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Category: Vintage Treasures

Vintage Treasures: Shadow of Earth by Phyllis Eisenstein

Vintage Treasures: Shadow of Earth by Phyllis Eisenstein

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Shadow of Earth (Dell, September 1979). Cover artist uncredited

We lost Phyllis Eisenstein almost three years ago, in December 2020. She was a friend of mine, and I miss the long conversations we used to have at Windycon and the Windy City Pulp & Paper Show. I’ll never forget the greeting she shouted at me in 2015 (“I’m retired!”) after she finally quit her advertising job. She had numerous writing projects she wanted to complete. She died of a stroke five years later, at the age of 74.

Phyllis was an enormously respected author who influenced modern fantasy in profound ways (George R.R. Martin dedicated A Storm of Sword to her, in gratitude for her contribution to Game of Thrones), but I always thought her own fiction was unjustly overlooked. Her series Tales of Alaric the Minstrel (ten stories and two novels, Born to Exile and In the Red Lord’s Reach) was her most popular, but her catalog also included the Book of Elementals trilogy and two standalone novels. Today I want to look back at one of her first novels, Shadow of Earth (1979).

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THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, PT2 by T.H. WHITE

THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, PT2 by T.H. WHITE

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“Thomas, my idea of those knights was a sort of candle, like these ones here. I have carried it for many years with a hand to shield it from the wind. It has flickered often. I am giving you the candle now — you won’t let it out?”

“It will burn.”

King Arthur to Tom of Warwick, p. 647 The Once and Future King

Read the first part of this review, Might For Right: The Once And Future King, Part 1 By T.H. White.

The first two volumes, The Sword in the Stone (1938) and The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939), of T.H. White’s The Once and Future King focus on the rise of Arthur Pendragon and the foundation of his kingdom, where right, not might, is the rule. The following two volumes, The Ill-Made Knight (1940) and The Candle in the Wind (1958), tell the story of Lancelot and Guenever’s affair and subsequent rot and collapse of the Round Table and Arthur’s kingdom. At the end of The Queen of Air and Darkness, White reminds the reader that in the tales of King Arthur, sin comes home to roost and that sometimes, even innocence isn’t enough to prevent ruination. In these two books, however, no one is innocent.

Lancelot made his first appearance in The Queen of Air and Darkness when his father lent his aid to Arthur for the Battle of Bedegraine.  It was then as a young boy that he had decided he would dedicate himself to Arthur’s vision of a better world.

Ill-Made Knight is the name Lancelot takes for himself. He is no Franco Nero or even a Robert Taylor (both played Lancelot in the movies), but instead a misshapen, ugly man.

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Visions of the Future: Sixty Years of Perry Rhodan Art

Visions of the Future: Sixty Years of Perry Rhodan Art

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My favorite science fiction series has always been Perry Rhodan, with the first German episode published in September 1961 (authors Karl Herbert Scheer and Clark Darlton) by Moewig Publishing. Although the U.S. editions ceased in 1979 after #137, in its native Germany the series continues to this day in various forms, with over 3,200 episodes in the main series and counting. According to author Andreas Eschbach, reading Perry Rhodan would roughly compare to reading 560 Harry Potter books.

The covers and internal illustrations for the first 1,800 German episodes were created by Johnny Bruck. Today a number of illustrators work for Perry Rhodan, with Alfred Kelsner being the only one still painting original art (vs. digital graphics). Perry Rhodan is considered the most successful science fiction series in Germany – a true classic!

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Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction Discoveries edited by Carol and Frederik Pohl

Vintage Treasures: Science Fiction Discoveries edited by Carol and Frederik Pohl

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Science Fiction Discoveries (Bantam Books, August 1976). Cover artist uncredited

Five years ago Steven H Silver had a daily column at Black Gate in which he covered Science Fiction Birthdays for a full year. His choice for November 4, 2018 was Kara Dalkey, and Rich Horton had this to say in the comments.

