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Tor Doubles #33: Mike Resnick’s Bwana and Bully!

Tor Doubles #33: Mike Resnick’s Bwana and Bully!

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Cover for Bwana and Bully!

As we move into the final month of reviews, there is a significant change in the format of the Tor Doubles. The series began with the proto-Tor Double of Keith Laumer’s The House in November and The Other Sky, but every volume since then has contained stories by two different authors.  However, three of the four final published volumes are single author books. This week looks at a volume with two stories by Mike Resnick, next week will be two stories by Damon Knight, and in three weeks, the final published volume contained two stories by Fritz Leiber. This volume was originally published in June 1991, which sharp eyed readers will note skips a month from last week’s volume. That is because Tor Doubles #33 and 34 were published in reverse numerical order, with this one published after the next one.

Bwana was an originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine in January 1990. Between 1988 and 1996, Resnick wrote ten connected stories about the utopian planetoid Kirinyaga, eight of which earned him Hugo nominations, including two winners. Describing the entire series as a “Fable of Utopia,” each story followed a similar pattern.

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A Storm of Another Kind: Mother of Storms by John Barnes

A Storm of Another Kind: Mother of Storms by John Barnes

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Mother of Storms (Tor Books, July 1994). Cover by Bob Eggleton

One of science fiction’s subgenres is that novel that emulates the style of bestsellers — bestsellers as they were before the fantastic genres became a big part of the cultural mainstream. Michael Crichton, for one, specialized in this type of writing, from The Andromeda Strain to Jurassic Park; but other writers take it up from time to time: Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle in Lucifer’s Hammer, David Brin in Earth, and much more recently Andy Weir in The Martian and Harry Turtledove in Supervolcano.

Some markers are common in this sort of book: reduced use of expository passages, a more demotic prose style, a near future setting that’s easy to imagine, multiple viewpoints and a large cast of characters — and despite this, a much reduced presence of characters who have a detached, scientific view of the world. John Barnes’s Mother of Storms is a classic example of that kind of science fiction.

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The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo, Part II

The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo, Part II

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I Am a Barbarian by Edgar Rice Burrough (Ace Books, September 1975). Cover by Boris Vallejo

The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo , which I discussed in my post last week, contains three more paintings that became paperback covers that I own and well remember, although none of these are Sword & Planet covers.

First up we have I Am a Barbarian by Edgar Rice Burroughs, from Ace Books. If you discount his westerns, this is one of only two historical novels ERB wrote, the other being The Outlaw of Torn. Torn is my favorite of ERB’s standalone novels but Barbarian also ranks up there.

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New Treasures: Mistress of Bees by Bernie Mojzes

New Treasures: Mistress of Bees by Bernie Mojzes

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Mistress of Bees (Dragonwell Publishing, September 23, 2025)

Judge not a book by its cover, lest ye be judged. Possibly F. Nietzsche said this. More likely, he didn’t. But he should have, and in particular, he should have said it about the highly entertaining Mistress of Bees, from Dragonwell Publishing, and authored by Bernie Mojzes. I mention this because, based on the cover art, I didn’t know what to expect, but I am pleased to report that what’s hiding inside is exactly what a good many Black Gate readers are looking for.

Mistress of Bees features a successful blend of socially relevant High Fantasy and streetwise Sword & Sorcery, all nicely leavened with a sly sense of humor. Revolution with a Les Mis flair waits in the wings, and when it comes – as it does more than once – the ruling aristocracy gives way to plucky, upstart attempts at democracy, cheered on (always) by our hero, Maris Goselin.

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Tor Doubles #32: Harlan Ellison’s Run for the Stars and Jack Dann and Jack Haldeman II’s Echoes of Thunder

Tor Doubles #32: Harlan Ellison’s Run for the Stars and Jack Dann and Jack Haldeman II’s Echoes of Thunder

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Cover for Run for the Stars and Echoes of Thunder by Barclay Shaw

Tor Double number #32 was originally published in April 1991 and includes Echoes of Thunder, an original story, in this form, for the Tor Double line, which, as with the Popkes story a couple volumes earlier, has not been reprinted in this form. This is Dann and Haldeman’s only appearance in the series. It also includes Harlan Ellison’s only appearance in the series.

