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Vintage Treasures: Sandkings by George R.R. Martin

Vintage Treasures: Sandkings by George R.R. Martin

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Sandkings (Timescape/Pocket Books, December 1981). Cover by Rowena Morrill

Writing is a notoriously poor-paying profession. In 2017, after eleven months of work, I sold my first novel to Houghton Mifflin for $20,000 — about $10,000 below the poverty line for a family of five in Illinois. And I felt lucky to get it, believe me.

So when someone like George R.R. Martin earns $9 million a year as a fantasy novelist, it generates a lot of wonder and amazement. And in some corners, envy and resentment. For George — who’s dedicated his career to SF and fantasy, and was famous for hosting hundreds of fans every year at the genre’s social highlight, the Hugo Loser’s Party at Worldcon — I think the resentment culminated in 2021, when Natalie Luhrs’s essay “George R.R. Martin Can Fuck Off Into the Sun” was nominated for a Hugo Award. George, who was the Toastmaster for the Hugos in 2020, has not attended a Worldcon since.

In light of the fact that The Winds of Winter, sixth novel in the series, in now roughly a decade late, there’s also been a grumbling reevaluation of Martin’s magnum opus, Game of Thrones, with fans bitterly divided over everything from the final season of the HBO series to whether the series is worth starting at all.

To me, this whole exercise is misguided. Regardless of how you feel about the vast media franchise Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin’s reputation as one of the most vibrant and groundbreaking authors of genre fiction was irrevocably established four decades ago with a string of brilliant short stories, including the Hugo-Award winners “A Song for Lya,” “The Way of Cross and Dragon,” and, especially “Sandkings,” one of the finest SF stories ever written.

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Back Among the Kencyrath: “The Gates of Tagmeth” by PC Hodgell

Back Among the Kencyrath: “The Gates of Tagmeth” by PC Hodgell

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One of the earliest reviews I wrote for Blackgate was of P.C. Hodgell’s 1982 sword & sorcery classic, God Stalk. It’s the story of Jame, a relative innocent at large in the very Lankhmarian city Tai-Tastigon on the world of Rathilien. She’s a High Born, the ruling race of a tripartite race called the Kencyrath (the other two are the Kendar — warriors and artisans — and the Arrin-ken — the lion-like judges of the three races).  She’s also a Shanir, a subset of her people gifted — or cursed as most have come to believe — with strange abilities. In her case, it’s retractable claws on her fingers.

The Kencyrath have been consecrated by their Three-Faced God to battle Perimal Darkness, a great evil that’s been devouring one world after another in a chain of parallel worlds for millennia. Every time, they’ve failed at their duty, having to retreat to one world or another. As of God Stalk, they’ve been on Rathilien for three thousand years. They escaped there following the Fall, a moment when the High Lord betrayed the Kencyrath and two-thirds were killed, their souls offered up to Perimal Darkness.

After a year in Tai-Tastigon Jame set off into the West in search of her twin brother Torisen and the Kencyrath homeland — well, at least the homeland they took possession of three thousand years ago. Over the following six books, Jame, forever a square peg in a round hole, emerges as a wild card in the political games between the various Kencyrath houses. Unwilling to adopt the cloistered and regulated life of most High Born women, Jame eventually finds herself a candidate in the Kencyrath military officer’s school. Along the way, she learns she is more than likely the prophesied incarnation of the destructive aspect of the Three-Faced God. She also discovers more of the supernatural underpinnings of Rathilien, how the Kencyrath’s arrival disrupted it, and that the final reckoning with Perimal Darkness is near.

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Vintage Treasures: Strange Monsters of the Recent Past by Howard Waldrop

Vintage Treasures: Strange Monsters of the Recent Past by Howard Waldrop

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Strange Monsters of the Recent Past (Ace Books, July 1991). Cover by Alan M. Clark

Howard Waldrop passed away in January of this year, and his death was a major loss. It’s common, especially for writers, to be praised as a unique talent, but in Waldrop’s case there may be no more apt description. He had an entirely unique voice. There was no one else like him.

