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Category: Vintage Treasures

David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part One

David C. Smith & Robert E. Howard, Part One

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For the Witch of the Mists by David C. Smith & Richard Tierney (Zebra, January 1978) and The Witch of the Indies by David C. Smith (Zebra, June 1977). Covers by Doug Beekman and Stephen Fabian

I consider David C. Smith (1952) a friend. We’ve never met face to face but we’ve corresponded and have spoken on the phone. As with writers such as Karl Edward Wagner and Andy Offutt, I first became aware of David as an author through a connection to Robert E. Howard.

While in REHupa, the Robert E. Howard United Press Association, I routinely did reviews of Howard pastiches. And so I came upon The Witch of the Indies (Zebra, 1977, cover by Stephen Fabian). Shortly after I picked up For the Witch of the Mists by Smith & Richard Tierney (Zebra, 1978, Cover by Doug Beekman).

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A Tragedy and a Comedy: Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers

A Tragedy and a Comedy: Murder Must Advertise by Dorothy Sayers

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Murder Must Advertise (Pocket Books, 1940)

Mr. Tallboy’s eyes, roving negligently round, had fallen on Bredon’s index-card… Neatly printed on the card stood one word.

DEATH

In Murder Must Advertise, Dorothy Sayers takes murder mysteries in another new direction: not, this time, exploring an established subgenre, but hybridizing the mystery genre with what we would now call workplace drama, or sometimes workplace comedy. The setting is Pym’s Publicity, a successful advertising firm. Many incidents turn on problems in carrying out the work, friendships and tensions between staff members, and relationships with clients.

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The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Four: The High Crusade, Three Hearts and Three Lions, and The Queen of Air and Darkness

The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Four: The High Crusade, Three Hearts and Three Lions, and The Queen of Air and Darkness

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The High Crusade (Berkley Medallion, March 1978). Cover artist unknown

Two other good novels by Anderson are The High Crusade (SF), a humorous look at 14th Century humans getting loose in the universe with a captured spaceship, and Three Hearts and Three Lions (Fantasy), which follows a modern (1950s) Earthman who is cast onto a parallel Earth where fantasy and magic are real.

The High Crusade (Doubleday  1960) was first published in three parts in John Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction, July – September 1960. It starts when an alien spaceship lands in England in 1345 just as an English army is being formed to fight in France. The ship belongs to the Wersgorix, who have conquered many planets. This time their plans go awry and the English capture the ship. And now they’re about to take the war to the aliens. My copy is Berkley, 1978, with the cover artist uncredited (see above).

Three Hearts and Three Lions would be categorized as “High Fantasy” and was first published serially in 1953 in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. It was published in book form in 1961. My copy is Berkley, 1978 with a cover by Wayne Barlowe (see below, midway down).

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A Heaven of Action: Mistress of Mistresses by E.R. Eddison

A Heaven of Action: Mistress of Mistresses by E.R. Eddison

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Mistress of Mistresses (Ballantine Books, August 1967). Cover by Barbara Remington

I heard her say, faint as the breath of nightflowers under the stars,

“The fabled land of Zimiamvia. Is it true, will you think, which poets tell us of that fortunate land: that no mortal foot may tread it, but the blessed souls do inhabit it of the dead that be departed: of them that were great upon earth and did great deeds while they were living, that scorned not earth and the delights and the glories of earth, and yet did justly and were not dastards nor yet oppressors?”

 Very shortly after the paperback publication of The Lord of the Rings made it a best seller, Ballantine Books began treating publishing other paperback fantasy novels, turning fantasy into a genre. Some of these were by contemporary authors, such as Joy Chant, Katherine Kurtz, or Evangeline Walton; but many more were older works being brought back into print. Among these older works was E.R. Eddison’s Mistress of Mistresses, first published in 1935.

Eddison had begun writing fantasy in 1922 with The Worm Ourobouros, which Ballantine also republished, a little earlier. In fact they treated them as two volumes of a series. There is indeed a minor linkage between them: The Worm Ourobouros begins by introducing a viewpoint character named Lessingham, who has a dream in which his consciousness is transported to Mercury and witnesses the events of the novel proper, though he doesn’t take part in them and soon enough is no longer mentioned even as a witness.

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The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Three: The Broken Sword, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, and Conan

The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Three: The Broken Sword, Hrolf Kraki’s Saga, and Conan

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The Broken Sword (Ballantine Adult Fantasy #24, January 1971). Cover by George Barr

Read Part One and Part Two of this article here at Black Gate.

The Broken Sword is arguably the best book Anderson ever wrote, and it was the “first” novel length fantasy he published. It mixes High Fantasy and Sword & Sorcery. The High Fantasy comes because of its setting in the land of Faerie, which is part of our world but invisible to most humans, and the fact that most major characters are elves and trolls. However, there is also a lot of the good bloody action that characterizes S&S.

