Search Results for: brunner

Aztec Empires, Amazons, and the Spanish Armada: Rich Horton on John Brunner’s Times Without Number

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In addition to his reviews here at Black Gate, Rich Horton has been quietly reviewing neglected SF and fantasy classics on his own blog, Strange at Ecbatan, to great effect for the past few years. We recently highlighted one of his more intriguing choices, the 1961 Ace Double Wandl the Invader/I Speak For Earth. This month he turns his attention to another neglected John Brunner masterwork, the 1962 fix-up novel Times Without Number, originally published as an Ace Double in…

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Martian Pirates, Brain Creatures, and Hive Minds: Rich Horton on Ray Cummings and John Brunner

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Rich Horton’s personal blog, Strange at Ecbatan, is a great place to hang out if (like us) you love vintage paperbacks and magazines. In addition to his reviews here at Black Gate (not to mention his editing duties for The Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy, the 2015 Volume of which just arrived last month), Rich also reviews forgotten bestsellers, neglected classics, and obscure books by writers who later became highly regarded. This week he takes a look at an…

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Vintage Treasures: Vulcan’s Hammer by Philip K. Dick/ The Skynappers by John Brunner

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One of the things I love about the early Ace Doubles is that they frequently paired young writers who later became superstars. It’s like finding a movie starring Scarlett Johansson and Elijah Wood when they were both 10 years old (that move exists, by the way. It’s called North. Don’t see it.) The 1960 Ace Double Vulcan’s Hammer/The Skynappers is a fine example. It paired the 32-year old Philip K. Dick — well established by that point, with seven novels…

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Robert Silverberg on the Tragic Death of John Brunner

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Six months ago, I wrote about an unusual find I made online: The Great Steamboat Race, an enormous and ambitious historical novel written by none other than John Brunner. Brunner, of course, was a highly regarded SF and fantasy writer, beloved even today for Stand on Zanzibar, The Complete Traveller in Black, and many other novels. He died in 1995, at the World Science Fiction convention. The Great Steamboat Race was an enigma. I’d never seen a copy before, never…

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Vintage Treasures: The Great Steamboat Race by John Brunner

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John Brunner is one of my favorite writers. He wrote one of the finest SF novels I’ve ever read, the Hugo Award-winning Stand on Zannibar, and over a career that spanned 40+ years he produced nearly 60 SF novels  and 15 short story collections. I have virtually all of his SF output, but a few months ago I stumbled on a Brunner novel unknown to me: The Great Steamboat Race, published in a premium trade paperback edition by Ballantine in 1983….

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Adventure in the Magellanic Cloud: The Mote in Time’s Eye by Gérard Klein

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The Mote in Time’s Eye (DAW, January 1975). Cover by Josh Kirby This is the latest in a series of posts I’m doing covering relatively obscure SF novels of the ‘70s and ‘80s. This novel was first published in French in 1965, but as it didn’t appear in English until 1975, I figure it fits this series. One of the things on the good side of the Donald A. Wollheim ledger is his willingness to publish SF in translation. This…

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Vintage Treasures: World’s Best Science Fiction First Series edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr

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World’s Best Science Fiction First Series (Ace Books, 1970). Cover by Jack Gaughan If you want to understand science fiction, it’s not a bad idea to start by reading Year’s Best volumes. And if you’re going to do that, it’s not a bad idea to start with the World’s Best Science Fiction, edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr, an annual series that began in 1965 and lasted for an amazing 26 volumes. The last of which, The 1990…

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Beautiful Dark Worlds: An Interview with John R. Fultz

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JRF has deep roots in the weird fiction community and especially Black Gate, and you can learn about those in this post.  We recently reviewed his collections Darker than Weird and Worlds Beyond Worlds which were published after I interviewed the author in 2017 for my Weird Beauty interviews series (right before Black Gate began hosting them; see the listing of those interviews below). This reposts that interview and teases an updated one specific to Fultz’s Zang Cycle (to be…

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Vintage Treasures: Fantasy Annual III edited by Terry Carr

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Fantasy Annual III (Timescape/Pocket Books, May 1981). Cover by Lisa Falkenstern Today we’re jumping back four decades to Fantasy Annual III, the third volume of Terry Carr’s companion series to his legendary and long-running Best Science Fiction of the Year, which ran from 1972 to the year he died, 1987. Fantasy Annual, which underwent a name change (and a change in publisher) lasted only five volumes, 1978-1982. But it was lauded in its day, and I still miss it. Fantasy…

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Vintage Treasures: Neutron Star by Larry Niven

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Neutron Star (Ballantine Bools, April 1968). Cover artist unknown As I was preparing last week’s Vintage Treasures article (on Poul Anderson’s Fire Time), I realized that the next book on deck was Neutron Star, by Larry Niven, one of the most important science fiction collections of the 20th Century. And I simultaneously realized we’ve never done a Vintage Treasures feature on Niven before, a pretty serious oversight. (For comparison purposes, as I was assembling reference links at the bottom of…

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