Waldrop left behind a single solo novel and over a dozen collections, but I think the one I treasure the most was his fourth, Strange Monsters of the Recent Past, published by Ace Books in 1991. It was one of the very few to appear in mass market paperback (the other was the Locus Award-winning Night of the Cooters, reprinted by Ace in 1993).

Strange Monsters of the Recent Past contains some of his most acclaimed short fiction, including the long novelette “He-We-Await,” from Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and his famous retelling of the labors of Hercules set in the Jim Crow south, the Nebula, World Fantasy and Locus Award-nominated novella A Dozen Tough Jobs.

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Five Tours in the Galactic Security Service: Backflash (Simon Rack #3) by Laurence James

Five Tours in the Galactic Security Service: Backflash (Simon Rack #3) by Laurence James

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Backflash (Sphere Books, January 1975). Cover by Bruce Pennington

Here’s another review of an obscure (at least to me!) 1970s SF novel. I found it on the free table at Boskone this year. It is slim, and I knew nothing about it or the author, so I figured it was worth a look.

Laurence James (1942-2000) was a British writer and editor, who published dozens of books between 1973 and his all too early death. He wrote in a number of fields, but mostly SF, and he was probably best known for a long series, Deathlands, which still continues with some 150 books published to date. James wrote over 30 novels in the series, most of the first 33 or so, which appeared between 1986 and 1996. All of the books (to this date) are published as by James Axler. I was completely unaware of these books or any other work by James until now.

The Simon Rack series comprises five volumes published in 1974 and 1975. Backflash is the third. It appears (though as I haven’t read the others I’m not sure) to be mostly a flashback to the first Simon Rack adventure by internal chronology (and perhaps that’s the reason for the title.) It opens with Commander Simon Rack of the Galactic Security Service confronting a madman who has stolen an experimental weapon and gone on a killing spree. As he corners him, the madman shoots — and it appears that the weapon’s effect includes messing with the brain’s sense of time, and Rack starts to experience his past life, on the planet Zayin.

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Medical Alternative History: The Wages of Sin by Harry Turtledove

Medical Alternative History: The Wages of Sin by Harry Turtledove

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The Wages of Sin (Caezik SF & Fantasy, December 12, 2023). Harry Turtledove photo by Joan Allen

Harry Turtledove has been writing alternative history for a long time: His early stories included those that became A Different Flesh, set in a world where the Americas were inhabited by Homo habilis rather than Homo sapiens, and The Guns of the South, portraying a Confederate victory in the American Civil War, confirmed his standing in this particular subgenre. A large share of his work has explored the two big premises for the genre: reversed outcomes in the Civil War and in World War II — sometimes as straight AH, and sometimes as science fiction (as with the alien invasion during World War II of Worldwar) or even fantasy (as in the created world consumed by a parallel to World War II of The Darkness). Such premises seem to have a huge appeal for fans, going back to Winston Churchill’s “If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg” in J. C. Squire’s anthology If It Had Happened Otherwise, published 1931.

Turtledove’s newest novel, The Wages of Sin, is a refreshing change of pace, taking place before the time of either war, and with a point of departure that’s not military at all, though equally grim in a different way. Following a long established tradition of AH, he starts out by showing the point of departure, which provides the premise for his world: the transmission of HIV from Africa to Europe in the year 1509, in a world where there is no chance of an effective treatment for it. His second chapter begins in 1851, in an England that has come to such terms as it can with “the Wasting,” and has been changed by doing so.

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Vintage Treasures: To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust

Vintage Treasures: To Reign in Hell by Steven Brust

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To Reign in Hell (Ace Books, May 1985). Cover by Stephen Hickman

In 1983 all my friends in Ottawa were talking about the debut novel by a young fantasy writer from Minnesota. The book was Jhereg, and it launched Steven Brust’s career in a major way. A caper tale (told from the criminal’s point of view) in a world of high-stakes court intrigue, Jhereg became an instant fantasy classic. As Fletcher Vredenburgh wrote years later here at Black Gate,

Jhereg reads like a fantastic and slightly off-kilter version of a Golden Age crime story. The focus is on Vlad’s ingenuity and the puzzle of how to kill the thief. That plus the witty banter, snarky sidekicks, and some action here and there kept me captivated.

