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Immaculate Scoundrels by John R. Fultz

Immaculate Scoundrels by John R. Fultz

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Every job needed a crew.

from Immaculate Scoundrels

I keep revisiting the earliest days of writing about contemporary swords & sorcery lately. Last month I read and reviewed Rogue Blade’s fantastic new anthology, Neither Beg Nor Yield. Now, I’ve just finished John R. Fultz’s return to bash and thrash of the genre with Immaculate Scoundrels (2024).

Fultz was one of the first authors I encountered back in 2011/2012 when I started blogging about S&S. He was one of the writers I discovered through the electronic pages of Black Gate, along with James Enge, Howard Andrew Jones, and Ted Rypel in particular.

Between his collection The Revelations of Zang (2013 – I read it after winning a free copy in a giveaway here at Blackgate!) and The Books of the Shaper series, Fultz staked out a claim to being one of the best new voices in S&S.  These works were heavily inspired by Clark Ashton Smith’ and Lord Dunsany’s strange and often psychedelic fiction ladled over with more blood and thunder. If you think I’m maligning him, rest assured I am not. Anybody daring enough to take Smith as an inspiration and make it more violent, well, that’s not a bad thing.

Instead of more S&S, Fultz followed up with a Native American-themed sword & planet duology. I reviewed both The Testament of Tall Eagle (2015) and Son of Tall Eagle (2017) here. I might have been a little disappointed he hadn’t written more stories like his previous ones, but these are good books and Fultz isn’t one to sit around spinning the same tales again and again.

In the intervening years, he’s written enough short fiction to fill two collections. The first, World Beyond Worlds (2021) brings together his fantasy stories from the period. The second, Darker Than Weird (2023) contains fourteen straight-up horror stories. Now, with Immaculate Scoundrels, it’s back to swords & sorcery, but not like in any of his previous books.

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Andre Norton: Gateway to Magic, Part I

Andre Norton: Gateway to Magic, Part I

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The Zero Stone (Viking, November 1968), Breed to Come (Viking, April 1972), and
Galactic Derelict (World Publishing, 1959). Covers by Robin Jacques, László Gál, and Ed Emshwiller

Andre Norton (1912 -2005): between ages 12 and 16 I probably read more Andre Norton books than any other author. Our small town library didn’t have a huge selection of SF/Fantasy works but someone in their purchasing department seemed OK with Norton, and that was a happy thing for me.

As painful as it is to report, it’s also probably a good thing that Alice Mary Norton chose to write under the name Andre. I just assumed Norton was a man, and I wonder if I would have been as quick to pick up her books if I’d known it was a woman behind the covers. Nowadays it makes no difference, but it might have affected my choices as a teenage boy.

Norton wrote both SF and fantasy, although the earliest books I read by her were firmly in the SF camp. The X Factor, The Zero Stone, and Galactic Derelict. Galactic Derelict is a particular favorite of mine, and one I’ve reread several times (something I very very rarely do.)

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Vintage Treasures: The Augmented Agent by Jack Vance

Vintage Treasures: The Augmented Agent by Jack Vance

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The Augmented Agent (Ace Books, September 1988). Cover by Terry Oakes

I need to read more Jack Vance.

It’s not hard to do. Virtually all of his short fiction has been collected over the years, in places like the five-volume The Early Jack Vance, edited by Terry Dowling and Jonathan Strahan, and the massive The Jack Vance Treasury.

Of course, those are small press collections, and if you’re looking for a more affordable way to dip your toe into the fast-moving waters of Jack Vance, then I recommend one of his fine paperback collections, like The Worlds of Jack Vance, The Best of Jack Vance, or today’s Vintage Treasure, The Augmented Agent, which collects eight Vance rarities, chiefly pulp adventures tales from very early in his career.

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Future Treasures: Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard

Future Treasures: Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg, edited by Robert Friedman and Gregory Shepard

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Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg
(Stark House, March 8, 2024). Cover by Jeff Jordan

Barry N. Malzberg has had an enormously prolific career. He published his first science fiction story the August 1967 issue of Galaxy magazine, and over the next six decades has produced an astounding 500+ short stories, dozens of novels, eleven anthologies, and nearly two dozen collections. These days he’s well known as a genre historian and critic. That’s him on the back cover above, looking suitably curmudgeonly.

He’s currently enjoying something of a career renaissance, courtesy of editor Robert Friedman and publisher Gregory Shepard at Stark House Press, who together have returned some thirty-five Malzberg books to print. To mark that accomplishment, their latest Malzberg volume is something special. Not a reprint at all, but a brand new volume gathering thirty-five uncollected short stories. Collecting Myself: The Uncollected Stories of Barry N. Malzberg will be available on March 8.

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Great Books Make You Cry

Great Books Make You Cry

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John Crowley’s Flint and Mirror (Tor, April 2022), Engine Summer (Bantam, December 1983), and The
Translator (William Morrow/HarperCollins, April 2002). Covers: unknown, Yvonne Gilbert, Chin-Yee Lai

Recently I mentioned that passages in John Crowley’s Flint and Mirror made me cry… and it was (nicely) hinted that maybe it’s odd for men to cry while reading.

The thing is, I cry often while reading. Sometimes for sad events, sometimes for joy, sometimes for anger, sometimes for wonder, sometimes for sheer beauty.

I mean, Crowley does it to me all the time. The conclusion of Engine Summer makes me tear up just thinking about it. (“Ever after. I promise. Now close your eyes.”) And the same for a few passages in The Translator. I was tearing up just trying to talk about “Great Work of Time” at a panel at Boskone a few years ago.