I suppose the only other candidates were M. T. Anderson (I’ve liked a couple of his recentish short pieces a fair bit) and an interesting one: Babette Rosmond, who had a couple of pieces in Unknown in the early ’40s, then a quite interesting short novel, Error Hurled, in a Fred and Carol Pohl anthology in the ’70s.

Rosmond of course was an important editor — first at Street and Smith (Doc Savage was one of her titles) and later in magazines like Seventeen. She also wrote several contemporary novels (including one set among pulp editors), and she was an activist for more woman-led treatment of breast cancer. Interesting person.

The anthology in question was Science Fiction Discoveries, published in 1976, the fourth anthology Fred and Carol edited together, and the first to contain all-original stories. It had an impressive line-up — including a Thousand Worlds novelette by George R. R. Martin, an Azlaroc tale by Fred Saberhagen, and stories by Robert Sheckley, Scott Edelstein, Roger Zelazny, Doris Piserchia, and others. But the contributor that captured my interest was Babette Rosmond, with the complete novel Error Hurled, her sole science fiction publication. Rich is right — Rosmond was a fascinating person, for multiple reasons.

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Every Page a Delight: The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers

Every Page a Delight: The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear by Walter Moers

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The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear (Overlook Press, August 29, 2006). Cover by Walter Moers

My brief Goodreads review of Walter Moers’ The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear follows. I have been on Goodreads since 2008 and this is the highest praise I have ever given to any book on the site… 🙂

Years ago, I felt that a few books of James Branch Cabell (specifically Figures of Earth, The Silver Stallion, Jurgen) would be enough to reconstruct “Fantasy” literature if ever a strange disaster happened and all other works of fantasy were destroyed.

I now think the same thing is true, to an even greater extent, with this one huge volume of Walter Moers’. It is magnificent. It is comprehensive. It is fabulously inventive. If all other fantasy vanished overnight (including the Cabell books) Fantasy would still remain, provided Bluebear still existed. It contains multitudes. It is a cornucopia of fictional marvels.

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Vintage Treasures: Combat SF edited by Gordon R. Dickson

Vintage Treasures: Combat SF edited by Gordon R. Dickson

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Combat SF (Ace Books, June 1981). Cover by Vincent Di Fate

Military science fiction has a long and honorable history, from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers to Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. It’s not nearly as prevalent on bookstore shelves as it used to be. Some people say that’s because science fiction is no longer a male-dominated genre that panders to young male power fantasies. And those people are mostly right.

But there’s still plenty of military science fiction that I remember fondly — especially the anthologies. The 70s and 80s was a golden age of mass market SF anthologies, and plenty of the better ones had military themes, like Joe Haldeman’s Tomorrow’s Warfare series (Body Armor: 2000, Supertanks, Space-Fighters), David Drake’s Space trilogy (Space Gladiators, Space Infantry, Space Dreadnoughts), and Jerry Pournelle’s There Will Be War.

But my favorite military SF from the era were the standalone anthologies. Including Combat SF, edited by Gordon R. Dickson, a terrific volume which includes stories by Arthur C. Clarke, Keith Laumer, Frank M. Robinson, David Drake, Joseph Green, Poul Anderson, Fred Saberhagen, Joe Haldeman, James White, Harry Harrison, Gene Wolfe, Hal Clement, and others.

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A Far Future Journey Across a Strange Earth: The Song of Phaid the Gambler (Phaid the Gambler/Citizen Phaid) by Mick Farren

A Far Future Journey Across a Strange Earth: The Song of Phaid the Gambler (Phaid the Gambler/Citizen Phaid) by Mick Farren

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The Song of Phaid the Gambler (New English Library, October 1981). Cover by Tim White

Mick Farren (1943-2013) was for a time a sure enough rock star, front man for the Deviants, a sort of proto-punk band in England in the late 1960s. He did a couple solo albums too, then turned to journalism, particularly for the important UK magazine New Musical Express, where he was one of the first to herald the arrival of the official punk movement. And he also began to write fiction, much of it SF — some two dozen novels in all.

