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John DeNardo’s Quick History of Serialized Science Fiction and Fantasy

John DeNardo’s Quick History of Serialized Science Fiction and Fantasy

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Astounding Stories August 1934-smallOur friend John DeNardo, editor of the marvelous SF Signal, posted a long article to Kirkus Reviews last month on the history of serialized fiction in SF and Fantasy. I finally had time to sit down and read it today, and found it a very rewarding survey of classic serialized fiction, all the way up to 2015.

In terms speculative fiction stories — that is, science fiction, fantasy and horror stories, which are of particular interest to readers of this column — serialized fiction has a long and interesting history. But just like readers sometimes don’t have the time to read long novels, you may not have the time for a long, sordid history… so let me sum things up….

By the early 20th century, that format was adopted in the United States as well. Magazines were a prevalent venue for fiction back then, and serial fiction — science fiction in particular — received a boon when Edgar Rice Burroughs serialized his novels Tarzan and A Princess of Mars. Both of these stories were later published as novels (in 1914 and 1917, respectively) and both were followed by numerous sequels, some of which were also serialized.

Other authors soon adopted the same publishing model. E.E. “Doc” Smith published his Skylark and Lensman series in serial format in the 1930s, for example. Even decades later, stories were getting published in serialized format.

Some of the more recent examples John cites include Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), Stephen King’s The Green Mile (1996), Karl Schroeder’s Sun of Suns (2006), and John Scalzi’s The End of All Things (2015). Read the complete article here.

Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1952: A Retro-Review

Galaxy Science Fiction, December 1952: A Retro-Review

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Galaxy December 1952-smallThe cover of the December, 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction was creating using a technique called “Camerage.” Editor H. L. Gold describes it as

A three-dimensional montage effect — but it’s not a montage… All the objects in the picture are assembled at one time, illuminated by projected colored lights… and are shot by a number of cameras placed on different planes.

To me, it looks a little odd — or at least this particular use of the technique looks a little odd. (Click the image at right for a bigger version.) Seeing an image online doesn’t quite match up with what you see on an actual copy of the magazine; I can’t quite explain the difference. But however you view it, the cover still doesn’t connect with me.

Ring Around the Sun (Part 1) by Clifford D. Simak — It started with a few inventions — a cigarette lighter, a razor blade, and a light bulb. These items would last forever, the manufacturers claimed. Additionally, another group supplied synthetic carbohydrates for consumption, helping humanity’s food supply. Each had its own effect on the economy, in both subtle and obvious ways.

Jay Vickers learns of the newest arrivals — the forever car and the forever house — with indifference. He doesn’t need a new car and doesn’t like the idea of a new house, no matter how reasonable the financing may be, even if it seems like they’re being given away.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “Black Colossus”

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “Black Colossus”

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Weird Tales Black Colossus-smallLate last week, while Howard Andrew Jones and I were discussing how hard it is to write great fight scenes, Howard gave me a piece of advice. “Read “Black Colossus,”” he said. “That will show you how it should be done.” So I pulled out my copy of the Del Rey’s The Coming of Conan, and started in… but not before reading the story that chronologically precedes it, “Queen of the Black Coast,” featuring the lovely and fatal pirate queen Bêlit. This Robert E. Howard fellow… his stories are a graduate school class in action writing, and no mistake. Not coincidentally, Howard and Bill Ward continued their fascinating Conan re-read with “Black Colossus” last month, originally published in the June 1933 issue of Weird Tales. Here’s Bill:

It’s wonderful stuff, as is the resultant exchange between Conan and his former mercenary commander, Amalric, who remarks that Thespides’ hot-headed charge is the sort of thing that Conan used to get up to. Conan agrees, but says that was when he was only worried about his own hide, now he’s responsible for others. Here Conan’s essential decency and honor feeds right into his maturation — this battle is his first command, and it’s really a freak of fortune that Conan is even in this position. But he’s smart, and he respects his fellow soldiers, having emerged just days before from their ranks himself, and all of that factors into him growing into a position of responsibility. Earlier, there is also reference to how kingly he looks all decked out in his new armor, something Conan would retain in the back of his mind for years.

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Airship Hunters Take Flight

Airship Hunters Take Flight

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Airship Hunters-smallcapra-dirigibleThis weekend I read and thoroughly enjoyed a New Pulp novel called Airship Hunters recently published by the fine folks at Meteor House. I really try and make these articles be about classic pulp, but new titles do catch my eye and while I am a fan of co-author Jim Beard’s occult detective, Sgt. Janus, it was actually the airship that caught my attention.

