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Did the Butler Do It? Dean R. Koontz’s A Werewolf Among Us

Did the Butler Do It? Dean R. Koontz’s A Werewolf Among Us

A Werewolf Among Us-small A Werewolf Among Us-back-small

A Werewolf Among Us
by Dean R. Koontz
Ballantine Books original paperback edition (211 pages, $1.25, January 1973)
Cover art by Bob Blanchard

Wow — check out that price! $1.25! Hard to believe, isn’t it?

I can’t recall exactly how I discovered this enjoyable mash-up of two very different genres. I was probably hanging out in one of the many bookstores that were, in those days, like Starbuck’s: one on almost every other street corner. We had the big chain stores like Kroch’s & Brentano’s, and Walden’s (later Waldenbooks) here in Chicago, of course, among smaller, local chains like Barbara’s Bookstore (still around), and then later we had The Stars My Destination and The Fantasy and Science Fiction Book Shop, two of the best book stores I’ve ever patronized. Crown Books came along in 1977, founded by Robert Haft, and then Barnes & Noble emerged, followed by the rise and fall of Border’s Books and Music, plus a chain called Books-A-Million, which I haven’t seen around in a long time. There were also scores of “Mom and Pop” operations, selling both new and used books, and you could go into any Sears-Roebuck, Marshall Field’s, Montgomery Ward, Woolworth’s, Post-Office News, drug store, and candy store and find books of all kinds. In the early 1970s I worked across the street from a small but very eclectic book store called Brainfood, and I’d spend my 30-minute lunch break (often extended beyond that time), browsing and shopping.

It was the best of times. Period.

Then along came the internet and Amazon.

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Comedy in Fantasy: The Ebenezum Trilogy by Craig Shaw Gardner

Comedy in Fantasy: The Ebenezum Trilogy by Craig Shaw Gardner

A Malady of Magicks-smallThe late Terry Pratchett left a large gap in the Comedic Fantasy genre which, for many, may never be filled. Love him or hate him (I have found myself doing both over the years), he pretty much defined the field.

I first came across Craig Shaw Gardner not long after I read The Colour of Magic. Giving away my age here, but when I read The Colour of Magic I think only the third Discworld book, Equal Rights, has just been published. Needless to say, like anything new, different and — more precisely — successful, there was demand for more of the same. Enter Craig Shaw Gardner. While I doubt they were consciously trying to emulate Pratchett, it is possible that Gardner’s publisher may have drawn a parallel of sorts, and decided to try and brand his novels in a similar way.

Thus it was that I encountered A Malady of Magicks, which immediately caught my eye with its familiar cover style. The cover blurb:

In which a wizard with a nose for magic gets a very bad cold…

was intriguing. Add to that a Josh Kirby cover and one can start to see the parallels, intended or not. I didn’t buy the book, but made a mental note of it, and saw that in due course books two and three appeared: A Multitude of Monsters and A Night in the Netherhells respectively. Others followed.

I was of course looking at the British versions, published by Headline in 1988 and 1989 and as mentioned, all with Josh Kirby covers. The series was originally published in the US by Ace in 1986 and 1987, with the first book, A Malady of Magicks, reprinted three times in 1986.

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Amazing Stories October 1960: A Retro-Review

Amazing Stories October 1960: A Retro-Review

Amazing Stories October 1960-smallAt the 2015 Worldcon, Sasquan, one of the dealers had a nice stash of old magazines. I bought a bunch of Goldsmith-era Amazings and Fantastics. This is one from quite early in Cele Goldsmith’s editorial career. Indeed, Norman Lobsenz’s editorial calls it “the first issue of the “new” Amazing that we have been talking about.”

He adds “There is one problem facing us … the constant shortage of first-rate stories.” This is a point he would make other times in editorials (and in the letter column), to a greater degree than I have ever seen from an editor in the pages of a magazine.

The cover here is by Alex Schomburg. The interiors are by two of the greatest artists in the field’s history, Virgil Finlay and Ed Emshwiller, and a name I didn’t recognize, Bernklau, who seems to have been active in the field only from 1959 to 1961 (in a variety of magazines). He was probably the Art Bernklau who did covers for Beacon Books in the same period.

Besides the editorial, the features include S. E. Cotts’ book review column, the Spectroscope; a science article by Lester Del Rey, “Homesteads on Venus,” and the lettercol, “Or So You Say.”

Cotts opens the book review column be celebrating that the column has more space. There is mention of SF in other media: an article in the National Review (“SF seems a strange bedfellow for such a right-wing magazine” says Cotts – a curious remark), SF on TV (Twilight Zone), on record, and an opera. This last is Harry Martinson’s Aniara (music by Karl-Birger Blomdahl). Martinson eventually (quite controversially) shared a Nobel Prize for literature.

