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Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention 2023, Part I

Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention 2023, Part I

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Some of the eye-popping pulps from the Bob Weinberg collection auctioned at Windy City

This weekend was the Windy City Pulp & Paper show, an annual gathering of about 600-800 pulp and vintage paperback enthusiasts in Lombard, Illinois. Founded by Doug Ellis and run by a dedicated and talented team, Windy City has gradually become my favorite convention. Back when Black Gate was a print magazine I used to get a table and sell back issues, but these days I spend my time more productively. Namely buying stuff, but also hanging out with friends and attending the auction.

And gawking at amazing sights. If you’re interested in rare and unusual items — such as mint-condition pulps, rare first editions, signed volumes, original art, and letters and esoterica from pulp writers such as Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, A. Merritt, and countless others — Windy City is the place to be. It’s a chance to hang out with like-minded individuals, gossip, and (especially!) find incredible treasures.

Reader, I found some treasures.

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New Treasures: The Kirilli Matter, Book 9 of The Fey by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

New Treasures: The Kirilli Matter, Book 9 of The Fey by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

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All 9 volumes of The Fey by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
(WMG Publishing, 2013 – 2023). Covers by Dirk Berger and WMG Publishing

In the mid-90s Kristine Kathryn Rusch wrote The Fey, a 5-volume fantasy series released by the hottest publisher in fantasy, Bantam Spectra (publisher of, among other things, A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin). Jayme Lynn Blaschke interviewed Kristine for my old website SF Site in 1998, and she gave a great synopsis of her ambitions for the series.

When I started working on The Fey, I described it to my editor as a Hundred Years’ War. Now, if you’ve read The Fey, you realize I haven’t gotten anywhere close to a hundred years. We’re in the first twenty years, and I’m starting in on book five. If this series sells well, I could probably go the full hundred years. It may take me twenty years to write, but I know the cycle is going to be long. We’re talking War of the Roses here. And there are a lot of stories in there, and they don’t necessarily have to be about the same characters.

Kristine followed the first five books in The Fey with a 2-volume sequel, The Black Throne, in 1999 and 2000. When the rights reverted back to her, she repacked the books in handsome new editions and re-released them through WMG, the publishing house she runs with her husband, the talented Dean Wesley Smith. As she predicted back in 1998, she is still writing the series 20 years later, and in fact she just released volume 9, The Kirilli Matter, last month.

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Bob’s Books – Shelfie #5: (REH, Moorcock, Kurtz)

Bob’s Books – Shelfie #5: (REH, Moorcock, Kurtz)

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It’s installment number five in Bob’s Shelfie series. This time, I’ll do a shelfie for my favorite fantasy author (Tolkien is second) – Robert E. Howard.

He is of course best known for his Conan the Cimmerian (the movies made it ‘the Barbarian’). They are terrific sword and sorcery stories. If you only know the movies, you should read some of the stories.

On the bottom left are the Del Rey volumes, covering most of his writing. Howard struggled to make a living as a pulpster in Cross Plains, TX, during the Depression. He wrote fantasy, weird menace, westerns, boxing,spicy, horror, historical – the guy was an extremely talented writer. And those Del Reys are superb collections – with some great intros from very knowledgeable folks.

He was an extremely prolific letter writer, and I’ve got several books of his –mostly with fellow Weird Tales contributor, HP Lovecraft.

I never got into graphic novels, but I really like the Marvel Omnibus’ of the color comic that started in the seventies. The three mini-memoirs from Roy Thomas, covering the first hundred-ish issues, are fantastic and great buys.

Up top are various pastiches by other authors. I used to have all the Tors, but don’t any more. Many are pretty poor. For me, L. Sprague de Camp did pretty well (though he was an ass toward REH) and John Maddox Roberts was the best of the Tors, along with Chris Hocking’s lone book (he wrote a second, which has had a long, torturous path to still not being out there – but is due out soon). I like Robert Jordan’s six books, though they all kind of feel the same by the end.

And those two plaques are awards I’ve received from the Robert E. Howard Foundation for my work in the REH world.

