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Vintage Treasures: Pilgrims through Space and Time: A History and Analysis of Scientific Fiction by J. O. Bailey

Vintage Treasures: Pilgrims through Space and Time: A History and Analysis of Scientific Fiction by J. O. Bailey

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Pilgrims through Space and Time-small

Cover by Ronald Clyne

You never know what strange wonders you’ll find at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Show. This year, among many other treasures on the $1 table, I found a coverless copy of J. O. Bailey’s 1947 nonfiction tome Pilgrims through Space and Time, which grew out of his 1934 Ph.D. thesis at the University of North Carolina.

You’d think a dissertation would be too dry to become a classic of genre (and in most cases you’d be right), but this was one popular enough to inspire the Pilgrim Award, given annually by the Science Fiction Research Association for contributions to the study of SF. It was first given to Bailey in 1970, and is still awarded today. Recipients have included Jack Williamson, Damon Knight, James E. Gunn, Brian W. Aldiss, Sam Moskowitz, Gary K. Wolfe, Joanna Russ, John Clute, L. Sprague de Camp, Brian Stableford, Mike Ashley, Gary Westfahl, Gérard Klein, Algis Budrys, and Pamela Sargent.

Pilgrims is a little dry for light reading, but I did find Bailey’s discussions of Lovecraft (“splendid”), and the pulp stories of Stanton Coblentz, Ray Cummings, A. Hyatt Verrill, John Taine, and others, to be entertaining enough to make me want to pick up some of my favorite pulp anthologies again — and maybe look at them in a new light.

Thomas Clareson, in his 1972 foreword to the Greenwood Press reprint edition, did a fine job summarizing the importance of this book to early SF scholarship. Here’s what he said.

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The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Michael Whelan

The Golden Age of Science Fiction: Michael Whelan

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Wonderworks
Wonderworks

A Princess of Mars
A Princess of Mars

The Gods of Mars
The Gods of Mars

The Best Artist category was not one of the original Hugo categories in 1953, but was introduced at the second awards in 1955, when it was won by Frank Kelly Freas. Since then, some version of the award has been a constant, with the exception of 1957, when the award was not presented. Originally called the Hugo for Best Artist, it eventually became the award for best Professional Artist when the Best Fan Artist award was introduced in 1967. Michael Whelan won his first award in 1980, beginning a seven year run of winning the award. He eventually won the award thirteen times, most recently in 2002, along with two other Hugo Award for Best Nonfiction Book (in 1988) and the first award for Best Original Artwork (in 1992). He has been nominated for the Hugo a total of 31 times.

The Locus Awards were established in 1972 and presented by Locus Magazine based on a poll of its readers. In more recent years, the poll has been opened up to on-line readers, although subscribers’ votes have been given extra weight. At various times the award has been presented at Westercon and, more recently, at a weekend sponsored by Locus at the Science Fiction Museum (now MoPop) in Seattle. The Best Artist award dates back to 1974, although in the three previous years, a Best Paperback Cover Artist award was presented and in the previous two years a Best Magazine Artist awards was presented. The first Professional Artist award was won by Frank Kelly Freas. Michael Whelan won his first award in 1980, beginning a twenty-one year run of winning the award. He eventually won the award thirty times, with one additional win for Best Art Book in 1994. In 1980. The Locus Poll received 854 responses.

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You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Bookshelf: John DeNardo on the Best June Science Fiction & Fantasy

You’re Gonna Need a Bigger Bookshelf: John DeNardo on the Best June Science Fiction & Fantasy

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The Girl in Red Christina Henry-small The Iron Dragon's Mother Michael Swanwick-small Wastelands The New Apocalypse John Joseph Adams-small

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with John DeNardo, the most well-informed man in science fiction (way back in March, if you must know, when he recommended Titanshade and A Memory Called Empire to us.) John never slows down, and at the beginning of the month he surveyed the best new science fiction and fantasy arrivals in his regular column at Kirkus Reviews. Here’s a few of the highlights, starting with a post-apocalyptic version of Little Red Riding Hood from Christina Henry.

