A few months ago I wrote about The Best of Jack Williamson, a fun refresher course for me in one of the great science fiction writers of the pulp era. It also reminded me that I wanted to read his Legion of Space novels, one of the most popular pre-Campbell space operas. Time is running out, too. Isaac Asimov, a huge fan of The Legion of Space when he first read it in Astounding Stories in 1934, sadly found it virtually unreadable…
Last week, I reminisced about how some of my earliest scribbles were influenced by the interstellar dogfights I saw in Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica. I was always doodling — a look at one of my notebooks from any year of my schooling would testify to how it sustained me through boring classes. There in the margins bloomed flora and fauna from the Dr. Seuss School of Zoology, spaceships, barbarians, and things that must have crept from the deeper recesses…
So I tried to hit all the genre classics in my early days as an SF and fantasy reader, and I think I did a pretty fair job . Sure, I have a few gaps here and there, but overall I think I managed to read the ones that looked interesting. With a few notable exceptions. I didn’t discover James H. Schmitz until relatively late, and I wasn’t able to lay hands on his most famous novel, Hugo nominee The Witches…
Christmas is pretty hectic at our house, and has been for about 18 years. Ever since we started sharing it with children. Our kids try to sit still and open their presents. They do. But after they’ve torn open a few, they can’t sit around in a calm circle in the living room any longer. Nope, nope. They tear off to shoot each other with their new Nerf guns or play Arkham Origins on the Xbox or read Atomic Robo or…
I’m still enjoying the Appendix N surveys by Tim Callahan and Mordicai Knode at Tor.com, as they read through every author Gary Gygax cited as an influence on Dungeons and Dragons, even though I’ve found lots to disagree with in their recent columns. So I’m happy to continue with these re-caps here. Especially since I don’t have a lot emotionally invested in their next two subjects: Lord Dunsany and Philip José Farmer. I have a lot of respect for Lord…
Last month we invited Black Gate readers to tell us about the best sword & sorcery tale they’d ever read, in one paragraph or less. In return, we offered to award a copy of Howard Andrew Jones’ terrific new Pathfinder Tales book, Stalking the Beast, the follow-up to his hit Pathfinder release Plague of Shadows from Paizo Publishing, to five lucky winners. Those five winners were randomly drawn from the list of all qualified entrants. Before we announce the winners, let’s have a look at some of the story…
This is one of a great many ’50s digests. It began publication in October 1956 as a bimonthly, and became a monthly in 1959 for its last four issues (the last was May). 18 issues total. (Apparently the June and July issues were assembled at least to some degree.) The publisher was Leo Margulies, and the editor for the first two issues was Sam Merwin, who had done good work with Startling Stories/Thrilling Wonder Stories. According to the Science Fiction…
Welcome to the 13th installment of my ongoing examination of one of the most influential book series of my youth, Lester Del Rey’s Classics of Science Fiction line. This time, we’re looking at the 1977 release, The Best of Fredric Brown, edited by Robert Bloch (who had his own entry in the series eleven months after this one, which I discussed back in July.) The Classics of Science Fiction line was my introduction to many of the major SF and fantasy…
By Janet Morris and Chris Morris This is an excerpt from The Sacred Band, by Janet Morris and Chris Morris, presented by Black Gate magazine. It appears with the permission of Janet Morris and Chris Morris, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part. All rights reserved. The Sacred Band is available in hardcover, trade paper; and in Kindle, Nook, and other electronic formats at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, I Tunes and other booksellers. Shock Troops of the Gods…
I didn’t know anything about Philip K. Dick when The Best of Philip K. Dick was released in 1977. That was the year Star Wars came out and I was more interested in trying to make a light saber out of my sister’s hair dryer. I wasn’t alone (about Dick, not my obsession with my sister’s hair dryer). Philip K. Dick was a midlist paperback science fiction writer in the mid-70s, with few awards and only a handful of successful novels to his name, largely unknown…