Search Results for: tale covers

Vintage Treasures: The Trackers Series by David Gerrold

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Covers by Michael Herring David Gerrold began his career as a screenwriter for Star Trek (the famous episode “The Trouble With Tribbles”), Land of the Lost, Babylon 5, Sliders, and others, but today he’s chiefly known as an author and novelist, with such works as the Hugo Award winning “The Martian Child” (made into a 2007 John Cusack film), The War Against the Chtorr series, Star Wolf, and most recently Hella, a 2020 adventure thriller set on a world where…

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Fantastical Kung fu Swordsmen Woven Into Historical Events: Legends of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong

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St. Martin’s Press paperback editions. Cover design by Ervin Serrano Louis Cha Leung-yung, known more widely by his pen name Jin Yong, was a Hong Kong wuxia author whose tales of martial arts heroes in ancient China made him one of the most popular writers of all time. He wrote 15 books between 1955 – 1972, and by the time of his death in 2018 he was the best-selling Chinese author. The New Yorker proclaimed that “in the Chinese-speaking world,…

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Vintage Treasures: The Macabre Reader edited by Donald A. Wollheim

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The Macabre Reader (Ace, 1959). Cover by Ed Emshwiller Today, December 21st, is the Winter solstice and the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. What to do with those long winter night hours? Curl up with a blanket, a warm beverage, and a good spooky book, of course. My pick for tonight is Donald A. Wollheim’s The Macabre Reader, his 14th anthology, published as a paperback original in 1959 and never reprinted in the US. It’s still considered…

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Underground Bazaars, Generation Ships, and the Mountains of Madness: November/December Print SF Magazines

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Covers by Kurt Huggins, Eldar Zakirov, and David A. Hardy Things have finally settled down in the magazine section of my local Barnes & Noble, and my favorite print magazines are reliably showing up again. I have to say, I’m relieved they all survived the chaos — in distribution, the market, and to their readers — caused by the pandemic. Magazines are fragile things at the best times, and fiction magazines particularly so. Having said that, the recent issues are…

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 25: The Proteus Saga and My First Comics!

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Welcome to the 25th installment of my reread of The Uncanny X-Men from 1963’s issue #1. We’re now in 1979 and this post will cover issues #125-#128. This is a really memorable run for me for a few of reasons. First of all, it’s an amazing 4-issue story with huge stakes and high drama, and an example of the Claremont-Byrne team entering their creative peak. Second, in these 4 issues, some really messed up stuff starts to be revealed about the psychological manipulation of…

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A Heist in a Sword and Sorcery World: A Hazardous Engagement by Gaie Sebold

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Cover by Duncan Kay I’ve had my eye on Gaie Sebold ever since I bought her brilliant and funny short story “A Touch of Crystal” (co-written with fellow Brit Martin Owton), the tale of a shopkeeper who discovers some of the goods in her New Age shop are actually magical, for Black Gate 9. She’s been well worth the watch. Her debut novel Babylon Steel (described as “Sword & Sorcery for the girl who wants to be Conan”) kicked off…

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New Treasures: The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson

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We’re nearing the end of 2020 and like most of you, all I can think is, man. Good riddance. There were a few highlights, of course. As always there were a number of exciting debuts, and that cheered me up a little. One of the most talked about SF debuts of 2020 has been Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds, named one of the Best Books of the Year by Library Journal, NPR, and Book Riot. In The New York…

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An Evocation of the Science Fiction Dream of Exploration: “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany

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Worlds of Tomorrow, February 1967, containing “The Star Pit” by Samuel R. Delany. Cover by Morrow This is the first of what I hope will be an extended series of essays taking a closer look at some stories I either consider to be particularly good, or interesting for other reasons. Of necessity, each of these essays will go into some detail as to the plot of the stories – in most case, in my opinion, this will not “spoil” the…

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Imaro Series Tour Guide

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“Who am I? Who is my father? Where is my mother? Why do death and demons follow me wherever I go?” – Imaro in The Quest for Cush Charles R. Saunders, the originator of Sword & Soul, passed away May this year (2020, Greg Mele covered a tribute for Black Gate). Saunders is most known for his Imaro tales chronicling an African-inspired “Conan the Barbarian” on the fictional continent of Nyumbani. Saunders also wrote of a heroine named Dossouye (separate series), amongst…

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Uncanny X-Men, Part 24: Arcade, Murderworld and their First King-Sized Annual

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Oh hi! You’ve stumbled onto part 24 of my ongoing reread of The Uncanny X-Men. We’ve reached the year 1979, about halfway through the Bronze Age of comics and about a third of the way into the legendary Claremont-Byrne-Austin run. Looking back, we’ve come a long way from 1963; the Bronze Age was a time of growing sophistication and experimentation in comics, and the X-Men was one of the petri dishes. This post will only cover issues #123 and #124 because…

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