All eyes were on Brust when his second novel appeared. Although most of us expected more tales of adventure set in the world of Dragaera, that would have to wait until Yendi — the first of a great many sequels in what eventually became one of the most successful and long-running series in modern fantasy — arrived a few months later. Brust’s actual second novel was To Reign in Hell, a fantasy retelling of Milton’s Paradise Lost, and it proved Brust would have an extraordinary fantasy career.

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Frankly Frankenstein

Frankly Frankenstein

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My guess is that even people who’ve never read the novel or seen the Boris Karloff version likely recognize that “Frankenstein” signifies a human-made scientific creation that bites back. (Though they probably do confuse which is the creator and which is the actual monster.)

Here in the 21st century, what Mary Shelley depicted way back at the start of the 19th is embedded in our cultural collective consciousness, even for those people who don’t pay attention to the culture unless it involves Taylor Swift, because of how often it actually occurs throughout history. Take your pick of technological disasters, the latest perhaps being AI.

Of course the reason why Shelley’s Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus  is a canonical work even before SF gained some legitimacy in academia is that this isn’t just a gothic horror story (though it is of course that).

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Vintage Treasures: Hammer’s Slammers by David Drake

Vintage Treasures: Hammer’s Slammers by David Drake

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Hammer’s Slammers (Ace Books, April 1979). Cover by Paul Alexander

David Drake passed away on December 10, 2023, and his death was a major loss to the field. In addition to his considerable accomplishments as a writer — with dozens of novels and collections to his credit — he made significant contributions as an editor and publisher.  He edited dozen of volumes for Ace, including the Space Anthologies with Marty Greenberg and Charles Waugh, and The Fleet and Battlestation shared universe series with Bill Fawcett. For Baen he edited three volumes of Men Hunting Things, Armageddon, and much more. He founded the Carcosa small press with Karl Edward Wagner — and in fact every time David stopped by the Black Gate booth at conventions over the years, the two of us invariably ended up talking about Karl.

But without question David’s most significant creation was Hammer’s Slammers, a long-running SF series that followed the adventures of the mercenary Colonel Alois Hammer and the tank regiment that bore his name. Alongside David Weber’s Honorverse, Hammer’s Slammers was the most popular military science fiction series of the late 20th Century. Including spin-offs and related volumes, the series ran to over a dozen volumes between 1979 and 2002.

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First Class Noir: Death Comes Too Late by Charles Ardai

First Class Noir: Death Comes Too Late by Charles Ardai

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Death Comes Too Late (Hard Case Crime,
March 12, 2024). Cover art by Paul Mann

Charles Ardai is the creator and the editor of the famous, successful Hard Case Crime series (featuring novels by the likes of Rex Stout, Lawrence Block, Stephen King, Earle Stanley Gardner, Cornell Woolrich, and Ray Bradbury, just to mention a few) now reaching its 20th Anniversary.

But Ardai is no minor author himself, as proved by the present volume, which collects twenty short stories (including some prize winning tales) previously appeared in various venues.

On the whole the book represents a very interesting and entertaining showcase of Ardai’s work. Among the various stories some are particularly worth mentioning.

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Andre Norton: Gateway to Magic, Part II

Andre Norton: Gateway to Magic, Part II

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Andre Norton’s two-book series Judgment on Janus and Victory on Janus
(Fawcett Crest, December 1979 and January 1980). Covers by Ken Barr

Part I of Andre Norton: Gateway to Magic is here.

Two other fun books by Norton that I read between ages 12 and 16 were Judgment on Janus and Victory on Janus. In Judgement, a down and out young man named Naill Renfro ends up on the planet Janus, which is ruled by a group of religious fanatics from Earth. There are artifacts on Janus from a native civilization, which is thought extinct, and Renfro finds one but is contaminated by it and begins to mutate. Turns out, he’s mutating into a native of the planet, a changeling, if you will. He flees into the vast forest of Janus.

When I first read this book, I was caught up in the rousing adventure, which had elements of the Sword & Planet genre. Only with a later read did I realize all the things going on underneath the surface, the condemnation of religious fanaticism and racism, and the criticism of a corporate world of excess. I came around to that way of thinking myself many many years later. She was ahead of her time here.

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