Search Results for: tale covers

Alan Brown on Cordwainer Smith’s Classic Norstrilia

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First paperback release of Norstrilia (Ballantine, 1975), with the infamous “dog-derived undergirls” back cover text (they “smelled of romance all the time.”) Cover by Gray Morrow For the past six years Alan Brown has had an entertaining biweekly series at Tor.com on our favorite topic — vintage SF & fantasy. He’s covered Keith Laumer’s Bolo, Poul Anderson’s Flandry of Terra, Andre Norton’s The Beast Master, Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon, David Brin’s Startide Rising, and…

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The Timeless Strangeness of “Scanners Live in Vain”

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Fantasy Book No. 6, January 1950, first appearance of “Scanners Live in Vain” by Cordwainer Smith. Cover by Jack Gaughan I recently had occasion to reread Cordwainer Smith’s Science Fiction Hall of Fame story “Scanners Live in Vain.” This was probably my fifth rereading over the years (soon followed by a sixth!) — it’s a story I’ve always loved, but for some reason this time through it struck me even more strongly. It is a truly great SF story; and…

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Vintage Treasures: The Hugo Winners, Volumes 1, 2 and 3, edited by Isaac Asimov

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The Hugo Winners, Volumes I & II and The Hugo Winners, Volume 3 (Doubleday, 1972 and 1977). Cover designs by F. & J. Silversmiths, Inc, and Robert Jay Silverman I’ve written 1,973 Vintage Treasures articles for Black Gate. (That seems like a lot. Is it a lot? If it were, the paperbacks waiting to be written up wouldn’t be threatening to topple over in a spine-crushing avalanche, right? Still seems like a lot, somehow.) My Vintage Treasures pieces aren’t reviews, sometimes…

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Space Traders, Backwater Planets, and Rocket Girls: May/June 2022 Print SF Magazines

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May/June 2022 issues of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Asimov’s Science Fiction, and Analog Science Fiction & Fact. Cover art by Alan M. Clark, 123RF, and NASA There’s a fine batch of print magazines piled on my nightstand this week. But the clear highlight is the return of James Enge’s delightful traveling wizard Morlock Ambrosius, who made his debut in Black Gate 8. “The Hunger” appears in in the pages of F&SF; Sam Tomaino at SF Revu calls…

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High Fantasy Noir: Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse

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Black Sun (paperback reprint) and Fevered Star (Saga Press, June 2021 and April 2022). Covers by John Picacio My first novel The Robots of Gotham was released in June 2018, and it was gratifying to see a summer debut could quickly climb bestseller lists, receive wide attention and praise from numerous venues, snag a Nebula and Hugo nomination, and win a Locus Award. Not mine, of course. No, all that breathless acclaim went to Rebecca Roanhorse’s Trail of Lightning, released…

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Vintage Treasures: Nebula Award-Winning Novellas edited by Martin H. Greenberg

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Nebula Award-Winning Novellas (Barnes & Noble, 1994) It’s become fairly routine for the Nebula Awards Showcase, the annual anthology gathering the Science Fiction Writers of America’s Nebula award winning fiction, to omit the Best Novella. In fact, in the last five years only one novella, Martha Wells’s Murberbot tale All Systems Red, has been included in its entirety. Most of the others have been represented by brief extracts. This isn’t a new problem. In his introduction to Nebula Award-Winning Novellas,…

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Exploring the Dark Underbelly of the 41st Millennium: Warhammer Crime From Black Library

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Three Warhammer Crime volumes: Bloodlines by Chris Wraight, Grim Repast by Marc Collins, and the anthology Sanction & Sin (Black Library, 2020-21) I flew to Tampa this spring, my first business trip of the year. Felt weird to be on a plane in a pandemic, even if we are at the tail end. Last thing I packed, as usual, was something to read. My reading calendar for the month is always jammed up with books I’m covering for the blog,…

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Dumas’ Musketeers: Finding their Future in the Past

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Court of Daggers by Alexandre Dumas, translated by Lawrence Ellsworth (Substack, 2022) Besides compiling the Cinema of Swords series, you might be aware of my other ongoing adventure fiction project, editing and translating new, modern editions of Alexandre Dumas’ Musketeers novels. This is an adventure in itself, as The Three Musketeers and its sequels amount to almost two million words in French, and the new English editions of the Musketeers Cycle will fill nine volumes when completed. Thus, it’s a big,…

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New Treasures: Rainbringer: Zora Neale Hurston Against The Lovecraftian Mythos by Edward M. Erdelac

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Rainbringer: The Symphonic Heavy Metal of Weird Fiction Edward M. Erdelac has been writing entertaining weird fiction for over a decade. He pushes boundaries. One of his first spotlights on Black Gate was in 2014 regarding his Merkabah Rider (concerning the 19th-century Hasidic Jewish mystic turned gunslinger).  Erdelac also wrote an entry in Tales of Cthulhu Invictus mentioned in my recent 2022 review of Richard L. Tierney’s Simon of Gitta tales (this connection resonates since both Tierney and Erdelac extended…

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Vintage Treasures: Zelde M’Tana by F.M. Busby

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Zelde M’Tana (Dell, May 1980). Cover uncredited F.M. Busby was a prolific SF writer in the 70s and 80s, with a number of popular series, including the Demu Trilogy and the Slow Freight trilogy. But his most ambitious sequence was Rissa Kerguelen, the tale of a young woman who leads a rebellion against a tyrannical Earth, which ran to eight volumes. It’s been out of print since the 80s. The book I want to talk about today is the final…

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