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Vintage Treasures: Manifest Destiny by Barry B. Longyear

Vintage Treasures: Manifest Destiny by Barry B. Longyear

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Manifest Destiny (Berkley Books, 1980). Cover by John Rush

I started buying science fiction magazines in 1977, after learning such things existed in the pages of paperback anthologies edited by my new favorite author, Isaac Asimov. I pedaled my bike off Rockcliffe air base in Ottawa in search of a corner store, and found one with a well stocked magazine rack. Hiding behind Better Homes and Gardens and the latest issue of Newsweek I found a row of compact marvels with colorful covers depicting spaceships and far planets. They included Analog, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Amazing, and the second issue of Asimov’s very own magazine, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine.

I still recall that bike ride home, clutching Asimov’s and Analog in one hand, and staying up late to read them. It was a good time to discover SF magazines. A lot of new writers were exploding on the scene. One of the biggest was Barry B. Longyear, who published his first story in Asimov’s in 1978, and in 1980 became the first person to win the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in the same year.

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New Treasures: Out of the Ruins, edited by Preston Grassmann

New Treasures: Out of the Ruins, edited by Preston Grassmann

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Out of the Ruins (Titan Books, September 2021). Cover by Shutterstock

I’ve spent a lot of energy over the past few years decrying the death of paperback science fiction anthology. So when they do still occasionally appear, I’m inclined to celebrate them — especially when they’re as promising as Out of the Ruins, a collection of apocalyptic tales old and new from a stellar list of contributors: Samuel R. Delany, Ramsey Campbell, Lavie Tidhar, Emily St John Mandel, Carmen Maria Machado, Charlie Jane Anders, Nina Allan, China Miéville, Clive Barker, Paul Di Filippo, and many others.

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A Deleted Excerpt from Immortal Muse, Revealed and Annotated by Stephen Leigh

A Deleted Excerpt from Immortal Muse, Revealed and Annotated by Stephen Leigh

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Left, Paperback cover (artist unknown); Right cover art by Tim O’Brien.

A Review of Immortal Muse & Interview with Stephen Leigh Complements this Excerpt.

 

Jeanne Hébuterne / Amedeo Modigliani

with commentary by Stephen Leigh, the author

 

To the reader:

This abandoned and unfinished long draft section may not make a great deal of sense unless you’ve already read IMMORTAL MUSE (DAW Books 2014), an alternate history fantasy novel about exactly what the title implies: a genuine muse who is immortal, who also happens to have been Perenelle Flamel (b. October 13, 1320), the wife of the alchemist Nicolas Flamel.

But here’s a thumbnail sketch of the plot.

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Lethal Vegetation and Nasty Christmas Presents: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV, edited by Gerald W. Page (1976)

Lethal Vegetation and Nasty Christmas Presents: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV, edited by Gerald W. Page (1976)

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV (DAW, July 1976). Cover by Michael Whelan

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV was the fourth volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror, copyright and printed in 1976. This one introduced a different editor, American author Gerald W. Page (1939–). Page had edited the successful weird tales magazine Witches & Sorcery from 1971 to 1974, and some stories from his ‘zine had made the earlier volumes of Year’s Best Horror. My guess is this put him on Don Wollheim’s radar when he sought out a new editor. I couldn’t find any information on why British editor Richard Davis had been replaced; but as I said in my review of The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, I was disappointed by his last volume, especially since his first two were so good.

Michael Whelan (1950–) returns as the cover artist. Whelan is a great artist and though this cover is in something of a sci-fi, surrealistic mode, I think it sufficiently announces the book as a horror anthology.

Under Page’s editorship, The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series IV definitely has a different flavor and lineup. The front cover proclaims at the bottom that it is “The unique annual of weird tales.” And many of the authors included are indeed associated with the older Weird Tales pulp era, including Frank Belknap Long, Joseph Payne Brennan, E. Hoffman Price, H. Warner Munn, and Fritz Leiber.