The Girl in Red by Christina Henry (Berkley, 304 pages, $16.00 in trade paperback/$11.99 digital, June 18, 2019)

With The Girl in Red, Christina Henry one again proves that retellings don’t necessarily lack originality. (Her previous re-spins of classic stories include 2015’s Alice, 2016’s Red Queen, 2017’s Lost Boy, and 2018’s The Mermaid.) In this post-apocalyptic take on Little Red Riding Hood, a Crisis has decimated much of the world population, forcing survivors to huddle in quarantine camps. But that doesn’t mean that the woman in the red jacket is helpless against the new kind of monster that the Crisis has created.

Next up is Michael Swanwick’s long-awaited sequel to his World Fantasy Award nominee The Iron Dragon’s Daughter (1993), which came in #2 in the voting for the Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and The Dragons of Babel (2008).

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A Mashup of Firefly, The Rowan, and Star Wars: Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

A Mashup of Firefly, The Rowan, and Star Wars: Aurora Rising by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff

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Aurora Rising-smallThe spaceship disintegrates around Tyler, sagging and rupturing, giving way to the void. He’s going to die out here in hyperspace, taken out by one of its freak Foldstorms.

He isn’t supposed to be here. It’s the night before the Draft, and he should be sleeping, preparing to tap the team he wants. As the top-ranked Alpha in the League, he’s got the strongest draft picks of anyone.

But he couldn’t sleep. And then the distress call came in.

Everyone knows that the Hadfield colony ship was lost more than two hundred years ago. But somehow, impossibly, it shows up on radar. And according to the initial scan, it contains tens of thousands of corpses, but also a single heat signature…

Somewhere deep in the hold of the Hadfield, someone’s alive.

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Future Treasures: Priest of Lies, Book II of War for the Rose Throne by Peter McLean

Future Treasures: Priest of Lies, Book II of War for the Rose Throne by Peter McLean

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Priest of Bones-medium Priest of Lies-small

When you’ve been reading fantasy as long as I have, you get used to hyperbolic praise plastered all over book covers. But even so, you don’t see the kind widespread acclaim that was heaped on the opening novel in Peter McLean’s new fantasy series last year, Priest of Bones.

Booknest called it “Absolutely sensational… Low Fantasy at its finest, and I wouldn’t hesitate to call it the Fantasy Debut of the Year,” and Fantasy Book Review said, “I can safely say that this will be the book dark fantasy and grimdark fans will be raving about at the end of this year.” Even Booklist raved, proclaiming it “A pitch-perfect blend of fantasy and organized-crime sagas like Puzo’s The Godfather… Expect word of mouth support from fantasy fans to turn this one into a genre hit.” But I think my favorite came from Publisher’s Weekly, with their usual economy:

Tomas Piety [is] a nefarious crime lord turned priest. After being away at war for many years, Tomas comes back to find that Ellinburg is changed… With his gang of Pious Men, Tomas embroils himself in cutthroat politics and epic barroom brawls to win back the city that once was his… Anyone itching to read a high-stakes story should pick up this delightful combination of medieval fantasy and crime drama.

Read the complete PW review here.

The second book in the series, Priest of Lies, is one of the most anticipated books of the year. It arrives in trade paperback from Ace Books next week. Here’s the description.

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New Treasures: The Ragged Blade by Christopher Ruz

New Treasures: The Ragged Blade by Christopher Ruz

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The Ragged Blade-back-small The Ragged Blade-small

Back in January I wrote about a conversation Colin Coyle, co-founder of Parvus Press, and I had in a bar at the World Fantasy Convention. One of the upcoming titles he told me about was The Ragged Blade, the debut fantasy novel from Christopher Ruz. The book’s editor, Kaelyn E. Considine, was kind enough to send me a copy of the finished book, and it looks fantastic. In an article titled “Why I Love The Ragged Blade” on the Parvus website, Colin pulls back on the curtain on how a small press acquires a book like this one.