I first read about airships as a kid in several Edgar Rice Burroughs titles. A film dramatizing the Hindenburg disaster and then an adaptation of Thomas Harris’ Black Sunday terrified me when I was just starting grade school. My introduction to the New Pulp world in 2009 came via Airship 27 with their nifty logo on each book. I even put an airship in my second Fu Manchu novel a few years later as a result. Far and away, my crowning achievement with airships was discussing their use in two cult classic films of the early 1970s: Darling Lili and Zeppelin with one of the principals involved in their production. So yes, suffice to say if you tell me Meteor House is publishing an airship title from Jim Beard, you have my attention.

Now in all fairness, it should be noted this new title is a collaborative effort between Jim and his co-author, Duane Spurlock. I know of Duane, but I had not previously read his work. Much like Pierre Souvestre and Marcel Allain a century earlier with Fantomas, the two men authored alternating chapters while compiling the book. Spurlock hails from Kentucky while Beard is my fellow Ohioan. There is a distinct Midwestern flavor to the adventure which lends an undeniable charm and authenticity to the proceedings.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “Queen of the Black Coast”

Discovering Robert E. Howard: Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward Re-Read “Queen of the Black Coast”

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Art by Brom for "Queen of the Black Coast"
Art by Brom for “Queen of the Black Coast”

Howard Andrew Jones and Bill Ward continue their insightful re-read of the first Del Rey Conan volume, The Coming of Conan, with the classic “Queen of the Black Coast,” featuring the beautiful pirate queen Bêlit, originally published in the May 1934 issue of Weird Tales.

Here’s Bill:

There’s a wonderfully vivid moment of stillness at the heart of “Queen of the Black Coast;” Conan sits high on the ruined pyramid of a vanished race as night falls over a scene of slaughter, the “black colossus” (which becomes the title of the next story) of the jungle a vast sea of darkness that enfolds him. He is as far away from any aid or comfort as we’ve ever seen him and far beyond the bounds of civilization, his lover lies dead on the ship they shared for years while the corpses of her pirate crew are scattered among the ruins, and a malignant evil that Conan has only glimpsed in a vision bides its time, waiting just as the Cimmerian, too, waits. Here is the man of “gigantic melancholies,” the man whose mind does not break, and, when the moon finally rises and the beasts rush upon him, the man of action.

Read the complete exchange here.

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Back to Ancient Opar

Back to Ancient Opar

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king-oparexiles-khoEdgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan has proven an unstoppable force. While misguided movies, TV series, and musicals do their best to rob the ape man of his savage nature and integrity in the name of mass marketing and political correctness, Burroughs’ original Jungle Lord perseveres. Conventional wisdom may suggest time has passed him by, but it’s the vitality of the original that keeps readers coming back for more. Happily, talents like Joe R. Lansdale, Philip Jose Farmer, and most recently Will Murray have been willing to give fans further adventures of the real Tarzan.

Turn back the clock four decades and you’ll find Philip Jose Farmer’s seminal fictional biography, Tarzan Alive (1972) had much to answer for in terms of launching the Wold Newton movement in popular fiction as well as boosting Burroughs’ cachet. While the book may be relatively obscure today, the ripples it created are still felt on the beaches of pulp fiction. For his part, Farmer launched a series of officially sanctioned books recounting the history of ancient Opar. Longtime readers of Burroughs’ work will know that Opar was the first of the author’s lost cities (an outpost of forgotten Atlantis) that survived undiscovered in Tarzan’s African jungle.

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Discovering Robert E. Howard: James Reasoner on He Pointed Them North: Trail Towns in the Traditional Westerns of REH

Discovering Robert E. Howard: James Reasoner on He Pointed Them North: Trail Towns in the Traditional Westerns of REH

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REHWesterns_Cover
Intro by James Reasoner…

After Paul Bishop’s excellent post on REH’s boxing stories turned my initial post on hard boiled private eyes into the start of a series, the next topic I knew I wanted to cover was westerns. And James Reasoner was the only person I considered to write it. Historical fiction, noir and westerns: he’s excellent in all of those areas. 1914’s Robert E. Howard Days 2014 Featured Attendee is one of the best western writers alive. Let’s hit the trail!

When Robert E. Howard was growing up in Cross Plains in the 1920s, it was entirely possible that some of the older men in town might have gone on cattle drives in their youth, as the great trails from Texas to the railheads in Kansas opened up after the Civil War and changed the focus of the Lone Star State’s economy. Whether a young Bob Howard ever listened to these old cowboys spin yarns about those days, we don’t know, but he certainly might have.

J. Marvin Hunter’s classic book Trail Drivers of Texas appeared in 1927, and this volume might well have caught Howard’s interest, too, although we have no record of him ever reading it.

What we do know, however, is that Howard wrote several Western stories in which the trail towns which served as destination points for those great herds of Longhorns play an important part, beginning with “Gunman’s Debt”, which went unpublished during Howard’s lifetime but is one of his best Westerns. It’s set in the small Kansas settlement of San Juan, and although Howard tells us that the rails and the trail herds haven’t reached it yet, it’s clear that they’re on the way. San Juan is new and raw and more than a little squalid:

Three saloons, one of which included a dance hall and another a gambling dive, stables, a jail, a store or so, a double row of unpainted board houses, a livery stable, corrals, that made up the village men now called San Juan.

