Search Results for: anna smith

Check Out Postscripts, the Varied Genre Anthology Series from PS Publishing

Postscripts is something of an unusual beast. It started off as a quarterly British magazine of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and crime. The first issue, edited by Peter Crowther and published by PS Publishing,  appeared in June 2004 to considerable acclaim. It won the International Horror Guild award for best periodical in 2006 and 2008, and the British Fantasy Award for Best Magazine in 2009. I snatched up the early issues as they appeared… they were a little expensive on this…

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Tin House 64, the Summer Reading Issue, Now Available

Tin House is an American literary magazine, showcasing fiction and poetry from new and established writers. The magazine was founded in 1999, and has published fiction by Stephen King, Kelly Link, Jonathan Lethem, David Foster Wallace, and many others. The 2016 Summer Reading issue is huge — 224 pages — and filled with fiction. There are 11 stories, including five in translation, and an excerpt from the dark environmental thriller Marrow Island by Alexis M. Smith. In his Editor’s Note, Rob…

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The Granddaughter of Fu Manchu

Mike Shayne, the redheaded tough guy private eye, was introduced in the decidedly more lighthearted detective novel, Dividend on Death penned by the pseudonymous Brett Halliday in 1939. The character was an instant success and Michael Shayne (as he was initially known) quickly became a cottage industry leading to another 77 (mostly hardboiled) detective novels through the mid-1970s, over 300 short stories through the mid-1980s, 11 B-movies in the 1940s, a radio drama series that lasted nearly a decade, an early 1960s television series…

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Vintage Treasures: The Elsewhere Anthologies, edited by Terri Windling and Mark Alan Arnold

Terri Windling is a superstar in the field of fantasy. She’s been awarded the World Fantasy Award nine times, and she’s also won the Mythopoeic Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the 2010 SFWA Solstice Award. As an editor at Ace she discovered and promoted first novels by Charles de Lint, Emma Bull, and many other important authors; with Ellen Datlow she co-edited 16 volumes of the seminal Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror from 1986–2003. She’s also an author…

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Ann and Jeff Vandermeer’s The Big Book of Science Fiction Will be One of the Largest Anthologies the Genre Has Seen

I’ve covered a handful of truly massive anthologies at Black Gate over the years — Otto Penzler’s The Vampire Archives and The Big Book of Adventure Stories spring to mind, as well as Ann and Jeff Vandermeer’s 1152-page The Weird — but I’m not sure I’ve ever come something as hugely ambitious as The Big Book of Science Fiction, edited by the Vandermeers, and scheduled to be released by Vintage this July. Weighing in at 1,216 pages in oversized trade paperback,…

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Vintage Treasures: Machines That Kill, edited by Fred Saberhagen & Martin Harry Greenberg

Today’s Vintage Treasure is a fine example of a recently extinct species: the mass market anthology. Allow me a moment to mourn the loss of this beautiful and now-vanished creature. In days gone by, mass market anthologies thundered in vast herds across bookstore shelves, terrorizing lesser tomes. A single bookstore ecosystem could support a vast number of anthologies with a spellbinding array of thematic plumage, from horror to romantic fantasy to sword & sorcery and far future SF. In recent years, publishers such as…

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The Books of David G. Hartwell: Visions of Wonder and The Science Fiction Century

We lost David Hartwell on January 20th. This is our sixth article in a series that looks back at one of the most gifted editors in our industry. With the publication of The Dark Descent and The Ascent of Wonder, David quickly established himself as the go-to guy for big genre survey volumes, and he produced many of them. These massive books were popular with libraries and book clubs, and many stayed in print for years. David had found a fine niche for himself…

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Goth Chick News: Your Dark and Stormy Night Reading List Has Arrived – Meet the 2015 Stoker Nominees

As it does each year at this time, the Horror Writer’s Association (HWA) has announced this year’s nominees for the coveted Stoker Award. In case you aren’t familiar with the coolness that is the Stoker, it is named in honor of the man himself, Bram Stoker, and awards are presented annually for superior writing in eleven categories including traditional fiction of various lengths, poetry, screenplays and non-fiction. Previous winners include Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, George R. R. Martin, Joyce Carol…

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Vintage Treasures: Worldmakers and Supermen, edited by Gardner Dozois

Back in December I talked about a few of my favorite anthologies, The Good Old Stuff (1998) and The Good New Stuff (1999), which collected some of the best adventure SF from the last century, alongside Gardner Dozois’ detailed and affectionate commentary. Dozois followed up with another fine pair of anthologies focused on deep space exploration and the far future, Explorers: SF Adventures to Far Horizons and The Furthest Horizon: SF Adventures to the Far Future, both published in 2000. All…

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A Crossover Too Far

A. J. Smithers is a respected author of fiction and non-fiction titles with a special dedication to the Clubland fiction of Dornford Yates, John Buchan, and H. C. “Sapper” McNeile. His 1983 novel, Combined Forces was subtitled Being the Latter-Day Adventures of Richard Hannay, “Bulldog” Drummond, and Berry and Co. Clubland literary scholar Richard Usborne praised the book and Smithers’ willingness to expose the dark sides of its characters’ lives. Wold Newtonians sometimes seek out this rare work because of the literary crossover within…

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