One of the first books that was ever submitted to us was Century of Sand by Christopher Ruz. It was a previously self-published book that Ruz had released years prior. The book had some very positive reviews, but Ruz wasn’t sure how to go about selling it to a broad audience. He wanted to know if we wanted to pick it up and re-release it… Century of Sand was a tautly-paced book. It was a violin string on the verge of snapping. It was the work of a guy who was going to be a master at managing the rise and fall of mood, tension, and action in a book. But it wasn’t yet the best book it could be… when the Parvus team met to go through acquisitions, we all agreed we weren’t ready to take on the complexities of a re-release.

Two years later, Ruz sent me a brand new novel that he was querying… I called him right away and told him I thought it was time for us to tackle that Century of Sand challenge together and he readily agreed. It was a weird path to a publishing deal; I reject the book and then, two years later I end up buying it because of an entire different manuscript he sent. But publishing is a weird business, I’m a weird guy, and some of the best things in life are weird. Like pudding or bergamot.

So we picked up Century of Sand, Ruz threw away the opening third of the book, combined major characters, eliminated sub-plots, and all-but-completely rewrote anything that remained. And what we ended up with was The Ragged Blade, Book One of the Century of Sand by Christopher Ruz… I love this book. I love the broken father/daughter journey, the way this book is both expansive and intimate at the same time, and how every page of The Ragged Blade is a carefully composed work of true craft.

The Ragged Blade was published by Parvus Press on June 4, 2019. It is 459 pages, priced at $14.99 in trade paperback and $7.99 in digital formats. The cover is by Ronan Le Fur. See our previous Parvus Press coverage here.

Vintage Treasures: Perilous Planets, edited by Brian Aldiss

Vintage Treasures: Perilous Planets, edited by Brian Aldiss

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Perilous Planets-back-small Perilous Planets-small

Cover by Alex Ebel

In the days when I was first discovering science fiction, there were a number of seminal books that helped lead me along the path to becoming a collector. These were the tantalizing artifacts that taught me that SF and fantasy tended to come in a series, just like the comics I collected in my youth. And this — in the days when completing a series meant questing through bookstores, instead of simply ordering online — added a delicious element of uncertainty and desire to my new hobby.

I knew that my favorite books as a kid, like Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators and Perry Rhodan, were packaged as a series, and I was comfortable with the concept. When it gradually dawned on me that adult SF books, like Asimov’s Foundation series, Herbert’s Dune, The Lord of the Rings, and others, were series as well, I took to science fiction like a fish to water.

SF publishers understood this simple reading mentality of course, and frequently took advantage of it, packaging books that often had only nebulous connections into virtual series. Some were more successful than others. One of my favorite examples is the late 70s SF anthology series from Avon Books, all published with gorgeous wraparound covers by Alex Ebel. Avon found four Brian Aldiss anthologies published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in the UK, and repackaged them with similar covers across the pond: Galactic Empires Volume One (1979), Galactic Empires: Volume Two (1979), Evil Earths (1979), and Perilous Planets (1980).

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Tor.com on Robert E. Howard’s First (and Best?) Barbarian

Tor.com on Robert E. Howard’s First (and Best?) Barbarian

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Kull Robert E Howard-back-small Kull Robert E Howard-small

Kull the Fabulous Warrior King (Bantam, 1978). Art by Lou Feck

Rogue Blades Entertainment mastermind Jason M Waltz tipped me off to this article at Tor.com this morning, saying,

A decent article, even well-argued, but I disagree Kull is the better barbarian. Kull is the precursor to the culmination that is Conan; without Kull, Conan would be a lesser creation. Yet I enjoyed the article.

The piece itself, by Alan Brown, is a thoughtful look at one of Robert E. Howard’s early creations, and a great intro to a fascinating character, especially for those chiefly familiar with Howard through his later Conan tales.

