Search Results for: Astounding

Vintage Treasures: Clash by Night by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore

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Clash by Night (Hamlyn Paperbacks, 1980). Cover by Chris Moore I’m a big fan of the short fiction of Henry Kuttner, one of the great genre pulp writers, and earlier this year I stumbled on a curiosity: a Hamlyn (UK) paperback collection of Kuttner’s pulp tales which has never been reprinted in the US: Clash by Night. Clash by Night collects five Kuttner tales from the heyday of the science fiction pulps, 1943-1952. The stories collected here were originally published in…

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Science is Sorcery

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Bloodstone (Warner, March 1975). Cover by Frank Frazetta “Kane’s power is that of science, not sorcery — although with elder-world science, the distinction becomes blurred. But then, to the untutored minds the distinction is difficult to grasp, for this lies in understanding the forces at work, and in the laws they obey. For example, to produce a deadly sword to wield in battle, a master smith will use secrets of his craft to smelt choice iron into steel, forge steel…

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Vintage Treasures: A Door Into Ocean by Joan Slonczewski

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A Door Into Ocean (Avon, February 1987). Cover by Line Joan Slonczewski’s first novel, Still Forms on Foxfield, was published in 1980, but it was their second novel, A Door Into Ocean, which made a real splash, winning the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel (not to be confused with the old Campbell Award for Best New Writer, now called the Astounding Award, on account of Campbell being a racist goofball.) Slonczewski is referred to as…

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Mission to the Mesozoic: The Shores of Kansas by Robert Chilson

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The Shores of Kansas (Popular Library, March 1976). Cover by Mariano Here’s another in my series of reviews of fairly obscure books from the ’70s and ’80s. Like some others, this review is of a book I bought at the Windy City Pulp and Paper Convention in Lombard, IL, earlier this year. Rob Chilson is a Kansas City based writer (though born in Oklahoma) whose first story appeared in Analog in 1968. (Likely he is one of the few John…

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What if a UFO Landed in a Bar?Alien Island by T. L. Sherred

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Alien Island (Ballantine Books, January 1970). Cover by Carol Inouye. Here’s my latest look at a little-remembered 1970s novel, T. L. Sherred’s Alien Island, which appeared in the very first month of the 1970s. These days T. L. Sherred is remembered for a single story, his SF Hall of Fame novella “E For Effort.” It’s a great story, and a deeply cynical one, so much so that there are those who claim that it was not chosen by John W….

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Vintage Treasures: The Med Series by Murray Leinster

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The Med Series (Ace, May 1983). Cover by James Warhola For most of its life John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction was the most important SF magazine on the stands. It was the beating heart of the genre in a way that’s tough to comprehend today, in a market that’s grown far beyond print. Campbell made his mark by discovering, nurturing, and publishing the most important writers of his day. But — quite cleverly, I think — he also cultivated…

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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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Vintage Treasures: Combat SF edited by Gordon R. Dickson

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Combat SF (Ace Books, June 1981). Cover by Vincent Di Fate Military science fiction has a long and honorable history, from Heinlein’s Starship Troopers to Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War and John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. It’s not nearly as prevalent on bookstore shelves as it used to be. Some people say that’s because science fiction is no longer a male-dominated genre that panders to young male power fantasies. And those people are mostly right. But there’s still plenty of…

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Vintage Treasures: Frontier of the Dark by A. Bertram Chandler

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Frontier of the Dark (Ace Books, January 1984). Cover by Attila Hejja A. Bertram Chandler was an enormously prolific science fiction author whom we haven’t covered much at Black Gate. He wrote some 200 short stories and over 40 novels, and is chiefly remembered today for his popular tales of the pioneer Rim Worlds, especially the adventures of John Grimes. Chandler began his career as a merchant marine officer in the UK, eventually commanding ships in the Australian and New…

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No Story is Without Value

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Good… whatever time of day or night you are reading this! They say those who do not read live but one life. Those who read live thousands. Reading is one of life’s few, small pleasures. It can also be incredibly frustrating, particularly if you want to share your excitement for any particular tale with the world. It seems that I am once again seeing discourse floating around the interwebs about books and genres and weird superiority rankings. It’s tired and…

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