The Broken Sword is set in the Ninth century A.D., in Alfred the Great’s time (849-899). It was published in 1954 and revised in 1971. The story is of Skafloc, a human child stolen and raised by elves, and of Valgard, the half-elf/half-troll who replaces Skafloc as a changeling. It also involves Skafloc’s sister, who unknowingly falls in love with Skafloc, which, of course, ends in tragedy.

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The Limits of Vision: Arthur C. Clarke’s Imperial Earth

The Limits of Vision: Arthur C. Clarke’s Imperial Earth

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When I began reading science fiction in the early 70’s, a handful of writers stood taller than any others, at least judging by the bookshelves at the thrift store around the corner from my middle school, where I spent my lunch money every day on used sf paperbacks. In those days the Kings of the Hill were Robert A. Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury… and Arthur C. Clarke.

I read very little Clarke in those years, though; for me, Heinlein stood higher than anyone else, with Bradbury and Asimov right behind. Clarke was far in the rear; aside from a few short stories, the only thing of his that I read back in the day was Childhood’s End.

For the past decade or so, though, I’ve been correcting that failure by reading the Clarke novels that I neglected all those years ago, and I’ve greatly enjoyed them. Most recently I read one of his later works, Imperial Earth. I found it a problematic book, and it left me with more mixed feelings than I usually have after finishing a Clarke opus.

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The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Two: Flandry of Terra and 7 Conquests

The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part Two: Flandry of Terra and 7 Conquests

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The Ace Flandry editions by Poul Anderson: Ensign Flandry, Agent of the Terran Empire, and
Flandry of Terra (Ace Books, February 1979, January 1980, July 1979). Covers by Michael Whelan

Read Part One of this article here.

I’ve never read a Poul Anderson book or story I didn’t like, although certainly I have my favorites. The first book I remember reading by him was 7 Conquests (cover art by Emanuel Schongut; see below), a collection of 7 short stories. I was about 14 and in awe of his language, and there’s still a scene in one story that titillates my daydreams even now.

Next, I started reading Anderson’s Flandry of Terra series, about an intelligence officer for the Terran Empire named Dominic Flandry. Flandry is very much a James Bond kind of character, with a fair amount of anti-hero in his makeup, but I loved these tales, which I’d primarily categorize as Space Opera.

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The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part One: The Last Viking Trilogy

The Epic Science Fiction & Fantasy of Poul Anderson, Part One: The Last Viking Trilogy

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The Last Viking trilogy: The Golden Horn, The Road of the Sea Horse, and The Sign of the Raven (Zebra Books, April-June 1980). Cover artist uncredited

As a teenager reading SF and Fantasy, I had two go-to authors whose work never let me down. One was Andre Norton, who I’ve talked about a lot. The other was Poul Anderson (1926-2001), who I’ve barely mentioned so far. I’ve got a number of posts planned about him.

Anderson wrote excellent heroic fantasy and SF with equal ease, although I slightly prefer his fantasy. The series I want to talk about first is his Last Viking trilogy, consisting of The Golden Horn, The Road of the Seahorse, and The Sign of the Raven, all published in 1980 by Zebra. They blur the line between fantasy and heroic historical. The cover artist is uncredited but my best guess is Don Maitz, who did the cover for another Anderson Viking book called Hrolf Kraki’s Saga (see below). I could be wrong; if so, someone will surely tell me.

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The Outsider: The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh

The Outsider: The Pride of Chanur by C.J. Cherryh

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The Pride of Chanur (DAW Books, January 1982). Cover by Michael Whelan

C.J. Cherryh has just lately announced the end of her writing career: For medical reasons, she can no longer manage a writing project. Sad news! This seems like a time to look back at what I consider one of her most memorable novels: The Pride of Chanur.

One of the common themes of science fiction is alien races; and a particularly interesting version of this theme is stories about first contact with aliens. By far the majority of such stories have human viewpoint characters, and show the nonhumans as alien and hard to figure out. This has been the case from H.G. Wells’s The First Men in the Moon to memorable recent novels such as Vernor Vinge’s A Deepness in the Sky, or films such as Arrival (based on Ted Chiang’s Story of Your Life”). But some stories turn this around, giving the reader a nonhuman viewpoint character. And that’s what The Pride of Chanur does, and does ingeniously.

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The Dark Fantasy of Karl Edward Wagner, Part Two

The Dark Fantasy of Karl Edward Wagner, Part Two

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In a Lonely Place (Warner Books, March 1983). Cover by Barclay Shaw

Read Part One of this article, focused chiefly on Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane tales, here.

Karl Edward Wagner and I shared certain similarities, which I’m sure meant nothing to him but which do mean something to me.

He had an M.D. as a psychiatrist and worked toward a Ph.D. in neurobiology. I have a Ph.D. in neuropsychology so I’m sure we’d have had many things to talk about in that field. He died October 14, 1994, apparently from liver and heart failure brought on by long-term alcoholism. October 14th is my birthday, though quite a long time before 1994, and I’ve also had a heart attack, though I survived it, and I gave up drinking long before it started to cause major damage.

We also have similar tastes in reading and writing. Karl wrote mostly Sword & Sorcery and horror, and those two genres make up most of my output as well.

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