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A Sherlockian Duo in a Pirate Adventure: The Fall of the Gods Trilogy by Ryan Van Loan

A Sherlockian Duo in a Pirate Adventure: The Fall of the Gods Trilogy by Ryan Van Loan

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Far Out (Night Shade, July 2021). Cover by Julie Dillon

When The Sin in the Steel, the opening novel in Ryan Van Loan’s Fall of the Gods trilogy, arrived last year, I was immediately intrigued. Well, I was once I read Aidan Moher’s review at Tor.com, anyway. Especially this part:

The Sin in the Steel is a rip-roaring epic fantasy that mixes a genuinely unique world with an equally standout magic system. It’s full of characters you’ll root for and despise, who’ll make your skin crawl, and who you’ll cheer on from the sidelines. Packed full of action, tempered by genuinely thoughtful themes about mental health and trust. The Sin in the Steel tells a good self-contained narrative… If Scott Lynch wrote Pirates of the Caribbean, it’d be a lot like The Sin in the Steel.

Yeah, it was that last sentence that got me. At least I’m predictable.

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Immortal Muse by Stephen Leigh: Review, Interview, and Prelude to a Secret Chapter

Immortal Muse by Stephen Leigh: Review, Interview, and Prelude to a Secret Chapter

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Left, Paperback cover (artist unknown); Right cover art by Tim O’Brien.

Stephen Leigh is a Cincinnati-based, award-winning writer of science fiction and fantasy, with thirty novels and nearly sixty short stories published. He has also published fantasy under the pseudonym S.L. Farrell. He has been a frequent contributor to the Hugo-nominated shared-world series Wild Cards, edited by George R.R. Martin. Stephen taught creative writing for twenty years at Northern Kentucky University, and has recently retired (but not from writing). His most recent novels have been Amid The Crowd Of Stars, the SunPath duology of A Fading Sun and A Rising Moon, The Crow of Connemara, and Immortal Muse. His latest novel, Bound To A Single Sun, will be published by DAW Books next year. Stephen is married to Denise Parsley Leigh; they are the parents of a daughter and a son; he is a musician and vocalist too, active in several Cincinnati bands.

In 2014, Stephen Leigh published his Immortal Muse novel (check out the 2014 Black Gate release), an alternative-history, fantasy fictionalizing alchemy’s role in artistic muses. Wow! Of course, Leigh had to be interviewed as part of the “Beauty in Weird Fiction” interview series. Indeed he was interviewed in 2016 before the interview series merged into Black Gate. If you are interested in the aesthetics of horror and weird fantasy, check out the thoughts of our recent guests like Darrell Schweitzer, Sebastian Jones, Charles Gramlich, Anna Smith Spark, Carol Berg, & Jason Ray Carney (full list of interviews at the end of this post).

This post wraps up (1) a review of Immortal Muse, (2) the interview with the author on Leigh’s muses, and (3) teases readers within an announcement. Okay, we’ll cover that last one first. There is a missing/deleted chapter from Immortal Muse that Stephen Leigh will be posting on Black Gate soon, over 11K words with annotations on (a) why it was left out of the final book and (b) how facts were woven into this fantastical alternative-history. It serves as both a stand-alone short story and an engaging behind-the-scenes look at writing. The article with the missing chapter is posted (look here).

Let this review and interview stoke your creative fires. …

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Future Treasures: Isolate by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

Future Treasures: Isolate by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

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Isolate (Tor Books, November 2021). Cover by Chris McGrath

Lee Modesitt is one of the most popular fantasy authors on the shelves, with multiple bestselling series to his credit, including The Saga of Recluce, Corean Chronicles, and the Imager Portfolio. But for all his success, I don’t think he gets a lot of critical attention, so it’s a real pleasure to see his latest — Isolate, arriving in hardcover from Tor next week — generate some authentic pre-publication buzz.

