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Category: Vintage Treasures

Vintage Treasures: A Glow of Candles by Charles L. Grant

Vintage Treasures: A Glow of Candles by Charles L. Grant

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A Glow of Candles (Berkley Books, November 1981). Cover by Jill Bauman

Charles L. Grant was a major figure in 20th Century horror, not just as a writer but as a talented editor. He edited dozens of horror anthologies, including eleven volumes of the groundbreaking Shadows series from 1978-1991. He produced over a dozen novels, but is remembered today primarily for his powerful short fiction, gathered in three major collections: Tales from the Nightside and A Glow of Candles and Other Stories (both in 1981), and the retrospective Scream Quietly: The Best of Charles L. Grant (PS Publishing, 2012). He died in 2006.

Grant received the British Fantasy Society’s Special Award for life achievement in 1987, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Horror Writers of America in 2000. He was honored with two Nebula Awards and three World Fantasy Awards for his writing and editing. Sadly, little of his work remains in print, and his collections can be hard to come by. I recently managed to track down a copy of A Glow of Candles, and it was well worth the effort.

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THE ART OF THINGS TO COME, PART 4: 1964-1966

THE ART OF THINGS TO COME, PART 4: 1964-1966

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Science Fiction Book Club mailer from 1964, featuring From the Twilight Zone. Art by Virgil Finlay

As I related in the first three installments of this series (parts One, Two, and Three), like tens of thousands of science fiction fans before and after me, I was at one time a member of the Science Fiction Book Club (or SFBC for short). I joined just as I entered my teen years, in the fall of 1976, shortly after I’d discovered their ads in the SF digests.

The bulletin of the SFBC, Things to Come – which announced the featured selections available and alternates – sometimes just reproduced the dust jacket art for the books in question. During the first couple of decades of Things to Come, however, those occasions were rare. In most cases during that period, the art was created solely for the bulletin, and was not used in the book or anywhere else. Since nearly all of the art for the first 20 years of Things to Come is exclusive to that bulletin, it hasn’t been seen by many SF fans.

In this series, I’ll reproduce some of that art, chosen by virtue of the art, the story that it illustrates or the author of the story. The first installment featured art from 1957 and earlier, while the second installment covered 1958-1960 and the third installment dealt with 1961-1963. In this fourth installment I’ll look at the years 1964-1966, presented chronologically.

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Vintage Treasures: The Lord Darcy Adventures by Randall Garrett

Vintage Treasures: The Lord Darcy Adventures by Randall Garrett

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Too Many Magicians, Murder and Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates
(Ace, 1979 – 1981). Cover art by Robert Adragna

In 1977 Jim Baen accepted an offer from publisher Tom Doherty to return to Ace Books to head their science fiction line. Doherty left Ace to found Tor Books in 1980 and Baen soon followed him, but his years at Ace were extraordinarily productive. He resurrected an enormous amount of classic SF and fantasy from the magazines and brought it to a brand new audience, including Fritz Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Poul Anderson’s Flandry, Keith Laumer’s Retief, Fred Saberhagen’s Berserker, H. Beam Piper’s Fuzzy novels, and collections by Robert Sheckley, James Tiptree, Jr, Robert E. Howard, James H. Schmitz, Barry N. Malzberg, and countless others.

One of the most distinctive works Baen championed was Randall Garrett’s tales of occult detective Lord Darcy, set in an alternate England in which the laws of Magic are rigorously codified, but the laws of physics remain unknown. He gathered them into three volumes: the novel Too Many Magicians and the collections Murder and Magic and Lord Darcy Investigates. They captured a brand new readership, and the books have been reprinted half a dozen times in subsequent decades.

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Vintage Treasures: The Best of British SF 1 and 2 edited by Mike Ashley

Vintage Treasures: The Best of British SF 1 and 2 edited by Mike Ashley

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The Best of British SF 1 and 2 (Orbit, 1977). Covers by Bob Layzell

Every once in a while I sit back, take stock of our accomplishments, and think, “Man. We’ve showcased countless forgotten writers here at Black Gate, discussed tens of thousands of neglected books, writing late into the night on tight deadlines, and nobody has spell checked anything.”

Still, I’m justifiably proud of what we’ve accomplished in the 23 years this website has been live. Though I do have to admit that we have been, like the market at large, over-focused on American publishing. So I was delighted to find the massive two-volume anthology The Best of British SF 1 and 2, published as paperback originals by Orbit in 1977.