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You Can’t Go Home Again: The Annotated Sword of Shannara: 35th Anniversary Edition by Terry Brooks

You Can’t Go Home Again: The Annotated Sword of Shannara: 35th Anniversary Edition by Terry Brooks

oie_1203939lEtutubTOnce upon a time, said the storyteller, a band of brave travelers set off into the wilderness in desperate hope of destroying a mighty dark lord. The only thing that could destroy the villain was a single magic talisman wielded by one specific young man. Along the way they were beset by enemies known and unknown and eventually became separated. Some continued on the original quest while others decided to warn their allies in a mighty walled city of impending attack.

In the end, the young hero, after confronting his own inner demons, defeated the villain. At the same time, the walled city staved off defeat long enough that it could be saved by the propitious arrival of an ally’s army. The world was set right.

“Stop! Stop!” cried some in the audience. “We already know this one!”

“Shut up!” yelled others. “We liked it before and we like it this time too!”

The storyteller said, “I know you’ve heard it before, but I’m telling it my own way and I think you’ll like it.” Much of the audience cheered.

In the back of the room, a man and a woman smiled and smelled success.

In 1977 when I was eleven, I, along with hundreds of thousands of others, was part of the group that yelled “Shut up!” For us it didn’t matter that chunks of Terry Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara read like he’d simply xeroxed The Lord of the Rings, sped it up, and stripped out the hard parts, songs, and poetry. So what if the Skullbearers bore an uncanny resemblance to the Ring Wraiths and the city of Tyrsis to the city of Minas Tirith? Did it matter that gnomes were suspiciously like orcs? That the whole point of the book was to get a single young man into the dark lord’s kingdom and bring him down with a certain magic item? Heck no! We loved the first iteration of those things and wanted them all over again. We were happy to read even a slavish imitation of LotR. I read the book in about three days. At over seven hundred pages it was the longest book I had read to date. One friend stayed in his room and read it in a day.

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Seriously Wicked: Not Just a Halloween Book

Seriously Wicked: Not Just a Halloween Book

Seriously Wicked Tina Connolly-smallSeriously Wicked
By Tina Connolly
Tor Teen (208 pages, $17.99 in hardcover, $9.99 digital, May 5, 2015)

Camilla Hendricks is a teenager who lives with her Aunt Sarmine. On the surface, Camilla appears to have an average life: she does chores, attends school, hangs out with her friends, and avoids her enemies. The reality, however, is anything but mundane: Aunt Sarmine is a witch. Camilla spends her days gathering spell ingredients, trying to decipher arcane spells written by paranoid witches, and mucking the dragon’s lair.

Camilla is a bit of a rebel, though; she’s vowed to be as normal as she can be and have a normal life with normal friends. Most importantly, she never, ever wants to be an evil witch like Sarmine. Unfortunately, that plan is thwarted when Sarmine summons a demon which then gets accidently implanted in Devon, the “boy-band-cute” new guy at school. Camilla has to help demonized-Devon find a phoenix that is timed to explode in the middle of their high school’s Halloween Dance. In order to do so, she has to embrace everything she’s tried hard to deny.

This book is a fun, easy read. While it ends up almost exactly where I thought it would (good guys win, bad guys lose, Camilla comes to terms with being a witch, Sarmine shows she has a heart and maybe isn’t actually evil at all), Connolly manages to incorporate a few fun twists along the way.

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Peter Tremayne’s Dracula Lives Trilogy Revisited

Peter Tremayne’s Dracula Lives Trilogy Revisited

NOTE: The following article was first published on February 14, 2010. Thank you to John O’Neill for agreeing to reprint these early articles, so they are archived at Black Gate which has been my home for over 5 years and 250 articles now. Thank you to Deuce Richardson without whom I never would have found my way. Minor editorial changes have been made in some cases to the original text.

Dracyla UnbrnNurceaIt has long been my contention that pulp fiction not discovered by age thirteen was beyond my ability to appreciate later in life. A certain amount of nostalgia seemed essential to enjoying such escapism once age and responsibility have got the better of you. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule in the rare instances where genuine literary talent is in evidence as is the case with the Holy Trinity of hardboiled detective fiction: Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Ross Macdonald. Given that I recently covered Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I decided to revisit Peter Tremayne’s three Dracula novels and one short story that I enjoyed so much as a teenager to see how they held up three decades on.

Peter Tremayne is best known today for his long-running Sister Fidelma mysteries. His medieval detective series is sort of a lightweight version of an Umberto Eco doorstop. Although Tremayne’s real world credentials are quite impressive as both an academic and scholar, his fiction is strictly populist in its appeal. Turn back the clock 40 years and one would find Peter Tremayne as a dedicated pulp pastiche writer trying his hand at extending the lifespan of H. Rider Haggard’s She, deliriously combining Shelley’s Frankenstein with Conan Doyle’s Hound of the Baskervilles, and delving deep into Stoker’s Dracula for a trilogy of loosely connected titles published by Bailey Brothers in the UK.

