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Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention 2023, Part I

Total Pulp Victory: Windy City Pulp & Paper Convention 2023, Part I

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Some of the eye-popping pulps from the Bob Weinberg collection auctioned at Windy City

This weekend was the Windy City Pulp & Paper show, an annual gathering of about 600-800 pulp and vintage paperback enthusiasts in Lombard, Illinois. Founded by Doug Ellis and run by a dedicated and talented team, Windy City has gradually become my favorite convention. Back when Black Gate was a print magazine I used to get a table and sell back issues, but these days I spend my time more productively. Namely buying stuff, but also hanging out with friends and attending the auction.

And gawking at amazing sights. If you’re interested in rare and unusual items — such as mint-condition pulps, rare first editions, signed volumes, original art, and letters and esoterica from pulp writers such as Robert E. Howard, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, A. Merritt, and countless others — Windy City is the place to be. It’s a chance to hang out with like-minded individuals, gossip, and (especially!) find incredible treasures.

Reader, I found some treasures.

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Vintage Treasures: The Flashing Swords! Original Anthologies, edited by Lin Carter

Vintage Treasures: The Flashing Swords! Original Anthologies, edited by Lin Carter

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Paperback editions of Flashing Swords! #1-5 (Dell Books, 1973-1981).
Covers by Frank Frazetta (1 & 2), Don Maitz (3 & 4), and Richard Corben

Lin Carter is best remembered these days as the editor in charge of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line, which was by any measure a monumental achievement, bringing back into print a truly impressive array of important fantasy books, many in serious danger of being forgotten. But Carter’s career extended beyond that. He was a very prolific author, with his best-known series being the Thongor books, with the hero a barbarian quite openly modeled on Conan.

With L. Sprague de Camp, he produced a great many “posthumous collaborations” with Robert E. Howard, featuring Conan — in stories either expanded from fragments Howard left, or new stories featuring Conan. Carter’s Callisto series is fairly derivative of Edgar Rice Burroughs. He also wrote pastiches of Lovecraft, of Dunsany, of Clark Ashton Smith. Carter was also an historian and critic of fantasy fiction, producing book length studies of Lovecraft and Tolkien, as well as Imaginary Worlds, an ambitious introduction to and history of fantasy.

And he was a prolific anthologist, putting out a number of reprint anthologies, a Year’s Best series devoted strictly to fantasy, and finally the subject of this article, the five original anthologies collectively called Flashing Swords.

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Vintage Treasures: The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha

Vintage Treasures: The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Arthur W. Saha

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The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF (DAW Books, June 1987). Cover art by Tony Roberts

By the time The 1987 Annual World’s Best SF appeared as a paperback original from DAW Books in mid-1987, editor Donald A. Wollheim was of course well established as one of the most important and influential — perhaps the most influential — editor in science fiction. Founding editor at Ace Books, and founder of DAW Books, Wollheim had been editing The Annual World’s Best SF series since 1965, when he launched the series with his assistant Terry Carr. It would run for only three more years, until his death in 1990.

The 1987 volume, the 23rd in the series, is an exemplary installment. It includes Lucius Shepard’s groundbreaking novella “R&R,” a Nebula Award winner; Roger Zelazny’s Hugo award-winning “Permafrost;” Howard Waldrop’s Nebula nominee “The Lions Are Asleep This Night;” and Pat Cadigan’s Nebula nominee “Pretty Boy Crossover;” plus stories by Tanith Lee, Doris Egan, Robert Silverberg, Damon Knight, Suzette Haden Elgin, and more.

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Vintage Treasures: What If?, Volumes 1-3, edited by Richard A. Lupoff

Vintage Treasures: What If?, Volumes 1-3, edited by Richard A. Lupoff

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What If, Volumes 1-2 (Pocket Books, 1980 and 1981) and Volume 3
(Surinam Turtle Press, 2013). Covers by Richard Powers and Gavin L. O’Keefe

Richard Lupoff was a True Believer. By which I mean he gave his career to science fiction, and both cared about it deeply and wrote about it fairly extensively — like Isaac Asimov, Brian Aldiss, Harry Harrison, Terry Carr, Sam Moskowitz, Donald A. Wollheim, Barry N. Malzberg, Gardner Dozois, and a handful of other crusty old timers.

The thing about True Believers is they have opinions. Boy, do they. They’re happy to tell you when the Golden Age of Science Fiction actually was, what they think of modern SF, and what should have won the Hugo Award last year. And the year before that. They’re especially vocal about awards, come to think of it.