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Future Treasures: Fall of the Iron Gods, Book II of The Mechanists by Olivia Chadha

Future Treasures: Fall of the Iron Gods, Book II of The Mechanists by Olivia Chadha

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Rise of the Red Hand and Fall of the Iron Gods (Erewhon Books,
January 19, 2021, and April 30, 2024). Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio. Covers by Rashed AlAkroka

Liz Gorinsky is one of the most respected editors in science fiction and fantasy. In fact, when I finished my first novel The Robots of Gotham, Liz was the first person I brought it to (she didn’t buy it). Liz left Tor Books in 2018 to found an independent speculative fiction publishing company, Erewhon Books. Liz left Erewhon last year, but not before growing it into one of the most exciting new publishers of SF and fantasy.

One of their recent discoveries is Olivia Chadha, a Colorado author of literary novels (Balance of Fragile Things), comic books, and SF/Hopepunk. Her first SF novel was Rise of the Red Hand, the tale of a group of rebels in a climate ravaged future South Asia who discover an appalling government conspiracy, which Nerd Daily calls “a stunning read from beginning to end.” The sequel, Fall of the Iron Gods, is due next spring.

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New Treasures: A Door in the Dark by Scott Reintgen

New Treasures: A Door in the Dark by Scott Reintgen

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A Door in the Dark (Margaret K. McElderry Books, March 28, 2023). Cover by Bose Collins

I’m such a sucker for a great cover. And Bose Collins’ glorious cover artwork for Scott Reintgen’s new fantasy A Door in the Dark — featuring the tantalizing and mysterious grounds of Balmerick University — definitely got my attention.

A Door in the Dark is the opening novel in the Waxways series, a fantasy thriller that follows six young wizards fighting their way home after a portal spell malfunction leaves them stranded in the Dires, and stalked by a terrifying revenant. Kirkus Reviews calls is “Truly fantastic… [with] elements of a locked-room mystery and an original magic system,” and I like the sound of that.

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Vintage Treasures: The Flashing Swords! Original Anthologies, edited by Lin Carter

Vintage Treasures: The Flashing Swords! Original Anthologies, edited by Lin Carter

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Paperback editions of Flashing Swords! #1-5 (Dell Books, 1973-1981).
Covers by Frank Frazetta (1 & 2), Don Maitz (3 & 4), and Richard Corben

Lin Carter is best remembered these days as the editor in charge of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, which was by any measure a monumental achievement, bringing back into print a truly impressive array of important fantasy books, many in serious danger of being forgotten. But Carter’s career extended beyond that. He was a very prolific author, with his best-known series being the Thongor books, with the hero a barbarian quite openly modeled on Conan.

With L. Sprague de Camp, he produced a great many “posthumous collaborations” with Robert E. Howard, featuring Conan — in stories either expanded from fragments Howard left, or new stories featuring Conan. Carter’s Callisto series is fairly derivative of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He also wrote pastiches of Lovecraft, of Dunsany, of Clark Ashton Smith. Carter was also an historian and critic of fantasy fiction, producing book length studies of Lovecraft and Tolkien, as well as Imaginary Worlds, an ambitious introduction to and history of fantasy.

And he was a prolific anthologist, putting out a number of reprint anthologies, a Year’s Best series devoted strictly to fantasy, and finally the subject of this article, the five original anthologies collectively called Flashing Swords.

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Conan has Come Hither: The Book is in Print! (May 1)

Conan has Come Hither: The Book is in Print! (May 1)

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It’s here! You probably know that back in 2019, many of the leading Robert E. Howard experts and fans contributed to a terrific series here at Black Gate on REH’s Conan stories. Prior to that, Black Gate’s own Howard Andrew Jones, along with Bill Ward, had over on his own blog, done a deep dive into each story as well.

Jason Waltz and his Rogue Blades Foundation combined those two series’ and added much more content. Now, Hither Came Conan is a print book that is THE definitive guide to REH’s sword-swinging Cimmerian (Hollywood added ‘the Barbarian’ tag – that’s not REH).

Howard wrote 20 Conan short stories, and one novel. Plus, there’s one unfinished tale (“Wolves Beyond the Border”). Each of the twenty-two stories has an essay from the Black Gate series, as well as Howard and Bill’s blog entry. Plus, there are thirteen new essays related to various stories. Finally there, are eleven additional essays not tied to a specific story.