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition

Dungeons and Dragons Player's Handbook Fifth EditionThe newest edition of Dungeons & Dragons, 5th edition, recently passed its one-year anniversary. Though I reviewed the books when they first came out, my gaming group didn’t want to give up their current systems to switch over. They’ve been playing edition 3.5 for years, are comfortable with the rule structure, and like leveling up into prestige classes.

One thing that is notable about this edition of Dungeons & Dragons is that players have not been swarmed by supplemental books or a variety of rule options. After a year, it’s rather refreshing that Dungeons & Dragons continues to have retained an emphasis on their core three books:

But this does mean that hardcore gamers like me, who are used to geeking out over systems where you’re really allowed to customize many aspects of your character, may feel like Dungeons & Dragons doesn’t cater to us. This is a bit unfair, and may be a sign that we’ve just gotten too spoiled with abundant choices in other games system.

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Blogging Sax Rohmer… In the Beginning, Part Six

Blogging Sax Rohmer… In the Beginning, Part Six

Dover RomanceTarcher RomanceWhen Arthur Henry Ward adopted the nom de plume of Sax Rohmer, he found a match for the bohemian occultist persona he was working to cultivate. The very name sounded exotic and foreign. It was less of a name than it was a statement of intent. As part of his new identity, Rohmer claimed to be a Rosicrucian as well as a member of The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. It appears that both claims were false, although the Ward family doctor, R. Watson Councell was active in occult circles.

It was Dr. Councell who provided much of the information for Rohmer’s 1914 study of the occult, The Romance of Sorcery. It is possible Dr. Councell actually wrote sections of the work considering his own later publication, Apologia Alchymiae (1923) which featured a preface by Rohmer. In the 1970s, Rohmer scholar Dr. Robert E. Briney came across four privately printed titles published by The Theosophical Publishing Society of London credited to one Arthur H. Ward: The Song of the Flaming Heart (1908), The Seven Rays of Development (1910), The Threefold Way (1912), and Masonic Symbolism and the Mystic Way (1913).

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A Gentle Introduction to Unspeakable Horrors: A Picnic at the Mountains of Madness

A Gentle Introduction to Unspeakable Horrors: A Picnic at the Mountains of Madness

A Picnic at the Mountains of Madness 2-small

I love kids books. I have three children who were very used to being read to, and would spend long hours each week curled up in my lap — or on the corner of the couch, if my lap was otherwise occupied — listening to the works of Eric Carle, Dr. Seuss, Alan Snow, and William Joyce (and Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, when I could sneak them in).

I enjoyed all kinds of kids books, but the ones I loved the most were those with a sly adult humor. Which is precisely why I so enjoyed A Picnic at the Mountains of Madness, by Neil Baker and Maya Sugihara, published last month by April Moon Books.

On the surface, this is a thoroughly enjoyable adventure story. Harry and Kaylee receive a mysterious map in the mail from their “Uncle Howard,” showing some curious ruins at the south pole. Packing a lunch and some warm clothes, they dash into the garage and climb into the family biplane (passing the family submarine and family excavator on the way), and in moments they’re in the air, on their way to the very bottom of the world.

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Where Truemen Struggle to Preserve Genetic Purity: The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad

Where Truemen Struggle to Preserve Genetic Purity: The Iron Dream by Norman Spinrad

The Iron Dream-smallEvery now and then, fandom needs to take a good, hard look at itself. Considering the recent Hugo kerfuffle, I thought it a fine time to read Norman Spinrad’s famous skewering of fan culture, The Iron Dream.

First published in 1972, this is a masterpiece of metafiction. It is a book within a book, containing the 1955 Hugo Award winner Lord of the Swastika, written by none other than that famous science fiction writer, Adolph Hitler. We are informed that after dabbling in radical politics in Germany, Hitler moved to New York in 1919. In the 1930s he became a sought-after illustrator for pulp magazines and started writing fiction. He was popular in fannish circles for his fanzine work and for his witty banter at conventions.

His best-known work is Lord of the Swastika, a post-apocalyptic tale where the world has been ravaged by nuclear war and most people have become foul mutants. Luckily there is one nation, Heldon, where the Truemen struggle to preserve humanity’s genetic purity.

Enter Feric Jaggar, a Trueman whose family was exiled due to political machinations and forced to live among the mongrel horde. Lord of the Swastika is the tale of Jagger’s triumphant return to Heldon, where he unmasks a plot by the mutants to take over the country and sully the genetic purity of the last real humans. Jagger’s political star rises, the masses rallying around him as he first faces off against a corrupt government, then unites the nation around him in order to start a massive war to wipe the Earth clean of genetic inferiors once and for all.

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