Lupoff didn’t just spout off about stories that were unjustly robbed of a Hugo Award — he actually did something about it. In 1980 and ’81 he published two highly-regarded anthologies, What If? Volume One and Volume Two, which brazenly set out to “Remedy the Injustices of the Past Three Decades!” (that’s right there on the back cover copy) and collect the fiction that SHOULD have won the Hugo Award every year, starting with 1953 and working all the way up to 1965. In 2013, Surinam Turtle Press released the long-delayed third volume, presenting Lupoff’s selections for the fiction that should have been awarded SF’s highest honor in 1966-1973.

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Vintage Treasures: Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin

Vintage Treasures: Tuf Voyaging by George R.R. Martin

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Tuf Voyaging (Baen, February 1986). Cover by David Willson

George R.R. Martin is the most successful living American science fiction and fantasy writer. He mostly gets attention for his novels these days, but early in his career he was chiefly known for his wonderfully moody and imaginative short stories, most of which were set in his sprawling Thousand Worlds universe, including the novel Dying of the Light and the famous stories “Sandkings,” “Nightflyers,” “A Song for Lya,” and “The Way of Cross and Dragon.”

Many of Martin’s most ardent fans are unaware of his Thousand Worlds series featuring Haviland Tuf, a small time merchant who inadvertently comes into possession of one of the greatest weapons in the galaxy, a 30-kilometer long seedship known as the Ark. Inspired by the work of the great Jack Vance (and written in a style that sometimes imitates Vance), the tales garnered a number of major award nominations, and were collected in Tuf Voyaging by Baen in 1986.

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Vintage Detectives: Supernatural Sleuths, Sci-Fi Private Eye, and Isaac Asimov’s Detectives, edited by Gardner Dozois, Sheila Williams, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greenberg

Vintage Detectives: Supernatural Sleuths, Sci-Fi Private Eye, and Isaac Asimov’s Detectives, edited by Gardner Dozois, Sheila Williams, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greenberg

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Supernatural Sleuths and Sci-Fi Private Eye (Roc, 1996 and 1997), and
Isaac Asimov’s Detectives (Ace, 1998). Covers by Romas Kukalis, uncredited, and Andy Lackow

Science fiction detectives have been a popular theme for anthologies for a couple of generations now. We’ve covered a few (including Tin Stars, edited by Isaac Asimov, Martin H. Greenberg, and Charles G. Waugh), but there’s lot more out there for the curious and the collector alike.

I’ve recently been dipping into some themed anthologies from the 80s and 90s, and three that have impressed me all have themes of detection: Supernatural Sleuths and Sci-Fi Private Eye (both published by Roc, in 1996 and 1997), and Isaac Asimov’s Detectives (Ace, 1998). They gather a fabulous cross section of 20th Century cross-genre fiction, including a John the Balladeer tale by Manly Wade Wellman, a Black Widowers story by Isaac Asimov, a Solar Pons mystery by August Derleth and Mack Reynolds, a Carnacki adventure by William Hope Hodgson, a Jules de Grandin novelette by Seabury Quinn, and a pair of Gil Hamilton novellas by Larry Niven, plus a rich range of major award-winning and nominated SF from Nancy Kress, Greg Egan, Kate Wilhelm, John Varley, and more.

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Vintage Treasures: Poseidonis by Clark Ashton Smith

Vintage Treasures: Poseidonis by Clark Ashton Smith

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Poseidonis (Ballantine Adult Fantasy #59, July 1973). Cover by Gervasio Gallardo

I’ve been collecting Clark Ashton Smith recently, and I keep coming back to the wonderful Ballantine Adult Fantasy editions edited by Lin Carter in the early 70s.

It’s not nostalgia (well, maybe it’s a little nostalgia). And it’s certainly not that the stories aren’t available in other editions — Smith’s work has been annotated and collected by more than half a dozen publishers this century alone, including Night Shade, Penguin Classics, Hippocampus Press, Prime Books, Bison Books, Centipede Press, and others. It’s not even the great cover art — great as it is (and it’s pretty darn great), Smith has benefitted from some truly excellent cover art for most of his reissues.

What draws me to these editions is Lin Carter’s excellent commentary and editorials. When Carter was assembling these books in the early seventies most of Smith’s work was long out of print, available only in moldering pulp magazines (and a handful of expensive hardcovers from Arkham House), and Carter was introducing one of the greatest pulp writers of the 20th Century to an audience that was woefully unfamiliar with his work. He did a fabulous job of preparing readers for the wonders that awaited them.

