Search Results for: tale covers

The Modern Horrors of Ronald Malfi

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Black Mouth and Ghostwritten (Titan Books, July 2022, October 2022). Cover designs by Julia Lloyd There’s nothing quite like a thoroughly unexpected discovery in a good bookstore. I couldn’t find the last Dell Magazines at my local Barnes & Noble in nearby Geneva, Illinois. So before Christmas I made a snowy road trip to the B&N superstore in Naperville. I didn’t find the magazines I wanted (what the heck, B&N magazine clerks??), but the 20 minutes I spent browsing their…

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The World’s Greatest Paranormal Investigator:Hellboy by Mike Mignola and Sundry Hands

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The kinds of stories I wanted to do I had in mind before I created Hellboy. It’s not like I created Hellboy and said, ‘Hey, now what does this guy do?’ I knew the kinds of stories I wanted to do, but just needed a main guy. Mike Mignola, “The Genesis of Hellboy”. Back Issue! (21) A half-demon paranormal investigator fighting Nazis is how my friend Evan Dorkin described Mike Mignola’s Hellboy to me nearly twenty years ago. He had been reading…

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Vintage Treasures: Citizen in Space by Robert Sheckley

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Citizen in Space (Ace Books, December 1978). Cover by Dean Ellis Robert Sheckley isn’t discussed much these days. But he had a towering reputation as an SF short story writer in the mid-20th Century. He sold his first story in 1951, and quickly became one of H.L. Gold’s stable of writers at Galaxy, one of the leading science fiction magazines of the 1950s. Sheckley was a very prolific writer of satirical SF, and he produced hundreds of short stories in…

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The Fantastic Realms of Luis Royo

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Realms of Fantasy covers by Luis Royo. Row 1: October 1997, April 1998, October 1998. Row 2: December 1999, October 2001, December 2002. Row 3: October 2004, August 2005, June 2006 Three days ago I wrote a quick piece about a pair of late 90s Ace paperbacks by Cary Osborne, Deathweave and Darkloom. The thing that first attracted my interest — as it often is — was the great covers for both books, in this case the work of the…

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Vintage Treasures: Deathweave and Darkloom by Cary Osborne

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Deathweave and Darkloom (Ace Books, 1998 & 1999). Covers by Royo I bought a collection of vintage paperbacks on eBay a while back (I do that a lot), and buried in the mix was one I knew nothing about, a midlist ACE SF adventure titled Deathweave by Cary Osborne. Now, I love midlist paperbacks. They’re basically an undiscovered country. If you’re an entry-level author, the theory is that if you work long enough, like countless writers before you, you’ll eventually build…

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Mars Missions, Vengeful Djinn, and Haunted Dolls: The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1952, a Retro-Review

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The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, April 1952 (Mercury Press). Cover by George Salter In its early years, one of the most notable characteristics of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction was its regular use of reprints — fantastical stories from outside the genre, often by very well-known writers, given exposure to SF and Fantasy readers. Another notable characteristic was covers by its art director, George Salter. Both aspects are features of this issue — indeed, this seems almost…

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The Public Life of Sherlock Holmes – Holmes Shelfies (#1)

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So…I found a kinda cool group over on Reddit. And it wasn’t LotR_on_Prime – yeesh. R/bookshelf is a subreddit where people post their shelfies. With over 2,000 books on 90-ish shelves/cubes, that appealed to me! I started with my Jack Higgins shelf, and then my Clive Cussler one. I’ve done a couple fantasy shelves, but mostly I’ve been sharing pics of my over-500 Sherlock Holmes and Arthur Conan Doyle books. And I’ve been adding a comment, talking about some of…

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Monsters, Mechs, and a Multi-Book Saga: Nightwatch Over Windscar by K. Eason

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The novels of The Weep: Nightwatch on the Hinterlands and Nightwatch Over Windscar (DAW, October 2021 and November 2022). Covers by Tim Green/Faceout I’m pretty much an impulse buyer. When I pick up a book and it mentions monsters, interstellar Confederations, extra-dimensional horrors, subterranean ruins, witches, and decommissioned battle mechs — all in the first two paragraphs — I’m usually sold. That’s exactly what happened when I read the inside jacket copy for Nightwatch Over Windscar, the new novel by…

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Exploring the Dark Corners of the Universe: The Science Fiction Anthologies of August Derleth

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Strange Ports of Call (Berkley Books, June 1958). Cover artist tragically unknown August Derleth is remembered these days primarily for his stewardship of the works of H.P. Lovecraft. He founded Arkham House (with Donald Wandrei) in 1939 to bring Lovecraft into print in hardcover, and over the next 30 years he contributed steadily to Lovecraft’s foundational Cthulhu Mythos, both in his own writing, and by publishing numerous books in the cycle from other horror notables. He was also (as Bob…

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A Dark and Glorious Vision: Michael Moorcock’s Elric, from Titan Comics

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All four volumes in Michael Moorcock’s Elric from Titan Comics (2014 – 2022) There’s been a lot of comic adaptations of Michael Moorcock’s Elric over the years. Perhaps the most famous is the French artist Philippe Druillet’s ambitious rendition of The Eternal Champion, but there have been many others associated with the character, including P. Craig Russell, James Cawthorn, Walter Simonsen, Mike Mignolia, Howard Chaykin, and many more. First Comics had a lengthy association with Moorcock for many years, producing…

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