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Out of the Mouth of Madness

Out of the Mouth of Madness

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Derleth MythosI spent the past year in the frozen tundra on a quest not for gold or oil, but rather that elusive will o’ the wisp men call Ha of Saskatoon. I barely escaped with my life, a sad and broken man. Over the course of many months, I poured through John D. Haefele’s exhaustive tome, A Look Behind the Derleth Mythos which the redoubtable Don Herron bequeathed to me in an effort to restore my shattered mind. Having recently closed the book for the final time, I come forth with this my 250th article. A mere trifle for the more prolific blogger, but a milestone for this shadow of a man who once was.

Now in absolute fairness I should disclose a few facts before continuing. First off, I am not an H. P. Lovecraft cultist. I like aspects of the Mythos more than I do his actual fiction. This will be heretical to many, but I did not come upon his prose until later in life – long after Roy Thomas introduced me to his work in various comics he authored for Marvel in the 1970s and well after the time I had absorbed bits and pieces of the Mythos unknowingly while devouring Robert E. Howard’s stories in the pages of the Lancer or Ace Conan paperbacks with their stunning Frazetta cover art which, like that of Boris Vallejo and Neal Adams, frequently displayed brazen muscular buttocks in a fashion that touched something primal and possibly even impolite in my already warped adolescent brain.

I must also refrain from joshing my readers that a particular Lovecraftian scholar earned my enmity like no one since S. J. Perelman when I purchased a pricey, but beautifully bound and illustrated Sax Rohmer collection that was published in recent years only to find said literary critic’s introduction to the same was dismissive, condescending, and pompous in the extreme. It took much restraint not to craft an analogue for this bloated windbag in my third Fu Manchu book and allow the Devil Doctor to feed this bleating goat’s delicate parts to starving centipedes. Despite the appeal of such a notion, I chose instead to let karma find him and that it may have done with Haefele’s scholarly work.

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New Treasures: The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies, Vol. 1 by Clark Ashton Smith

New Treasures: The End of the Story: The Collected Fantasies, Vol. 1 by Clark Ashton Smith

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The End of the Story The Collected Fantasies Vol 1-smallThe End of the Story is the first of five volumes collecting all of Clark Ashton Smith’s short fiction, arranged chronologically by composition. It was originally published in hardcover by Night Shade Books on January 1, 2007, and quickly went out of print. The cheapest copies I can find online start at over $200.

I would love to have a copy, but that’s well outside my price range. So I was delighted to discover that Night Shade is printing the entire series in trade paperback, starting with the first volume, which goes on sale tomorrow.

The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith consists of:

  1. The End of the Story (January 2007)
  2. The Door to Saturn (June 2007)
  3. A Vintage from Atlantis (November 2007)
  4. The Maze of the Enchanter (April 2008)
  5. The Last Hieroglyph (September 2010)

The trade paperback edition of the second volume, The Door to Saturn — also long out of print in hardcover, and selling in some places for well over $300 — is scheduled to appear January 5, 2016.

The End of the Story contains 24 short stories and three poems, beginning with “The Abominations of Yondo,” first published in Overland Monthly in April 1926. It includes some of his most famous tales, such as the Captain Volmar novelette “Marooned in Andromeda” (1930), the Malygris tale “The Last Incantation” (1930), and the novelette “The Monster of the Prophecy” (1932).

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons – Who Needs a Hard Boiled Detective?

The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes: Solar Pons – Who Needs a Hard Boiled Detective?

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PonsWolfe_NarcissusSolar Pons has already made several appearances here in The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes. And previously, I wrote that Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe is my favorite detective series of them all. So naturally, I found a way to link them together into one post. Barely.

Now, August Derleth was a born-and-raised Wisconsin boy, enamored with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s tales of the great Sherlock Holmes. He wasn’t much different than an awful lot of American youths in the nineteen twenties.

Except, the enterprising Derleth wrote to the author and asked if there would be any more stories. Doyle, not the friendliest person in regards to his meal ticket, did have the courtesy to send back a reply in the Fall of 1928,  saying that he was finished with Holmes.

Not discouraged at all, the nineteen year-old University of Wisconsin student made a note on his calendar, ‘In re: Sherlock Holmes’, as a reminder to write a story in imitation of Doyle’s creation. The date is lost in the mists of time, but August Derleth did in fact sit down and produce “The Adventure of the Black Narcissus” in one afternoon, starring Solar Pons and Dr. Lyndon Parker.

It appeared in the February, 1929 edition of Dragnet and Derleth would produce over seventy more tales before passing away in 1973. British author Basil Copper added over two-dozen more Pons stories with the blessing of Derleth’s Estate.

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