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Might For Right: The Once and Future King, Part 1 by T.H. White

Might For Right: The Once and Future King, Part 1 by T.H. White

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“I have been thinking,” said Arthur, “about Might and Right. I don’t think things ought to be done because you are able to do them. I think they should be done because you ought to do them.”

King Arthur, p. 239 The Once and Future King

I first read English author T.H. White’s The Once and Future King when I was seventeen, fresh from seeing the movie Camelot (1967) for the first time (the musical Camelot, by Lerner and Lowe was based on parts of White’s novel). The tale of Arthur Pendragon, by turns both comic and tragic, told in a thoroughly anachronistic and post-modern way, reached me as few other books had. The story of Arthur’s education and effort to create a better world and his ultimate failure and downfall broke my heart. I absolutely loved the book and used it as the basis for my AP English exam essay instead of any of the books I’d read in class (I aced the test). More than any other Arthurian book or movie, White’s book forms my image of Arthur’s doomed noble reign.

I know I reread the book once during college or grad school, but that was over thirty years ago and my memories are dim. To say I approached The Once and Future King last month with some trepidation is an understatement. There’s been more than one greatly admired book I’ve revisited only to find out that whatever affection I held for it had flown. I did not want that to happen here. Nonetheless, spurred again by watching Camelot recently, I was determined to read the book. Having finished the first two parts of the novel, I am happy to find that not only do I still love the book, I’m impressed more than ever by its power and White’s artistry. Note: To convey the latter point, I’ll be quoting the book generously.

The Once and Future King is really four books; The Sword in the Stone (1938), The Witch in the Wood, later retitled The Queen of Air and Darkness (1939), The Ill-Made Knight (1940), and The Candle in the Wind (1958). The first three were all published as standalone novels, the fourth only as part of the unified four-book collection. A fifth part, The Book of Merlyn (1977), was written in 1941 but wasn’t published until long after White’s death in 1964. For today, I’m going to write on the first two parts.
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Vintage Treasures: The Plenty Trilogy by Colin Greenland

Vintage Treasures: The Plenty Trilogy by Colin Greenland

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Take Back Plenty, Seasons of Plenty, and Mother of Plenty (AvoNova, January 1992 and
January 1996, and Avon Eos, June 1998). Covers by Glenn Orbik, Jim Burns, and uncredited

Colin Greenland’s Take Back Plenty was one of the major British SF novels of the 90s. It won the British Science Fiction Award and the Clarke Award for Best SF Novel, and was nominated for the Philip K. Dick Award. Writing about its heroine, Tabitha Jute, in Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia, John Clute said:

Colin Greenland, one of the sharpest and most innovative young British critics and novelists, had a bright idea. The old SF was joyous. So why not enjoy it, even now? Why not write Space Opera whose heroine – Tabitha Jute – may not change the universe, but who is superabundantly alive? So he did.

Greenland followed Take Back Plenty with two sequels, Seasons of Plenty, and Mother of Plenty, and one collection, The Plenty Principle, which included a prequel tale using the same setting, a derelict planet-sized starship “populated by gamblers, militarists, and space trash” known as Plenty.

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Haunted Trucks, Ghostly Theaters, and Creepy Picnics: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

Haunted Trucks, Ghostly Theaters, and Creepy Picnics: The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII, edited by Karl Edward Wagner

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The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII (DAW, November 1984). Cover by Vicente Segrelles

The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII was the twelfth volume in the DAW Year’s Best Horror series and the fifth edited by the great Karl Edward Wagner (1945–1994). The book was copyrighted and printed in 1984. After nine covers by Michael Whelan, we have a new cover artist, the Spanish artist Vicente Segrelles (1940–). I think this is a frightening cover and less fantastic than those that Whelan often did. I had this by my bed one night and actually turned the book over because the lich-woman in the mirror was sort of creeping me out. That’s pretty good horror art!

But an even bigger artistic change is that this is the first DAW Year’s Best Horror without the famous yellow DAW spine and the famous DAW yellow tag on the cover; though the DAW “number” is still ongoing, this one being 603. This major aesthetic switch came about for all of DAW’s titles in late 1984. I assume that the DAW powers-that-be thought after about twelve years a change was needed. Maybe, but it does sadly mark the end of an era in paperback publishing. Nevertheless, the cover font of The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII is still similar to previous volumes, keeping it artistically in a line to some degree.

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