The Kull stories marked the first time that Howard created an entire quasi-medieval world from whole cloth. While the various races and tribes bear some resemblance to peoples who inhabit the world today, he portrayed a time before the great cataclysm that caused Atlantis to sink, when even the shape of the land was different, a time when pre-human races still walked the Earth. Kull is an Atlantean barbarian who from his earliest days harbored an ambition that set him apart from his fellow tribesmen. A large, quick man, often compared to a tiger, he is powerful yet lithe, with dark hair and grey eyes, and a complexion bronzed from a life in the sun. He had been a warrior, galley slave, pirate, mercenary, and general before seizing the throne of Valusia from the corrupt King Borna. While a mighty warrior, Kull also has a whimsical and inquisitive side. He could be kind and sensitive, and is fascinated by the metaphysical.

Read the entire piece here.

The Adventure Stories We’ve Needed: Crossbones & Crosses: An Anthology of Heroic Swashbuckling Adventure, edited by Jason M Waltz

The Adventure Stories We’ve Needed: Crossbones & Crosses: An Anthology of Heroic Swashbuckling Adventure, edited by Jason M Waltz

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Crossbones & Crosses-small

Art by Dieder Normand

There’s been no shortage of publishing events in 2019, but one of the most exciting for me personally has been the return of Rogue Blades Entertainment.

In its heyday about a decade ago, RBE was well on the way to becoming the most important adventure fantasy publisher in the US. With a back catalog that included Writing Fantasy Heroes (which included contributions from luminaries such as Steven Erikson, Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card, Glen Cook, and Howard Andrew Jones), and hit anthologies like Rage of the Behemoth (2009) and Demons (2010), it had built a loyal customer base and a stellar reputation. Then the creative mastermind behind Rogue Blades, Jason M Waltz, scaled back operations to make certain they could reliably deliver on their long-term commitments.

It was a strategy that paid off. The contest anthology Challenge! Discovery, RBE’s first new book in four years, appeared in 2017, and Crazy Town, a brand new anthology of hard boiled tales, arrived to wide acclaim in November. And the book I’ve really been waiting for, Crossbones & Crosses, an anthology of Heroic Swashbuckling Adventure, was published just last month with a stellar cover by artist Dieder Normand.

Crossbones & Crosses is a collection of new and reprint tales of swashbuckling historical adventure featuring pirates and crusaders. Contributors include Howard Andrew Jones, Keith Taylor, C.L. Werner, and many others. Here’s a snippet from Keith West’s review at Adventures Fantastic.

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IMHO: A Personal Look at Dystopian Fiction — Part Two: J.G. Ballard

IMHO: A Personal Look at Dystopian Fiction — Part Two: J.G. Ballard

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Empire of the Sun-small Crash Ballard-small The Wind from Nowhere Ballard-small

For the sake of this article, and not wanting to rely on memory alone, I’ve used a brief synopsis of each novel mentioned here, courtesy of Wikipedia.

If you read Part 1 of this article you’ll know about some of the older novels of dystopian fiction upon which I grew up, novels that surely inspired many other writers… novels I’d hate to see get tossed in a pile or in a corner to collect dust with all the other forgotten novels. Today I’m going to talk about one writer in particular: J. G. Ballard.

Ballard’s memoirs of being a kid during WWII were made into a fairly good film by Steven Spielberg, starring Christian Bale when he was just a kid: Empire of the Sun. Film director David Cronenberg turned Ballard’s strange, erotic and haunting novel Crash into a strange, erotic and haunting film. I’ve read most of Ballard’s short stories, and a number of his other novels, but my personal favorites are his Quartet of Elemental Apocalypse, as one critic dubbed the series. To me, they truly depict dystopian futures. Ballard had a great talent for creating interesting, believable characters, making his stories more character-driven than plot- or action-driven. He excelled at pitting ordinary people against extraordinary odds, and his plots contained many an unexpected twist and turn.

The Wind from Nowhere is Ballard’s debut novel published in 1961; he had previously published only short stories, which I also highly recommend. This is the novel that launched his apocalyptic quartet — his “series” dealing with scenarios of natural disasters. In this novel, civilization is reduced to ruins by prolonged worldwide hurricane force winds. As an added dimension, Ballard explores how disaster and tragedy can bond people together in ways that no normal experiences ever could.

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