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Make Room For Harry Harrison: Anthony Aycock on a Forgotten SF Master

Make Room For Harry Harrison: Anthony Aycock on a Forgotten SF Master

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Make Room! Make Room! (Berkley Medallion, July 1967). Cover by Richard Powers

Harry Harrison was a true believer. Like Isaac Asimov, Terry Carr, Donald Wollheim, Gardner Dozois, Lin Carter, Damon Knight and a handful of others, he dedicated his life to science fiction, and in a multitude of roles, as writer, editor, critic, and scholar.

His fiction, however, has been largely — and unjustly — forgotten, and in the dozen years since his death in August 2012, all his books have gradually gone out of print, including once-popular novels like Make Room! Make Room! (filmed as Soylent Green in 1973) and The Stainless Steel Rat, one of the top-selling SF novels of the 60s, which spawned a hugely popular series that ran for twelve volumes.

So I was delighted to see Reactor (still known by fans under its secret identity, Tor.com) shine a long-overdue spotlight on our boy Harrison late last year. In “Make Room! Make Room! For Harry Harrison!” Anthony Aycock provides a brief overview of Harrison’s career, and introduces modern readers to his best work.

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Vintage Treasures: The Night Watch by Sean Stewart

Vintage Treasures: The Night Watch by Sean Stewart

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The Night Watch (Ace, September 1998). Cover by Tara McGovern-Benson

Sean Stewart has had a fascinating career. He was Creative Director at Microsoft’s Xbox Studios until the studio closed in 2014, then spent five years at Magic Leap. Today he’s a Managing Partner at Cathy’s Book, LLC, publisher of his alternative reality game/novel series Cathy’s Book, and since 2020 he’s been working at a Generative AI stealth start-up as an Interactive Storyteller.

But he began his career the old fashioned way — writing fantasy novels. His debut book Passion Play (1992) won the Prix Aurora Award for Best Canadian Science Fiction novel, and his follow-up Nobody’s Son won the Aurora Award in 1994. His real success came in in 1995 with the appearance of the magic realist fantasy Resurrection Man, The New York Times Best Science Fiction Book of the Year, and the two books set in the same world, The Night Watch (1997) and Galveston (2000), winner of the World Fantasy Award.

The Night Watch is the one I want to talk about today.

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Maybe We Should Give Up on GoodReads

Maybe We Should Give Up on GoodReads

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Hello, Readers!

As I blaze through my reading goal for this year (two books ahead, baby!), I’ve been thinking about the app/site I now use in order to keep track of my reading, and the functionality of how I’m able to interact with other readers. You see, though I still have an account, and I check in very occasionally, I all but abandoned GoodReads shortly after it was purchased by Amazon.

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Holmes on the Range: A Chronology

Holmes on the Range: A Chronology

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There are a lot of ways to go about writing a Sherlock Holmes story. Some folks attempt to very carefully emulate Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s own style, and to turn out a tale that feels as if it might have been penned (or typed these days) by the creator of the great detective himself. No surprise that results vary. GREATLY. Hugh Ashton and Denis O. Smith are the best I’ve found in this regard. Last week, I took a deep dive into Steve Hockensmith’s Holmes on the Range series. You might want to click over and read that. Below, I present a complete chronology of the series (along with a list in publication order, following). Each entry comes with a non-spoiler summary – the kind of thing you’d find on a dust jacket or on a back cover. I think this is a useful reference to a terrific series. Steve himself reviewed and assisted, so it’s accurate. Come back next week for a Q&A with Steve, to wrap up our series.

A HOLMES ON THE RANGE CHRONOLOGY

ss – short story; nvlla – novella; nov – novel

 (ss) Dear Mr. Holmes (July 1892)

So begins the Holmes on the Range saga. Gustav (Old Red) and Otto (Big Red) Amlingmeyer travel to Brownsville, TX, to sign on for a cattle drive. They’re gonna help move three thousand Mexican longhorns all the way up to Billings, Montana. En route one night, there’s a stampede. As they get the herd back in place, two of the cowboys are found, stomachs slashed, eyes cut out, and scalped. Clearly, Indians had raided the drive and killed the men. Except, Gustav’s not quite so sure. For the first time, he gets to try out the Holmes methods he’d heard sitting around the campfire and listening to Otto read “The Red-Headed League.” A stranger shortly joins the group, a lawman shows up, fireworks ensue, and Big Red gets the detection’ bug.

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Vintage Treasures: The Last Man on Earth edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

Vintage Treasures: The Last Man on Earth edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh

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The Last Man on Earth (Fawcett Crest / Ballantine, August 1982). Cover by Wayne Barlowe

I continue to dip into the (seemingly endless) supply of anthologies from the three amigos of science fiction, Isaac Asimov, Martin Harry Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh. I’m not sure how many they actually produced together, but I’ve managed to track down around 80. They began collaborating in the 80s, and averaged over half a dozen books a year, until Asimov’s death in 1992.

This time I’ve set aside their popular series in favor of a fine standalone book: The Last Man on Earth, a collection of post-apocalyptic tales that present a wide range of imaginative scenarios built around a popular SF trope. They include William F. Nolan’s “The Underdweller,” the tale of a man living in the sewers of San Francisco, trying desperately to salvage mankind’s most important texts while avoiding the new rulers of the city; Gordon Eklund’s “Continuous Performance,” which sees a man struggling to survive by putting on magic shows for androids; Roger Zelazny’s “Lucifer,” the haunting story of the world’s last man and his visit to the mysterious ruins of a long-dead city, and many others.

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