: Twelve Journeys through Space and Time an important book? Sure looks like it to me. It is, according to my count, his 50th collection, appearing almost exactly 60 years after his first, Next Stop the Stars, was published in 1962. It contains a dozen of his most celebrated stories, including tales of Spanish conquistadores who find the Fountain of Youth, a tourist in Mexico who makes a startling discovery, and spacefarers who find a nightmare world.

If you’re not familiar with Silverberg, this may be one of the most important and rewarding purchases you make this year. And if you are, you already know it’s an essential buy. It arrives in trade paperback from Three Rooms Press in two weeks. Here’s an excerpt from the enthusiastic Publisher’s Weekly review.

SFWA Grand Master Silverberg brings together 12 tension-filled speculative stories from throughout his long career in this impressive collection. Silverberg’s adventurous and melancholy tales are united in taking characters to vividly detailed settings, including a grisly ancient Egyptian embalming market in “Thebes of the Hundred Gates”; a “nightmare world” of “gaudy monsters” called Sidri Akrak in “Travelers”; and even the microscopic space between electrons in “Chip Runner.” Exploring themes of death and identity, the stories range from the bittersweet to the truly tragic, yet the collection never feels grim. These timeless topics also mean that even the decades-old stories still resonate… Readers will be won over by the immersive worldbuilding and clever plot twists of these thought-provoking stories.

Voyagers: Twelve Journeys through Space and Time will be published by Three Rooms Press on April 20, 2021. It is 448 pages, priced at $16 in trade paperback and $9.81 in digital formats. Get all the details at the publisher’s website.

See all our recent coverage of the best upcoming SF and fantasy here.

New Treasures: Glow by Tim Jordan

New Treasures: Glow by Tim Jordan

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Glow by Tim Jordan (Angry Robot, February 23, 2021). Cover by Glen Wilkins

I always enjoy finding a reliable new reviewer. Even more than that, I enjoy a reviewer who’s concise — one who can package a synopsis and recommendation in a single punchy, well written paragraph. John the Librarian, one of my recent discoveries, definitely has the knack. Here’s his review of Glow, Tim Jordan’s debut novel from Angry Robot, released in February, which features a young man on the run from drug liches and an unstoppable assassin in a near-future dystopia….

Just as humankind was on the brink of reaching the stars, fueled by new biotechnology that conveys near-immortality, the Earth was almost destroyed by a nuclear holocaust. Now, a once-great corporation is clinging to power from its orbiting stations, an Earth-side alliance seeks to overthrow it, and a new kind of artificial life lurks in the dark, where nothing is as it seems. Rex is an addict of Glow — a nanotech drug — who can’t remember who he is. When he’s taken in by a sect of nuns who promise salvation, he finds himself in a conflict that could destroy all he holds dear, hunted by something not of this world… In Jordan’s impressive fiction debut, the action and pacing are taut, the characters well drawn, the conflict compelling, and the world he creates is fascinating and immersive in its detail. His world building is reminiscent of the best space opera mixed with the gritty, violent dystopia of cyberpunk.

Glow was published by Angry Robot on February 23, 2021. It is 400 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback, and $6.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Glen Wilkins. Read the first three chapters (22 pages) at Issuu.com.

See all our recent New Treasures here.

Vintage Treasures: Year’s Finest Fantasy edited by Terry Carr

Vintage Treasures: Year’s Finest Fantasy edited by Terry Carr

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Year’s Finest Fantasy (Berkley Books, 1978). Cover by Carl Lundgren

The first Year Best volume I ever read was Terry Carr’s The Best Science Fiction of the Year #6, published in paperback by Del Rey in 1977 and filled with stories that blew my 13-year old mind, including the fascinating gadget tale “I See You” by Damon Knight,  John Varley’s futuristic murder mystery “The Phantom of Kansas,” the raunchy and bizarre “Meathouse Man” by George R. R. Martin, and Isaac Asimov’s classic “The Bicentennial Man.”

I kept an eye out for Terry Carr’s anthologies after that. The next one I spotted was Year’s Finest Fantasy, published by Berkley in July 1987. It was a fine demonstration of Carr’s far-ranging and discerning eye, for it included names both expected — Avram Davidson, Stephen King, a Dying Earth tale by Jack Vance, and Harlan Ellison with one of his finest stories, “Jeffty Is Five” — and unexpected, including T. Coraghessan Boyle, Woody Allen, and a horror novella by Robert Aickmanm. It also contained Steven Utley and Howard Waldrop’s Frankenstein story, “Black as the Pit, from Pole to Pole,” and an long novella from a virtual unknown, Julian Reid, his only known fantasy work, originally published in Universe 7.

Year’s Finest Fantasy was successful enough to kick off a series that lasted for five volumes, changing name to Fantasy Annual with #3. Terry Carr, a fine writer in his own right, provided a thoughtful introduction to the first volume, arguing convincingly that “contemporary fantasy tells us more truly of the nature of humanity than any collection of “realistic” stories could.” 43 years after I first read them, I find Carr’s words still resonate strongly.