Both Publishers Weekly and Library Journal gave it a starred review; Library Journal says “anyone who likes to delve into the way worlds work will be riveted.” Here’s an excerpt from Judith Utz’s enthusiastic coverage at Booklist.
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New Treasures: Far Out: Recent Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Paula Guran

New Treasures: Far Out: Recent Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy edited by Paula Guran

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Far Out (Night Shade, July 2021). Cover by Julie Dillon

I had the privilege of interviewing Paula Guran back in September, in honoring of the upcoming release of her 50th book. We discussed a lot of her recent projects; one of the more interesting was Far Out, a huge new anthology. Here’s what Paula said about it, in part.

I have another one that just came out that’s not getting a lot of attention that I will mention. It’s called Far Out: Recent Queer Science Fiction and Fantasy… I’m very proud of that book. It is a great book, and it really has a nice look at the last ten years, and… the publisher it came out from is just kind of not supporting it. I just want to get it out there; it’s a good book, it would be great in college courses that are looking at any kind of LGBT fiction and just as a great introduction to a lot of authors that are very familiar to us, but may be new to people out there…

It’s been one that I wanted to do for a while… it was the last book I had under contract [with Night Shade]… I isolated myself on Far Out to a ten-year period…  of course there were people that I knew I wanted to go back and look for stories from in that period, like Chris Barzak for instance, who’s a gay writer… but just on that cusp of 2020 that I was ending at, there’s this sudden boom in 2020 and 2021 of just in the last year, even more [writers] that you can pick from now. It’s really exciting to see that.

Far Out is a reprint anthology with a “table of contents [that] reads like the glitterati of queer fiction,” according to Arley Sorg at Lightspeed. Here’s the complete TOC.

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A Grand Scale Conspiracy and an Interstellar War: The Nova Vita Protocol Trilogy by Kristyn Merbeth

A Grand Scale Conspiracy and an Interstellar War: The Nova Vita Protocol Trilogy by Kristyn Merbeth

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Fortuna, Memoria and Discordia (Orbit Books, 2019-21). Covers by Shutterstock and Lisa Marie Pompilio

Ooof. Things are really busy at Chateau O’Neill. Like, super busy. They’re always sorta busy, but this month has taken it to a new level. I’d share the details, but I’m too busy.

I don’t get much much time to read when I’m faced with this kind of deadline pressure. But I can still daydream about it, in between sales meetings and hitting my weekly pitch deadlines. This week I’m especially excited about the third novel in Kristyn Merbeth’s Nova Vita Protocol trilogy, Discordia, arriving from Orbit next month. Kirkus praised the opening volume Fortuna, saying “”The narrative is powered by a cast of deeply developed characters… The nonstop action and varying levels of tension make this an unarguable page-turner.” I’m looking forward to finally having all three volumes of this popular series in my hot little hands… and some vacation time to enjoy them.

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Burger Creatures and Halloween Stories: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III (1975), edited by Richard Davis

Burger Creatures and Halloween Stories: DAW’s The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III (1975), edited by Richard Davis

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III (DAW, 1975). Cover by Michael Whelan

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III was the third volume in DAW’s Year’s Best Horror Stories, copyright 1975, printed in that same year. Like the first two, British author and anthologist Richard Davis was the editor, though he would not continue with DAW after this volume. The cover was by Michael Whelan (1950–), his first for the series. Whelan was becoming more and more ubiquitous on sci-fi and fantasy paperbacks at the time. I think Whelan’s cover is horror-based but it does seem to lean toward the surreal, psychedelic vibe that was common in the 70s. Unlike Volume Two, this one contains no inner art.

Of the thirteen stories in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series III, three were originally published in books, three in magazines, and two in fanzines; five appeared here for the first time, which I’ll come back to in a moment. At least five of the authors were British, five were American, one was Canadian (Allan Weiss) and Eddy C. Bertin is the lone Belgian, for the third volume in a row. Like the last installment, this anthology contains only male authors. All three of Davis’ DAW volumes have had a bit of a British slant, but this is unsurprising given that Davis was British as well. We’ll see if that changes when we switch to an American editor, Gerald W. Page, for the fourth book.

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