The Song of Phaid the Gambler was published in the UK in 1981. It was split in two (sensibly enough, I think, for marketing reasons) for US publication, from Ace in 1986 and 1987 as Phaid the Gambler followed by Citizen Phaid. There are differences between the two versions — I suspect, though I’m not sure, primarily to smooth out the separation into two separate books. I read the US version.

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Vintage Treasures: Frontier of the Dark by A. Bertram Chandler

Vintage Treasures: Frontier of the Dark by A. Bertram Chandler

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Frontier of the Dark (Ace Books, January 1984). Cover by Attila Hejja

A. Bertram Chandler was an enormously prolific science fiction author whom we haven’t covered much at Black Gate. He wrote some 200 short stories and over 40 novels, and is chiefly remembered today for his popular tales of the pioneer Rim Worlds, especially the adventures of John Grimes.

Chandler began his career as a merchant marine officer in the UK, eventually commanding ships in the Australian and New Zealand merchant navies, including the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne. He drew heavily from his long career sailing everything from tramp steamers to troop ships to infuse his fiction with a distinctly naval flavor.

His 1984 novel Frontier of the Dark, published the year he died, is a significant departure. A science fiction horror tale featuring werewolves in space, it bears the dedication, “For Harlan Ellison, who made me do it.”

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Only the Beginning: The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

Only the Beginning: The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett

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St. Martin’s Press – 1st , 1983

IN A DISTANT AND SECONDHAND SET OF DIMENSIONS, in an astral plane that was never meant to fly, the curling star-mists waver and part…

See…

Great A’Tuin the turtle comes, swimming slowly through the interstellar gulf, hydrogen frost on his ponderous limbs, his huge and ancient shell pocked with meteor craters. Through sea-sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and asteroid dust He stares fixedly at the Destination.

In a brain bigger than a city, with geological slowness, He thinks only of the Weight.

Most of the weight is of course accounted for by Berilia, Tubul, Great T’Phon and Jerakeen, the four giant elephants upon whose broad and star-tanned shoulders the Disc of the World rests,  garlanded by the long waterfall at its vast circumference and domed by the baby-blue vault of Heaven.

Astropsychology has been, as yet, unable to establish what they think about.

So begins The Colour of Magic (1983), the first volume of the eventually forty-one-book-long Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. I was lent this book (along with another Pratchett book, Strata (1981), which I’ve still never read — or returned, possibly) back in 1985 when it first hit US shores. He said it was funny and it was.

I hadn’t laughed much during earlier run-ins with fantasy and sci-fi comedies, save for Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Too often, puns were what passed for wit and the satire was shallow. Returning to Colour for the first time in many years, I’m impressed with how sharp Pratchett’s eye was when it came to picking his genre targets and just how good his prose was. His writing would become more complex, deeper, and much darker over the decades, but already, it’s witty and effervescent. In an age of such po-faced seriousness, we could use more of it.

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Vintage Treasures: Nightfrights edited by Peter Haining

Vintage Treasures: Nightfrights edited by Peter Haining

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Nightfrights (Peacock/Penguin, 1975). Cover by David Smee

They say that science fiction and fantasy readers love to identify with their heroes. To imagine themselves learning that they’re a wizard, attending Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Or being called to participate in The Hunger Games, or captain a starship.

I get it. I’m 59 years old, and the instant I saw the cover of the 1975 edition of Nightfrights I identified with the wide-eyed old coot on the cover. That’s what qualifies as an intrepid hero I can identify with these days. Awakened in the middle of the night, called upon to investigate the inhuman shrieks in the backyard, telling ourselves it’s just raccoons but knowing in our heart that’s it’s ghouls. Or Bughuul, from that Sinister movie I just watched on Prime. Or our neighbor Jerry, driven mad by fumes from his lawnmower. Don’t come any closer Jerry, I’ve got Alice’s rolling pin, and I know how to use it.

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