Containing nearly 800 pages of short fiction from Arthur Conan Doyle, H. G. Wells, John Wyndham, John Russell Fearn, Eric Frank Russell, Arthur C. Clarke, John Christopher, John Brunner, E. C. Tubb, Brian W. Aldiss, James White, Bob Shaw, Philip E. High, Colin Kapp, Kingsley Amis, J. G. Ballard, Michael Moorcock, Keith Roberts, and many others — all interspersed with insightful genre history and commentary from editor Mike Ashley — these books are a wonderful retrospective of the finest science fiction from across the pond.

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Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy edited by Lin Carter

Vintage Treasures: Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy edited by Lin Carter

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Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy, Volume 1 (Ballantine Books, 1972). Cover by Gervasio Gallardo

Over the decades we’ve spent a lot of pixels at Black Gate talking about Lin Carter’s groundbreaking Ballantine Adult Fantasy series. He was under contract to produce a book a month for editors Ian and Betty Ballantine, and that’s exactly what he did for five years and 65 titles, almost all reprints of out-of-print fantasy novels and original anthologies. For the most part my favorites are those marvelous anthologies, including The Young Magicians, Golden Cities, Far, Discoveries in Fantasy, and others.

In 1972 and 1973 Carter produced the first two volumes in what he’d hoped would be an ongoing series, Great Short Novels of Adult Fantasy. They each included four novellas, accompanied by his usual fine introductions, and it’s a tragedy he was unable to produce any more before the Adult Fantasy series was discontinued when Random House bought Ballantine. In his opening essay, Four Worlds of Wonder, Carter explains his focus on longer fantasy.

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A Jumble Sale of Fascinating Ideas: The Science Fiction of Arthur C. Clarke

A Jumble Sale of Fascinating Ideas: The Science Fiction of Arthur C. Clarke

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Across the Sea of Stars and From the Ocean, from the Stars,
two omnibus collections by Arthur C. Clarke (Harcourt, Brace & Co, 1959 and 1961)

I’ve just about finished trimming and sorting my SF collection. It’s a pretty eclectic assortment: some of these books have personal meaning for me, some strike me as interesting for their cover art or their connection to the history of the genre, some are just old friends I’ve carried around for decades. Most fall into the category of post-war English-language SF up to about 1980, though there are more recent titles among them. I have other and more current titles elsewhere in the house, but this is where my heart is. (Maybe you can’t love a genre quite so wholeheartedly once you start publishing in it.)

All of which prompted me to re-read some classic SF, since I probably can’t trust the opinions I formed when I encountered these books at the age of 14 or 15. Case in point: Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, as I originally discovered it: in the omnibus collection Across the Sea of Stars.
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Vintage Treasures: The Starhammer/Vang Trilogy by Christopher Rowley

Vintage Treasures: The Starhammer/Vang Trilogy by Christopher Rowley

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Starhammer, The Vang: The Military Form and The Vang: The Battlemaster
(Del Rey, 1986 – 1990). Covers by David Schleinkofer and Stephen Hickman

I’m a huge fan of modern science fiction, and I find no shortage of new novels and and series to coo over here. But there are times when I miss the old-school SF of last century, rooted in the Cold War paranoia of the 50s and 60s. The Golden Age of invaders from space, all-consuming blobs, and gooey alien parasites that have their sights set on your lower G.I. tract.

In the late 80s Christopher Rowley, author of the popular Battle Dragons series from Roc, had a hit with his Vang novels, a space opera/alien parasite hybrid. Clearly inspired by the author’s love of Alien and pulp-era SF by A.E. Van Vogt, Jack Vance, Eric Frank Russell, and others, the trilogy — Starhammer, The Vang: The Military Form and The Vang: The Battlemaster — had the sweep of epic space opera crossed with the gritty realism of James Cameron’s Colonial Marines.

The story of The Vang begins when the asteroid miner Seed of Hope, illegally prospecting in a Forbidden Sector of the Saskatch system, finds a billion year-old vessel containing an alien horror, the last vestige of a race nearly annihilated in an ancient conflict that convulsed the galaxy. It’s an encounter that will plunge humanity into a desperate war of survival.