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Monsters in a Mist-locked Kingdom: The Shepherd King by Rachel Gillig

Monsters in a Mist-locked Kingdom: The Shepherd King by Rachel Gillig

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One Dark Window and Two Twisted Crows (Orbit Books,
September 27, 2022, and October 17, 2023). Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio

I enjoy a good fairy tale. Also a well told-gothic romance. My true love, of course, is monster movies. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a novel that took a stab at mixing all three. At least, not until I read this tasty copy on the back of One Dark Window:

Elspeth Spindle needs more than luck to stay safe in the eerie, mist-locked kingdom she calls home — she needs a monster. She calls him the Nightmare, an ancient, mercurial spirit trapped in her head…

When Elspeth meets a mysterious highwayman on the forest road, her life takes a drastic turn. Thrust into a world of shadow and deception, she joins a dangerous quest to cure the kingdom of the dark magic infecting it. Except the highwayman just so happens to be the King’s own nephew, Captain of the Destriers… and guilty of high treason.

One Dark Window is the debut novel by California author Rachel Gillig, the opening book in a duology. Sequel Two Twisted Crowns arrives later this year.

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Bob’s Books – Shelfie #4: Shared Universes – Thieves World, and Heroes in Hell

Bob’s Books – Shelfie #4: Shared Universes – Thieves World, and Heroes in Hell

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I’ve done three shelfies posts. If you missed those (shame on you!), I’ve been posting shelfies, with comments on some of the books, over in a bookshelf subreddit. With over 2,000 physical books, I’ve got a lot of shelves.

And to me, if you’re talking about a shared universe, you gotta start out with Thieves World. I own a (non-RPG/comics) almost complete library; including one few folks know about, let alone have.

THIEVES WORLD

The first Thieves World book came out in 1979, and I have a first edition Ace paperback. I started reading the series almost from the start, and re-read that first book as recently as 2020. It’s probably in my Top Five Fantasy series’.

Thieves World was a shared universe, where multiple authors wrote short stories around the Empire outpost, armpit town of Sanctuary. Writers could use others’ characters in their own stories, and the authors came and went in the series, but their creations were fair game for anyone.

Many of the biggest names in fantasy joined in, and there were also spin-off novels. There were twelve collections, from 1979 – 1989 in the original series. I’ve got all of them on that bottom shelf. I really liked the art-style on the first six books. A friend of mine has at least two of the original paintings by Walter Valez – I suspect more than just those two, which I got to stand right in front of. LOVE them!

Tempus, Hanse Shadowspawn (my favorite rogue in all of fantasy), Molin Torcholder, Jubal, Crit, Niko – SOOO many cool characters. It got a major shake-up later, when a sea-faring race arrived (foreshadowing of the Seanchan?), but it still works. I think that the current crop of Dark Fantasy writers were influenced by Thieves World, which was well before of them.

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Beauty and Nightmare on an Alien World: NIGHTBORN: COLDFIRE RISING BY C. S. FRIEDMAN

Beauty and Nightmare on an Alien World: NIGHTBORN: COLDFIRE RISING BY C. S. FRIEDMAN

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Nightborn: Coldfire Rising by C. S. Friedman. (DAW Books, July, 18th, 2023, 304pages). Cover art by Jeszika Le Vye.

 

What if your feelings had shape and were visible?

What if you could see your nightmares manifest as they turned on you?

C. S. Friedman has published 14 novels, including the highly acclaimed Coldfire Trilogy and the groundbreaking science fiction novel This Alien Shore (New York Times Notable Book of the Year -1998). Her Nightborn: Coldfire Rising novel will be published this July, 2023 by DAW Books; this post reviews an advanced review copy (preorder from the publisher).

The stunning cover art by Jeszika Le Vye evokes and extends the signature covers of the Coldfire Trilogy crafted by Michael Whelan; the trilogy was released during 1991-1995 followed by a 2012 prequel novella, Dominion. Note that a revised version of Dominion, starring the Hunter himself, is in Nightborn.

And stay tuned — Black Gate has an interview in the works with C. S. Friedman (a perfect fit for our series on Beauty in Weird Fiction).

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