I’ve gotten used to introducing these vintage Best Of collections — as I did recently with The Best of Robert Bloch and The Best of Murray Leinster — assuming that most readers have no idea who the authors are. There’s been a surge of interest in Henry Kuttner lately, however, and he’s been in the news half a dozen times this year at Black Gate alone. The most recent was just last week, when we listed him as one of…
Robert Bloch — who died in 1994 at the age of 77 — had a lengthy and enviable career as a dark fantasy and horror writer, producing over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories. Of course, all of that was overshadowed by his greatest success: the 1959 novel, Psycho, adapted by legendary director Alfred Hitchcock as perhaps his most famous film. But there’s a lot more to Robert Bloch than just Psycho, as most fans know. Bloch was one of…
I can’t be the only one who really enjoys these low-cost omnibus editions produced by the Science Fiction Book Club. Omnibus editions have been a tradition for the SFBC for as long as I’ve been a member (don’t ask how long that is). One of the first books I purchased from them — and still one of my favorite SF books, period — was H. Beam Piper’s The Fuzzy Papers in the mid -1970s, containing Little Fuzzy and Fuzzy Sapiens. The…
I’m a huge fan of E.E. Knight’s Vampire Earth novels. For me it started years ago, with the paperback editions of the first two books in the series, Way of the Wolf and Choice of the Cat. If you’re new to the series, of course, things are easier. You don’t have long waits between releases, haunting bookstores for the next installment. You can even get the first three novels in a handsome omnibus edition from the Science Fiction Book Club,…
E.E. Knight’s Vampire Earth is one of the best adventure series on the market — action-packed, highly entertaining, and filled with great twists and surprises. Set on a near-future Earth conquered by a vampiric alien race, it’s the kind of fast paced and chilling narrative that would have resulted (as Paul Witcover puts it), “If The Red Badge of Courage had been written by H.P. Lovecraft.” The Science Fiction Book Club has just released a high-quality hardcover omnibus of the first three books,…
“I think it’s pretty cool that crowdfunding allows all the elements of this anthology to come together — a magazine with a history in the space opera community, pro authors who are enjoying a chance to pursue a unique project, and a small press getting a chance to grow alongside a rising editor working with his love of space opera.” – Camille Gooderham-Campbell, Every Day Publishing I imagine many Black Gate readers came to their love of science fiction and…
The Fuzzy Papers was one of the first science fiction books I ever read, and it’s one of the small handful of books that made me an SF reader for life. The Fuzzy Papers contains two novels by H. Beam Piper, Little Fuzzy (1962) and Fuzzy Sapiens (1964, also known as The Other Human Race), and was published by the Science Fiction Book Club in 1980. I joined the SFBC at the age of 12 at the urging of my friend…
It shouldn’t be a surprise that I didn’t discover science fiction and fantasy through novels — not really. I discovered it by reading short stories in Junior High, and especially the enticing anthologies on display every week in the library at St. Francis School in Halifax, Nova Scotia. I didn’t really know what science fiction was; but if it had monsters on the cover, I was all over it. The first anthology I can recall reading was Creatures From Beyond, a…
Back on Mars, and closing in on its finale, after my short sabbatical… What can I say? It seems Synthetic Men of Mars will suck out the desire to keep trudging forward from even the most dedicated ERB enthusiast. Llana of Gathol is the first of the two story collections that close out the published Barsoom epic: it contains four novellas chronologically linked together to produce an episodic novel… one that hopefully improves upon the failed previous book. Our Saga:…
I was almost to Chicago last Thursday when I realized I’d gotten so wrapped up in the audio book of The Name of the Wind that I’d missed my turn. Fortunately, I found another way to Interstate 90 and the Hyatt Regency. And when I finally reached the dealer’s room, I was able to lodge a personal complaint with Patrick Rothfuss himself for writing so well that I got distracted. It wasn’t long ago that I’d arrive at a convention…