Here are my compiled thoughts (as promised) on the stories nominated in the short fiction categories for the 2016 Hugo. (Versions of these posts appeared earlier on my blog, Strange at Ecbatan.) A quick word on my voting philosophy: I am not planning to reflexively rank Rabid Puppy entries below No Award. I am of course disgusted by the Rabid Puppy antics, and I feel that many more worthy stories were kept off the ballot by the Rabid choices. And…
Here’s an odd little book. It was fairly routine for publishers to use sex to sell paperbacks in the 60s and 70s (and 80s, and 90s, and….) But usually they teased the reader with sexy cover art, or code words like “sensuous” and “spicy” (or “French”) to signal sexual content. The Pollinators of Eden has a more overt sexual theme, dealing with an intelligent and sexually voracious species of tulip discovered on a distant planet. It was Boyd’s second novel, following The Last…
Holy cats… Jonathan Strahan’s up to Volume Ten already? My oh my, how times flies. Well, you know what the imminent arrival of the newest volume of The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year means. That’s right — the Best of the Year season is upon us. Strahan kicks it off, as usual, but in the next 3-4 months we’ll see a dozen more from Gardner Dozois, Rich Horton, Paula Guran (two volumes!), Ellen Datlow, Neil Clarke, John Joseph Adams, and…
Over at his personal blog Strange at Ecbatan, Rich Horton reviews one of the great classics of science fantasy, Leigh Brackett’s The Ginger Star, the opening novel in the three-volume Book of Skaith. I adore the great Brackett stories of the late ’40s and early ‘50s, particularly The Sword of Rhiannon, one of the great pure planetary romances; and other stories in the same loosely developed future (though The Sword of Rhiannon is really set in the past): “The Halfling,”…
The top article at Black Gate last month wasn’t even a BG piece, strictly speaking. It was a brief link to Matthew David Surridge’s essay The Great Hugo Wars of 2015, at Splice Today. Based on the overwhelming traffic to that article, and the high number of comments, it seems our readers are still more than casually interested in the Hugo Awards. Number 2 on the list was M Harold Page’s look at Fool’s Assassin, and How Robin Hobb Writes Lyrical Fantasy…
I’ve been enjoying doing a little research on vintage paperback prices… mostly because it involves my favorite pastime, shopping online for science fiction paperbacks. Except now I get to do it, y’know, in the name of science. What I’ve learned so far hasn’t been super surprising. Robert A. Heinlein is popular. Philip K. Dick is really popular. I guess the biggest surprise is that the #2 man on the list is Karl Edward Wagner, which I didn’t expect (but I…
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…
The Ace Doubles were a fairly low-paying market by most measures, and they didn’t always attract top authors. But they did publish early books by many writers who would go on to become top authors. Such is the case with the pairing of Rocannon’s World, the first novel by the great Ursula K. LeGuin, and The Kar-Chee Reign, an early novel by SF master Avram Davidson. Rich Horton examined both novels as part of his ongoing series of Ace Double reviews…
Jonathan Strahan is one of the most accomplished and acclaimed editors in the genre. He’s edited the annual Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year since 2007, as well as some of our most highly regarded original anthologies — including the Infinity series (Engineering Infinity, Edge of Infinity, etc) and the Fearsome books (Fearsome Journeys and Fearsome Magics), all for Solaris. He’s also edited (with Terry Dowling) one of my favorite ongoing series, the five volumes in the monumental Early…
I’ve been on something of a Fletcher Pratt kick recently, ever since I purchased a fine collection of old paperbacks that included five of his books, including The Well of the Unicorn and Tales From Gavagan’s Bar (co-written with L. Sprague de Camp), both of which I recently wrote up as Vintage Treasures. Way down in the bottom of that box was a copy of The Compleat Enchanter. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first. Everyone who collects classic American fantasy has…