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A Masterfully Crafted Dark Tale: Shadows of the Short Days by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson

A Masterfully Crafted Dark Tale: Shadows of the Short Days by Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson

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I’ve been trying to expand my reading diet recently, and I was drawn to the debut novel from Icelandic author Alexander Dan Vilhjálmsson, Shadows of the Short Days, when I read Rachel Cordasco’s review at Strange Horizons, in which she called it “a vibrant mix of urban fantasy, New Weird, and Icelandic folklore… Vilhjálmsson virtuosically weaves together Icelandic folklore and fantasy/cosmic horror… to create a unique reading experience.” That sounds like just what I’ve been looking for.

It was James Tivendale’s review at GrimDark Magazine that sealed the deal for me. Here’s the interesting bits.

Vilhjálmsson’s debut is a masterfully crafted dark tale that fuses elements of alternative history, steampunk, science fiction, urban fantasy, and grimdark. It is a strikingly original and often complex narrative that mainly follows two well-crafted protagonists. Sæmundur is a sorcerer who has recently been expelled from the magic university of Svartiskóli for being too ambitious, being intrigued by gaining absolute knowledge of the esoteric source of magic galdur which is forbidden and borderline heresy. He has been nicknamed Sæmundur the Mad, is now a drug and alcohol-fuelled reprobate in the eyes of the majority of his peers but he wishes to prove them wrong. The other major player is Garún who is a talented graffiti artist and she wears headphones which contain a noisefiend…

Shadows of the Short Days was a similar reading experience to the one that I enjoyed with The Gutter Prayer by Gareth Hanrahan. It takes certain fantasy tropes and turns them on their heads… This story is brimming with interesting original races, magic and monstrosities including the winged and intimidating Náskárar, the art of seiour, and a cloth-golem… [it] features parallel worlds, demons, jellyfish that aid breathing underwater, huge airships, rebellious factions, grotesque torture segments, mind-reading, complex incantations, and magical rituals, and a loveable pet cat…

It’s superbly well written, thrilling, and the pacing is exquisite… Vilhjálmsson has presented us with one of the most ambitious, intense, original and thrilling debuts that I’ve read in a long time… this is highly [recommended] and should be a big deal in the fantasy scene.

Shadows of the Short Days was published by Titan Books on October 20, 2020. It is 464 pages, priced at $14.95 in trade paperback and $9.99 in digital formats. Read the complete first chapter (8 pages) at Fantasy Book Reviews.

See all our recent coverage of the best new science fiction and fantasy here.

Vintage Treasures: Where Do We Go From Here? edited by Isaac Asimov

Vintage Treasures: Where Do We Go From Here? edited by Isaac Asimov

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There are prolific anthologists, and there are very prolific anthologists, and there’s Isaac Asimov. The Internet Science Fiction database lists nearly 200 anthologies with his name on them, averaging around seven per year between 1963 and his death in 1992. (If you’re thinking, Geez that seems like a lot, let me clarify for you. Yes. It’s a lot.)

Of course, the vast majority of those were produced later in his career and in partnership with a team of editors, especially Martin H. Greenberg and Charles G. Waugh. In the early days Asimov compiled anthologies the old-fashioned way: by himself. It was the enduring, decades-long success of those books that paved the way for the massive literary-industrial complex to spring up around Asimov in the 80s and 90s. And he may have had no original anthology more successful or popular than Where Do We Go From Here?

Where Do We Go From Here? was published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1971, reprinted by Fawcett Crest in 1972, and kept in print in paperback for nearly ten years. It was one of the most popular and discussed SF anthologies of the decade, by a wide margin, and cemented Asimov’s reputation for curating — and selling — top-notch short fiction collections. It gathers stories by Stanley G. Weinbaum, John W. Campbell, Jr., Lester del Rey, Robert A. Heinlein, Hal Clement, James Blish, Jerome Bixby, Arthur C. Clarke, James E. Gunn, H. Beam Piper, Walter Tevis, Larry Niven, and others. Here’s the complete Table of Contents.

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New Treasures: The Swimmers by Marian Womack

New Treasures: The Swimmers by Marian Womack

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Marian Womack’s debut The Golden Key was published last year — bad year for a debut novel, I must say — but it still managed to get a lot of attention. Booklist called it a mix of “Spiritualism, the suffragette movement, and the fairy tales of Lewis Carroll and George MacDonald… an elegant sense of mystery and otherworldliness. This gothic fantasy will captive fans of historical fiction.”

Her second novel The Swimmers, set in an Earth ravaged by climate change, imagines a world in which the rich live in the Upper Settlement rings high in orbit, and the rest of humanity struggles to survive in a dangerously transformed world, a place of deep jungles and monstrous animals. Publishers Weekly calls it a “meticulously detailed sophomore novel set in a vivid, believable eco-dystopia… Readers will be captivated.”

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