Run for the Stars was originally published in Science Fiction Adventures in June 1957. Ellison has noted this as the author’s preferred edition of the story.

Benno Tallant is a drug addict on war torn Deald’s World. While ransacking the corpse of a grocer for money with which to buy drugs, he is taken prisoner by three men who need his assistance in their attempt to keep Earth safe from invasion of the alien Kyban, whose fleet is preparing to destroy the human outpost on Deald’s World.

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Good Cover Art Fires the Imagination: The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo

Good Cover Art Fires the Imagination: The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo

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The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo (Del Rey, May 1978). Cover by Boris Vallejo

I make no secret of the fact that when it comes to books, I’m first and foremost a fan of the prose and the stories. The cover art is important but secondary to me. But there’s no denying the power of good cover art to catch one’s eye, to fire the imagination, and to cement one’s memories of the stories. Genres such as Sword & Planet and Sword & Sorcery have been graced with some truly great covers over the years, from Krenkel, Frazetta, and Vallejo, to Jones, Kelly, Kirby, Bell, Royo, and many others.

When I walk past my shelves, the covers of favorite books leap out at me and evoke all kinds of pleasant memories and associations with what’s inside. Over the years, I’ve bought various art books and calendars from my favorite book cover artists. Last night I started paging through my copy of The Fantastic Art of Boris Vallejo, and I thought I’d share a few images and the connections they have for me to memorable reading.

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Alt History on Acid: Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon

Alt History on Acid: Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon

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Shadow Ticket (Penguin Press, October 7, 2025)

I never really fully understood what Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity Rainbow was about. Much like everyone else. As one critic put it,

I doubt that anyone could account for everything going on in Gravity’s Rainbow, even Pynchon himself, although I suppose he has an edge on the rest of us.

I sort of knew it had something to do with V-2 rocketry and associated penis imagery, fascism and political satire, conspiracies and paranoia, alt-history, combined in a hodgepodge of puns, jokes, silly song lyrics, and linguistic puzzles spread amongst loosely connected absurdist plot lines. And that is sometimes characterized as the

Great American Novel, like Moby-Dick. Unlike Melville’s readers, though, Pynchon’s readers can go for pages at a time without one clue as to what is going on with the plot, setting, or characters.

Which I think is the point. To not know what is going on. Because that’s the way life is; no controlling narrative, but rather a series of random occurrences that nonetheless shape the impenetrable human condition.

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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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Tor Doubles #31: Gordon R. Dickson’s The Alien Way and Naked to the Stars

Tor Doubles #31: Gordon R. Dickson’s The Alien Way and Naked to the Stars

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Cover for The Alien Way and Naked to the Stars by Brian Waugh

Tor Double #31 was originally published in April 1991. The proto-Tor Double, which included two stories by Keith Laumer, was the only volume up to this point to include content from a single author. This volume, with two stories by Gordon R. Dickson, is the first official Tor Double to include content from only one author. However, of the remaining five Tor Doubles, four of them would prove to be single author collections.

Naked to the Stars was an originally serialized in F&SF in October and November 1961. Although the story begins as a fairly typical piece of military science fiction, Dickson takes it into a different direction, which makes the story stand out.

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Into the World of Edgar Rice Burroughs, with Richard A. Lupoff and John Flint Roy

Into the World of Edgar Rice Burroughs, with Richard A. Lupoff and John Flint Roy

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Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure by Richard A. Lupoff (Ace, 1968) and A Guide to Barsoom
by John Flint Roy (Ballantine Books, January 1976). Covers by Frank Frazetta and Boris Vallejo

Among my prized possessions are these two books. Edgar Rice Burroughs: Master of Adventure, by Richard A. Lupoff, 1965 from Ace books with an early cover by Frazetta, and A Guide to Barsoom by John Flint Roy, 1976, from Ballantine Books, with a cover by Boris Vallejo and some interior illustrations by Neal MacDonald.

Lupoff’s book has quite a bit of biographical material on ERB, but is mostly an examination of his work. It isn’t just a love affair with ERB but includes plenty of critical analysis. I find myself disagreeing with Lupoff on one particular conclusion he draws, but that’s material for another post. I much appreciated this comprehensive examination and refer to it often.

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