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Vintage Treasures: The Naphar Trilogy by Sharon Baker

Vintage Treasures: The Naphar Trilogy by Sharon Baker

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Quarreling, They Met the Dragon, Journey to Membliar, and Burning Tears of Sassurum
(Avon, 1984, 1987, and 1988). Covers by Wayne Barlowe, Paul Lehr, and Ron Walotsky

Sharon Baker died in Seattle in June 1991, at the much-too-young age of 53. She began writing in her 40s, while she was busy raising four sons. In a Gale Contemporary Author interview in 1986 she said

I felt like a car appliance [and] to remind myself that I was not, I signed up for a weekly writing class… On good days, I no longer feel like an appendage of my station wagon or anything else. I feel like me. And I like it.

Her first novel was Quarreling, They Met the Dragon, published in 1984, and it drew immediate attention. In Trillion Year Spree, Brian Aldiss praised it as evidence of “An original mind at work on an ingenious world.” Gene Wolfe said “Sharon Baker is better than good… [she will be] one of the field’s most important author’s by the close of this decade,” and Publishers Weekly compared her to Samuel R, Delany.

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A Strange Song of Unknown Places: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft

A Strange Song of Unknown Places: The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath by H.P. Lovecraft

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HPL’s original manuscript

Three times Randolph Carter dreamed of the marvelous city, and three times was he snatched away while still he paused on the high terrace above it. All golden and lovely it blazed in the sunset, with walls, temples, colonnades and arched bridges of veined marble, silver-basined fountains of prismatic spray in broad squares and perfumed gardens, and wide streets marching between delicate trees and blossom-laden urns and ivory statues in gleaming rows; while on steep northward slopes climbed tiers of red roofs and old peaked gables harbouring little lanes of grassy cobbles. It was a fever of the gods, a fanfare of supernal trumpets and a clash of immortal cymbals. Mystery hung about it as clouds about a fabulous unvisited mountain; and as Carter stood breathless and expectant on that balustraded parapet there swept up to him the poignancy and suspense of almost-vanished memory, the pain of lost things and the maddening need to place again what once had been an awesome and momentous place.

HP Lovecraft (1890-1937) was a man who seems to have never been fully comfortable in the world. His racism, most unpleasantly, but also, his old-fashioned affectations and his adamant refusal to bend his artistic desires to the least sort of commercial demands, all these, I believe, indicate a severe unease with the way the world was (he even turned down the editorship of Weird Tales because he refused to move to Chicago “on aesthetic grounds.”) The old America, peopled by the heirs of the original colonial families, had been washed away on a tide of industrialization and immigration. It was decadent and in decline and he would not be a part of it.

From his earliest days, Lovecraft was plagued by strange dreams and nightmares. Many of these would serve as the basis of stories later in life. A tragic family life — his father died in an asylum of late-stage syphilis and his family slowly slipped into poverty — and an innate nervous disposition probably had much to do with his attitudes. At the heart of the horror stories for which he’s most famous is the belief that mankind is insignificant and powerless in the face of a vast and uncaring Universe. While I don’t think he was mentally ill or anything, I do believe he longed for some intangible, more fantastic and better world.

Not finding one at hand, he created one in a series of related tales that culminated with The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath in 1927 (though it wouldn’t be published until 1943). Typically referred to as his Dream Cycle, Lovecraft was greatly influenced in writing these tales by Lord Dunsany‘s lush stories. The stories are filled with dense descriptive passages, surreal imagery, and the illogical logic of dreams.

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Thomas M. Disch: Love and Nonexistence

Thomas M. Disch: Love and Nonexistence

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334 by Thomas M. Disch (Avon, October 1974). Cover artist unknown

In the last page of Thomas M. Disch’s novel 334, the family matriarch, Mrs. Hansen, has finished explaining why she should have the right to die. “I’ve made sense, haven’t I? I’ve been rational?” she asks her unseen auditor, a civil servant taking an application. “They’re all good reasons, every one of them. I checked them in your little book.” She has indeed given reasons why her life is no longer worth living, with disconcerting thoroughness, and makes clear that if her application is turned down, she will appeal. “I dream about it. And I think about it. And it’s what I want.”

What is remarkable about this scene is not the defense of suicide (which does not take place in the text — the book ends with Mrs. Hansen’s summation), but an articulated yearning for nonexistence. The three elements of this nexus — the voiced eloquence, the fiercely focused desire, and the prospect of nothingness — constitute three compass points of Disch’s art. There is a fourth, always present but harder to see, which we will come to in a moment. For now, let us consider these elements, vividly present throughout Disch’s fiction and widely remarked upon, but also widely misunderstood, especially in the SF genre, where he began his career and which he never fully left.

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